Life as I see it

One time my cousin was asked to pray and he asked the Lord to please come back when he was in Form Two so he wouldn't have to sit for the KCSE.

He also asked for blessings on Mr Kenyatta and Mr Moi. At which point we all burst out laughing. He must have been in Standard 4 and I was in Standard 6. We had learned in Sunday school that we must pray for kings and rulers, they just didn't specify whether dead or alive.

My other cousin smugly said, " We wanted Jesus to come back so much, but did we realize we would have to die to go to heaven?:"

We started to talk about death. And wondered who among us would die first. My cousin said he hoped his mother would die before him so she wouldn't have to cry about him dying.

Well, she did die, and so did many more people we would have wanted to have around a little much longer.

I may have laughed at the prayer but I honestly  didn't see my life beyond 18 years old. I somehow thought I would combust and pew ewwww. Disappear like a deflating balloon at 18 years old. 

But for the time I was alive, I wanted it to be a happy one.

We had a pictorial New Testament at home and I read it through. Then I started to read the Kikuyu version of it and got stuck at rūnyanjara. I asked cūcū what Jesus meant  by building a house on a rūnyanjara. In the pictorial Bible, It showed a rock but it didn't make sense.

We asked the pastor's wife and she just laughed it off and said 'Gathoni gakoragwo ta gatarī kīongo kīega ( Gathoni is somehow cracked in the head ). She could have just said she also didn't know. She was the same one who called us Defoworshipper when we caught tadpoles from the river, thinking they were fish. We had put them in soda bottles and were feeding them ugali everyday until cūcū said we had to throw them out. They didn't belong in a bottle. So we poured them out in the shamba and hoped they would survive somehow.

I got my answer one day when an aunt from Mūrang'a presented a song in church, she said Jesus was the rūnyanjara, and our faith must be built on him. It made sense. " Aka igūrū rīa mwathani Jesū nīwe rūnyanjara. Your faith should not be in the things of this world."

It was also important for me to believe because she was a beautiful aunt and Mūrang'a sounded like a very exotic place.

It set me free in a way. I had read about storing up treasures in heaven, and I didn't want to store my treasure on earth ( the picture in the picture Bible was quite graphic)

And somehow I started to try to find the meaning of things.

I wanted a life purpose.

If we were only gonna be on earth for a short while, why waste the time on things that don't last? Why sustain conflicts with people, why accumulate things, why try to attain everything.

Then I learned that actually, we had a chance to live again, a better life. An ordered life.

And this promise has kept me going particularly in the last 15 years.

When you are in your twenties, the adults around you seem too detached from your reality, na mtu hatakangi advise.

Then you get to your 30s and it hits you that ohhh boy, I need advice. I need someone to hold my hand. I need a mentor. 

Then you get to late 30s and eventually 40 and realise that they exited your life too soon. 

You would have like to ask them  how did you deal with this life at 40?

But 'wako kwa kaburi wanakulwa na mchwa alafu wakuwe mchanga' the words of a dear girl  called Rose, whose mother died when she was six and she came to give me the news and my heart broke and broke.

Skip the Rope to Skip the Rope Challenge

Every day I meet interesting people. I meet boring people too, a boring person is also important.

I met MD Njiru the artist at a writers workshop and promptly thought his jokes were off-colour, though I had a mouth infection and wasn't feeling funny. But something about his plan to create worldwide awareness on the topic of Suicide quite noteworthy. We exchanged numbers and I had no idea how big the incentive was going to be.

 In the few weeks that followed I was added to a group on WhatsApp that totally blew my mind, seeing the proposed topics, seeing the experts that were listed as speakers, he was onto something.

Among the topics  to tackle are:
1) How to deal with loneliness 
2) How to deal with romantic rejections 
3) How to deal with a cheating  partner and betrayal (we don't  want to hear more acid,and boiling water cases or worse  people  unaliving themselves)
4)Dealing with chronic  pain and terminal illness 
5) Dealing  with unemployment 
6) Dealing  with a toxic work place ( Last year  we saw several medical interns losing their lives)
7) Dealing with life frustrations and disappointments  ( Kuna time tu Mambo huwa haisongi no matter how much you try)
8) A guide on the healing journey for someone who was sexuallly abuser 
A) As a child 
B) As an adult 
To state the obvious, boys are sexually abused....though it's rarely talked about
9)Overcoming body shaming 
10)Healing from childhood and teen bullying 
11)Dealing with Shame, Guilt, and feelings of worthlessness 
12)Dealing with learned hopelessness 
13) Alcohol and substance abuse
14)Managing and learning to live with underlying mental health conditions  like Bipolar, schizophrenia, etc
15) Increased suicidality and LGBTQ link
16) Hopelessness and how to resuscitate hope 
17)Family history  link for people  who have lost sibling(s) or parent(s) and what they can do to reduce the  likelihood of them unaliving themselves 
18)Financial distress 
19) Academic  pressure ( How many university kids shall we lose because of missing marks😭😭🙆🏿‍♂️🙆🏿‍♂️)
20) Also someone to tackle why mental health advocates are  more prone to taking their lives and what should be done to avert that
21)Another  person  to talk to our men and women in uniform

And so I chose number seven. Number seven, because I have lived that life, you know that life when you are pushing in every direction but nothing is happening?

And in fact, that is the main theme in my first book, Going to buy a plot in Maaī Mahiū and other stories is all about. But with a positive outlook towards everything.

I recorded the video, and also read pages from my latest book- Conversations into Adulthood.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DXtYZm3DPDH/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

 In this book, I have opened up the hard conversations, the tough ones, the ones that break us up inside. By having the courage to talk about them, we begin to heal.

https://nuriakenya.com/product/conversations-into-adulthood-by-cecilia-gathoni/

I am looking forward to this event. Md- Moshua is a crazy man. He hopes to make a 24 hour rope skipping record and get into the Guinness Book. I wish him all the best. 

It's better to be crazy than boring.

 The challenge is not easy, but all in all, I think it will accomplish more than he even intended. Imagine 24 hours of free counselling, free therapy. These videos will be available on YouTube even after the event so he has unknowingly created a huge resource that can be used for research, training, education, and as a comfort for anyone that ever felt like giving up.

The event will be live on these channels: copy and paste to  your browser

YouTube

Skip the rope - YouTube https://m.youtube.com/@Skiptherope100 

Joshua Resource Center - YouTube https://m.youtube.com/@JoshuaResourceCenter-o6d

TikTok

https://www.tiktok.com/@skip.the.rope?_r=1&_t=ZS-95oJHh0vTOh

Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/skiptherope100?igsh=OHAwMmxvbjAzdnJv

https://www.instagram.com/joshua_resource?igsh=MXI5OXlkZnF5aTdzbw==

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61570763973971&mibextid=ZbWKwL

Twitter

https://twitter.com/Josh_ResourceKE?s=09

SKIP THE ROPE- It takes courage to live.

My small town experience

 The thing about here, is that most people are just starting to explore life. So, to a person like me who has lived and experienced and decided on a certain path, it's difficult for them to grasp that someone can live like I do. they question, they suspect, they judge and then they disapprove.

And to me, I don't just get it, why are they thinking like this, why are they slow, why all the groupthink, the comparisons.

Then there is the elite part who have managed to  maintain their positions and do not like anyone who does not curtsy and bow in their presence. 

And everyone else has accepted their place at the feet of the table. Like little elves, they shuttle every eager to please.

 Woe to you if you if you cannot tow in line.

3 Lessons in Three Months

 

I wasn't looking for lessons, but the past three months taught me skills I didn't have before.

Here are three after three.

January: Postpone the Problems

In the classic Gone with the Wind, Scarlett O'Hara in one of the chapters says :

 

There were times I would sleep at 2.00 a.m trying to solve a problem, but it never worked because I would be too tired the next morning, and my problem would still be quite active. 

Now, I set aside time to think about a problem and the solution. When I have done everything in my power to solve it, I set it aside and use my energy for other things.

Feb is for Fewer words 

I am not the guest of Honour.

As such, I am not required to say something. Whether it's an opinion, a suggestion or an idea, I  don't have to say what I think at this moment.

 There are other people here; let them talk. I have tried this one, and I like the peace it brings.

March Away.

I learned the term 'chasing energy' from Chat gpt and I was kinda embarrassed. I have often found myself chasing energy.

 I gave chat this situation where I felt like I was oversharing with a friend ( I do that often  )

Sometimes it's not even about oversharing.

 It's when you expect feedback from  a source but they are taking their time so as you wait you keep in contact hoping they will remember they owe you an answer.

In March, I learned to redirect that energy to something productive.

IMG CREDIT: LUKE CHEN VIA Pintrest

Gratitude: Remembering those who got me where I am

 I am coming to understand that, in spite of the hard times I have faced in my life, I have always had very good people around me.

Today I saw a like on my Facebook post and it was a lady who was a colleague in 2004, at my first office job.

She worked in the cyber cafe side of the business, and I was the receptionist on the Internet Supply Office. And she reminded me how I would go with pages of written stories and ask her to help me type. I was writing a column for a local Daily and would write my articles on a notebook.

She told me I was always motivated to be a writer, and she is proud of the steps I have taken. Then she sent me the number of another colleague, and when I called him, he was like, you know how you have a favourite uncle (I don't have the father experience, so we'll go with uncle). He asked if I had eaten enough to grow, and whether I am still tiny with a little voice.

And it hit me that, the reason I never toppled over were because of people like these. They would buy me lunch when I didn't have any money, and they even recommended me for jobs and scholarships. And even if they didn't know that I was going through the most horrendous period of my life, and hanging by a single thread, they were in my life then.

And I am grateful.

With a Classmate int he Library, Digital Film and Tv, LUCT, Cyberjaya

Nothing lasts forever

 Oh how quickly we forget the once familiar places

How they fade into insignificance.

How faces we loved become  memory

And new ones become the reason we exist.

Nothing Doing

 

The strange thing about life is how much of it goes on about without out direct interference.

There is the positive, like peace in the country, sunshine and rain, and good relationships with others.

There is also the negative deaths, illness, bad economic times and falling out with fellow humans.

And sometimes we spend too much time trying to ensure that everything remains at optimum.

This we do, sometimes at the expense of something greater, our time, our mental alignment, our health.

The more we try to keep all the balls in the air, the more we lose the rhythm and oft times, everything comes crushing down on us, at our feet, leaving us sometimes in paralysis.

But what can one do when being alive means  constant attention to every aspect of life
Internal and external?

Keeping still.
We limit our reactions.
And somehow, we train ourselves to cope with every changing season.