I’m I here
for the long run?
Before I give my opinion, I have an announcement to make: every
human being should have an opinion, and if you don’t have one, make one up and
run with it until it becomes yours.
But now I have a question. What keeps two people together,
in a marriage, in a friendship, in a prison cell? What keeps three, or more in
a family together, what maintains these ties. Is it love? Or something higher.
What could be higher than love?
What makes two human beings want to stay together after
five, ten years? And if we said that is true love then what do you call family
ties? Principled love or are we just being responsible and maintaining the
family circle intact, in case raiders wanted to capture us we got strength in
numbers? Or are we just putting up with each other until the children turn 16.
Drifting apart. How does it begin? How do you stop it in its
tracks.
I remember after highschool. I went off to work, and my best
friend from highschool went into Campus. And one day she had this thing going
on, so I rang her for directions. I was leaving work at 6pm but that was the
time she could pick me up from town, not the 7.30pm when I would have arrived
into town.
‘My friends are taking me out to dinner.’ She said and didn’t
say wanna come?
And I got the point.
She had moved on.
It was a blow. In my youthful life, I had not yet
experienced that to a huge degree. Later on I would also move on from
relationships, and friendships and even drift away from family members.
I am clingy I admit, but ironically I will gladly give a
person that desires space as much space as they need.
Do I love my family?
I come from an extended family of uncles, grandparents,
aunts, cousins, mothers, family friends who are now family by right of years. (I attended this family friend event and when
they said cousins to stand up I almost stood up.)
They’ve known me and I would say yes I Love all of them but then
again to me love is an abstract concept. Love is the stuff that makes a grown
up man find an excuse to lay on a shrink’s couch for many afternoons repeating
phrases like- my parents don’t love me, I’ll
kill myself- dude grow up.
Love can be pretentiousness, I love my family so much I
would die for them, so I’m going to send them 25k a month, za matumizi but only
pass by for fifteen minutes every other half a year.
I donno,I could be wrong and people give and accept love in
different ways.
Though I realized that I actually like my family. Like. No
all of them, a few I like, the rest I love philosophically, like a good
daughter should, a love buttered in exhausting politeness.
It could be that the family members I like are a bit like
me. Free souls who don’t work too hard to conceal who they are, curious beings
eager to learn and experience new things. They also stopped trying to change
the strange person I am, they now accept that I am “different.”
They are people I would introduce to, say,(insert famous
writer here)
And tell them, stay here, they won’t bother you.
Well, that’s after introducing the individuals, and then
their teeth.
Gosh the story has escaped.
(One week later...)
“This is the first set of dentures granny got,, as you can see
they are a size larger than the second pair. This is the second pair, the
bottom got lost. We suspect a rat carried it away to nibble on the bits of food
stuck between. Damn the blasted rat, may he choke on fake enamel..this is my
uncle’s set of teeth, they are, well, the few left can still chew soft food,
yes, yeah, well never mind what shade they are. These here are my cousin’s set
of teeth, they don’t like to be compressed to grow in the old direction. These
are my aunt’s set of teeth, she did try to sip a bit of a battery acid in
Chemistry class, well, I donno, she was curious. Yeah it was a long time ago.
These here are, oh well never mind let’ s just sit here and watch the fog rise
from the Aberdares OK?”
Back to couples, I sometimes wonder, had I accepted the first
marriage proposal I got, would I still be enthusiastic about the person.
I guess for marriage it’s a bit harder in comparison to
friendships. If a friend decided to move on, there is no signed document to
remind you of commitment. The commitment you made to this human being now standing
by the stove frying himself two eggs at 10.00pm because the book his wife is
reading is too unputdownable, to make him fried pork rice but all she has done
is stare at two pages back and forth wondering why can’t he get into bed so she
can find an excuse to sleep on the couch?
My opinion thus espoused, I think we must make allowances
for the unpredictability of the human species.
Be prepared for change. If the glue that stuck you together
no longer works, try selotape, if that doesn’t work then..I donno I’m not an expert
in human behavior.
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