do you remember the time?

This comes a while after a post about some of the things I did and believed in when I was a child.
Would you want to be a child again?
The problem with life is we all start young. So much for intelligent design. Like we work our way through it, getting more and more wisdom, some of which we could have used beforehand, but then again it’s the nature of life to save the important lessons for later.

Childhood is a generally turbulent time. there is so much to learn, so much to get right, so much that is, conversely, gotten wrong, leading to punishment, and if you’re lucky, a life lesson. Along with that, you get scars, a potent reminder of when you fell.
But you know where and when you’re going to fall. Would you do it differently? Perhaps. Then you would deny yourself some of the lessons that you learned as a result of that experience. Maybe you become a changed person, so much so that you don’t recognize yourself.
Therein lies the irony. If you could travel back in time and change yourself too much, you become someone else. If you change too little and you will suffer twice the fate.
Truth is, you are already changing your future based on what you are doing now. Forget those momentous gestures that you think will drastically change the future into some weird, wild, unrecognizable tangle of stuff… But maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be.
Forks in the road should not leave worries about roads not taken. They lead down increasingly complex expressions of probability. They are, in a way, the first step in the journey of a thousand miles. They have their own consequences that you may not know at that moment, but when you realize what exactly is going on, it all fits…
Don’t be afraid of the future, instead work on your present. Make it the best present you can, and the future will take care of itself.

opinion, or what you want me to think…

“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”
Bertrand Russel

Opinion polls are interesting. They take a random sampling of the population and assume, in their sample, that they’ve catered for everyone that could be within the population at large. Sometimes this is a reliable measure of what the general zeitgeist is, other times it exposes people as bigots… Either way, opinion is like quicksilver, runs fluid and has the potential to get toxic…
What one person thinks has the tendency to represent what others think. Average opinions tend to be very pedestrian, being as they represent diluted views. People with extreme or radical views tend to dilute them, hoping that they are not chastised for having views that fall outside the societal ‘comfort zone’…
Forget, for a while, the fact that variant opinions are the source of society’s progress, the thinking that things can change for the better because someone dared to be different… Forget the fact that the human mind is unique and wholly capable of creating its own content, not just regurgitating the thoughts and opinions of others… Forget all the intelligent design that has gone towards making sure that you will survive and leave your mark on the world. That all means nothing. After all, who ever got anywhere by being themselves? Tell them they can be different, but do everything to make them the same. That’s how it should be.
But that is where we fail. Falling over ourselves to fit a mould that is obviously designed to press us to a uniform thickness, wearing down on bumps and projections and other imperfections, spikes on the graph that is life, until they are a smooth, flat surface, devoid of character.
Your place is your place alone. there is nobody else who can fit there. Uniformity is dangerous. It breeds the worst kind of complacency, the belief that difference equals dissidence. Fight the differences away, make them akin to a plague. Then it’s downhill from there, no opposition will rise. What’s good for one is good for all. But we are not one-size-fits-all. We never were.
Dare to be different. Cut your own path. Have your own dream.

and they say that a hero will save us

Heroes are a rare breed… They appear every so often and save the day and astound the people around them, but they also have a tendency to leave people dependent on them… Somewhere along the way, they merge with the problems they solve…
Forgive the generalizations.
People latch onto things very easily. It’s how the brain works… Make easy associations and keep them even when they are no longer relevant.
And people are lazy. Outsource the solutions to your problems, and then elevate those to whom you have outsourced, and in the grand scheme of things, heroes become that much more heroic. Doing things nobody wants to or can do.
There is no shortage of heroes in the human imagination… Displaying the ideals of strength and intelligence, trying to fit in to regular society, even when their disguise is a pair of glasses, regularly meeting foes that test their limits and beating them…
Heroes are our modern day gods. They represent ideals which we cannot achieve using our own strength… They are a symbol that we can reach beyond the limits of our frail human bodies and achieve something greater than what we imagine. They are evidence that we are not the product of our environment, rather, we contain within ourselves the seeds of change, the transcendent quality that reaches far and wide, long after we are gone and declares that we did what we could with what we had and made the world a somewhat better place…
This is still true today. Our heroes are the ones that stand out, the athlete that breaks the world record, the General that fights a thousand battles, the unfortunate soul that overcomes his background to succeed and such. For every hero that receives accolades, there are many more that are lost in the background whose work will never be acknowledged until it is too late, but they still work, knowing that their time in the sun will come.
History also has a way of creating heroes… Hindsight is an interesting tool. Nobodys are turned into somebodys long after they are dead, because the human memory has a way of glossing things over, making them all pretty and scrubbing out the bad parts, idealizing everything.
Heroes also have a way of being overlooked, even with their seemingly massive contributions. Take Kenya for example. In the fight for independence, there were the Mau Mau on one side, having sacrificed their lives for the promise of a free nation, only to be screwed over when the country they fought for became free. Successive generations of leaders have pretty much put themselves at the forefront of the nation’s history, with their names plastered on everything, from airports to highways and such, while the Mau Mau fighters do not even have a decent memorial to their cause. Fine, statues have been erected and streets renamed, but what good is that when the nation’s true heroes are dying off without as much as a marked grave in their honour? Heroes’ Acre, Mashujaa Day, Kimathi’s statue, they are all good attempts at restoring the Mau Mau vets’ image in the public eye, but it’s entirely cosmetic. I mean, what do we care? We are, after all, comfortable in our place, we have our jobs and our lives and our comforts. they fought, it was a long time ago. We are the future after all.
But that is where we go wrong.
Our mistake is assuming that we can keep what we have and go about our business and the state will take care of itself.
Far from it. The state is a creation of man. as such, it is imperfect. And as a result of its imperfection, it is open to abuse. We have to look deep within ourselves to realize that we are not as perfect as we may want to think. We fight, but what are we fighting for? Until that question is answered, then the pointless wars and battles will carry on.
While that happens, another generation of heroes is passing, the agitators for multiparty democracy and such. While everyone else was cowering in fear, these men and women stood and fought the powers that were. They were not afraid, they were tortured and they stood their ground. Who we are as a nation now can be linked to what they did in the 90s, the days of Mwakenya, the days of YK92, the days of Mlolongo, the days of Nyayo House and Nyati House and violent crackdowns and FORD. And now a generation has grown up without a hint of what these people did and how they have suffered for the freedoms they enjoy now.
Until a hero will rise up and save us from the mess we have stuck ourselves in, all the things we hope for, all the things we believe in as a nation and as a people will remain ideals.
So now the question is, who is that hero?

bad service, or the illumination of thieves

I have been contemplating this post for a while, but it’s official. I am tired of all the crap service I have been getting where there should ideally be actual service. There is a way that I am expected to behave as a customer, which includes accepting End User agreements and generally bending over…

For purposes of clarification, the thief being illuminated is Safaricom.
Dear Safaricom,
We have come a long way, you and me. Since high school, you have been my connection to the outside world, finding friends and keeping in touch and all that other jazz phones are supposed to do. You’ve kept me in contact with everyone, to the best of your ability. Or at least you make it sound like you’re making the effort. But lately it’s not the same.
Fine, I hated on your competition because you pointed out that they were charging per minute instead of per second, and you were all over the country and all that other stuff, like Bei ya Campo (thanks by the way, that was cool). But now you’re not the same, it’s feeling a lot like you’re stealing from me. And not petty theft either, like you’re downright ripping me off. Like you pretty much charging the hell out of making calls across networks, because they’re evil and if they cared they would switch to you. And texts, that are miniscule bits of data that, if charged fairly, should cost no more than 10 cents… Let’s do the math. 3.50 bob for a text that costs you 10 cents to deliver gives you |(3.50/0.10 *100)| = 3500% profit.
Small wonder you make billions of shillings in profit. I have read quite a bit on economics. Yours is an expanding market with one-off costs, so you’re guaranteed to make profits forever. After buying your shares in a fit of stupidity I highly regret, I hoped to get at least some of those profits. let’s just say a cheque for 50 bob (about approximately what I spend on your network per day thanks to your stupid charges) is not even worth the paper it is printed on…
So it’s ok, you sponsor stuff and build your corporate image as the ‘caring network’ or whatever, but what does that matter? That’s not your job. I’m not saying stop kissing babies or whatever, all I’m saying is you could do more to make your customers feel good about being on your network. Like for starters you don’t wait for the competition to lower rates and then you come in and sing and dance and make it look like you’re lowering yours as well while in fact you want me to buy more credit… I’m not stupid…
I’m leaving you. It’s been long and hard, but Zain has done more for me than you ever will. And part of leaving you involves tossing my SIM out of the window after redeeming my gazillion bonga points and okoaing jahazi.
You haven’t been entirely useless though… Through you I have found the joys of data via mobile and all that surfing stuff. But that’s pretty much standard. Though you do tempt me with your will-they-won’t-they stories about 4G trials and such. As far as calls and texts and such are concerned, you just keep that. It’s ok, really.
So goodbye Safaricom. Right now I can safely say The Answer is yes to making life better for a wonderful world.

Your disgruntled customer,
Me

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a letter to the other side

So I decided to write a letter to myself in 2010, seeing as that’s in a couple of days…

Eric,

First of all, happy new year, and congratulations, you made it this far. It’s a brand new year, a blank canvas you can do pretty much anything with… Choose wisely what you want to do with it.

In all things, do not forget that as long as you live, you have something to look forward to. You have your entire life ahead of you, take it easy. It will be one wild ride…
There will be things, just as there have always been, that you can and cannot fix. You may not tell when you get into them, but you can’t fix everything. You can, however, learn from everything you try to fix. Everything is a lesson, whether success or failure. It is entirely up to you to decide how you will look at it.
Years are not anything to take lightly, they are entire trips around the sun. They look long, but they have a way of running out on you when you least expect it… And with the passage of time, there are threads that are bound to unravel while others get woven closer together. You may not see it now, but the things you do will set the pace for the things to come.

Time will pass no matter what. Do not waste whatever little time you have wishing for more time. Picture an hourglass… As the sand trickles from the top to the bottom, do not wish that the sand would stop and give you a break. Time will spin madly on, irregardless of whether you have your fingers crossed or not. it’s up to you to decide how you will use it.
This will be a year of great responsibility for you. people will rely on you even more than they do now. However, do not let this dissuade you, neither do not let it change who you are. In all responsibility, find the lesson that is to be learned and learn it accordingly. Even the mundane and dull tasks that you may take for granted, they too have their lessons.
You have a greatness you yourself cannot comprehend. It is up to you to take the path that will lead you there. It will unfold before you, do not rush it. Remember Dorothy? Yes, the yellow brick road. Find your own road and take it to your own Oz. Get out of that comfort zone. You could have settled for less, but this would be a waste, and you know it. Reach for the greatness that you keep dreaming about, and you will see that it only takes that much effort to get there.
Read more. How else are you going to learn? Admit it, you don’t know everything
Write more. You have much to share.
Love more. That way, maybe you will stop feeling so alone.
Think less, do more. Sometimes, even the best intentions can barely match up to the occasional action.
Get out of your shell. There are other people out there. You may think you are alone, but you are not. Get out more, smell the coffee. You will be surprised. Open yourself up to possibility.
Learn to let go. Sometimes it may hurt, but in the long run, it’s best if you let go of some things.
Respect everyone, even those you don’t understand, or those that don’t understand you.

And use your time wisely. You only get one turn. Don’t waste it worrying about what might be or regretting about what was.

And don’t forget, you rock \m/

All the best in 2010. I’m rooting for you

Regards,

Eric

Post-holiday Clarity

I had been on holiday for about 5 days somewhere between end of November and beginning of December, and during that time I had loads of time to think. Beach-walking, introspective thinking, that stuff.
So here’s what I have drawn from that.
My life is a massive spiderweb. In it are tangled very many individuals and things that either have an impact on me or that I have an impact on…
And usually what happens is these webs is that the impact of such people is soon forgotten, until, say, major crisis happens and there is a recollection. Or the disappeared person reappears and there is a recollection. Like a primary school buddy suddenly happens to be in the same school as me, and all the recollection about how we were the fiercest of rivals comes up… then I realize I kinda took my foot off the gas after that pressure was eased…
In my life I’ve had various pressures to succeed, some of which persist, others which wear off. With time I get used to the persistent pressures and just tune them out… But then they kick it up a notch and I end up beating myself up for generally sucking at something i should be good at.

I thought I had myself figured out at 19… The world was there for me to take over and completely pwn, but with time I realized there was way more than I could manage by myself. I’d always been the independent rebel-sans-cause type, the world couldgo hang for all I cared, but that came to change as well, having to factor in other people into my life and live with them and for them as it were… Not exactly the idal situatiom, but that’s how we’re programmed, to be social and everything…
So here we are, having barely lived our lives. What’s it to be? For one, I need to learn to stop taking things so seriously. It’s only life. And much as I have come to learn to live from regret to regret, there’s also the happy bits in between…I need to take those and learn from them. I also need to start working out how to move on to level 2. And to make use of what I have. And before that, to appreciate what I have.

Above all, I need to learn how to speak my truth.

I want my brain back please…

It’s getting harder and harder to think for myself… I have come to realize that my ability to think original, coherent thoughts has waned rather fast. Like now I have become too tired and occupied with getting over the intricacies of life, now I just let everything in…
I’m in a position of responsibility. That in itself means I have to do three people’s work. School’s closed. Add another five people. Budgets to do, emails to send out, sanity to keep… The usual.
And I’m interning. I’m supposed to be doing that now, but nobody’s watching… Cats and mice
I’ve been having interesting, intricate dreams… means I’m getting more REM sleep. Good sign. Like one where my uncles, all five of them, and me, were sitting down for a chat. There were other people I can’t remember. Getting life lessons. Ok, that’s where I was like, is my brain trying to tell me something, like perhaps I need a father figure, or worse, all those ‘getting married’ stories I was getting will come true sooner rather than later…