To all the ladies interested in me

Dear ladies,

I am not who you think I am. I am a good person, or at least I try to be, but I am not a great guy. When you spend a lot of time around me, it’s very likely that you will either hate me, or really like me. When you spend so much time around somebody, it’s easy to fall into the temptation of thinking you like them, even think you love them, but do you?

In the words of Shakespeare, ‘the whole world’s a stage, men merely players, and one man in his life plays many parts.’ I as well, have many masks, donning the one that suits the occasion. When it counts I am able to put on my best behavior. I’ll be able to command the decorum if need be, even exude the right kind of mien, but will you use a single conversation to judge me, will you summarize my life based on just one or two conversations. Are you sure you know me, or do you just have but an idea of who I am? What do you want to believe about me? do you think I can be that good, that perfect, consistently? Everyday? You don’t see me as I am, but as I appear to be.

At first, love appears to be something that unconsciously comes to us. It feels as though its something we are compelled to do. But thereafter love is a choice that we have to make everyday. Infatuation is a beautiful thing, but there comes a time when it all wanes away, and the energy dies of, after that love becomes a deliberate choice we have to make. What if I will get to meet a lady who is more beautiful than my wife, will it be a reason to love my wife less? In youthful passion, when our blood runs hot,

as Polonius would say concerning Hamlet in the famous tragedy, how prodigious the tongue lends vows. We may entertain fancies and fantasies, we may hold on to chimeras when there is no price to pay, because love seems a beautiful thing when it costs us nothing, but at the slightest inconvenience reality intrudes. We realize we never loved, and if we did, we only loved ourselves, or just loved the idea of being in love.

I am pretending, and when we finally get married, I don’t think I could keep the pretense for that long. I cannot keep wearing the mask. At some point I will get irascible, I will shout at you when in frustration, I will not want to see you or anyone else for a week. Is this the life you will want? May be you want it before you have it. Because you like me you want to believe I am a good person, but I am putting it down candidly when I say that I am not. If anything, I can only hurt you, I can only break your heart. All that may even sound like a beautiful thing abstractly, until I actually do that to you. Akipenda chongo huita kengeza.

Randolph Bourne in his essay The Handicapped, addresses the relationships men have with ladies. ‘Why does society assume that every relationship a man has with a woman has to be romantic?’ he asks. ‘How degrading!’ I can almost hear him sigh. When a handicapped man makes friends with a lady, it is mostly true friendship because no one is trying to be good; they are just being themselves. The handicapped man has no need to perform, to have the lady think highly of him; the lady on her part doesn’t try to impress a handicapped man. That way falsehood is stripped away, and there can only be truth, even if in part. That is the nature of true love, it isn't trying to gain anything; it isn’t thinking about itself, and what’s in it for it. You dread thinking that by loving me you are in love with yourself, but it’s the truth. You don’t love me, neither do I you; I don’t want to waste my time trying to make myself believe I do. If you haven’t been able to make yourself happy all this while, why do you think I will now be able to make you happy?

The one thing older people have that we lack is perspective. We see a part, and try to make the whole fit that part. Older people see the whole, and then fit the parts into the whole. They have perspective. They have experienced life, and life has taught them not to just see what they want to see. You may enjoy twenty minutes of my time, but that doesn’t mean you will enjoy thirty years of marriage with me.

I am growing to know myself, many of you are as well. Are you sure you know what you want already. Why marry a man, and then after a year realize you actually do not love them. Everything seems to be telling you that you won’t be happy, but you still think how beautiful it would be to spend your life with this person. The universe whispers until it shouts. Why do you want me to lie to you, I don’t know myself well enough by now to be sure whether I love you or I am just enjoying the fantasy of being in love with you.

When we are paying attention to something, the thing usually exalts itself to the point of seeming so important. Becoming important simply by virtue of us paying attention to it. But is it something that we will always be looking at. There’s a joke I once heard, ‘sometimes its hunger that makes me like a lady, but when I am full, I come back to my senses.’ ( it sounds better is Swahili) Could it be that you are just hungry? Could it be that you are just bored, jaded, tired and love has so exalted itself to that place of importance.

May be you know hate me, “just how insensitive can someone be!’ you are probably saying. May be you have always hated me; may be you just don’t care. I broke your heart. Could it be because you chose to entertain an idea of me? Suddenly I stopped doing what you thought I should have been doing; I step out of a notion you had of me. Was it my mistake? Why’d you believe that anyone could be that good, that I could be that good. Why did you debase yourself so much as to think a lady such as yourself, beautiful and gracious, that an idiot like me would ever deserve you. When there are many other better people than myself, why did you still choose me? You know you deserved better, and it was your mistake you looked no other way. I can only hope you learnt your lesson.

Why can’t we just be friends? Why do we have to take it farther? Why do we have to make ourselves slaves to such caprices that will only break our hearts? Is it fair that I demand a relationship when we are so better as friends? What happiness would dating add to our companionship that we do not yet enjoy as friends? When you are my friend I won’t have to pretend, we won’t have to pretend. We will still be friend even if we won’t talk for a month. Yes, we won’t have to talk everyday. You wont feel terrible about me not always focusing on you; you will understand that you are not my whole world, that I have other things to do as well.

May be I will get better, but it’s likely that I will get worse. It’s good that you have so much hope, but why believe in me so much when I don’t believe in myself. If I don’t love you, truly love you, is it a likely thing that the intenseness of your love will make me fall in love with you? I don’t want to love you because I have pity on you, I don’t want to love you because it is expedient. I want to love you because it is a choice I’m making; because I can never be happy with anyone else as long as you walk on this planet. Retine vim istam, falsa enim dicam, si coges

I don’t love you. If I say I do, know its another one of my lies.

Restrain your violence, for I will lie if you force me.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there’s a mistake.

The only other sound’s the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

Anyone who has gone through high school certainly knows of Robert Frost. (Frost? It’s funny this poem is about snow.) In those days, alongside his counterparts, I regarded Robert Frost as a sadist sent to traumatize students studying poetry. Today, when I look back, I see him more in a light of veneration than with a sigh of desperation. The Road Not Taken remains to be my favorite verse, and I bet it is as well for so many others. Whats yours best poem? Who is your best poet?

At one time, I was reading an essay addressing the interpretation of poems. The insistence was that poetry is not really important for its intellectual edge as it is for its ability to appeal to the senses. Poetry is first of all meant to be enjoyed before it can be understood. Comprehend the sound before you construe the meaning. I agree. In my high school times the aim was to get what the poem means. There was always the question, what is the poem about? I am sure I got that question right on less than two occasions. My interpretation of any poem was always so wrong, glaringly and embarrassingly wrong. I have since, however, begun to enjoy poems for their sounds, rhymes, and melodies, and then in some kind of epiphany, the meaning has poured itself out. ( Wait, my intention is not to be cheeky, but can you still give the rhyme scheme of the poem?)

I am not confident in my skills when it comes to dissecting poems for their meanings, but today, I will share with you what I understood from this poem.

Robert Frost (assuming he is the persona) seems to be in a journey, to whence we cannot tell, but then he stops on his way there to look into the woods. To him these woods with all the snow is something beautiful to look upon. It is as if he wants to stand and watch the woods filling with snow for as long as he could, but he remembers that he has a journey ahead of him. He has responsibilities to live up to and promises to keep. And because of that he has to go on with his journey. Beautiful right?

This poem has typified my life in so many instances, it may have yours as well. For most of us, we are in a journey, some will call it destiny, some see it as a purpose we have to fulfill. For several people we have goals we look forward to actualizing, may be it is to turn back the tide of lack and poverty in our families, may be it is to alleviate the suffering of people in the world. But in the end, we are pressing forward to do something. Yet on the way there, there would be distractions, there would be things that would nag us to forsake the rightful path, probably for the sake of expedience. The journey during such instances seems to be a long one, and it can always wait, can’t it?

Yet the consciousness of responsibility causes the persona (goodness! It feels as though I am in my high school regalia) to get back to his journey. In my article, What am I here for?, I said that for nearly all of us, our aim is to be successful, to be at the top someday if that is what matters to us. However, we cannot take the same path there, our paths are different, and for some of us we cannot bear to compromise, life has simply not made that provision for us. That’s why comparing ourselves to others becomes so destructive. What promises do I have to keep? What responsibilities await me? The answers to these questions are not the same. There are people who can stand back as long as they are want, and watch the woods fill with snow. There are others, and many they are, who have to keep going, focusing on the prize ahead of them. It’s the consciousness of what is demanded of them that galvanizes them to action.

What motivates people to work towards their goals and for the betterment of their lives and society, is very peculiar and personal, we do not share destinies after all. The question then becomes what price do I have to pay personally? Once we know the price we have to pay, we will understand and see it as our own burden to carry. We cannot then afford to blame anyone, we cannot point fingers when we fail to deliver. Reaching that destiny will certainly require discipline, and sacrifice. Yet we are not to expect other people to be disciplined in that same way. They may be on a whole different path altogether, and the sacrifices that they may be making or may have to make doesn’t have to resemble the ones we are making. That’s why it is unreasonable to expect others to make the same trade offs we are making, and immature to get resentful because they aren’t sacrificing as much as we are. Yes, it’s all about trade offs. We give something up to have something else, and in this case we give up watching the woods so that we can be fast and on time when it comes to our responsibilities.

In the parting shot of his book, 12 Rules for Life, Jordan Peterson, answers the question: what shall I do with my newly found pen of light? He clarifies on what exactly everyone should aim to do with the knowledge they have now acquired. He says, ‘our specific personal faults detrimentally affect the world, our conscious, voluntary sins make things worse than they have to be. Failure to make the proper sacrifices […] weakens us― and in that weakened state we are unable to thrive in the world, being of no benefit to ourselves and to others.’ Robert Greene in Laws of Human Nature puts it more candidly when he says, ‘we are here not merely to gratify our impulses and consume what others have made, but to make and contribute as well, to serve a higher purpose.

One time when we were sharing some words with my roommate Njoroge Maina, he explained what drives his commitment to his academics. It made a lot of sense. In the Holy Scriptures, the commandment is that whatever we do, we must do it diligently and faithfully as unto the Lord, without grumbling or complaining. At the end of time we answer to an audience of one. Were we faithful in what had been given to us? because the Master will soon come to settle accounts. Njoroge said that he sees his academic work as divine, a task appointed by God, so that even when tired and weary, he has a reason to rouse himself from sleep and get to work, he serves a purpose higher than himself. In The River and The Source by Margaret Ogola, Mary-Anne explains to Vera that she can serve God in her work, by allowing her Faith in God to permeate her entire life, and to define her work. Mary-Anne exhorts her to do her work, whatever it is, lectures or assignments, well, offering it to God. When we know that we answer to God concerning our work and not man, not even ourselves, the whole perspective of it changes. We cannot do it shoddily anymore. There’s no work in Sheol, where we are going, so whatever our hands find to do, we must do it well.

What are your responsibilities? What is your purpose? What are you meant to give to the world?

Yes, the woods are beautiful, but we have promises to keep.

And miles to go before we sleep.

And miles to go before we sleep.

The Little Foxes

The Tired, Thirsty, and Hungry Fox

Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that spoil the vineyard, for our vineyards are in blossom

Songs of Solomon 2:15

Once upon a time, when the sun had shone in its strength for days without end, and the rain had not softened the ground for months, so that a devastating famine had taken hold, a tired, thirsty, and hungry fox, Foxy was his name, was walking around, desperately hoping to find something to eat. For two weeks now, Foxy had had nothing to eat. In the sky a crow, Crowy was her name, with a generous and deliciously looking slice of meat in her beak, was flying, trying to find a tree to perch on. For Crowy, food had been hard to come by as well, and she had just snatched the slice of meat from a goat herder in the fields. Foxy, tired, thirsty and hungry, decided to rest under a tree. So it happened that Crowy perched on one of the branches of this very tree, under which Foxy was sitting, tired, thirsty and hungry. The movement of the branches roused Foxy. He looked up and saw Crowy, in her beak she had a delicious slice of meat. Until then, foxes and crows had never spoken to each other. Foxy knew this was his only chance.

“Wow!” He said. “What a beautiful bird! You have to be the prettiest bird of all your kind.”

He went on to praise the color of Crowy’s feathers even though they were black. He praised her beak and said she had beautiful eyes. Crowy’s heart swelled with pride, she felt as though someone was finally interested in her, for until then, no one had ever actually paid attention to her.

“I wonder how sweet your voice is,” continued Foxy, “will you sing for me, please?” Crowy was excited, she was excited that the fox had said her voice was sweet, forgetting that she had the most annoying caw and made the most disturbing voice among all birds. Here was somebody who thought it to be beautiful. Crowy did not know that the fox was only tired, thirsty and hungry. Crowy gathered air in her lungs, she then opened her beaks wide to give out the most beautiful tune in the world. Just when she opened her beak, the delicious slice of meat fell to the ground. Foxy quickly dashed for it, and immediately ran off. Crowy was surprised to see Foxy running, then she remembered her slice of meat. She would have to sleep hungry today, again.

While we are often drawn to think of theft, murder, or fornication when we talk about sin, most of us, however, have had our hearts ensnared by what we would probably never have regarded to be sin had we not put on the lenses of scriptures. Foxes might be the most cunning creatures on earth, or we would never have said, as cunning as a fox. And after we have established how cunning foxes are, we see them addressed in Scriptures in this specific instance, as little. Here we have, cunning little animals, who ruin the vineyard that is just in bloom. To say they are cunning, is to emphasize that they are deceiving and manipulative. It may be precisely because they are little that they cause the greatest mischief, as no one would regard them seriously.

The term little foxes, therefore, consists not of the great sins of heresy and apostasy, or even fornication and adultery, but the little items in our lives that shift our attention from God to themselves. This may be in our normal routine, reading, chatting with friends, or even watching certain programs. It is the innocence of these things that provides a leeway into our hearts, and cultivates a coldness of God in our spirits. The fact that we are not hungry for God, as John Piper would say in the preface of his book Hunger for God, is not that God is unsavory, but that our hunger is already catered for by many other lesser things, we are stuffed already as it were.

The Bible says in James that the Lord tempts no one, but all of us are tempted when we are drawn by our own desires. We would say sin is born of a ‘little’ mistake carelessly regarded. The little foxes creep in insensibly and ruin our grapes that are tender, and our vineyards that are in blossom.

In John Owen’s approach to sin, temptation and the Christian life, he clarifies that we all have peculiar lusts due to our particular constitutions, education or prejudices. Satan tends to attack us according to our particular personalities, moving against a confident person more differently than an anxious one, but tempting both nonetheless. For example, the rich man may become proud of all that he has, thinking that he is full and in need of nothing. Even though this is a thought that may never come out loudly, it is one he harbors in his heart and that reflects itself in how he lives his life. The poor man may not have cause to be proud, but instead he may become embittered by his many  misfortunes and unenviable circumstances. He may secretly distrust God in his heart, and cease to have faith in God’s assurances. These men have sinned, and we would not be wrong to say they have been tempted differently. We must learn our dispositions, for in so doing we are more prepared to avoid stealthy arrows directed at us. To Owen, we must be killing the little foxes, or they will be killing us. We must catch the foxes, or they will ruin our vineyards that are just in blossom. There could be habits we ascribe to our nature and personalities, yet it’s these very habits that create a fertile ground for error and sin.

Many of us who believe we stand should look carefully lest we fall. Our hearts can often be nagged by little things, and as our hearts happen to be the greatest deceivers, we find ourselves in messes that it is often impossible to wriggle ourselves out of. We are to guard our  hearts, with all vigilance, for from them flows the springs of Life. To be able to enjoy God and worship him, there has to be a degree of need and hunger in our hearts that draws us to seek him. There are so many things in the world that rid us of this hunger and need for God, so that our fellowship with God becomes to us nothing more than just another task we need to get out of the way. The time we give to God in such a constitution of mind always seems unnecessary and if we are busy pursuing our goals, it often feels like a distraction and a waste of time. These things are the little foxes that spoil our vineyard of fellowship and love.

Catch the little foxes. Matthew Henry in his commentary declares this to be a charge that particular believers mortify their own corruptions, their sinful appetites and passions that work to destroy grace and comfort, quashing good emotions and crushing good beginnings, hence preventing their coming to perfection. The little foxes are to be seized, the first risings of sin… In Hebrews the instruction is, seeing we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight that clings close, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus as the pioneer and the sustainer of our faith. 

Catch us the foxes

Little foxes that destroy good beginnings

Little foxes that thwart good resolves

Little they are, so we may entertain them, 

Pay no attention to them, Or

Doubt their abilities to mess up our lives.

References

• Holy Scriptures

• Desiring God - John Piper

• Matthew Henry- Commentary

• Overcoming Sin and Temptation - John Owen