This thing called love

The singer in the Song of Solomon begs us not to awaken love before its proper time. I remembered that line when a friend of mine sought my advice on what he must do to stop day-dreaming about a girl he thought he had forgotten.

He first met this girl six years ago and she told him off when he professed. Deeply hurt, he hit back that he didn't care and meant every word. He bumped into her again recently and all the hidden embers suddenly shot into fiery flames.  

"Man, this is the girl I must marry," he told me breathlessly.  

Young lady, don't awaken love before its proper time

To me she's just an ordinary girl but to my friend she has a mysterious quality so consuming his mind keeps reverting to it. It just makes you to pause and marvel. What is it about love that keeps us awake in the night when we want to sleep?  

Love is something the world's best psychological brains need to explore. We have gone to the moon and invented the most dangerous nuclear weapons. But who can explain why a man can fall in love with one woman so much that his life loses its colour without her? 

Some people think Shakespeare was the world's best in waxing lyrical about love. But I wish there's a machine that records the thoughts a man has about a woman he truly loves. But truly the best love lines will never be written because they are so deep they can never be captured by words.

Love is that strong that you fall in love at your own peril if you don't have the emotional stability and inner strength way beyond the ordinary. Sometimes it's even better to marry a woman you are not very much in love with. Because the heaviness of too much love keeps its victims staggering under its weight so much that true happiness remains a dream beyond their attainment.

In black and white

Is it me or has this year been unusually fast? How else can I explain the fact that I've not yet achieved the thing I hoped to have achieved by this time?

This got me thinking why some people don't achieve as they ought to, and the answers came slowly as I took a thoughtful stroll in my neighbourhood.

Stay focused

P.K. Bernard said, "A man without a vision is a man without a future. A man without a future will always return to his past." That's true. The most important ingredient for achieving is having the vision, not just in the mind, but also in black and white. This impels the vision-bearer to spring into action, and stay focused until the vision is fulfilled.

A vision, to those who say such terms leave them clueless and confused, it simply a mental picture of something which such importance to you that you feel you will not be fulfilled unless you carry it out. If you meet a girl that you fall head-over-heels in love with, you will probably have a vision of walking her down the aisle. A man with such vision constantly playing on the back-screen of his mind will not rest until he has asked this girl out on a date and taking it from there until he slides a ring down her finger.

My stroll also got me thinking about our independence celebrations on October 9. How can we still celebrate without shame when years since we took the instruments of power from the British colonialists, we still have a messy education system that stresses rote memorisation to pass exams instead of practical and creative instructional methods through which we can produce our own Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerbergs?

Parents have to take back their places and help their children to discover themselves early on. It's the only way to grow intelligently and courageously to fulfill the purposes for which they were created.

Birthday reflections

Today is my birthday. I won't tell how old I've turned but just know I'm no longer a child, but a man living each day circumspectly, and captaining my ship to the best of my abilities.

I was born in the thick morning fog and the biting cold of Kigezi where my father was working as a health inspector. The fathers of the time knew how to wield the whip, not wanting to spare the rod and spoil the child unlike today when children sue their parents over a little spanking! My papa was a bold preacher who loved raising the cane as he preached the gospel of morality to the stubborn tots we were. I now look back with a smile of appreciation because it saved me from getting spoilt.

We later moved to our present home in Mitooma District where I lived with Grandma who gave me practical lessons in industriousness; breaking the dry ground in the sun with small hoes; living by the maxim that a man that does not dig (work real hard) should not eat! I’ll forever be grateful, for she ingrained in me a work ethic that has continued to hold me in good stead. There's nothing sweeter than bread that you have worked hard for.

Tick-tock tick-tack and I found myself at the university surrounded by exciting times; exploring night clubs and chasing after shapely girls that were the objects of our romantic fantasies.  These were dangerous times but by the grace of God I passed through them unscathed. 

The greatest lesson(s) learned so far, is that life is sweeter when lived with a smile both in good and bad times. Don't dwell much on the betrayals and the things that work not. Picking myself up and tackling each day with the optimism that things will somehow work out for good no matter the disappointments along the way, is what makes life fulfilling even in easy circumstances.