So Long, 2015! Until We Don't Meet Again!

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, its still a beautiful world. - Desiderata, Max Ehrmann.

Maybe not. Well, maybe. Really depends with where you are.

2015 has been mean. Really mean. Its hard to believe that we took it in our strides and the year is coming to a close. Its a year that has been full of "sham, drudgery and broken dreams." How's that beautiful Ehrmann? Has there been anything to smile about, ala Morgan Heritage?

2014 was equally mean, especially to some of us. We lost good people, really good people. Property was destroyed and lives destabilized. In our quiet moments we hear gunshots and bombs going off. We see pools of blood, here and there, blood that before June 15, 2014 was warm and freely flowing in people we knew. We remember flies feasting on on our friends; we remember them lying lifeless in a row, with identification tags on their feet, lying outside, in the open, exposed to the elements! We remember heads split open by bullets, the reddening brain matter oozing out. We remember their heads, getting smaller and God! The stench! Did you know life leaves a terrible smell when it departs?

We hope you are with the Lord, our friends. We pray that the Lord continues to comfort your families. There have been many attacks since and we hope our people are with the Lord too and that He comforts their families as well.

Lets come back to this year.

About two weeks ago, a friend of mine (was in campus with, same school, shared some courses, friends on Facebook kind of friend) shared something on Facebook that generated quite some debate. It is something which I think all of us grapple with, albeit in different ways.

For your sake lets call her Dorothy. I think she had just turned 28. Dorothy was/is concerned with the direction her life was taking. In her estimation, she should have been married by now, with three kids, enjoying her marriage and all that. She should have graduated with her Masters degree or about to graduate and living a life that is worth celebrating, for lack of a better word.

The problem is, Dorothy still has that one degree she got a few years ago. And she is still single. Her life, to put it plainly, is nowhere close to what she would have liked. The replies to her status update were quite similar to her situation. No one seemed to be living the life they have been working for.If anything, people now found comfort in these common stories of dreams differed. Strange, no? How people doing the right things, mostly, don't get the things they deserve?

At the beginning of this year, I had such grand plans for making it or making it ala Jimmy Gait of the Hello cover song. I had similar questions to Bwana Misosi in Nitoke Vipi? The satisfaction I had found, and which really lulled me to numbness, in the things I had done or acquired was waning out. I needed more and was tired of the chains that held me back.

Do not get wrong. There have been beautiful moments in 2015. Moments put a broad smile on my face whenever I recall them. I have had crazy moments too, the good kind of crazy. Moments that still make me laugh at myself and life.

Perhaps the most beautiful thing about 2015 is that we did not give up. Its like the scripture says: "We are hard pressed on every side, but not crashed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed." (2 Cor 4:8-9)

I have found encouragement from many places this year. There is a friend who got married, got a new job and is now temporarily jobless. There is another who also got married and unfortunately miscarried. I am humbled by how particularly these two have carried themselves. Then there are the poets who, heeding Longfellow's call in A Psalm of Life have left "Footprints on the sands of time;/ Footprints, that perhaps another,/ Sailing o'er life's solemn main,/ A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,/ Seeing, Shall take heart again."

So, thank you Kipling for "If", Henley for "Invictus"  and Angelou for "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"

I have also found great inspiration from the scriptures, the little I have read that is. On several occasions I have recited Psalm 23 and parts of Psalm 27.  I have kept telling myself that "I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take  heart and wait on the Lord." (Psalms 27: 13-14)

There is a high likelihood that 2015 has been hard on you too. If the government "lost" all those billions, became broke and struggled to pay honest and hardworking Kenyans properly, how much worse, I wonder, has your situation been? It doesn't matter now. You are still here. You did not give up but proved equal to the task and have run your race well. Thank you for not giving up!

So, let 2016 come with whatever it brings. We are much stronger now.