Do We Need Validation?

Reading the transcript of Oprah’s last show, an interesting paragraph struck me, where she said;

““I’ve talked to nearly 30,000 people on this show, and all 30,000 had one thing in common: They all wanted validation. If I could reach through this television and sit on your sofa or sit on a stool in your kitchen right now, I would tell you that every single person you will ever meet shares that common desire. They want to know: ‘Do you see me? Do you hear me? Does what I say mean anything to you?’”

My mind took me back to so many years back. Maybe I was 13 or 14, I don’t really remember. All I remember is that we were in Kenya; in my grandmother’s house to be more exact. We had family members over from other parts of Kenya, so the house was full of fujo (noise). I was sick that day, and I was resting on a mattress on the floor of my grandmother’s room.

Lying there, in my sick state, I was really upset because nobody had come to check up on me, as everybody was busy with the guests. And I was feeling terrible physically and emotionally. Then somebody left the fujo in the living room and actually came to me and asked about how I was feeling.

I think that’s my first experience with this need for validation; or at least, it’s one that has touched me so much that I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. And looking back, it makes me realize, that sometimes it’s the small words that make a big difference. If my brother ever becomes a president of anything, I would link it to his habit of connecting with the common folks. Like when he rides into a cab, he asks the driver, “Where are you from?” And when the driver says, “Pakistan,” he continues with, “Where in Pakistan?”

And suddenly, the two of them sit and talk about that specific region of Pakistan even though my brother’s never set foot there, but I think he’s spoken with enough Pakistanis to know the whole region.

Or when he goes to a bakery and orders something, he genuinely stops with the cashier and asks him, “How is business?”

And people end up sharing more than they’d feel comfortable sharing with a stranger they probably won’t see again. But you see, he connects with them, he validates them, tells them that their voice truly matters, because if things had been different it could have been him in their place, lonely for a person to speak with, hoping for someone to validate them…

So I guess, this is today’s message for you; remember that we all want validation. We want to know: ‘Do you see me? Do you hear me? Does what I say mean anything to you?’”

Ciao…

And if you haven’t checked out my short story (it’s really short for those who are imagining it’s going to be hundred pages, don’t worry, it’s only 5 pages), a concise story about a friendship that changes one’s life forever. find it in the below link;

http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/the-day-akela-died/15847920

P.S. The Discount will run for a limited period of time only, so make sure you get your copy today!

Google A Heart’s Echoes

So today I checked what are the google terms that actually lead to my blog, and here are the top results;

Among other phrases are “Feel like a loser” which leads to this, and Kenya’s Survival Guide which leads to the Kenya Studies 001 and 002. Only this morning, I received a viewer who searched for ‘Masdar Institute Blog site: ahechoes.wordpress.com’

Now someone was really exact there. But what’s interesting is that I’ve been playing with the idea of actually blogging about masdar institute. You know, mention the temperature problem (what problem??), and the occasional email problems (what email??). Also talk about how someone might be doing their defense and the alarm system goes off, ‘An Incident Has Been Detected…’

Maybe someone was using their bunsen burner to make coffee. (Just FYI, didn’t happen yet – at least as far as I know.)

But you know I figured since I have a problem with keeping my mouth shut sometimes, I don’t want to be hunted by Masdar’s extremely-hard-working marketing team since I think they’re the most efficient team around here, so I’ll leave my brutally honest review for after I leave this place.

Reminds me of a day when someone told me that I shouldn’t be so brutally honest, and my reply was, “So what shall I be? Just brutal?”

As an overview of the month, this month began with Why Do We Laugh At People’s Dreams?

I reminisced a bit about Kenya in Of Jobs and Seeking Knowledge where I spoke of the job my grandma used to give me during summers, and also in a Pinch of Swahilism.

Three of AH flavored notes came up on The Glint of light on Broken Glass, Stepping Stones and 9 Traits of Successful people who were just like you and me.

Finally, I got a little bit personal in If The Birds Don’t Sing, Do They Write? and On Why I Write?

the most popular post of the month could be found here.

And thanks for your continuous support.

On Why I Write

So today is going to be one of those random posts where I ramble just to kick up my statistics to hit a certain target on the 31st of the month. I thought of sharing with you on why I write. Simply said, because it is very very difficult for me to stop. I’m serious. I remember a time in uni when I used to make a conscious effort to stop writing (not start writing cz I could do that subconsciously sometimes). Call me obsessed, and I was. But the downside to living in an imaginary world filled with colors that don’t exist, people that don’t exist, and sounds that don’t exist is that one day you actually wake up to realize that you’re missing out on a lot of things that’s happening in your life.

Like listening to a child laugh at the spinning of a coin on the table.

I remember once when I was really awed by one of my baby cousins, who just couldn’t stop laughing at the amusing sight of a coin spinning on the table. And every time I did it, he would laugh, and laugh, and laugh.

So much purity, so much innocence…

What happens when they grow up?

So maybe I leant more on writing about my imaginary world when I hit my teens. Maybe it was easier to understand – and control – than my real life, even though it was no secret that most – if not all – of my characters could be found in my real life.

Then I took a creative writing class and I learnt two things;

a) Universality in writing can be achieved through specificity. Until then, I used to write short stories where I didn’t always tell the whole story as it should be told, but I filled it with so many gaps “for the reader to fill” and the only thing I used to fill it in is emotion. But then hearing that advice about actually being specific, my writing took a jump and became better, because suddenly readers were tuned into my world; they could actually hear, see and smell everything that I could. Just recently, I got an email from someone who’s read a short story,

“can you believe I still imagine that roofless corridor they sat at… I’m sure you didn’t describe it that way; you wrote something much nicer loool … but the image is still in my head of what I imagined when I read it even the grass… “

Another comment that came earlier about the same short story,

[comment edited for typos] “abt ur story, I really like it.  its sooo good tht it doesnt only touch ur heart bt ur memory as well and bring those nice flash backs with the classic era of 1970 wth all pale colors and interesting turns. mashalla it looks like a classic painting from the 70′s. i could draw the pic of all the events in the back of my mind and still have it till now thnx i really enjoyed reading it.”
To read the short story (5 pages) that these comments refer to, go to http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/the-day-akela-died/15847920

b) Stop running away from what you want to really want to say. While editing one of the poems – the last draft can be found here – my professor pointed out something. While I can’t entirely quote him, but the idea was that I was trying to build fiction based on a true story, when the true story was actually better than the fiction I was trying to modify it into.

So maybe my writings have been online since 2007 as facebook notes at first, but nobody can really compare between what can be seen here and the previous 2007 ramblings which mainly revolved around three topics;

1) Complaining about AUS

2) Complaining about AUS and…

ummm..

3) Complaining about AUS

So the question that many people are wondering about; when am I actually planning to take my writing seriously (i.e. quit engineering for it)?

Just for the records, my Blogspot blog was born in 2008, and my wordpress blog was born in 2009 – complete with the my brand name ‘A Heart’s Echoes.’ And to be honest with you I’m planning to give myself six years ensha’Allah to actually make something big of this, and someone might say that’s a long time especially since I’ve been actually penning down words for myself since 2000. But I  want to take my time developing this craft; slow and steady. I don’t want to shoot to success only to find myself falling down hard because I know I wouldn’t be able to handle that.

Until then, this blog will continue spreading the way it is, one person at a time reading one word at a time….

Thanks for dropping by.

AH

PS once I read this interesting tweet about a person who knows two writers and discovered that one had finished two manuscripts before getting published, and the other finished five manuscripts (if I recall the numbers correctly), and that’s a definition of persistence

A Pinch of Swahilism

If you’ve been following this blog since Ignore Inc (2008), then you probably recall that I’m a self-proclaimed Kemeni – Yemeni roots, Kenyan trunk, UAE branch and don’t know where the leaves would fall. Some people argue that since I have mostly Yemeni blood then it is not necessary to even mention the Kenyan part, since I don’t live there – but I do carry its passport. The thing is, Kemenies are not entirely Kenyan and they’re not entirely Yemeni for me to omit the Kenyan part, but they’re a unique mixture of both.

1) Kemeni people don’t necessarily speak Arabic in Kenya. Our mother tongue is Swahili. Arabic is limited to the grandparent generation and the madrasa-going children, and of course, when they speak Arabic, they go classical. My mother knows a family where the parent (grandparent generation) used to speak Arabic, and his own children spoke Swahili – how they communicated , it remained a mystery. We learnt Arabic because we lived in the UAE. However, the Arabic that’s spoken by the grandparent generation can be quite fascinating because they mix a bit of the two, so you see people talking like this, “Mimi sawweit ilanguka…” (I fell…)

Or  “Nimimambiya yi9′rib ilpass.” (ati apiga passi, or to iron clothes).

2) The “Me I” phenomenon. I don’t know why, but Kenyans love saying, “Me, I went to…”6ab the ‘I’ explains you’re talking about you, why waste the energy to mention the ‘me’?

3) Nicknames can stick forever and ever and ever. You hear people who are called Saeed Mbuzi (Saeed sheep), maybe because he is unfortunate enough to sell sheep, or Khaled Kibonge (Fat Khaled) even if he’s lost all the extra weight. Some people are more famously known by their nicknames than their family names especially if you live in Mombasa.

4) Lighthouse on Sundays. Half of the Mombasa population spends Sunday evening in an area called Lighthouse (or Mama Ngina Drive –picture below). It’s a place where one tends to make their latest announcements. If they get married, they drive down there with their new wives to make the announcements. Or if they get new cars, they drive there to show them off. Once I saw a Toyota car with the Lexus ‘L’ stuck to it. Ya3ni, who are they trying to fool seriously?

5) They social network is so intact, it’s really annoying. Apparently neighbours care about each other so much that one ear is always tuned to what the neighbors are doing -sometimes literally, like in areas such as Kidogobasi or Kaloleni, where the houses are so close, if you take the wrong corner you might end up in your neighbor’s kitchen instead of your own house.

This naturally leads to…

6) The Grapevine is amazingly efficient they can put Aljazeera and CNN to shame. Especially now that Facebook and twitter are becoming popular. I knew some people who would gather together every evening to spread the latest news; the men get news from work, and the women get news from the Hodi rounds.

7) The Hodi rounds. You know how when you want to visit your friend, you call them? At least that’s what normal people do. Kemeni women go on Hodi rounds (since the houses are so close to each other), so if Woman A wants to show her latest dress to her friend in House 9, she will first pass her neighbour in House 2 and call out, “Hodi?” (figuratively stands for, ‘Is anybody home’?) and the person inside says, “Karibu,” (You’re welcome) {In the old days when security was not as big an issue as it is now, people used to keep the doors open for each other)…so woman A says, “I was just going to (house 9) so I thought of passing by since I was in the way…”

Same thing applies to House 3, 4, 5,6, 7 and 8.

8.) A lot of Hodi rounds happens in Wedding season since cards have to be given by hand to the guests, and seriously let’s not get into that. That’s a story for another day.

9) When women meet in a ga3da, it’s very easy for woman A to ask woman B, “How are you? How is your sister?” (Please note that the sister, woman C is sitting right next to woman B)….

Then woman B turns to sister C and says, “How are you? How is your sister? How is your [list just about every member of the family who might be sitting in the same place]…so the person ends up saying, “Alhamdullilah x 100.” Then the list of questions is repeated to the next person.

10) If you’re a girl, then you have to know how to cook, or your net worth goes to zero.

*There goes my net worth*

11) Never mind about this…

12) Last but not least, when a rich person is mentioned in front of the typical Kemeni, he has a tendency to state, “Pesa za drugs hizo” (It’s drug money)

What other things make you a Kemeni?Share below.

And tweet this if you’re proud to be a Kemeni.

view from Mama Ngina Drive aka Lighthouse

Somewhere in Mombasa, Kenya

When The Caged Birds Don’t Sing…Do They Write?

People say loneliness is a killer. Some people can’t sit on their own. They can’t bear to hear the sound of their own thoughts. They need a constant supply of people around them to keep their company. And when they’re on their own, something happens, they get bored, they go to sleep, they log onto twitter, FB, they ride on the Social Network wagon and start the ride.

So what happens if you find someone for whom loneliness is their only best friend? They get too accustomed to the silence, and to the fact that there is no one to hear them rant about the day’s events…They may eye people with distrust because unlike their best friend ‘Loneliness’ people can’t always be trusted with one’s own secrets. But you know, sometimes being too lonely, can make one’s mind susceptible to the dangers of negative thoughts.
Thoughts like, ‘I was meant to be alone,’
‘Nobody really likes me…’
‘Nobody ever will…’

And maybe in their state of loneliness, they might cry, thinking of all the hurtful words they’ve had to endure, all the times they felt their heart break, and all the times, they went to sleep and saw dreams that made their heart sigh. Because they knew that what was in their dreams, would remain in their dreams.

So today, I’m writing this, in a state of total loneliness. My mind discards me to a place in time when I angrily wrote about the time when some people in my life hurt me. I find myself opening an old word document. On my laptop, it’s password protected, but today I’m going to put it in my blog;

Diary Entry 1-Dated 6/10/2005

Amongst the storms, there’s a place that you can always call home.  A place where you can forget about the worries of today, where you can dream of a better tomorrow, where you can hold onto the faith that no matter what happens, you will sail away on the crystal blue water, whether on a boat, or on a log. It doesn’t matter, there is always tomorrow, there is always a way out of any problem, there is always a way to reach the top, to find everything that you ever wanted, to achieve everything that you dreamt of achieving. There is always an escape. Just don’t despair. In your life, when you find that special place, remember me.

My heart hurts from the painthat is in it. I hate (XYZ – up to three people are listed here) so much. Today, I just broke down. I couldn’t take it anymore. At first I tried to be cheerful, but then I couldn’t take it anymore. I was so not in the mood. It’s just this environment, it feeds and grows on the negative energy that is around. What’s even worst is that the negative energy does not end, it’s just generated, and regenerated, over and over again. And now I am in tears. AH is in tears. I know, people would never believe that if I told them.The pain in my heart is a physical pain.

Diary Entry 2

Ever since I came here I have been really upset. Over what? I can’t tell really, but all I know is that ever since I came here I haven’t been really relaxed. I continuously feel upset. Sometimes, this feeling will go away for a time, but then it has to return. First I thought that maybe I need to get away from these houses because they are constant reminders of the current problems, but then I realize that maybe I do not want to go to another place, what I really want to go is to another time and that will never be possible,

Then, I think of developing my writing, but I realize that it’s emotionally draining. I get so caught up in my stories that I just get upset all over again. Then, I realize that I am just a kid. I live in a world of my own, and maybe that’s not the right thing. Like, remember when I told you that I was going to go to ABC’s place because I wanted to stay on my own. Those were my intentions, because I thought I was going to have all the time in the world to sit on my own. But then, the entire circus came and I wasn’t really pleased….

Diary Entry 3

So what is the story? My anger…it’s back again. It fails to be dissipated. It’s always sparked by the slightest things. People always know how to spark it. Retrieved from the depths of the past. Diaries that have spent centuries collecting dust are opened again. Angry words. Others filled with melancholy. Pure sorrow. Pure misery. “No, no, leave me alone, I’m a changed person now…”But the words jump out at you…

“I’m angry…

“Frustrated now…

“Do they always have to hurt me?”

 Maybe the fault was with me before. I never really understood because no body was there to explain it to me. I had to struggle on my own. Only when I fell, did it all become clear to me. I tried to close an eye to why I did not know everything from before. My people failed to teach me. It was over now. I had learnt my lesson.
Afterthought

I don’t know what brought these memories back…but looking back at this, I realize  a point reaches in your life when you go through an emotional burn-out, you realize you have run out of emotions to feel, you’ve run out of tears to cry, you’ve run out of words trying to make sense of it all, when you tell yourself enough is enough, you can’t have the people around you put a rein on how you feel and control you. Eventually, a time comes when the volcano that tends to erupt freezes over, when the black you’re used to seeing turns into gray and then maybe white, when something happens and you tell yourself, ‘One day I’ll be laughing about this two years from now, might as well laugh about it now.’ A time comes when you crumple the piece of paper where you’ve scratched on, throw it in the trash can, tell yourself you deserve to turn over a new page, but the more new pages you turn over, the greater the probability that you’ll wake up and discover that you’ve run out paper.

Title is modified from “I Know Why The Caged Birds Sing” by Maya Angelou

The Glint of Light on Broken Glass

The image above shows the reflection of the moon on the floor of my dark room. Why did I post it? Because it got me thinking,about the type of people around and the perceptions they perceive in life. There are people who sit on their balcony on a cool night and stare up at the moon. They represent those who face life full of hope. Then there are those who stare at the floor with tears in their eyes and catch a glimpse of the moon’s reflection on the floor. They are the ones who face life with a mirror image of hope. Some may claim it to be false hope or the feeling of false hope that they really need at that specific time.

Then there are those whose perception of life is so narrow, they just look at life through the camera lens of their mind. They decipher the world according to the limits presented by their minds. It’s as if you have a blind young man who got his vision back and opened his eyes to see a squirrel. So when someone spoke to him about a flower he would ask, “Is it as big as a squirrel?” And when people tried to describe to him a car, he would ask, “Is it colored like a squirrel?” So the squirrel was his reference point. People who look at life through the camera lens of their mind see a limited version and miss the specter of color, of texture, of aroma because they are looking at everything through this piece of glass.
Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. -Anton Chekhov

Stepping Stones

Sometimes wading through life’s struggles is like walking on stepping stones across a river. And some people are blessed to have a mentor one step ahead of them. That mentor would warn them if the stone is slippery or if another is broken. But when the mentor falls off, does that mean that the following person stop moving? Not necessarily. Learn from their mistake, avoid the stone and jump over it. Also, you never know, because you might find someone else who takes the leadership role. Someone who was very far ahead at one point in life, but then life somehow hindered them, and they felt sad, wondering why for every step forward, they were taking three step backwards.
Until they met you, and discovered that maybe that was why they were being pushed back by life; so they would end up leading you at one point in time.
And you be the person to help the person behind you, even if the person behind you is an evil person who secretly desires to throw you into the water. The best thing to do when you feel the intensity of evil eyes on your back, is to help that person to get ahead of you.
Get ahead of you?
You may ask yourself, “Why do I do that when the person was trying to throw me into the water? Why help them proceed?”
Show them that the destination is not as important as playing it right during the journey. A lot of times, they might end up embarrassed for even thinking of throwing you off, and just watching their embarrassment is enough for your self-satisfaction.
But don’t do them for you or for the self-satisfaction, but do it because you’re a Muslim who believes in the following aya from Surat Fussilat (which can be heard after the 7th minute of the video); ﴿
﴾وَمَنْ أَحْسَنُ قَوْلًا مِّمَّن دَعَا إِلَى اللَّهِ وَعَمِلَ صَالِحًا وَقَالَ إِنَّنِي مِنَ الْمُسْلِمِينَ٣٣
وَلَا تَسْتَوِي الْحَسَنَةُ وَلَا السَّيِّئَةُ ادْفَعْ بِالَّتِي هِيَ أَحْسَنُ فَإِذَا الَّذِي بَيْنَكَ وَبَيْنَهُ عَدَاوَةٌ كَأَنَّهُ وَلِيٌّ حَمِيمٌ ﴿٣٤﴾
وَمَا يُلَقَّاهَا إِلَّا الَّذِينَ صَبَرُوا وَمَا يُلَقَّاهَا إِلَّا ذُو حَظٍّ عَظِيمٍ ﴿٣٥﴾
33. And who is better in speech than he who [says: "My Lord is Allah (believes in His Oneness)," and then stands straight (acts upon His Order), and] invites (men) to Allah’s (Islamic Monotheism), and does righteous deeds, and says: “I am one of the Muslims.”
34. The good deed and the evil deed cannot be equal. Repel (the evil) with one which is better (i.e. Allah ordered the faithful believers to be patient at the time of anger, and to excuse those who treat them badly), then verily! he, between whom and you there was enmity, (will become) as though he was a close friend.

35. But none is granted it (the above quality) except those who are patient, and none is granted it except the owner of the great portion (of the happiness in the Hereafter i.e. Paradise and in this world of a high moral character).

English translation from http://www.dar-us-salam.com/TheNobleQuran/surah41.html

Picture From: http://www.healersharbour.co.uk/Stepping_Stones.jpg

9 Traits of Successful People Who Were Just Like You and I

One of the many things I am grateful for in my life, is the fact that I grew up watching some relatives rise from zero to above-average success. Of course, these people are not exactly Bill-Gates famous, but they could be considered leaders in their markets. One of them is a family member who we used to watch cartoons with as kids every summer when we used to go to Kenya. So today I’ll try to list down common traits that I noticed in them while I was growing up. Not all of those people were born with a golden spoon in their mouth; in other words they were just like you and me….so here we go;

1) They redefine the term ‘hard work’. If you think having a full 7am-5pm work day as working hard, then that’s not what their life is like. They worked 7am-5pm. Then they continued working until dinner time. Then they continued working until midnight. They worked until they were totally burnt out; so that when they hit the bed, they slept like babies. When they woke up, they didn’t have time to think of what they dreamt of at night. They also did not toss and turn in bed thinking about how hard it is to get out from underneath the blankets….They just got up and continued working

2) They can be annoyingly persistent. In short, they just don’t give up in whatever they attempt to do. Maybe they got robbed once or twice (once or twice??), or they got into trouble with business partners, or they got into financial holes, but they just never gave up. These problems were just challenges for them to overcome, and they did whatever it took to overcome them.

3) They are amazing people at heart. They give as much as they can. They are just kind-hearted. I remember once I was riding with one of them and an old woman was walking along the street. This person, just stopped, picked up the woman and asked her where she was headed for, then dropped her. Before leaving, the woman made duaa for the driver saying, “May Allah take you to Mecca and Hajj.” And I remember smiling to myself, ‘If the person was going to go for Hajj then he would definitely end up in Mecca.”

[Needless to say the person did perform Hajj a year or two later]

which takes us to the next point

4) Du’aa za ma7ababa (Ma7ababa means grandmothers in Swahili) or to be more exact, birr al waledein. One of them lived -and worked – a bit far from their mother, but they drove to see their mother twice every single day (and no, where the mother lived was not ‘on their way’  to work). Only exceptions are when something major happens, in which case they would call them by phone. And to think that this is a businessman who has so much in their hands already but they always took the time out to see their mother. Be true to yourselves, how many of us might live away from our parents, and have just one job, and yet we would visit during the weekend, or twice a month?

5) People love them. In general, they have that magnetic personality that makes people smile whenever they’re around. Some of them are pure comedians who just bring joy to their business partners, customers, etc…that people just want to spend time with them and help them in any way possible. Some of them end up with employees who are so loyal that if they were told to leave the job for one with a better pay, they wouldn’t…just because of that person.

6) They listen. To their customers, to their competitors, even to their children. They keep their mouth shut sometimes and listen.

7) They think outside the box. In their work, at home with their family…they try to be unusual, trying things that haven’t been tried before, so that after some time you might see people copying them.

8 ) They take risks. And this is one of the most important things that separates us from them. They are ready to take crazy risks. A lot of them have hit rock bottom; and I’m not talking depression or emotionally. But some of them have had to borrow transportation fare from their kid relatives. And some of them have had to share a meal with the whole family because things had taken a downturn and they couldn’t afford proper food. And some of them have been shot at (no kidding – but alhamdullilah the bullet missed and they survived). But this is how bad their lives got, and yet they venture into the unknown with nothing but faith in their hearts.

9) Last but not least, they share. They share their knowledge. They share their sources of inspiration. They share their joys and successes. They just share…

And it’s your turn to share this on FB and twitter

So how many of these traits do you carry?

Hadeeth of the day;

عن عائشة رضي الله تعالى عنها قالت : قال رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم ” إن الله يحب إذا عمل أحدكم عملاً أن يتقنه “

Hadith  translation; “Allah loves someone who when works, he performs it in perfect manner (itqan)”

Quote of the day;

The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor. – Vince Lombardi

Hadith translation courtesy of; http://medicalba.com/node/683

Questions of The Day

Answer whichever question that suits you

1) if a company had refused your resume just because you were not local (and it was a bit obvious that they were interested until they found out your nationality), then the same company calls you again after a few years of experience, would you go for an interview/accept to work for them?

2) Do you ever overeat and what emotions drive you to overeating?

3) What job do you hate so much (but must do) that you end up procrastinating each and every single time? What are the consequences of procrastinating?

4) Ask me a question and I shall answer you (unless it’s too personal/private/ controversial)

Explosive Point Reached

So this weekend I’m stuck in the villas during the weekend because I have a disastrous exam on Sunday; namely Advanced Heat Transfer. Checking the scope of the final exam can either be a good cure for insomnia or a sure way to make depression kick in. In case you didn’t get that, we have a lot to study, and I am on the verge of breaking apart because progress is so slow,  makes a tortoise seem as though it’s moving at the speed of a 911 porsche, and it makes the hare seem to move at a speed of a sonic jet.

But you know at times like this, I just try to remind myself of the quote, “When you’re about to give up, remember why you’ve held on to for this long.” I try to fill my head with psychobabble and try telling myself that the storm will pass. For good or bad , inshaAllah it will pass. I also sit and think of all those people who miss out on an opportunity to gain an education due to their financial or social status. I think of all those girls who won’t see the inside of a classroom because they are girls.

And I think of Kimani Maruge. In case you don’t know who he is – which I’m sure you don’t, Kimani Ng’ang’a Maruge was a Kenyan who held the Guinness world record for being the oldest person to start primary school – at the age of 84. He attended school with 2 of his 30 grandchildren. He passed away in 200 aged 90.

And I remember this;

من لم يذق مر التعلم ساعة تجرع ذل الجهل طول حياته

So I guess that’s it for today.

Hope I inspired you to hit the books.

You can read more on Kimani here