Photo: President Uhuru and his deputy Ruto. Jubilee regime has caused pain to millions of Kenya since taking over.
About Pain.
Lately I have been posting a lot about pain and the feedback I get usually overwhelms me. Man. The burdens people carry in their hearts. The weight in their thoughts. Everyone has a story of pain. Some more gruesome than others.
I have been studying how pain changes people.
And behind every depressed person, behind every incurable arsehole, behind every withdrawn person, behind every smiling person, lurks pain.
The question remains, why do we hurt each other as human beings? Ever been conned your hard-earned money? And you see the con somewhere drinking expensive whiskey, sharing his photos with a greasy smile totally oblivious of the excruciating pain they have caused you? Happens. Ever been ghosted? It leaves you wondering what is wrong with you. Ever lost a loved one? Know how death makes you feel so helpless, because, often death is a comma, never a fullstop.
Yet, pain, can be trivial. It is being sold a deceptively good-looking avocado only to get home and find it is a wet mess with dark threads. For men, it is seeing your crush pregnant(I don’t know the female equivalent of this). It is knocking your small toe against the side of the bed (not trivial).
Pain is inadequacy. Not able to provide for your family, for your siblings, for your friends. And for yourself. Pain is being aware that the Jubilee government is no good for everyone, but still some folks go ahead and vote for it, twice, no less and acting shocked now, and still entertaining the thought of voting one-half of the disastrous duo. Human beings never learn.
Some of the pain is self-inflicted. Like when you drink too much knowing the hangover is waiting for you. Or when you drink rent money and the caretaker is ever so punctual, and you calling friends to top up and even the once you thought were liquid prove difficult. Pain sometimes is not following advice.
And advice is the most useless invention of man kind. Because we never follow advice. Human beings were never designed to follow advice. Ever tried to advise someone in love? Or a man with money? You end up embarasing yourself.
The more adults I meet the more I realise that all of us are walking storages of trauma. We store every ugly incident that happens in our life. Some of it we let go. Some we hold onto all the way to the grave.
Trauma stunts growth. Yet, there is no way around it. You have to live through it and with it. Good luck if you survive it and live to tell.
Lately, the Stoicism philosophy has become very popular. Read about it. But I still find it inadequate. It is OK to try to be resilient and a stoic, but the hurts and the pain we deal call for more remedies than merely acting strong. Because each case has individual merit and idiosyncracies.
Because, life is unfair. Some people glide through it without any glitches, anything they need or want is there, at their beck and call. And others struggle so much to even get a matching stick. Both never signed up to be born. But good old, Professor Nyasani says in one of his philosophy books that once you are born, you are condemned to live the life you are consigned to.
What I have learnt, call me a cynic, is that pain is always around the corner. Sometimes it never prepares you. Sometimes it comes from unlikely quarters(like the cases where trusted friends or relatives defile children). So the better to be prepared for the ugliness of pain. At least deep in your mind, have a section that handles it whenever you are hurt.
I don’t want to make your lives any gloomier than I have in the last few months. But I have been having some philosophical reflections about life. The absurdity of it all. The futility of it all. That George Floyd lives as an underprivileged black man in America, and when he is trying to pick the pieces and put his life together, he is choked to death by the very person supposed to protect him. So what is the point of life?
There is no point. You have to grind it to the end.
Find your moral campus. Find what works for you. Examine your own toxicity around others. Examine the motive of your friends. Not all your friends want the best for you. I need say that some friends are not necessarily evil, or bad, they are just ignorant about the reality of life, so they may give the wrong picture.
Many times, you will screw up. Forgive yourself. Nobody can forgive yourself more than yourself. Be accountable. Don’t pass blame around. And remember whatever you do, our time on earth is limited and life is like a river, it never stops.
Above all, never look for perfection. Take it from me. Life is like a broken mirror. It functions just as well if you hold one shard.
Lastly, there are no easy answers to life. But trusting in God has worked for me, always. So even the skeptics around here, that is the only key that has always worked for me. Not philosophy. Not self-help books. Not popular advice from friends. Only God can lift your pain and burdens.
By Silas Nyanchwani via Facebook
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