Random Musings. . .by Kui Gathua

  “I have become more comfortable as time has gone on with saying goodbye because. . . I’ve been having so many conversations about the cyclical nature of life. It just keeps going.” ~ Brie Larson As of midnight tonight, one third of 2021 will be done and dusted, gone, finished. And that is an invitation to stop and review. Look back, analyze and recalibrate before moving forward. Say goodbye properly by thanking that period of your life, learning from it and releasing it so you can face the future with a clear rear view mirror. There’s a number of ways I change season. I call them ‘spring cleaning’ methods. Taking time off to review my journal reflections of the past and note down any significant learning from them. A multiple day water fast, taking down a bunch of things and having them justify taking space in my life, or else they get to go. A private party with a treat of my choice to celebrate the past season, my success or my resilience through it. . .the ways are endl...

  “Freedom is never given; it is won.” – A. Philip Randolph In an episode of The Survival Podcast this past week, Jack Spirko asked if his listeners made their own decisions or depended on others to make important decisions for them. I instantly sat up because a few hours before, I’d just read a chapter of The Road Less Travelled where M. Scott Peck, M.D. challenged his readers about making decisions and taking responsibility. ‘Almost all of us from time to time seek to avoid – in ways that can be quite subtle – the pain of avoiding responsibility for our own problems’. Hmmmm. . .do I fit into that demographic? I am not brave enough to list the number of examples I came up with from just that morning! But then, that word ‘pain’! Indeed if I don’t take responsibility for causing my pain, then I need to be pitied and helped because I am a victim, right? ‘The difficulty we have in accepting responsibility for our behaviour lies in our desire to avoid the pain of the consequen...

And a youth said, "Speak to us of Friendship." Your friend is your needs answered. He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving. And he is your board and your fireside. For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace. When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay." And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart; For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed. When you part from your friend, you grieve not; For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain. And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit. For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught. And let your ...

  " Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and wisdom.” ― M. Scott Peck “Problems do not go away. They must be worked through or else they remain, forever a barrier to the growth and development of the spirit.” ― M. Scott Peck I picked up my copy of The Road Less Travelled for a re-read and once again, the stark simplicity of the first sentence in the book struck me, like it did the first time:   ‘Life is difficult’   Fact or fiction? And he continues. . . This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. . . .Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily, subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. Do you know someone like that? Do you live with them? Are you related to them? Is that you? Well, newsflash! Life is difficult and in the last few months, even mor...

      “Don’t let your happiness depend on something you may lose.” ~ C.S. Lewi s  Nairobi is back in lock down and curfew has been extended. Right before the Easter holiday. Sigh. One of the ‘pandemic vocabularies’ that’s been widely used since we got into this conundrum is “essential” - essential services, essential travel, essential gatherings, etc. Essential simply means ‘of the ultimate importance, indispensable, necessary’. Something you cannot do without. And what we thought was essential before March last year has been redefined and reclassified. I went into a nostalgic audit this past week and looked at my life then as contrasted with my life now. My focus was on what things did I do or not do without then and that I’ve been forced to do without since. After listing a few, I then asked if I had a misplaced dependency on any of them. Interesting answers I got! Some were purely just for entertainment and an effort to pacify the small portion of me th...