Ruminations, Birthdays and Internal Memos
Monday 4 December 2023
The fourth of December is my birthday. In 2023, I’ll be turning 22. For the first time in a long while, I have written something about it and would want to share it with friends, acquaintances and strangers on the internet.
The Mind, Body and Spirit are separate entities that form the person that we see and interact with. They come to the table wanting different infinite things from their existence yet there is finite time and willpower to do them all.
My mind - the faculty of consciousness and thought - wants to know more. Wants to experience and feel more. It wants to go to the unknown and find what lies therein. It wants to ask the hard questions all the time with no end.
My body - the physical structure within which the rest reside - wants to look good and feel even better. It wants to work out and run. It wants to be stronger than ever before every morning.
My spirit - the seat of emotions and character - wants to be upright. It holds the rest of my person to high moral standards and wants it to remain the same.
Kila mwamba ngoma, ngozi huvuta kwake.
There is a consistent tussle between the three entities. Each is selfish. Each wants to standout in all and through all. With each comes some sort of individuality that demands for the entity to be considered independently. It is for this reason that I refer to myself as “we”. (I also think it sounds cool and, you know, this is my blog.) Indeed, we are the mind, body and spirit that come together to form the person that you all know.
In the coming year, my greatest aim is to strike a balance. It will not be easy. We are not here to do easy things. There are some ruminations I have had during the weeks leading up to my birthday that I think would fit into this memo.
1. We do it at the highest level and do it to win. All the time.
Whatever the price of winning is, we will pay up. We define winning and work towards it relentlessly. We might try to find the off switch in 20 years, for now, we have no idea how that looks like.
2. We have a standard of excellence and we keep it up. All the time.
There is no way, that we can accept any form of mediocrity on any level at any time. We have a high standard and cannot go beneath it.
3. We speak our minds. All the time.
Anytime we speak, we (try to) find the right words to speak our minds. We understand that some sentiments are not shared with whoever is reading or listening to our words. That is why we don’t push. We listen. We want our beliefs questioned and the Mind changed.
4. We have strong opinions that are loosely held.
We give new, foreign ideas five (metaphorical) minutes. We understand that there as many ways of viewing the world and how life works as there’s sand in the Diani beaches that we’ve never been to. We are open to having the Mind changed. Not barking off at ideas ferociously but giving them time to settle, you know, ruminating and all.
5. We show up. We do the dirty work. All the time.
Successful people don’t love doing the dirty work. We are not like them. We do all the dirty work if that’s the price that needs to be paid.
6. We fall short sometimes. We are human. All the time.
We accord ourselves and others grace when we fall short, because we will. We haven’t been doing that and that has been bad to the Mind and the Spirit sometimes. This year, it’s different. We accord grace.
7. We, in unison, believe in God and the gift of salvation. All the time.
The Body has felt His power, the Mind sees His hand in all creation, the Spirit feels His calming presence in all situations. There has never, is not and will never be any conflict regarding this. We firmly believe so. And with all our might, we will try to express His love in all our works.
8. We care little what opinions people have about us. All the time.
We look forward to controversy. We are not afraid of confrontation and being different. That we have got here thus far is testament to our dedication to not thinking of the status quo, always going against the grain and expressing ourselves in the purest of ways.
9. When we love, we express it and we give it our all. All the time.
This has been hard to do thus far. Moving forward, We want to understand people and how to make them special. I mean all forms of relationships - work, personal, family, strangers. We have said it before, we want to be a channel for giving God’s love.
I understand that some of these might be controversial. And that’s totally fine. If it itches really bad, give me a call. Let’s talk about it. I understand equally, that the ones that have gone ahead of me would probably judge some of this as the heat of youth and most of them as the wrong outlook towards life. Like I said in number 4, we are looking forward to having the Mind changed.
PS: In addition to all this, the final year of the first part of my educational journey will end before my next birthday. We are working on a great tribute to the person who made us value putting in the work nonstop. The person that was grinding in the trenches with us all the time. She put perspective and added meaning to the struggle. Mama is gone but never forgotten.
Cheers.