I was asked why I don’t hope in something some days ago. And I gave an honest answer. That I’ve tried that before and I didn’t get what I hoped for. I’ve wanted things so badly just to end up scarred so badly. I have believed in people just for them to turn around and shoot at me. I have raised my hopes high just to not be shortlisted.
But as I sat down today, I realized that one way or another, I always get what I wish for. Problem is, I rarely wish for stuff.
Instead I hide my heart in walls where it can’t be hurt, but that means it can’t be made happy too. It means I aimed for ‘good’ things, or other average things, not too high, lest I fail and die from the failure. It means I give myself to people in bits and pieces, lest they are unable to handle the full me. It means I walk around occupying the least space, lest I show them how I look when inflamed and fully myself.
Out of the four travel destinations that I had for this year, 3 have come to pass. Only 1 remaining. All of them were funded by other people. You could call that luck or coincidence. But I believe in neither. I don’t think its a coincidence that I have only gone to the specific places that were in my bucket list.
Nevertheless, I am an evolving human being. A friend of mine described me that way. I had never used those words, though nothing could be truer about me. That i’m that cat with more than 9 lives.
Its like I die every single season. And the me that resurrects is usually very different but obviously an updated better version. Its the reason I wouldn’t delete the posts I wrote here a long time ago, even when I now don’t endorse some of those messages like Christianity. That was still me. I am not embarrassed about it. Because without that me, there wouldn’t be this me. So I honour myself by acknowledging how far we’ve come and how far we’ll go.
Speaking of how far I can go, it is on that note that I imagine. I’ve always been afraid of letting my mind be free. Because for me to imagine is to hope, and to hope is to believe, and to believe is to work towards making it a reality. Previously I was worried about that. Reality. Because things didn’t go my way a bit too often. And that made me afraid.
But then, what am I without imagination?
If there is a man whose mind I bow down to in admiration, it is Ngugi wa Thiong’o. That man wakes up all my cells in my brain. Who comes up with satire like that? I have read hundreds of books, and I have never encountered satire served while hot the way Ngugi does it. If I believed in heaven, Ngugi would be the saint I would be looking forward to meet first.
But what caught my attention in regards to Ngugi and allowing myself to imagine, is knowing that he wrote the current book that i’m reading; Devil On The Cross, while in prison.
Its not as much as writing while in prison that caught my attention, it is more about, a man deprived of food, writing a whole book based on a feast. It is about a man experiencing the worst that a government can do to its own, still envisioning brighter days for his country. It is a man with the worst reality, imagining the best one yet, that he will most probably never experience.
And as I set out to define my self for myself, I realize that either way, whether I define tomorrow or not, I shall see tomorrow. So wouldn’t it be better to live it in my own terms? It feels so damn good to tick a bucket list. I have gone to beautiful places that weren’t in my bucket list, but the places I enjoyed most, the places my soul got birthed anew, were those ones in my bucket list.
I have been heartbroken thoroughly, but there is a particular sourness to a heartbreak from a person I chose purposely unlike those who chose me and I just went along. I am in no way endorsing heartbreaks, I just think its more worth it if it was entirely of my own doing than of circumstances.
I didn’t want to sound like a motivational speaker. God knows my beef with that career is indescribable. But there are few things that I’ve written down as goals or wishes or dreams that haven’t come to pass. It reached a point I was scared of writing bigger dreams down. I didn’t understand why at that point, but as I later understood, it was because I didn’t believe I was worth it. Others seemed better suited for that kind of greatness.
But a sun can only be dimmed for so long before she asserts herself. And an ocean called a lake for a short while before she reminds them what she is capable of. So I take a pen and a paper and allow my mind to envision itself wherever it wants. I discard my reality and go to far away places. Or better yet, I use the reality that I don’t like to find out what I like.
And I can feel my soul waking up. Imagining is like food to my soul. As I said, it gives it hope. Hope brings me alive. My best part in Sarafina was that last moment before the final song, when Sarafina gives a speech. A hopeful speech. That part used to light me up as a small kid. I didn’t know what apartheid was exactly, but I could tell that ,that expression on her face as she spoke, belonged to a person who doesn’t yet have what they want, but not only can they see it, they can feel it too in their bones.
A while ago I wrote that I wanted someone, anyone to call me back to life. Turns out that only I can do that. And when we say we are fully human and fully God, they scorn at us and call it blasphemy. But how can they explain the fact that some of us die and resurrect ourselves back to life?
Anyway, a new dawn is upon me. It feels so damn good to start anew. Someone told me that I only write about sad things here. While it is true, that my sad self is the better writer, it is also true that unlike sadness, happiness radiates itself too brightly to be captured in words. At least for me. Sadness is the moon up there alone, sometimes full , sometimes half, but still describable. While happiness are the Sun’s rays. How do you capture them well in words? Yes, they are there but in an elusive kind of way.
But who knows? Maybe one day i’ll serenade you with happy stories. For now, you sit back, and watch the me that I create.
Mwende Kyalo 