Time doesn't heal everything

It is often said that time heals everything. I don't think it really does.
Time doesn't heal everything, but time changes the way you see everything.

Time changes the way you see your baby as she walks down the aisle on the arm of a man as they promise each other 'happily ever after'...

Time changes the way you see your indomitable parent who now needs your help up and down the stairs because their body, well, it just no longer is what it used to be...

Time changes how you see a painful break up which you swore never to get over, with your teenage sweetheart who is now in his third marriage.....

Time changes how you see your younger sister on whom you spent years "knocking sense into her head" but whom you now call up for advice every now and again....

Time changes how you see a lost opportunity you had to go to college, when you decided to devote your time and energy getting to know your very young kids....

Time changes how you see the death of your closest and dearest when you realise it is 20 years later and you still have great memories about them and they seem like they happened just yesterday.....

Time doesn't heal everything, not completely, not always...
But time changes how you see everything, completely.....always.

Butterflies!

I have always loved butterflies. They are such fascinating little creatures – beautiful, delicate, diverse. They are so free spirited, flitting about, dancing in the sunshine...

My romance with butterflies goes way back and runs very deep. As a matter of fact, there is a family joke about butterflies which my elder sister loves to recount. She tells of how I was always chasing after them, totally oblivious to the rest of the world. She once sent me to buy milk at a shop slightly over 10 minutes walk from home to and fro. After almost an hour I came with glowing eyes, excitedly describing the butterflies I had seen and how I had followed them through the grass patch on the way to the shops, but with no milk!

When I think about it now though, butterfly chasing is not always such a productive occupation. For one, they are so delicate, you never really want to actually catch them  because they will get destroyed in your hands – so for all your labour, you have nothing to show. Then again, butterflies never keep still. They are always on the move, flitting from one flower to the next and you never have an idea which the "next" will be, so you are on the move, not knowing where you are going!

Some details in life may be fascinating, but they could lead you off the path you got on when you begun your journey. I like what a friend of mine tells his team whenever they embark on a project – "No chasing butterflies" – and they all know what he means!

Less is more – In Favour of the Smaller Picture

Brian Munene, 13 years, is mentally handicapped and epileptic; the first born of two. His mother is single, unemployed and unable to cater for the needs of her children. His brother is blind.

Enough has been said about thinking big and aiming for great things, reaching for the sky, achieving great dreams. But sometimes looking at the bigger picture can be paralyzing!

I was recently asked to play a bigger role in the running and management of a home for children with mental and physical disabilities. While I know that the founding of this home is a very noble and caters for a very forgotten yet special group of abandoned children, I balked at the idea of being held accountable for making the "bigger picture" happen!

The home has 30 children living on rented premises and has no steady source of income. Being part of the team means that I accept the responsibility of seeing to it that these children have a roof over their heads, food to eat, someone to care for them and clothes to wear. It means that I have to see to it that they receive physiotherapy, get basic schooling, learn a skill (for those that are able to) and generally feel that they do belong to this society despite the fact that a number of them were abandoned and even left to die due to the extreme nature of their disabilities.

Yet, when I think of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, a person who dedicated her entire life to making other people's lives count and who even after her death continues to inspire me, I do not see her "reaching for the sky" or "achieving great dreams". Rather, I see someone who was focused on doing whatever little she could using whatever little she had and as she did so, all her small acts of compassion formed the magnificent quilt of love, devotion and dedication that spans decades and encompasses continents!
Less is more! I am going to focus on my little piece of patchwork for the moment, and who knows what kind of a quilt I will make?!

As Marian Wright Edelman puts it:

“We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.”

 

A Very Bra-zen Story

I got a very thought provoking email from a friend the other day.

It was a story of a man who went to buy a bra for his wife. When he got to the lingerie shop, the poor man was totally bowled over by the sheer variety – there were so many colours, sizes, shapes, styles and fabrics to choose from. (Coming to think of it, no wonder we girls spend 6 hours shopping for one pair of shoes which we eventually do not actually buy on that day, but return a week later, to repeat the process of choosing...and end up buying the first pair of shoes we looked at the last week! But then again, that is a story for another day.)

Anyway, back to my email. The shop attendant, seeing the man's utter dismay tells him not to worry because despite all the apparent variety, there are basically 3 types of bras – the Catholic type, the Salvation Army type and the Baptist type.

Unfortunately, this helpful advice got the man in a total spin, so, to put him out of his misery, the attendant explains it to him like this:

The Catholic type support the masses, the Salvation Army lift up the fallen, and the Baptist type make mountains out of molehills.

After falling off my seat and howling with laughter, I thought about it critically and came to the conclusion that none of those bras quite fit me, I neither have masses nor am I fallen and as for mountains, I have no desire for any such things. I need to find myself a bra!

I'm thinking perhaps the Quakers. They consider outward rites and symbols unnecessary (and even a hindrance) to spiritual experience and value simplicity.......

It's all about choices

©Copyright The Suyian Trust, Nairobi Kenya

As I struggled to choose what to wear to the office one morning, it suddenly struck me that life is all about making choices. My alarm clock had gone off at 5 o’clock and rather than get up immediately, I had chosen to spend a few more minutes in bed. As a result, I was behind schedule, running late for work and with hardly enough time to have my breakfast.

Life really is about making choices. We choose to hope or to despair; we choose to love or to hate; to fight back or surrender; to believe or doubt; to move forward or to hang back; to embrace or to push away; to give or to take; to receive or reject; to forgive or to hold grudges.

The ultimate choice we make in life however is the choice about the very life we live.

Each day we get to choose whether we will take in a new breath and believe that tomorrow will be brighter and filled with purpose or give up and accept that the obstacles and today’s losses are all that there is to it.

What is this thing called Love?

Some months ago, I got tired of watching the flurry of activity going on around me and having none of the action. Days had gone by without a single one of my "facebook friends" saying or doing anything in my corner so I figured out the best way to get everyone's attention would be to talk about something we all understand. I decided to start a conversation about LOVE.

After posing the question "what is this thing called love" I realised soon enough that nobody seemed to really have the foggiest idea how to define this so called "universal language". I got a few fumbling answers, some text book responses, but nothing satisfactory. Still, I was happy, at least someone was reading and posting something on my wall.

Next, to spice things up, I came up with a philosophical sounding conclusion saying something about love not being an emotion but a decision...really serious high sounding stuff, if I may say so myself. Now that really caught everyone's attention. All of a sudden, they "knew" what love was, or perhaps what it was not....and I got some colourful analogies of how unanticipated love is, most of which I dare not repeat here.

Finally, thoroughly fired up by the attention I was getting, I posted a very romantic quote and not unexpectedly, my "facebook wall" became a hive of activity....My mission was accomplished.

What was really funny about all this though, is that everyone assumed it was romantic love I was asking about. Nobody spoke of the different types of love that we have – a parental love perhaps, the type of love that believes in you even when to the rest of the world it is evident that you have clearly lost your way; or filial love – the kind that you have for your siblings because you know they are yours no matter what you do, and there is just no getting rid of them (love you sis!)....or the kind of love that makes a sister or a brother out of a friend (much like you, "L").

I pose the question again, "What is this thing called Love?"

The Animal in You

I once remember my colleagues returning from a training seminar on group dynamics and all they were talking about was animals. Apparently, during the seminar they had been taught a principle which categorized people into different groups that related to animal characteristics. There were about 12 of them, but the ones I remember distinctly are:

The donkey: these are people that are very stubborn and will not change their point of view
The lion: the kind of people who fight whenever others disagree with their plans
The ostrich: the type of person that buries his head in the sand and refuses to admit any problem at all
The cat: this type of person is always looking for sympathy
The tortoise: who withdraws from the group refusing to give ideas or opinions
The peacock: these are the ones who are always competing for attention – they think too highly of themselves.

So next time you meet someone, be sure to take a closer look at them. You might actually be face to face with a housefly – a regular pest that always turns up when they are not wanted and sticks their hands into everything. Or perhaps you might be dating a butterfly – hardly sticks to one thing, always flitting from this to the other. Or you might be lucky enough to meet a tiger – the kind that has a high level of social tolerance so their fights are kept to a minimum.

Or maybe I should be asking, what kind of an animal are you?

Venus and Mars Collide

I cannot think of a time I was more embarrassed than earlier this year when my attempts at showing appreciation of one of my friends went terribly sour!

At the dawn of the new year, as you were making your new year's resolutions all of which by now are broken, I was doing something far more exciting. I did a thorough inventory of my friendships and came to the conclusion that there was one friend I was treating particularly shabbily.

This particular friend is quite resourceful in a profession that I am new to, so from time to time, I call him up when I need technical help. This is not a bad thing, of course, what are friends for? However, the problem is I had only looked him up specifically when I needed help, and never otherwise (tsk! tsk!)

So, in the spirit of new beginnings and making amends, I purposed to call him up when I don't need help and just have a good old chat. This seemed like a perfectly grand idea to me until the last minute of the evening we were supposed to meet up for a drink and a chat when this friend balked!

After replaying the incident several times in my head and with a few consultations here and there from member of the less fare sex, I think I may have unravelled the mystery. He thought I was hitting on him! A single unattached woman, on a mission, offering rather assertively to buy him a drink, out of the blues, and not asking for any favours as was the custom, may have been all too much for him!

I have since abandoned that mission and set out on one that I hope will be greatly beneficial to the entire human race, well, perhaps the entire woman race - an in depth analysis of the theory that men are from mars and women from venus. Any volunteers, guys? I promise, I won't offer to buy you a drink!

Life is a Bitch, and then you die

For some reason, today I am reminded of a very foolish business venture I once undertook at a time when I had no money to loose. Not that I ever have money that is designated "to loose".

Anyway, I committed a tidy sum of money, tidy, considering my financial state at the time, to taking part in an exhibition that was supposed to make me lots of money and give me contacts that would help me sell my hundreds of handmade cards. (If y'all are really nice, I might show you my handiwork sometime). The idea was all really brilliant, an exhibition of different arts and crafts in an up-market residential area where people supposedly have a better art-sense and yes, have deeper pockets. There was only one problem though – not enough publicity was done for the event!

So there I am on a Saturday afternoon, having spent the better part of my morning selling nothing, and watching the dark rain clouds gathering. (I thought that only happens in movies). Life sucks, right? Wrong!

If you asked me how my day had been, I would honestly have said "great!" And it had. You see, there was this handsome guy with a voice to die for, who had paid me special attention the whole day (girls, stop rolling your eyes on me, you know what I mean). I mean, the guy did a double take when he saw me, despite my faded jeans, hustled look and no make-up. And after that, he spent most of the time at my stand, talking about the cards, my work, his life, and I don't know whether he was so funny or I was suffering a heatstroke from the day's earlier sun, but he made me laugh a great deal.

The moral of the story? Life is a bitch and then you die...or life is an exciting adventure packed with unexpected twists and turns. You choose. I did.

Only change is constant!

I have a famous quote I coined...well maybe I didn't really coin it...but I like to quote it often, like my personal mantra. I could have said this to you before and I will probably say it again

"The only thing that remains constant in life is the fact that things are always changing"

or more simply put,

"The only constant in life, is change."

Yet, for some reason we all fear and resist change with all our might. We lift our cheeks, colour our hair and cling to people whom we should have let go of a long time ago!

Yeah, letting go of people can be one of the hardest changes to accept. Perhaps if we borrowed a leaf from nature, then we would move through life more gracefully.

Just like trees shed leaves in fall to put on new ones next spring, whether we resist it or not, when a person's season is over in your life, they may need to be shed.
Now, before you go ahead and decide to shed me, remember, that not all people in your life are leaves! There are always some people in your life that are meant to be there forever. They are like buttress roots, holding you firmly to the ground.

So go on – find out what season it is in your life, figure out what part the people and things in your life play – then boldly embrace change!

My Pet Dog, Procrastination

You would not believe the number of blog entries I have written in the last month. They are absolutely numerous!

Ever since I begun riding the blogging wave, every conversation I have, any discussion I hear or any argument I get into is a potential blog entry –

You: "Ethel, how soon can you print my cards?"
Me: "Ah! Cards! Now, that would make a good topic for blogging!";

You: "It looks like rain today!"
Me: "The weather...hmm...I think I can still create an interesting twist to talking about the weather"

You: "I broke up with my boyfriend last night"
Me: "Relationships! What curious things they are....I will definitely write about falling in and out of love!"

So where, I hear you ask, are all these amazingly interesting entries? Ummmm, well....my dog ate it! Honest, he did!

I didn't get to blogging right away, and somehow the Procrastination ate up all my ideas and now I cannot even remember what I was supposed to be saying in the first place...So you are reading the rumblings of a mind that is exhausted from searching for what it had been thinking about yesterday, and the day before and before that.....and before that.......

You are as old as you feel

I seem to have a penchant for quoting very cliché quotes... But bear with me please, I got some really funny stuff about age I just have to share with you!

The other day I got an email forward from a friend. I am not really a fan of forwards (please note, friends!) but this particular one really tickled me. Perhaps because it hit so close to home?

It was a really long one, but I will just pick out what I thought were the choicest parts.

One of them goes like this:

Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we're kids? If you're less than 10 years old, you're so excited about ageing that you think in fractions. 'How old are you?' 'I'm four and a half!' You're never thirty-six and a half (and all the ladies in the house said....).

Another one said this:

You get into your teens, now they can't hold you back. You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead. 'How old are you?' 'I'm going to be 16!' You could be 13, but hey, you're going to be 16! And then the greatest day of your life .... . You become 21. Even the words sound like a ceremony. YOU BECOME 21. YESSSS!!! But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk! He TURNED; we had to throw him out. There's no fun now, you're Just a sour-dumpling. What's wrong? What's changed?

It went on and on through the different landmarks of age, but the part that really got me in stitches was this one:

You get into your 80's and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30 ; you REACH bedtime. And it doesn't end there Into the 90s, you start going backwards; 'I Was JUST 92.'

Now back to the moral of the story - You are as old as you feel or as young as you wanna be. My advice to you? Throw out all the non-essential numbers. This includes age, weight and height. Remember, life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

Lets take time out – to be thankful

While sipping on on juice this evening at a friend's house as I fussed over and was absolutely fascinated by her wee little bundle of joy (yeah, it amazes me every time to think that we all metamorphose from that helpless state), she pointed out how lucky we were that we could actually sip on our juice... and even taste it while there was someone lying in a hospital bed who didn't even have the strength to use a drinking straw.

Her observation at the time seemed out of the blues, but it really got me thinking. Actually, I do have it better than so many people! I have a roof over my head, I have the option of having three square meals a day, and snacks in between, I can actually chew and taste my food, I am sitting upright as I type this blog post... come to think of it...I have sight, I can even use the computer (don't throw pillows at me just yet, I know that sounds cliché but bare with me).

Just thinking of my friend's statement has got me on a roll tonight. I really do hate being preached to about how much better I have it than other people when I am right in the middle of feeling sorry about something in my situation, but today, I am actually going to stop and think about it and I'll ask you to join me.

You may not have an idea where your next meal is coming from (seriously....it happens, I know) but think about it – if you can at least read my post on a computer or on you're phone, and if you have the energy in your finger to click the button at the corner and close this window, then truly, you do have something to be thankful for!

A "wee" bit of sacrifice never killed anyone, or then again, did it?

There are very few things that would induce me to give up my creature comforts.

For instance, why in the world would I want to give up the roof over my head in exchange for a tent on my back for a period of two weeks? Or the attendant security of knowing that bar any extraordinary circumstances, my door is unlikely to be charged by wild animals. Why would I want to exchange curling up in the evening on my settee with the remote control firmly in my possession (yes, it is I that controls it) mindlessly flipping through TV channels for a night in out in the open, surrounded by pitch darkness with the only source of light coming from distant stars and the glow from a fire lit to keep wild animals away? Or the knowledge that I shall retire to my warm bed with a nice thick mattress and the pillow I am so used to, for the uncertainty as to whether my bed for the night, a threadbare sleeping bag that has to be so in order for me to lug it around for the duration of two weeks, will be dry or wet.

I could actually fill several pages with the comforts I would rather not give up, and still not be done, but I think you get my point. That is why I look at my friend Anne with a mixture of respect and fascination as she prepares to walk for two weeks, through the Rumuruti forest (I am sure some have no idea such a forest exists and I will probably have to tell you all about it at some point) in an attempt to raise funds towards saving this forest and by extension, preserving the water system that depends on it.

I did promise to tell you all about this friend of mine and her quest to make a difference; so this is just the beginning. Hopefully, I will inspire more of us to do whatever little we can towards that worthy cause we have always wanted to support.

Ignorance is not bliss - you don't know what you're missing!

There is a very cliché statement that goes "You never know what you've got until you lose it."

I beg to differ totally! Who doesn't know when they have money? I for one definitely know when I have money. All of a sudden, I appear slightly taller than I usually am, and manage to look very elegant in my signature faded jeans. My nails suddenly need 'doing' and my handbags are too few. My shoes don't suit my wardrobe anymore so of course I have to get a new pair...(girls, did I hear an amen?).

But today it rained and I thought, forget about 'ignorance is bliss'. Sometimes, you don't know what you are missing until you get it (or get it back)!

I seriously did not realise how much I had missed the rain until I heard the distant pattering in my sleep just before I got up. I didn't realise how much I enjoyed the accompanying cool crisp early morning air which hit me as I stumbled out of bed, half dressed, trying to remember why it is that I have to get out of bed before 11 am today. And when I walked to the bus stop, jumping over mud puddles and dodging splashing motorists, I realised that I had sort of missed the way the ground becomes chocolatey and squishy when it rains. The labouring 25 minute walk to the office didn't seem so labouring this morning because the sun was not beating down on me today. I was actually lifting my feet off the ground today!

Ah, yes...sometimes, you do not know what you are missing until you get it (or you get it back). So today, when the rain starts falling at exactly the hour when I have to leave work for home, and when I have to stand at the bus stop for hours wondering where it is the public transport vehicles get to when it rains, don't you worry about me. I will be singing in the rain!

Donno about you, I'm Saving the World!

It was with utter horror that I watched events unfolding over the past few weeks. All our forests in Kenya, or at least what is left of them are burning! Honestly, I was transfixed. Then I got angry, angry to the point of wanting to do something. We have to put a stop to this madness! The selfish desires of a few individuals are threatening the very existence of a whole nation and we .... well, we are our usual passive selves. We might have a few heated debates while the news is still hot but those will die off soon enough when we stop seeing the horrific pictures. We will complain every now and then when our taps run dry. The more valiant of us will write letters of protest to some government department or other that we feel is responsible. And then what?

There is nothing as paralyzing as being faced with a crisis of such magnitude, knowing you have to do something, yet not having the foggiest idea what you ought to do. So when my friend 'A' said she would do what she knows best how to do – walk, I took her very seriously. She may have the answer after all! If we all just do our bit we may save our forests yet.

So "you go girl, 'A'!" I'm rooting for you. Well, actually, I am writing for you! As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what I’ll do, I am going to write and tell you all about ‘A’ as she walks for the forests and you are all going to contribute in your own little ways. There! Problem solved!

Symbiosis versus parasitism

Yesterday I was feeling weighed down by some stuff that has been on my mind for quite some time. A very dear friend of mine offered to take me out for coffee and try and cheer me up a little, but considering this would be the second time in as many weeks, my first instinct was to decline...I mean, who wants to be seen as 'that' sort of friend – the one who is always down in the dumps and needs lifting up?

Anyway, somehow the coffee did happen and as a matter of fact, it turned out not to be a 'tissues and hankies' affair but a very interesting current affairs discussion.

This reminds me of a very curious bougainvillea plant I once saw. Generally, the bougainvillea is a low growing, creeping bush. It is often grown as a fence or along walls which only reach up to about 3 metres high. However this particular bougainvillea plant had found a 30 feet tree and attached itself to it. As a result, it was towering way above all the others and I could see its beautiful flowers from a great distance off. I am very sure it was enjoying the plentiful sunshine and the fresh air way up there. In return, the otherwise common looking tree was transformed into a beautiful, flower covered tree.

Like the bougainvillea, I realised, it is necessary to benefit from my friend's strengths. No one person has it all together within themselves. While giving help to my friend when she needs it and accepting hers in return, I am actually forming a symbiotic alliance, sort of like the bougainvillea and the tree. As to who is the bougainvillea and who is the tree..... that is a story for another day!

Now what?

It is now 4 days since I started this blog and I am beginning to have the feeling you get when you are presented with an 'artistic masterpiece' by a 2 year old. You hold it out, turn it upside down, downside up, rightside left, leftside right, all the while nodding with profuse enthusiasm and exclaiming how beautiful the work of art is. Then, after having waited for a respectable amount of time, you return to the 2 year old and ask, "Er, sweetheart, what is this you drew, again?"

So, now I have a blog. Hurrah! Cartwheels! Loud clapping!

...Err..So what am I supposed to do with it again?

Riding the blogging wave

About 2 years ago when my friend "L" first started blogging, my sister and I teased her about it, telling her how blogging was a release for the tormented soul who had something to say, and nobody to say it to. Never in a million years did I ever see myself riding the 'blogging wave'. After all, I have an old fashioned journal in which I make intermittent entries, by hand, mostly about stuff that my brain needs time to process and that is really more than enough, right?....Wrong!

Today I was interviewed for a job I would happily die for and guess which one question utterly dumbfounded me....Yep, you guessed right "Do you have a blog".

DO I HAVE A BLOG? What do they mean do I have a blog?! Why would I have a blog? Blogs, as I said earlier are an outlet for the tormented soul with nobody to talk to. You write and write and write away, and perhaps somewhere amongst your rumblings, you will find answers to the "deeper meaning of life".

Well, perhaps that IS the point, you write and write and write... then you write some more. And since the job I am willing to kill for (or was it die for? I forget) requires that I write, here I am with my tail between my legs (dont laugh at me "L") riding the blogging wave!