What Matters?

So I am meditating one day as I am wont to do between 4:40 a.m. and 5:00 a.m. every morning, but my Mind keeps going back to my grandma and one aunt of mine. No matter how much I try to gently guide my focus back to my breathing and to the present moment, my Mind keeps shifting to some of the people I truly love. In a last ditch attempt to get my Mind to acquiesce to my instructions, I ask it what it wants, why it keeps going back to these people yet it knows this is the time to meditate. And, unexpectedly, my Mind fills me with a feeling that seems to say to me, “Because these people are so important to me. And I remember that they are important to you too. Sometimes when I see you meditate and try so many different things so you can improve yourself for the world, I fear that you will forget what truly matters.” 

Realizing that the Mind has a genuine concern, I countered with, “These people matter to me still. They will never not matter or not be a priority”.

“I know, but you have just come from dating a narcissist and you were so enamored by their abrasiveness which you thought was self-assertiveness, by their self-centeredness which you mistook for independence, by their inability to relate with people which you assumed was self-sufficiency”, continued my Mind.

“I have learned my lessons, don’t you see how much we have grown from that experience? I now know how to love myself, how to move mountains for me. When you and I started out, I had to anchor my efforts onto something that I loved dearly, and almost always that has had to be somebody or something other than myself. Either I didn’t love myself enough or I didn’t know I did. I am sorry for the pain I have caused you and my heart.”

“There goes your timer. Sorry I have ruined your meditation today. I just could not postpone reminding you how much you love the people you do. You have a good heart, do not lose that for any reason.”

“Thank you for speaking to me about these things. You should not ever have to worry about such, I’ll see to it that you don’t. And you did not ruin the meditation. This is exactly what meditation is for me, it is me quieting myself enough so that you (my Mind), my soul, my heart, and my body can have communion with me and help me know myself.”

Therapy is just amazing. After four years in a serious, cohabitational relationship where verbal, emotional, and even physical abuse were rife, I have finally come home to myself. The most important lesson I learned from dating a narcissist is that my love and will are an inextinguishable ball of fire that can keep my heart warm through the coldest winter. 

I dated and almost married a narcissist; somehow, I came out not only unscathed but also wiser, more humble, more loving, more open to vulnerability, more self-reliant, and generally optimistic about what the future holds. I now realize that I am not in therapy because of the relationship itself, I am in therapy to figure out what got me into it and what made me stay so long.

Finding Purpose in Your Work

So I recently watched this YouTube video which says that most young people, read millennials, are very dissatisfied with their jobs because they do not derive any sense of purpose from them. Apparently, millineals are a very purpose-driven generation and feel frustrated when engaged in vocations in which they cannot see a purpose. Being both a millennial and dissatisfied with a number of things about my job, I decided to take a closer look at my job and see if there was not a meaning in there which could help me feel more at peace with just waking up every workday to go stare at a screen and type innumerable lines of computer code.

From experience, I know it is hard for a software developer like myself who writes code for corporate software to feel any sense of purpose. In fact, many a time I hear people with similar jobs grumble that they are only enriching others. Unfortunately, while enriching others could be a purpose too, it irks the hell out of the enricher if the enriched is already a few more commas richer. Anyway, because I could not easily delude myself that all my code was somehow changing lives, I decided to take a different route to finding purpose from and in my job. I resolved to start by writing down ten things I love about my job. In the end, I had a list of twenty items which not only bolstered my motivation to keep doing my best at work but also prompted me to write this article.

First, I realised that my employer has given me so many first experiences — things I may never still have done had I not joined Eclectics International. The firsts that stood out to me were my first plane ride, my first foreign travel, first vacation to the Kenyan coast (to any coast really), and of course the first pay check that was kinda big enough to make me smile with pride. They say in life it is the little things that matter, and these little things mattered to me because they knocked off a couple of items from my bucket list. My career bucket list, specifically, contains such diverse things as mastering JBOSS, microservices, iOS, and machine learning with TensorFlow; I also intend to get a Prince2 certification, become a marketer, maybe get a PhD like I always dreamed, and eventually shift to wearing a suit to work everyday, you know, just to go to meetings and sign papers all day, because why not.

Second, I took inventory of the skills I have gained under my employment and was blown away. In one and a half years, I had learned Ionic, Yii2, EMV card processing, uncounted libraries and third party APIs, JBOSS, EJBs, a number of ISO standards, and gotten a golden opportunity to work with card-processing, Android, POS devices which greatly enhanced my experience in mobile apps development. Further, I occasionally found myself in boardrooms meeting with CEOs, continental heads, board chairpersons, regional directors, managers, etc. until I finally found my voice and got comfortable with expressing my opinions and explaining my stand on any particular issue. But beyond the technical and soft skills, it is at Eclectics where I practically learned that I was worth so much more. Essentially, working here raised the ceiling of who I am and what I think I can become — it raised the standard of what I demand from myself professionally. 

Third, I have made wonderful acquaintances and developed some amazing friendships with people who have very different life experiences and beliefs. I am drawn to people who can express themselves, but more to people who can make a crazy assertion and go on to defend it sufficiently enough for me to actually want to research deeper for myself. These are just the kind of people we have at Eclectics — opinionated, intelligent, talented, helpful, life-long learners, and humble enough to listen to and consider opposing views. I stopped counting the number of times colleagues have helped me not only in writing code but also by offering me chances to broaden my experiences and expand my perceptions as a human being.

In addition to all that, it dawned on me that one of my complaints, being overworked and over pressured, is not entirely a bad thing for me. See, I work out, and in my exercises I know that growth and positive change only start happening past the point of pain — everything else is just warm up! So when I reflected on the times I had been most pressured or had the biggest load, I realised that those were also the times when I delivered the most and accomplished the things of which I am most proud. These were also the times I had had to learn something whether I felt like it or not; basically, these were my moments of growth. Pressure has made me deliver more than I thought possible; pressure has forced me out of my comfort zone into finally learning things I knew I needed to learn to grow in my career; pressure has helped me redefine impossible as “something that someone is not committed enough to do”.

But, when all is said and done, perhaps the best thing I have gotten from Eclectics is the direct and indirect mentorship of my more experienced colleagues. Notably, while working on the UBA project, I learned from James, our Head of Products, the necessity of articulating requirements, of seeking clarity, of creating consensus on what needs to get done from the outset, and of making hard decisions with finality so that the people you are leading are confident to proceed in one common direction. From our DMD, Sebi, I actually wish to be able to emulate his affable persona, his down-to-earth leadership style, his modesty, and the ease with which he fills his position, seemingly so effortlessly. And finally, our MD inspires me to sharpen my business acumen and my marketing skills; and he reminds me that there is no cap on ambition or vision, and that if you are willing to work even odd hours of the night, you can dream as wildly as you want.

In conclusion, when you open up your mind to see the bigger picture, you realise that there can be purpose in anything we do. I believe, much like the existentialists do, that purpose cannot be found from external things. Rather it is for us to infuse our actions with purpose; we decide if what we are doing has meaning or not. If you decide it is meaningless, you do it half-heartedly and do not get to do your best job. However, it is just as easy to decide that everything you do shall be an expression of your deepest beliefs. In which case, you stop seeking meaning and purpose and start creating them, much like I did by writing this story which is now a page of my biography even if the rest of it is never written. Similarly, your code tells a story of how you think and reason, and you do not want that story to be poorly told especially when you are the one telling it.

DREAM ABOUT TOMORROW BUT WORK TODAY

I once met a stooped, short, old man whose claim to fame is that he was one of the people who worked in construction of the Kenya International Conference Centre (KICC). Now, it may not matter much to you and I who put which brick where, who painted what, or how many people it took to erect the landmark building. But to many of those construction workers, probably most of them, it is a point of pride to have been part of a team that built something great and enduring. To them, and especially to this old friend of mine, the KICC would not be without their contribution.

The thing, however, is that such pride in our work often comes long after the final product is complete and even more after it has gained mass reverence. That’s when we insist on reminding everyone how crucially important our little role was in the product’s creation; and endeavour to imply that, in retrospect, we actually loved that part of our job. But if we earnestly invert this process, if we start taking much pride in things before and during their construction instead of after, then we put ourselves in a position to do better work. See, this shifts your perception such that you are no longer just laying bricks, or mixing concrete, or roofing, or panelling. You are building THE KICC! You are building a LANDMARK!

Building a landmark is more important work than, say, laying bricks; so it raises the importance and significance of the bricklayer’s role; and there is research to show that important work inspires and motivates us. If you are an employee or entrepreneur, try to tap into that future enthusiasm that you will feel when what you are working on now is complete and is helping people. One way to harness that enthusiasm is to constantly keep in mind the end goal, and then figure out one thing you can do right now to take the project closer to completion. In other words, continually dream about tomorrow as you are working today to make that dream a reality.

As an example of how this works, I am a software developer and in my last project I constantly found myself thinking: this system we are developing is going to help all Kenyan youth access business start-up loans much more easily; that is going to change people’s lives and possibly the fate of our nation; and I am so excited to be the one making the app that everyone will use. Then I would pick one thing to do that day which would make the app better and easier to use. And most of the time I would be motivated throughout the day, because I was not merely changing the size of a button or tweaking the background colour of the app, I was making an app that was going to help youths start their dream businesses and change their lives.

The takeaway for managers, business leaders, and entrepreneurs, is that they have a critical job of continuously and repeatedly reiterating the big picture – one that is meaningful and important – to their workforce. Further, if they want their bottom line to be taken more seriously, they should communicate very clearly how it ties into the big picture. If that is not demonstrable but can follow naturally once the big picture is achieved, then I think it is okay to just let the employees focus on the big picture whence they derive importance, meaning, a sense of contribution, and the consequent motivation and inspiration to keep doing their best work.

The Essense of Physical Desires in Our Pursuit of Happiness

After all your physical desires are met, you rise to the next level in Maslow’s hierarchy. Here you start to aspire to things that cause you so much angst because they are things no one can aptly define. How much money is enough money? How much social status is sufficient? How much prestige is guaranteed to satiate your desires? What level of education or degree of learning will fulfill you? When you think you have answered these questions, you achieve whatever amount you had in mind only to realize you are still not satisfied – – and the cycle of angst begins all over again. But every now and then in the midst of your angst, something profound happens that you never notice.

One moment you will be feeling like a failure, as if you didn’t have the power to change your life and your dreams will never come true, then somehow you realize you really need to use the bathroom. Suddenly, none of that future potentiality or lack thereof matters anymore. All you care about is relieving yourself as soon as possible. And when you get to a loo and are relieving yourself you feel such a deep sense of accomplishment, you feel as if you will never want anything else out of life. In these instances, all the angst is gone and all that is left is the necessity of dealing with the arising physical desire. Now, this is really interesting for two reasons.

First, the fact that a mere physical desire – – the need to pee or take a dump; the feeling of hunger; a persistent, nagging itch; or the urge to lie down when worn out – – so tyrannically takes over our will and momentarily redefines the source of our happiness in life raises some new philosophical questions about humans as a species and as rational beings. Imagine Maslow’s hierarchy as a swimming pool with the basic needs at the very top and our loftier ambitions at the bottom. The work of our physical needs in this analogical paradigm is to periodically yank us to the top of the water where we can get a fresh breath of animalistic satisfaction, and the consequent temporary happiness of relief, before we take another deep dive to further pursue our higher goals. As any swimmer knows, your success as a diver depends on two things, how much air you can hold in and how efficiently you utilize it when underwater. Similarly, our success at the highest (deepest) levels depends on how much we enjoy these trivial things, and how well we use that as fuel in the pursuit of our aspirations.

Second, the implications of it all are huge. They explain why someone living the simplest life beset with the deepest challenges is oftentimes much happier than those of us apparently aspiring to acquire the heavens. To such a man, each day that he manages to meet his daily needs is quite a triumph for him such that he’ll spend many a minute if not hours thanking his deity, all the while feeling so satisfied and grateful to still be alive. This opens one point of departure in our quest for happiness. It’s impossible to be truly grateful without feeling satisfied and vice versa.

To sum it up, the next time you feel as if your life is headed nowhere, just let yourself get really hungry. Then when you finally allow yourself a meal, enjoy it slowly, savoring each bite and the accompanying sentiment, that feeling of “Oh God, all I need is food. And here it is!”. In life, all we need to be happy is so little that we often overlook it and go in search of things that are ultimately guaranteed to cause us nothing but pain and misery. I promise you that you will keep forgetting this lesson time and again, but as long as you remember every now and then that you have everything you need to be happy, you shall be okay. Best of luck!

A Millennial’s Therapeutic Creed

I am a millenial,
I live above my means
and I am mad at everyone
because I can’t afford to live like this forever.
I am a millenial and I hate everyone who keeps asking me for money
that I grudgingly give
while I’m left sleeping hungry.
I am a millenial who knows
how badly my education
has screwed me, a millenial
who has seen the government enrich
a few potbellied power brokers
instead of creating jobs for us.
I am a millenial and I blame my boss
that I haven’t afforded a car
or even a better life at my age. 
I am a millenial struggling to look trendy, 
and gnashing my teeth 
whenever fashion changes because 
I cannot afford to keep up. 
I am a millenial whose mind thinks
a million different things a day, 
but is still thought of and treated
like a lazy, unthinking idiot. 
I am a millenial who could apologize
for wanting things to fall in place right now,
don’t you see how there’s so much life to live
and so little time and resources to live it all,
why chastise me for wishing, for trying?

I am a millenial but from today
I’ll remember that it’s my responsibility
to create the life I want for myself.
My government, society, parents, degree,
job, boss, partner, don’t owe me anything,
their being here is the only reward. 
But neither do I owe anyone that 
which I don’t have with me to give – –  
whether it’s time, money, or energy – – 
because borrowing from A to please B
is a fool’s paradise and a house of cards. 
I accept that I have to work
for everything I want;
and I accept that some things in life take time
even after you have already given your best.
I accept that I earn too little
to live the flashy lifestyles
I covet in others, and, philosophically, 
that there’s nothing wrong
in living a simple life,
that life’s real ecstasies are had equally
both by the lowly and the mighty,  
even though the means may differ.
I accept that if I budget well
and save diligently, 
I’ll definitely get where I need to be. 
I’ll never hate life or people or things
because they are not as I want, 
instead I’ll extend my heart and grow
to where I can love them just as they are. 
I am a millenial, and I’m tired of being judged 
because my philosophy is different, 
because my mind and heart are free, 
unencumbered by the dogmas 
that kept my ancestors in shackles.

HERE WHERE

You touched my soul,
you made it whole;
Now look into my heart,
promise we’ll never part!
How swiftly I’d also pledge!
‘Coz this balancing on edge,
as is amazing, is dangerous,
is as scary, as is wondrous;
it’s a sweet heaven in hell
such as words can’t tell.
‘Ere I met you, nothing,
here with you, everything;
here the sun shines so summer,
and I feel a welcomed newcomer
here where lovers let loose and live,
where one is glad just to give,
and receives evermore in awe,
for such kindness I never saw.
You’re a feast for the senses,
a scent of a million fragrances;
your voice like a fine tuned organ
would seduce into faith a pagan;
your smile dazzles and puzzles;
your touches and loving nuzzles
are both the fire and soothing balm;
bae, to you I dedicate this psalm,
and wish I could write many more
’til nothing was to say any more,
that wasn’t already sang in praise
of you and all the ways you amaze!

The Kind of Person to Become

Maybe for lack of anything better to do I will finally put in writing this 100 billion dollar dream that has so passionately ignited my soul and is daily shaping my life. There is a man I feel I must become. A man whose word is gold, a man whose confidence is a solid rock, a man whose heart is a fountain gushing with love for humanity, a man whose mind is a dry sponge ever eager to absorb and learn more, a man without limits other than his own nature, a man who can make miracles happen, a man who is daily changing the world we live in and that we’ll leave to our kids for the better. I feel a necessity to assimilate the lessons of the ancient stoic philosophers who teach us to love nature, to be happy living by the law which her benevolent hand has written into who and what we are. And while chasing money, fame, and power, never forget that those are merely Ithacas, remember the timeless wisdom of Cavafy when he cautions us to live as much as we can while journeying so that no destination, no matter how barren, shall ever dampen our spirit. Time and again, a humbling idea comes home to brood, namely, that money is merely a means to an end and not the end itself. We crave money not for what it is but because of the possibilities and opportunities to do things and live differently. I hope you find a way to live right now even as you await other things to fall in place so you can live as you dream.

In Pursuit of Perfection

He says that his life changed one evening when an angel appeared to him with one simple message: You will only end up as poor and as rich as you are now. Then, after uttering this ominous sentence, the angel began to fade out as he had faded in, but the man made him stop with a breathless, “Wait!”

The angel faded back into view and gave the man his attention once again. The man knew there were many questions he should ask, but he knew neither which was most important nor which to begin with. So, with a hint of anger, perhaps frustration, in his voice, he started with the one that was nagging him the most, “What do you mean I will never be richer than I am now?”

“I mean just what I said and nothing more.” said the angel.

“But I work hard, what about the fruits of my labour and all the other promises God made?”

“The truth, like the commandments, is also writ in stone, and God’s word is truth forever. Nothing I said changes what was inspired and written straight from the heart of God.”

The man was confused, “But… How… What…Why then do you say I won’t amount to anything?”

“I only said what I was sent to say: You will only end up as poor and as rich as you are now,” said the angel as he faded out of view.

“Come back! Please!” but the angel was gone, and the man could never tell if his pleas were even heard.

He says that the message of the angel only became clear to him many years later. After he had achieved success in other ways, he realized that his struggle had been making him blind to the fact that he was already everything he needed to be. He was a child of God, and he had all the talents that God had hidden inside him. God’s kingdom was his inheritance. There he was, already a prince but blind to the fact, and thus firmly stuck in a rat-race trying to become this ‘someone’ or that ‘something’ before he could reach for his dreams. 

In retrospect, it is very clear that the angel had not come to prophesy his doom but to open his eyes. Today, 40 years later as he tells this tale, he says his eyes are finally fully opened. He sees the truth that he could not see then. There is a natural law that asserts that nothing new is created in the universe, and that nothing is ever destroyed either. Things only change from one thing to another, transmuting, changing of form without ever going out of existence.

By forcing him to avert his eye from the pursuit of wealth and stature, the angel had redirected him into the outpouring of his true essence into the world. And the more of his skills and natural abilities he exercised, the more he transmuted. And as he actualized the potential within, he was outwardly becoming a new person. 

His lesson, he says, is that blessed are those who realize from the outset that they are complete, that they are perfect, in accordance with both the universal nature and their own nature. But even more blessed is the one who immediately starts his job of making the world a better place as early as possible, without any excuses or delays and against all obstacles and hindrances.

Warriors of faith

The beholding soul opens up its heart and lets the Grace of God and Faith in Christ be its guide. Knowing that it can never again go astray, it is no longer afraid of sudden failure or destruction; it no longer tries to appease the false gods of fate or destiny or chance. It trusts that, henceforth, wherever its step shall fall will be exactly where God intended. Then Christ seeing a warrior who would unquestioningly obey in the midst of battle moves into this warrior’s heart and rebuilds his Father’s kingdom in there. And so it is that a warrior of Faith is a heaven unto themselves, for the Kingdom of God is within them and Christ himself sits on the throne of their hearts and guides their step everyday. Their spirit is jubilant out of being in constant communion with its maker, and their actions and speech betray the joy in their heart. All those who interact with them leave with a feeling of having being in the presence of something divine. The love that God within manifests outwardly from the warrior cannot help but touch everything around, and nothing fails to notice when touched by the love of God. Train yourselves to be this warrior — all worthy warriors are made out of training — train yourself to carry and communicate this agape love and see how the things and people you deal with change. Difficult work becomes easy when done with absolute love; annoying people become tolerable when loved as God loves them; boring life becomes a treasure when treated as special as its giver lovingly made it to be; difficult challenges become valuable stepping stones if open-handedly welcomed for what God made them to be — training grounds to perfect your warrior skills. 

There’s a verse in the 82nd Psalm that says ‘You are gods! Sons of the Most High…’. Perhaps it’s time you started acting so, started to love like God, started to perform miracles. Start to tell the mountains of challenges, and obstacles, and difficulties in your path to go drown in the ocean. Command them to leave you to glorify your Father by the height of your accomplishments. It’s time to use all the warrior skills you have accumulated in your journey of Faith and to call upon the others placed within  you that you haven’t even tapped into yet. 

Let your work be your prayer

I once saw this written somewhere. It seemed wise but was quickly forgotten as most clichés often are despite the wisdom they contain. Only recently did the significance of this little phrase come home to brood. And as the how and the why of it all dawned on me, I realized how much potential has gone to waste because we constantly forget and continually fail to let our work be our prayer.

The best illustration of how one’s work can be their prayer is contained in a quote attributed to Martin Luther King Jr. who said:

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted, or a Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, “Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

The question of course is whether your work is worthy of being offered up to your God on the altar of sacrifice? Would you have the courage to look up to the heavens and cry out, “Dear Lord, this work of my hands I offer to you for your glory?” Would you pray that your work be magnified so it can be a testimony of what those who believe in Him can achieve through His power? Or would you be afraid he would find all the shortcuts you had taken and refuse your sacrifice?

Until you have done your best work and know you can do no better, until you have given your all each day and have held nothing back for whichever reason, your work is not yet a sincere prayer. When you shall have done your best and given your all, you shall feel the same peace and contentment one feels after an earnest and honest prayer. Peace and contentment which are borne from the realization that the ball is no longer in your court but in God’s. Your soul will know that all it has to do is wait on God to do his part; then you can finally reap the fruits of your labor.