I have never attended a funeral. I remember though, very vividly, when my neighbour died. Urban planning being what it is in 1990s Kenya, a great idea poorly fulfilled, I was afforded a rare glimpse into this private affair- as was half the estate. (We’re not a gated community)
I remember the emotion, the plaintive moans, the masked expression of the grieving widower, the sullen ones of the children. I remember all those things that are expected in the in the natural progression of as unnatural an event as death.
She was a Muslim. Had to be buried on that day. Of all these things, I remember nothing so much as the thought that struck me when I saw them carry away the corpse, draped in a dazzling white sheet. It was a purely selfish thought- but a completely human one.
I wondered whether the angel of death had hovered over our neighbor hood, over our house…over me before finally descending on her. And if so, what had made Him not choose me?
Death gives meaning to life. It scares us into living, if only for a little while. That’s why when it happens on a large scale- the Nakumatt fires, the Molo explosions and more recently the famine deaths, the Nyakach floods- we feel the need to huddle together. We hold memorials, we declare mourning periods, and we blame Satan…the government. We pray and cry. As if death were an unforeseen eventuality. As if it weren’t some immutable aspect of existence.
Death hovers over us everyday. Sometimes it treads silently, strikes unexpectedly. Sometimes it is in the obvious pain of disease. Sometimes it is the physician that ends that pain.
This knowledge resides at the deepest recesses of our minds. It is pushed there by fear. Fear of the unknown, of what cannot be controlled. But to claim this truth would bring certain pointlessness to living. We live…to die?
So we live our lives, pointless and purposeless at times but temporarily free of that fear of the end. We create routines and daily rituals, subtly scorning death. Some live it on the edge in flagrant defiance. We are shocked when those around us die. What a farce. We know death. It knows us…will one day call us by name.
But this insane farce is the only way to sanity. We need to pretend to live so that we can live, truly live. Until the next calamity pushes this inevitability back to the forefront of our minds.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Living a Life of Joy
Living a Life of Joy
Email this article to a friend How do you know when you’re living your purpose? When your present moments begin to feel perfect.
When you live on purpose, your relationship with time changes dramatically. You’ll no longer be looking for happiness somewhere in the future. You’ll stop saying to yourself, “Once X happens then I’ll be where I want to be. Then I’ll be happy.” Instead you will look to your present and say, “This is exactly where I want to be right now… and nowhere else. Nothing could be more perfect than this precise moment.”
The emotion that accompanies this state is joy. Joy results from total acceptance of your present moment. Whenever you project your consciousness away from the present moment and seek happiness in another time or place, you leave joy behind. When all parts of your being fully embrace where you are right now, you can’t help but feel joyful.
Most likely you haven’t reached this state yet. But it’s well within your capability to do so. You can reach it by following your internal compass. By assessing your current emotional state and comparing it to the state of joy, you can get a sense of your distance from this state. You can pinpoint where you are at any time along the levels of consciousness scale. Inner peace is right next to joy. Neutrality is a little further out. Far beyond that lies anger. And really far away is fear. The more powerless you feel, the further you are from joy, and the more you’re resisting what is.
If you are far away from joy, you cannot simply jump to this state immediately and stay there for long. You might be able to experience it temporarily, such as through meditation, but the circumstances of your life will soon pull you back to your previous level. But with conscious intent, you can eventually reach this state and make it your default. And the way you do this is to keep re-pointing your life in the direction of joy by making better decisions.
Whenever you’re faced with a decision, even a seemingly mundane one such as what to eat for your next meal, choose the option that brings you closest to joy. That will be the option that makes you feel the most powerful. It will not necessarily be what makes you feel joyful, especially if you are currently in a very negative state. If you’re currently depressed, you may have zero choices that will produce joy in this moment. But you will have some choice that makes you feel more powerful and alive than the others, and that is the choice that will turn your life in the direction of joy.
If you are feeling fearful and worried, perhaps the best action you can find is one which makes you feel greedy or angry. That is perfectly fine. Greed and anger are both higher states than fear; they are closer to joy. It is better to act out of anger than out of fear, since it will turn you in the direction of joy. And soon you’ll be able to progress beyond anger. Do not beat yourself up if a seemingly negative state like anger is the best you can muster at this time in your life. You cannot expect any more from yourself than your best. The anger will pass, and you’ll soon be able to climb the ladder towards more positive states. If you are in a deep negative state such as depression, you will have to pass through higher negative states first before you can reach the positive ones. So going from depression to anger is a very positive step in the right direction.
If you proceed in this manner with every decision you can, eventually you will reach the state of joy. It may take some time, but you will eventually reach it and make it your default state.
Joy is in fact your natural state of being. Babies enter this state very easily because they are fully in the present moment. They do not seek themselves in the past or future.
When you are joyful, your life flows with ease and lightness. Existence is no longer a struggle. Why? Because when you stop resisting the present moment, you stop creating problems for yourself. Resistance creates internal problems like stress, fear, and disease, but it also creates external problems like conflict, scarcity, and injustice. When you learn to choose the direction that creates the most joy in your life, your life will become a joyful experience in each and every moment. And of course it is easy to accept and embrace any present moment in which you feel joyful, so the state will naturally perpetuate itself. Joyful feelings create joyful actions which produce more joyful feelings.
The state of joy enables you to stop worrying about your survival, to stop fearing what may or may not happen, and to stop fighting your present moments. You’ll find it easier and easier to satisfy your needs. This will allow you to direct your consciousness outward and interact with the world without fear. People will seem much less threatening to you. Even strangers will smile at you more because they’ll pick up on your joyful state. Positive people will be drawn to you like a magnet, and you’ll soon find your life filled with empowering relationships. All the support you need will come to you. And this in turn will give you the energy and drive to embrace your true purpose.
Simply make decisions that bring you as close to joy as possible, even if it seems very distant at first, and soon you’ll find your life becoming more joyful. You have free will though, so in any moment you can decide to move towards joy or away from it. The choice is yours.
Friday, April 17, 2009
A Virgin Mind
Once, my friend Mariam, tried to set me up with a guy, which happens quite often when you’re twenty and never-been-kissed. She’s a childhood friend and she takes this as some sort of license to meddle…perhaps with a bit of encouragement from me. On this particular occasion, in a string of many, she was fed up with me questioning my loneliness from a couch instead of actively pursuing happiness. Accused me of waging a one- woman campaign in the effective wrecking of my own life- not in so many words, but you get the drift.
With a blend of irritation and frenzied philosophy, she said: “you’re alone because you want to be alone. Loneliness, just like love is a choice.”
It amazed me- still amazes me- how her words both consoled and confounded me. So it wasn’t a cosmic conspiracy or some quirk of fate but rather a subliminal decision on my part. But when does one make such an outrageous decision? I want to remember with clarity and precision that moment. To go back to it and relive it, and choose the other door… to choose love.
Yet why this need for shared existence? For the tedious melodrama of love- cliché and redundant? Is humanity secretly greedy for punishment? Then why the need to belong to others outside of us. This unfortunately is the narrow field within which my mind wanders- when I’m not channeling feministic independence and the validity of sole existence, I’m questioning my affinity for loneliness…why it comes so easily to me.
“It’s the sex, isn’t it? How it must frighten you being untouched and all,” Mariam chided. The proverbial point of no return. Did it?
“No!” I had replied thoughtlessly. Hastily. “It’s what comes after.”
Now that I think of it, it’s true. I don’t know men. Think I’ve lost the opportunity to. I can relate with them from an intellectual base but emotionally I’m at sea. I’m awkward when forced into pheromone-charged encounters. Haven’t the sure-footedness required in the mating dance. I don’t know how to giggle and it strikes me that at twenty, I’m too old for training wheels! It’s too late for me to learn.
And I question the wisdom of abandoning this solitude, these lonely nights that are so commonplace with me to stare at phones that refuse to ring; to acknowledge a need at whose mercy I shall always live.
Romance is a myth and love is an illusion of that myth, says Mariam who favours herself to be the Aristotle of this weed-head generation. There is no man-of-my-dreams dying to make me happy. She forbids me to even go there.
But I go there often. Go there during the unenthusiastic preparation of dishes, during the mechanical devouring of those dishes. Go there during nights alone spent in the dark. And I wonder whether I saw him that day or whether I will the next. Whether he’s the one behind the radiant smile of a random stranger or the reassuring pat of a friend. Whether he’s walking towards me or away and whether such an encounter would have the makings of one of life’s defining moments or no.
From an objectively intelligent standpoint, is the comforting knowledge that one cannot die of loneliness but beyond this stream of intellect is the silent and irrational fear of it. The feeling of being invited to a party and finding yourself behind closed doors, face pressed against the glass.
It didn’t pan out. The set up, I mean. It wasn’t him.
So where is he?
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William kipchirchir samoei arap Ruto is without a doubt the greatest political paradox of post-independence Kenya.
He is a champion of his country’s democracy; he was mentored by its sincerest dictator. He is a child of those despotic times; a rebel against them. He stands in the pulpit to condemn ethnic loyalties; his career balances on his manipulation of the Kalenjin vote. He is a fraud and a traitor; he’s a democrat and a leader. He is the elixir in the veins of Kenyan politics; he’s Moi’s most enduring legacy.
I write with that awe that someone staring at Frankenstein’s monster would probably feel. Ruto, a creation of Moi’s politically intuitive imagination to gain his own ends, has risen to the higher echelons of the Kalenjin top-brass; a feat that is nothing short of meteoric, praise-worthy and severely chill-inspiring.
Ruto is ambitious and at a relatively young age he has managed to secure mention in the deeply satirical tragic-comedy that is Kenya’s history. I in no way mean to vilify him for his aspirations. He has also managed to romanticize the Kenyan plot, for there’s something whirlwind about a Sambu village boy gaining the favour of the president. The poet in me worships him.
But Ruto is a dangerous man. He lives in times where self-assertion (to any extent) is the accepted formula for political success. Behind his disarming smile is a silent ruthlessness. He is that blend of man who would have made Machiavelli both deeply horrified and greatly impressed. And despite his coaxingly rosy dreams for the future are the indelible exploits of his past….
Being an old boy of the ‘Youth for KANU 2000’ school, there was something hilariously ironic about the din raised by him over the December 2007 elections. The very man once appointed ‘Director of Elections’ by Moi for matters of …er…political expediency.
He features prominently in the scandals lining up in quick and alarming succession both from the Moi era and past it. The Nyayo connection is something he can never shake off. Angloleasing, Goldenberg- there are enough cases pending due to injunctions and other technicalities.
He is widely seen as having orchestrated in the ’92 and ’97 clashes and recently the Waki report where he is accorded notable mention. Ruto, MP for Eldoret North where Felician Kabuga MAY or may not have been allegedly residing once; here where the worst of the machete wielding took place- something that Kabuga knows more than a little about. No implications here, just a ground break in the field of the blatantly obvious. A leaked ODM strategy paper of the ’07 campaigns contains odious truths- if so proved- of an exclusionist campaign with ethnic cleansing as a last resort- Headed by him.
His subtle passes coloured by some rather overt gestures at the presidency should more alarm than excite us. He is a fiery proponent of the parliamentary system. That scares me. But the Kenyan populace, being what it is, innately whimsical and capricious, is hailing him as a political messiah of sorts. That surely makes a case for him being a ‘Teflon’ politician. - Nothing sticks to him.
He will survive every major scandal thrown his way. He will wade his way through the murk and still come out squeaky clean. Sometimes logic…common decency are at the mercy of history. ‘Sometimes history decides’
Already the political sphere is abuzz with news of a Ruto-Uhuru merger that, if it lasts to Election Day, promises a substantive shift in loyalties- a paradigm of politics. Perhaps this is his true talent; this ability to realign and continually re-invent himself. From a Moi errand boy under the self-proclaimed professor, to the lifeblood of the opposition- the young turk who was a symbol of the change that was proving so elusive- and now a warrior of the people; all fronts on which Uhuru has failed miserably. As a politician, William Ruto is that evolutionary breed of cockroach designed to survive a nuclear holocaust, and us all.
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You linger at the edges of my subconscious,
Like a rudimentary sketch of a brilliant idea,
Elusive and taunting; formative…still growing in me.
Like the aftertaste of ripe oranges on a dry tongue,
Bittersweet and sensuous; an awakening of dead energies,
Like an empty space desirous of filling,
As the hollows of a tree that needs the warmth of burrowing feet,
Like warm draught on cold nights,
Flighty and fleeting…unforgettable.
Like hearty memories of a sunny day,
Imprinted brightly on the mind,
Like a loving gaze,
Domineering, compelling, and soft.
Love is the substance of life,
It is a river, its gentle currents pushing me to you,
But you are that river,
And I reeds upon the bank,
Pliant, constant and firm,
Swaying to the soft undercurrents
Of love, of life
Thought is the element of life,
It is a tree spreading branches of shade over a scorching existence,
But you are the veins of these branches,
Giving life…giving breathe to a sleeping mind.
And you occupy my thoughts,
Sedentary and unsummoned,
Like hazy dreams of beauty,
On an artist’s pen.
There’ll be no want in our love,
There’ll be no need,
No lack…no dearth.
There’ll be silence but no solitude,
Tears but no grief,
There’ll be hardship but no misery,
Pain but no loss,
There’ll be anger but no bitterness,
Lures but no succumbing,
There’ll be love in our love, my love
Never have my faculties and passions swayed in similar fashion for the contentment of my soul,
They sway to you.
And every beat of heart,
Every rush of blood and breathe of life,
Looks to you for indulgence,
Like feeble flowers in the brilliance of the sun.
Never has the leave of my senses brought with it such lucidity of mind and clarity of thought,
Every sense is filled with the awareness of you.
To taste,
To touch,
To hear,
To smell,
To see…the very object that enflames them.
Here’s to fires of the blood,
That razed hearts, consummate flesh
And we, moths singed by the undying sparks…burning embers,
Rekindling passions
Here’s to the madness of youth,
To its appetites: absolute, insatiable and all-consuming,
Lusty
Spent and fanned by its hungers,
Here’s to yearnings, subtle tempting,
Silent longing and meltings,
Stolen moments, dark exploits.
To the sacrifice and fanaticism of our youth
I slept and dreamt a dream tonight,
It followed me to consciousness,
And into the light of day,
It lingered there,
Like the sun,
Brightening my thoughts…scorching them,
It teased and confused me,
Confounded and plagued me,
Was it idleness or a vision,
A message or a hope?
I slept and dreamt a dream tonight,
It was a promise,
The promise was love,
I dreamt of you.
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Am twenty. It strikes me like a diplomatic age. The early teens were awkward, the late explosive. At eighteen a girl can get pregnant by a forty-six year old man, be adequately shunned for it but also be accepted back with a shrug of resignation.’ She is young’. As if youth instantly blots out any sufficient clarity of thoughts in the direction of birth control!?
At nineteen, they shun you period.
At twenty, they call you a woman, scold you for making them grandparents at such a young and hold hushed discussions about shot-gun weddings- without an actual shot gun. They excuse your mistakes as the residual effects of mindless teenage rebellion, applaud your pluses as subtle steps into responsible maturity. At twenty you’re pre-adult. No one really has any expectations of you. You float by in life and the world takes you as you are. There’s diplomacy in this indifference.
I hate waiting.I hate the familiarity of caught breathe, the predictability of dashed hopes and the inevitability of this downward trend. And yet I have been waiting, for twenty years, for something big to happen to me. Something that would propel me into my life and make me an active participant in it, not just a detached observer to its unfolding. It wasn’t the belated and unwelcome jutting of breasts at that shy age; a kept promise of womanhood , an affirmation of my femininity. But whatever did I need in breasts for? I was content to live in flat-chested ignorance. It wasn’t my first crush on that boy a year ahead of me who made my heart race, my stomach tie knots and my thoughts hazy all at once. All at the sight of him. I would have given up a world for him back then ,was convinced I was going to marry him, be the mother of his four children. I still am sometimes .That boy who still makes me nostalgic for those years ;those times .
It wasn’t turning eighteen; the ability to exercise my constitutional right not to vote ,to engage in a ‘life of meaningless sex’ and alcohol. Freedom isn’t all it was cracked up to be.
I’m twenty years old and I haven’t discovered my ideals, haven’t embellished them, made them the roots of my existence. At the risk of sounding cliché –I don’t know who I am, don’t know what I believe.
Does God exist in a world where children are raped? If He does, does He understand? If He doesn’t is He still God? Does He exist for everyone or is He a sunflower only brightening to the sunny side? If there is not a God, are we in hell?
What is love? Is it a chemical production borne of raging hormones and dirty lyrics or is it the secret love-child of intelligent design wielding a corrective hand on an imperfect world? Is it an urge or an instinct? If love makes sense, will it be love?
Is Jean-paul Satre right; hell is other people or should we sway to Thomas Paine that people are inherently good? Is man the destructive force of nature, intrinsically evil and with an insuppressible urge to dominate?
What is life about? Does it matter? Does mine? Are we floating purposeless in a world without end or meaning . At twenty no one expects you to have the answers. You can postpone this quiz for the later, early twenties. Twenty is like the beginning of always. When do answers come? I don`t know, DAMN IT. I am twenty. See, diplomacy through and through.
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- new horizons...
It’s the 21st century and no, the Martians aren’t here: no, Raila isn’t president: and yes, I am still a virgin. (Yes really). My friends advise me not to think this obscenity even in the confines of my room…it’s so very terribly old fashioned. They chime in with their…..
‘D, life ni short tu sana…..campus ni time yako ku have fun”: The message repeated ad nauseam is carpe diem. But before I start living the la Vida loca let me make my case.
Living in as cosmopolitan a city as Nairobi and belonging to as liberal-minded a generation as the motley college crowd makes me certain that such anachronistic thoughts as mine have no company- except maybe with the bible-flashing evangelistic crew .This gives me little comfort. So it is that I find myself in this curious position some twenty years after my uneventful birth. And after bitterly and vehemently discounting the ‘inability’ and ‘lack of opportunity’ arguments,(virginity is not inability but lack of opportunity), the rapid tide of socio-cultural changes raging around me officially begs the question: Why?
Is it religion? Do I secretly harbour some puritanical hang-ups about getting laid? I did have my closet-agnostic moments but years after jumping on the Salvationist bandwagon, and generally looking for loopholes in the Good Book, I realize that it isn’t God. My views on celibacy do not stem from the moralistic prohibitions of religion, although I suspect they may be fanned by them. They are not direct but incidental to my sunny Sunday school promises to keep away from boys. Easy promises to keep back then. That age when boys were immature and untrainable partly from raging hormones and partly from the intrinsic rebellion of the pre-pubescent years. As men they haven’t greatly improved on their flaws…
Is it my mother? Who surreptitiously skipped the sex talks but who still managed to instill, ever so subtly, the fear of God in me over matters pertaining to boys and babies. (No connection was made between boys and babies). My whole chapter on sex is a story of diligent curiosity on my part and my friends’ faithful but rather undependable delivery on the other. I’m wiser now.
Is it my father, who also evaded the sex talks but was more brazen about it being an unapologetic member of the breadwinner school of thought?
(Yes we’re happily dysfunctional. It’s not them.)
Or is it me? Suffering from an acute form of the virgin syndrome that leads one to have a generally skewed world view; namely over-sentimentality towards it. Towards sex.Sex isn’t love, I know that much. But the world over there is the fuzzy logic that generates sentimentality towards such physicality: a fitting together of complementary organs, which in truth is the whole rationale behind sex. And here subscribe the free thinkers of the post-romantic age. They of the ‘you-can-have-my-body-but-not-my-heart’ credo.
So here I am, standing aversed to the wind of change that seems unrepentant and content to sweep in the direction of decadence. This wind that makes me, and my virgin kind, quite…redundant. I’m standing in the middle of a world that has no use for me! Like the last believer in a dying doctrine, which effectively makes me crazy? And the only thing that can compound such insanity is a sedentary residence at campus grounds. Here where the mood of hedonism is not just encouraged but required. (The things they don’t teach you in high school!). Here where booze and pheromones enjoy frequent and beneficial encounters over substandard food and cheap lyrics. Let the good times roll!
But I do wonder, often and unwillingly, about love. Question it. Wonder what it’s like to be in it. To swoon to the faint whiffs of cheap cologne mixed with sweat. To be under the intoxicating influence of hormones. To walk about lightheaded and in a trance and to be content at such idleness. I wonder about giving my heart, about having it exist outside my body exposed to the world. About whether it will last or whether like all things in life it’s fickle…ephemeral.
I wonder also how it feels like to be claimed. Desire to know this feeling of belonging and possession. ‘To be his.’ How gloriously those words linger on a mind that has tried, vainly, to disprove the ill logic of need. A mind that prefers the familiar discomfort of loneliness. I wonder whether love is real or whether it’s a depreciating asset that starts with lofty ambitions of infinite bliss and degenerates rapidly, predictably into a misery in which one is trapped.
It’s the 21st century and yes, I still believe in love…still want to. No, you cannot have my body without my heart. And no, I won’t apologize for who I am.
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