la vita è bella

Sidebar: For a while now I've been using song and album names as titles for my posts. Today I found myself at a fork - to use life is beautiful which as actually a song by Vega 4, or its Italian counterpart la vita è bella, which is the name of a movie. As you probably already know, the movie won out. Italian sounds so exotic....

A friend of mine's grandmother was killed recently. The worst possible way - she was first stabbed, then when she failed to bleed to death she was strangled. Here's the kicker - by her son, now the friend's uncle. And what's worse, this friend's mum got to the scene before the grandmother died, so she saw it all. The trauma is real in their house. Real!! It surprises me at times, how fleeting life can get. One moment you're here, the next you're not. I find it a little ironic, that life is God's most precious gift, bar none, and yet of all of them, it's the one gift we're sure is going to be taken back someday.Regardless of religion, creed, belief, culture, upbringing, we all converge on this one point - we're gonna die someday. The English even coined a phrase around it: as sure as death and taxes (turns out the government is pretty efficient when it comes to collecting those...:). But the sad part, is that for those who remain life has to go on. The hardest part of saying goodbye is having to do it all over again, every day for the rest of one's life. Having to face the same truth each new day, that life will never be the same again. Our time here is short. It feels like a part of us has been ripped off. And I guess it usually has. I've so far had the good fortune of never having lost someone close to me. I can't even begin to imagine what it feels like. It's been 4000 years and we as a civilization still haven't grasped the mystery that is death. The closest we've come is to call it the Grim Reaper.

That said, it's not so hard to tell how bad death is from the effects it has on the people it surrounds. No matter how bad someone was alive, there will always be nice things to say about them at their funerals. It's a twisted stroke of fate, that people should find the heart to share all these great things about someone when he's no longer around to hear them. They say the one thing worse than having loved and lost is to never have loved at all. But I would like to contend, the worst thing that could happen to someone, is to die before their time. Before they get the chance to realize all their dreams. Before they get to show the world just what it is they're made of. Life owes it to us to last until such time as our potential is fulfilled. Preachers preach and a lot of them call the grave yard the richest place in the world. They say it's coz it's full of people who died with dreams untold. People who didn't live long enough to see their ambitions through. That, I think, is the worst thing that could happen to someone.

And as terrible as death is, life is that much better. It's under the cover of life that we can, well, live. And love. Learn guitar. And play the music in our hearts. Travel. Meet new people. Climb the Everest (or maybe just the Nandi Hills, but still). Win an Olympic medal. Get an autograph from Snow Patrol. Exercise. Eat fast food. Listen to indie rock and rebel against the law. Fantasize about Jessica Alba. Run a blog. Fly. Freaking anything we wanna do!! And then turn right around and do it all over again. Ever wondered what it would be like if you weren't there? If you were suddenly gone, how would your world react? Well, whatever you thought you were wrong. There can be nothing glamarous about death. Grief is like the ocean. It's deep, it's dark and it's bigger than all of us.

So, does life really end at death? For most of us, yes. But Mary Elizabeth Frye wrote the euology of eulogies, and I'd like to to be mine:

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond glint on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain
I am the gentle autumn's rain.

When you wake in the morning hush
I am the sweet uplifting rush.
Of quiet birds in circling flight
I am the soft starlight at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there, I did not die.

END

a rush of blood to the head

So it's been a pretty long week. Actually a long month, coz this is the first month I've spent working. Like ever! I never did any of that internship thing when I was in uni, I just used to bum all holiday long. It's a new experience, like being thrown into the deep end (that would actually also be a new one for me literally - don't know how to swim :). But yesterday I did something good. I bought something big for my new house. It's not new really, I've kinda been living there for about a month already, but I haven't gotten anything at all, except for the bed which I really did need. Anyway, the big thing. It's not really big, it's just a coffee maker. I decided on that one coz Im an absolute lover of coffee, I think they're really cool and convenient, and it's something I've always wanted. But mostly it was that I could afford it at the time -:). Im a guy who likes symbolism to some extent, and so to break it in and mark the day all I had was coffee. Breakfast, lunch and supper. Ok, not lunch coz I was out for that one, but definitely the other two. And its been great. Now I want a TV and a Playstation. (What's that? Im too old? No Im not. Leave me alone!)

The first time I paid rent was depressing. I can totally see now how it is our parents got so old so fast! Growing up the way I did, one never realises this day is going to come. I was a pretty sheltered kid, add that to the fact that I grew up upcountry and you have yourself naivette at its best. We weren't really rich, but we comfortable, Id say, and I got most of what I wanted (except for a certain mountain bike that has eluded me to this day..:( ). And so you tend to learn to not care where stuff comes from. All you know is if you want it it can be found. The stories about hungry kids in Sudan don't really impact us the way they do white people coz we're so close to it all. It's that case of familiarity breeding contempt, I guess. Of course as a kid you don't really think like that anyway, these are things that just cross my mind in hindsight. When I try and think about how different I probably would be if I'd grown up having to hustle for myself. Or if I'd ever been in the middle of a live strike (can you believe I've still never seen one??!) and had to escape the scene.

Im not complaining by the way. I loved my childhood. And I think my parents did make me who I am today, together with Starch of course, no one goes to that school and chucks without being changed in some way! It's just that now that I have to get all my own stuff and pay all my own bills it's a little new. There's no lifeline at the other end of the phone to bail me out. (ok, there is, but who're we kidding?) But there's a sense of achievement, I find, that comes with being able to call something mine. It's refreshing, like a breath of fresh air, knowing deep down inside that my life is now my own. Coz it is. I answer to no one but myself. If you don't count my boss that is - all 60 of them [and they say it's a flat structure. What!!]. Ok, not really 60, but still.

Coz of this new-found freedom Im learning all the fundamentals. How to be fiscally responsible. Savings. Investing. Budgeting. Even the word "mortgage" keeps coming up. It gets overwhelming at times, but truth be told I've never had so much cash in my life, and so I really do need to learn these things, at the very least to keep me from bouncing off the walls after payday. Everytime I get a chance now that I live close to a megastore I go window shopping and there is ALOT of stuff to buy out there. You can never not find something, even things you weren't looking for. Or things you have no idea when you'll ever need to use. Discipline is hard. But necessary. And it starts now, with me admonishing myself over that skateboard I bought. Oh, wait, had I not mentioned that? Ya. The coffee maker Im proud of. The skateboard, maybe not so much...

END

love in the time of science

When the Time Magazine decided to do a Person of the Century edition back in '99, it was
to award the person who they thought had had the most impact through the entire century.
Now Time does a lot of cover spreads, and they're almost always who's who. So who better to pick the best out of the best than them! As you can imagine the list had like all the big names. FDR, JFK, Mahatma Gandhi, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs (ya, he of the ipod fame), Elvis Presley, and even (SHOCKING!!!) Adolf Hitler. But among them, a little known scientist was crowned king. Albert Einstein and his theory of relativity won out. He wasn't the loudest, or most eloquent, or most influential, and by no means even the smartest, person on the list. But see according to the guys over at Time, the one thing for which the 20th Century will be remembered for the most will be its scientific developments. Apparently science was a really big part of the last hundred years. So in a world full of scientists, what does it mean to be in love?

Is it the ancient mythic asian folk tale handed across generations depicting a conversation between two drunk people:
Drunk #1: "I love you!"
Drunk #2: "No you don't."
Drunk #1: "Yes, yes, I do. I love you with all my heart."
Drunk #2: "No you don't. If you love me, why don't you know what hurts me?"

Is it the whole romanticized idea of a guy bringing a girl the moon (or a red rose) and crossing the ocean for her? Does it necessarily mean sacrificing, to the point of giving up your life for another? Is it blind? When belabored with conditions, does it cease to be "true"? Does it take you breathe away, and does it never end? Is everyone of us really meant to end up with just the one person? Is it written in the stars? And if it's destiny, then is this just God's experiment in which we have no say? O ya, and what if the earth doesn't move?

Or is it the Hollywood interpretation, what Julia Roberts meant when she stood before Hugh Grant in his bookstore telling him "The fame thing isn't really real you know. And don't forget, Im also just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her." Or what Anne Hathaway meant when in answer to Jason's question "Why me?" she said, "Because you saw me when I was still a nobody." Or what Kate Winslet and Leo DiCaprio shared when deep in the Atlantic she held his hand telling him, "I'll never let go!" Or what Chad Michael Murray was feeling looking deep into Hilarie Burton's eyes and telling her "It's you. When all my dreams come true, the one I want next to me. It's you,
Peyton." Or the connection Sanaa Lathan had with hip hop, all the way from her childhood, in the form of an apparently strapping young fellow by the name Taye Diggs. (BTW I think I now need to get a life coz these examples just keep flowing. What!!)

I think love is one of those things that doesn't have an absolute definition, it's purely subjective. You could ask a hundred people in love what it means to them and you'd end up with a hundred different answers. Much unlike the Theory of Relativity above, love is one subject that remains as fluid as the air. You can never really put your finger on it. To some it could be complete trust. To others it could be putting someone else's dreams and ambitions above one's own. And to yet others it could be
accepting the other person exactly as they are, warts and all. And I think all these people would be right. It seems to be the kind of thing that's really easy to confuse with want or desire (spelt l-u-s-t ;). See my thinking is one is fleeting, and the other lasts for a while (forever if the romantics are to be believed). One is superficial and the other runs deep. In hindsight it's usually pretty easy to describe love - after all, if after 27 years you still make each other's hearts skip beats then it sounds like love. But on that first day, can you usually see the next 27 years? Herein lies the problem with
defining love. It's one of those things that is until it's not. And when it stops being then you'll know it wasn't true, if it doesn't (stop being) then you'll know it was. (Eh, am I in danger of becoming a philosopher here?...)

We spend our whole lives searching for true love, which is why our lifetimes are divided into two - there's that first part where we're still searching, and then the second part called "the rest of our lives" when we've found it. And don't take my word for it: just turn on the radio. Depeche Mode - The Meaning of Love; Air Supply - All Out Of Love; Angels and Airwaves - Love Like Rockets; Ashlee Simpson - Love Makes The World Go Round; BarlowGirl - I Need You To Love Me; and that's even before I go into the R&B songs! Turn on the TV: One life to live; One Tree Hill; Felicity; Dawson's Creek; Tell Me You Love Me; Melrose Place... again, I haven't even broached the subject of Mexican soaps! Or go to the cinema: The Other Boleyn Girl, Titanic, Casablanca, If Only, The Notebook, Love In The Time of Cholera, The English Patient... I could really go on. And yet love
remains the most misunderstood concept of all time (although a pretty strong case can also be made for E=mc2 :)

I found this paragraph on the net some time and I think it sums it up pretty well: As an abstract concept, love usually refers to a deep, ineffable feeling of tenderly caring for another person. Even this limited conception of love, however, encompasses a wealth of different feelings, from the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love to the nonsexual emotional closeness of familial and Platonic love to the profound oneness or devotion of religious love. As in even they admit it's impossible to explain (ineffable). And of course, no discussion on love would be truly complete without The Bard adding his voice to the mix:

Love is not love which alters when it alteration
finds. It is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempis and is never shaken. Love
alters not with time's brief hours and weeks, but bears it out, even to edge of
doom.

END

we might as well be strangers

Last Sunday's sermon was very awe-inspiring. It was about us being ourselves. Being the Africans we are meant to be. Unapologetically, so the preacher said. It really provoked me. Most of the stuff he said is actually true about us. We walk around wearing those loud t-shirts that scream Kenya in glow-in-the-dark colors and paint our faces red green and white, so that we show we're patriots. We make a loud hash every time we buy Kenya, so we can show we support our local industry. We try so hard to tell our friends where it is we come from, and we tell ourselves twenty times every day, "I'm proud to be Kenyan." So the question was: when has it ever been in contention that we're proud? Who asked? Who challenged the status? Why do we feel that need to outwardly go out of our way to prove our love for the motherland? It all sounds a little fake sometimes if you ask me. If it was real, if it was genuine, it would just come through. It's almost as though we're trying to convince ourselves that we love the motherland!

The things, according to him, that people who don't come from here love about our country and us: we're all family, you don't need to call ahead to show up at someone's door step, we own things communally, we place a greater premium on people and relationships than we do on time and systems, our mother-tongue interferes with other languages, like english, we cook a mountain of food every meal - just in case guests show up unannounced, cousing is not even a Kenyan concept - here we're really all brothers and sisters. If you look carefully, you'll find that these, the things others admire in us, are the things we're ashamed of. Someone is speaking and they shrub and we laugh at them. Someone shows up an hour late for a meeting and we call that "Kenyan timing." and that's enough to explain everything. We don't even trust ourselves to lead ourselves. We think we'll run our own institutions to the ground if left in our hands [and of this Im actually guilty. When Geoffrey Griffin of Starehe died, I was strongly of the opinion that if a black person were put at the helm of the school that was going to be the beginning of its downfall. Imagine. That's not even an outsider talking about a local, it's we ourselves talking about us! I stand corrected, btw. They put a Kenyan in charge and he took the school back to the top] You go to that Java at Adams and there's a ka-waiter looking askance at you like "Now this one, what does he want here?" A Kenyan. One of our own, not a foreigner!

We could perhaps blame this inferiority complex we have on colonialism. It's the kind of thing that cuts deep into people's psyche and damages sometimes irreparably their self esteem. Slavery is the worst form of oppression. It teaches us that we're not good enough. That we're somehow insufficient, and we need someone else to validate us before we can present ourselves to the rest of the world. From the gospel according to Willy Lynch, [a guy who was called in by slave owners in the south when they feared they were losing control of their slaves]: Keep the slaves physically strong, but psychologically weak and dependent on their master. Keep the body, but take the mind. But be that as it may, really, are African countries the only countries that were colonised? Wasn't the United States of America a British Colony in the 18th century? They fought for their freedom, and when they got it they set about creating their own identity. Never mind that the country has actually surpassed their colonisers. Let's just focus on the basics: today there is nothing American that reflects british influences. Nothing whatsoever! The britons have an unwritten consitution, Americans wrote down theirs. Britons are a monarchy, the American system is presidential. The Britons keep left when driving, Americans keep right. They even speak different flavors of English, and spell things differently. It's like the Brits were never in the States. Look now at our dear Kenya. The roads are still the same. The language is still the queen's. Infrastructure is still the same. We even used to have Kenyan Pounds as part of our currency. Our very legal system is like 60% English Common Law! Look at precedent, and you'll see names like Lord Demming, Lord Erroll, Oliver Wendell Holmes jr. et al. Surely, is anything we are that is a creation of our own?

I guess there comes a time when we have to ask ourselves: is patriotism a task or a life philosophy? Is there like a 21-point plan for being Kenyan? Are there things you have to do to show it? Is it in the dress? Is it in the fact that we speak our mother tongue fluently plus that of our next-door neighbor's? Can we quantify the amount of Kenyanness in someone? Langston Hughes wrote the poem I, too, sing America as a harbinger for the coming of the day of the black. Back then, before Rosa Parks and before Martin Luther King, when beaches were still segregated, here was a black person saying "Besides, they'll see how beautiful I am/And be ashamed--/I, too, am America." This should be testament to the fact: Things don't affect you psychologically unless you let them. Nothing external to you has any power over you, says John C. Maxwell. JD from Scrubs was once having one of his usual waking dreams, about being Robin to Turk's Batman, and he asked himself something interesting: "How low is my self esteem that Im the sidekick in my own fantasy?" At the time I lauged - it was a funny joke. But it's starting to seem more and more reality about us Kenyans, and Africans in general. It's our land, they're our minerals, the lakes and mountains were ours first, for crying out loud this is the cradle of mankind. Where it all began. And yet before the rest of the world we bow and ask, "How may I serve you today master?" 

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill/Of things unknown but longed for still.

END

sometimes you can't make it on your own

Friendships are hard. Relationships are even harder. Marriages should actually come with the NIH sign [Not Invented Here]. I've always wondered why. It should be one of life's great paradoxes - that man was actually created with fellowship in mind, and yet finds it the hardest to relate with his own kind. Of course if you believe in evolution then understanding this shouldn't really be a problem for you, you know, coz of the whole natural selection thing... But that aside, there seems to be a plethora of explanations out there for why interaction is so hard between people. Out of sight, out of mind. People always leave. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. You never miss the water till the well runs dry. In fact, Allan Pease (is that his name? I forget) has a whole series on the two genders: Why men don't listen and women women can't read maps, Why men don't have a clue and women always need more shoes, Why men lie and women cry, Why men can only do one thing at a time and women don't stop talking, or Why he's so last minute and she's got it all wrapped up. The list is long. It's like everywhere you turn in this arduous journey of life you find a shaded resting place with a couch, a cool drink and a pamphlet listing 27 reasons why you're better off on your own.

Are we really? I was privileged to go to Starehe for high school. Now as far as associations and disparities go, it doesn't get bigger than Starehe. That school has like a thousand students. Literally. The whole brotherhood theme is so hammered it's like it's up there on the list [of priorities] and academic success comes a close second. We all live in the same rooms - prefects, captains, high schoolers and collegers. There is no such thing as bullying. We eat at the same tables (most of us anyway). We live by the same rules (although here I should probably add seemingly). We don't put on the same uniform, but the times when it needs to be on are the same for everyone. We are taught to share, to depend on one another, morally, mentally and physically. We are taught that the differences we see are only superficial, and that deep down inside, we're all the same. That when the game ends the king and the pawn all go back to the same square. That we're all the same color once you turn out the light. But best of all, after all this education is done, the final decision to relate is left up to the individual. No one gets forced or otherwise compelled. Those who want to be snobs can actually be snobs, and the social bees can do their thing. So if you leave the school having learnt anything, it will be because you chose to, and those are the lessons that stay with us for a lifetime. It was in Starehe that I first heard the long version of no man is an island: No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main...Therefore send not to find out for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. (or something like that)

I think mostly the thing we're afraid of in relationships, is the possibility of getting hurt. Apparently if you don't expect anything you don't get disappointed. While they last, judging by consensus, relationships and friendships are the isht. But when they end, there are few feelings that are worse. I guess they called it a heartbreak for a reason. It would seem then that every song's gotta end some time, but is that reason not to enjoy the music? It could also be a question of misplaced priorities. In today's world, money seems to be that answer to all of life's problems. Get enough of it and there's really nothing, or no one, else you need. That those who say money cannot buy you happiness don't know where to shop. The American actor Groucho Marx once implored the Good Lord, "All I want, God, is a chance to find out for myself if money really doesn't buy happiness." Modern society even has a skewed view of family - father, mother and children. Strictly. These days we don't so much live together as simply coexist. We're all just victims of circumstance in where we find ourselves. Is it us? Are we our own worst enemy? George Bernard Shaw may have been right:

As we strain to grasp the things we desire, the things we think will make our lives better - money, popularity, fame - we ignore what truly matters. The simple things. Like friendship, family, and love. The things we probably already had.

END

boulevard of broken dreams

I got turned down recently at a job interview. I assume so coz they didn't get back to me like they said they would. But that wasn't my last hope so I'm still ploughing on as I know best. This is about the third time that's happened to me so far, and it's really been eye opening, I like to think. I'd like to believe that I'm learning new things every day from all these missteps. Coz otherwise then it will all have been for nothing, and that is not a particularly awe-inspiring prospect. We learn from failure I guess that the world doesn't begin and end with us. We learn that life doesn't stop. We learn that when one door closes, if we look carefully we'll find that another one opened. And most importantly we learn to believe in a higher power, coz it would appear that we did everything we could and somehow still didn't make it. That our best wasn't good enough. It's supposed to teach us perseverance. If it doesn't kill us it's supposed to make us stronger. It's supposed to stretch our limits, and make us discover heights we can reach we didn't think possible. And when we finally do succeed, and find that the success is even greater coming at the time it did rather than earlier on, it's supposed to show us in hindsight that all things really do work together for good for those that love Him.

Failure tests our faith. Our resolve. How badly do you want something? You never really realise that until fate tells you you can't have it. Then you get to find out just how far you'll go to get it. You also get to find out that it's never all going to be in your hands. You'll always have to leave something - however small - to chance. I was watching Prison Break way back when, and Scoffield said something I found interesting - preparation can only get you so far, then you have to take some leaps of faith. And this was a guy who didn't even empty the trash without it being some part of a grand plan! If because we failed once we become afraid to try again, to take a chance on life, then we shall truly have failed. Otherwise it's all education, not failure per se. I find that success isn't about never falling. It's about rising up one time more than however many times you fall. It's starting from scratch and keeping on scratching. "...If you can make a heap of all your winnings/And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss/And lose, and start again at your beginnings/And never breathe a word about your loss/..." goes that Rudyard Kipling poem.

The older I get, the more I realize that dreams don't always come true. Occasionally dreams get replaced by even greater ones. And at other times they just die. And it's all ok. That is as it should be. One does not always become less of a person for letting go. One isn't less worthy for changing course. If we always got everything we asked for when we asked for it, I think we'd become ungrateful. We'd start to take things for granted. Sometimes loss teaches us to value things more. You try and you fail and you try and you fail so that when you finally do succeed, you can truly appreciate the grandeur of it all. You can take a step back and take stock of all your efforts and treasure your achievements.

Sometimes when you're young you think nothing can touch you. It's like being invincible. Your whole life is ahead of you, and you have all these plans. Big plans. To become this successful person. To find your perfect match, the one that completes you. To write the great novel. To invent something new. But as you get older you realise it's not always that easy. It's not until the end of your life that you realise the plans you made were simply plans. At the end, when you're looking back instead of forward, you simply wanna believe that you made the most of what life gave you. You wanna believe that you're leaving something good behind. A legacy. You want it all to have mattered.

END

deep enough to dream

Over the weekend, I was out house-hunting. The reality that I need to learn to stand on my own hit me, and it hit me hard. See I cleared uni. Four years seems like a really short time in retrospect, even counting that one class that never really used to end [or in my case 6 - Im a difficult guy to enthrall :) ], and I know that sounds cliche, but it's true. I cannot believe it's all over. No more waking up at ten to bask in the sun. No more fast food lunches every day. No more 'borrowing' stuff from the friend next door. No more skyving classes - something liberating about that, never quite known what. No more paying half-fee at concerts coz I have a student ID. No more people to make fun of. No fences around me offering the promise of security from the vagaries of the world. No more staying up all night staring at the stars just talking (Ok, I never did that. That would be completely cheesy!). Anyway, it appears I will be unable to do very many things I used to be able to coz I was still just a student, what did I know? Now I know. And soon Im going to be given the power to read (that's what they tell us when we graduate, like what have we been doing these last four years?? duh!), and with great power comes great responsibility... teren teren!!!

So the agent at the house quoted a pretty insane figure which they demand upfront as deposit for the houses, and I was hit with another reality - I NEED A JOB, FAST!!! It's like the rat race never ends. You work hard at primary so you can go to a good high school, you work hard there so you can get a good course in uni, which you do well so you can get a nice job. You'd think it was all over, but apparently you still need to work hard, perhaps now more than ever. When I was a kid I used to envy my parents, coz they used to have all the fun at work and I had to spend the day in school. It seemed they didn't have teachers hiding in the eaves with sticks waiting to pounce for even the smallest reason, or a boring monotonous timetable that never stops, or constant examinations. But mostly it was that school ran from 6AM to 6PM and work only seemed to run from 8 to 4 :). Now that I've gone through all that and Im on the verge of entering the working world, those days are starting to seem pretty idyllic. No landlords asking for rent, no pesky kids wanting to go to the park, no bosses breathing down your neck about deadlines, no insurbodinate juniors making you look bad, no needing to budget with fewer resources than requirements, and three school holidays every year to look forward to. Perhaps the grass really is always greener on the other side, even if you've been there and back.

On the job front the competition is pretty cutthroat. It's more than just survival for the fittest. Everyone wants a piece of the action, and it doesnt seem to be enough to go round. Natural selection is supposed to sharpen the edges, to ensure we are constantly getting better and better, and that every subsequent generation advances one step further than the previous one. But no matter how thin you slice things, there are always going to be two sides to them. The other side of natural selection is it kills potential talent. It squashes latent dreams. It diverts focus from the things that are important. People spend so much time learning tricks of the trade they never get to know the trade itself! It destroys the team dynamic, and turns everyone into a potential enemy. There are times, like now, when I wish we could all win. Yes pressure turns coal into diamonds, but it also collapses lungs, which I hear are very important! Like Martin Luther King I have a dream. But mine is that everyone will be able to find their place in this world. And that they will be able to find it without stepping over anyone else's head. And that we shall all be happy where we are, and be satisfied to advance as we walk step by step. And that we shall all strive to in so doing leave the world always a better place than we found it.

Ronald Reagan once postulated his life philsophy in a speech, and I found it quite admirable:

The house we hope to build is not for my generation but for
yours. It is your future that matters. And I hope that when you are my age, you
will be able to say, as I have: We lived in freedom. We lived lives that were a
statement, not an apology.

END

the world spins madly on

The other day I had an interview. My very first interview ever!!! I kid you not. You'd think being where I am I'd have done thousands of these things. I should be an old salt by now, but noooo. Bad things still happen to good people, and the employment system still shuts out some of its best potential talent (i.e. me, haha, I wish :). So it's only natural that I was freaking out, you know. coz asides from it being my first interview, it was kind of a big deal since it's a large company, but more importantly, since it's been my only call back since I started doing this. I've just been sitting in the sun watching everyone else in sharp suits go live their lives as mine passed me by, and now my chance was here.

I agonized over even seemingly small things like what-sized brush to use to polish my shoes. I wanted everything to be just right. I was slated for late afternoon so it was a pretty long morning, and as I found out later, our memory does NOT get better with age - in the one hour I spent in the waiting bay coz we started a little later than scheduled I forgot quite a bit of the material I had prepared! :( But, as it turned out, I didn't even need the stuff. I found that if you're really telling the truth and are really driven by your convictions then you've known yourself long enough that you'll be able to handle anything they throw at you. Maybe not as impressively, but it's gonna be pretty tough for you not to be able to say anything at all. You'd actually have to be actively trying to not get hired (in which case the question begs why you went to the interview in the first place :). Unless they decide to ask you about the budget. Or the East African Community. Or Chad. Ya, interviewers can get mean like that sometimes. So another thing I learnt is to always be a step ahead, answer the question and provide just a little bit of extra information. Little enough that the next question might actually come from your last answer; and then to make sure you stay off Amos Kimunya! Worked for me ;)

I also got my half-year results for the first semester, and they were less than exhilarating. It's a bit dishearting, considering those will form a big part of my average grade at the end of uni, but what can I do? They say the only way to live happily ever after is day by day. I want to be happy, so Im learning to take every moment as it comes. Making the best of a bad situation, that is the one thing you can only learn if you actually have bad situations to work with.

Now Im really trying to stay positive and not interpret it as a bad sign that my interview lasted twice as long as others', and that I wasn't asked any of the standard interview questions like what are my weaknesses and why should they hire me, but it's tough. I have a lot of things to think about, like how Im going to recover from my first semester goof-up, or what else I can do to enhance my employ-ability rating, or what's going to happen if we don't win the SIFE national exposition this weekend. And I would really have liked to be able to go back in time and change a few things, but on and on the clock ticks. Im finding that no matter how apprehensive I get, no matter how much I'd like to undo, time does not stop. The world spins madly on, sing The Weepies.

END

black holes and revelations

Last year at around this time, I found out I was going to New York City. I remember at that time being in like a daze of sorts, being unable to grasp the enormity of the news. I've won awards and competitions in my life before. Many, many times. (so they were almost all academic - sue me!) See I grew up blest. But this right here, this was different. It was like the culmination of a lifelong dream of mine Id had from way back when. To fly. And not just fly, but to NYC no less!

By the way, if you read this and you come from there then don't laugh, please understand where Im coming from. Here we consider 10-floor building skyscrappers. Ours is the epitome of insecurity - all one has to do to attract mugger detail is step out into the sunshine. If a road has three lanes on both sides we've outdone ourselves. It's virtually impossible to make jaywalking a jailable offence, coz then we'd need like twice as many cops as there are pedestrians - its like a way of life here to cross the road wherever. Traffic lights have only recently (3 months ago) been elevated above eye level, but even then it's still not unheard of for them to blink both red and green at the same time, or for two lights to blink green on opposing streets. Even something as simple as calling from a public payphone is an exercise in futility. The city (and I use that word loosely) is so hapharzadly planned that you'll get lost with a map, a guide and a gps device with two large blips, one for where you are and the other for where you want to go. But don't get me wrong, I dont not appreciate this place. I count my blessings everyday. Anyways, NYC. It meant we were going to need to work round the clock to come up with a world class presentation, and that for that reason I was gonna fail my exams (reading wasn't exactly priority at the time), but who cared - we were going to NEW YORK CITY!!!

So, three months flew by in a breeze, we managed to scrape together like 30K (A week's expenditure, mind you), and a truckload of work and a few sleepless nights later, we off to the city that never sleeps (turns out the sleepless nights were not wasted - they were actually good training :). And the rest, as they say, is history, the stuff of legend.

Ten months down the line and I can still see every second of that week as though it happened yesterday. The subways, the fast food and coffee, McDonald's, Broadway, Park Avenue, Fifth Avenue and the Trump Tower, The GAP, Dolce and Gabbana, Chanel, the NY Public Library, the fluid public system, Times Square, and the Manhattan skyline from the top of the Hilton. They easily count as the best days of my life so far. And I swore to myself I would go back, even if its the last thing I do. I still want to. Me by the way I actually want to move there. There's something alluring about a system that works, and things happen the way they should. You work hard you get rewarded, you don't you end up on the streets. Coz I know I can work hard. I can do it, but Im one of those idealistic people with their heads in the clouds. And where I am right now, those clouds are a little beyond my reach.

But Im a little wiser now, and Im learning that happiness isn't getting what you want, its wanting what you've got. So even if I never do get to go back, I hope it won't change me. And I hope I always know who I am.

I'm a saint and I'm a sinner
I'm a loser, I'm a winner
I am steady and I'm stable
I'm young but I am able
I, am Alividza's grandson,
The spitting image of my father,
When the day is done my mama's still my biggest fan.
Sometimes, I'm clueless and I'm clumsy,
But I've got friends that love me
And they know just where I stand
It's all a part of me, and that's who I am.

END

all these things i've done

I'm rude, so I've been told. I don't answer people in a polite manner. I speak without thinking, and end up hurting people's feelings. Ok, I'll bite. Am I really? When someone sees you busy eating lunch, then they ask you what you're doing, are you at fault if you tell them you're practising crop rotation? If you were clearly waiting for a bus at the bus stop - one of the few that's actually labelled, mark you - and then you were asked what you were waiting for, would it be impolite to answer "The turn of the century."? I ask

Apparently Im also selfish. I think only of myself, and no one else. Everything I do I do with myself in mind. I cannot undertake a kind deed that will not at least benefit me in some way. Well who isn't? The English have a word - altruism. It means "showing unselfish concern for the welfare of others." Doing good just because it is, without expecting anything in return. They also have a phrase: white unicorn, being "a rare mystical creature only rumored to exist but highly sought after," or "the perfect person, your dream person." The same English have another word: utopia. It means "an ideal and perfect place or state where everyone lives in harmony and everything is for the best." Could it be that the perfection and elusiveness of altruists, white unicorns and the place called utopia are somehow connected? Hmmmm...

I am not christian. I listen to rock music. I associate with non-saved people. I do not read my bible everyday. I do not attend bible studies and/or other christian events. I don't even go to church where I stay. Is my understanding of christianity at fault? coz I believe it should be a way of life. It should not really be something you explicitly say. It's the sum total of everything you do, and everything you omit to do. So I don't preach, or witness or sing and dance. First I have two left feet [why BTW do we say left and not right?], physically can't dance :). Birds have gone deaf listening to my voice singing, so that's kinda out as well. I find the bible is best read when you're not discussing it with folks. "And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all," goes the Bible. I hate the [pretentious] holier-than-thou attitude exhibited by most of the members of so called C.U's, and it is that, rather than the christianity itself, that I try to dissociate myself from. But apparently to those who would judge me, the two are one and the same.

It's said that there are many paths to success, but the quickest way to failure is to try to please everyone. It would seem that I can't win them all. Mother Teresa once wrote a poem [actually she wrote many, but this one kinda stands out]:

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered,
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives,
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies,
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you,
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight,
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous,
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow,
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough,
Give the world the best you have anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God.
It was never between you and them anyway.

How true.

END