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I am taking a risk by beginning this discourse with Shakespeare. I am aware that you would soon dispense with it than relive the abuse from literature you had to endure in your highschool. But Shakespeare puts across such an important point, one I think warrants a discussion. I am here to help you see it simply and easily. In Shakespeare's play Hamlet, when Laertes is about to leave for France, he is careful and kind enough to advise his sister, Ophelia, on the danger of the passion of ‘green’ love and warn her of Hamlet, who seemed to have a crush on her, though that is in some regard debatable. The piece of advice is certainly a spectacular one, but Ophelia's reply so struck a chord in me and has led me here. Here was her reply: “I shall th' effect of this good lesson keep As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother, Do not as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads And recks not his own rede.” I understand that you don't always get it the first time, I didn't, and this is Shakespeare's for goodness sake.😂 If I didn't get it wrong, then at least I hope to be right, even if in part, in the words that follow. Striving to be a better person and good at what I do has heralded a lot of frustration in my life. And I have only been able to see it not long ago. After I had learnt my lessons, or thought I had learnt them; after I finally believed I had understood the necessity of circumspect and disciplined living; after I had gotten some fleeting feeling of inspiration on what it meant and why it was important to be focused in our life pursuits, I would begin to see myself as the savior of the messed-up and broken souls I knew. I was right to think that these were people who had a lot of potential, who were able to live the most fulfilling lives, but I was wrong to imagine that I was the one who would be responsible for that turn around; I was not the one to lead them out of their captivity. Once in a while we see paradise, and it is really kind of us to want to lead our fellow comrades and acquaintances to this place of respite and refreshment. But after some keen deliberation, we would be disappointed to find out that we never knew this paradise too well in the first place. We had not really known its incomparable joy or its sweet water, neither did we know anything of its cool shades and flowered paths. Yet we thought ourselves capable of leading others into this amazing place, even thinking we could make them stay. A place we had made ourselves believe we knew but didn't. Our world thrives in comparisons. Comparison inspires competition that is meant to stave off complacency and keep us striving. But given the kind of comparison that has been engendered by the brokenness of our world today, we are only able to either see our inadequacies or our virtuousness when we draw these contrasts. The tendency to feel useless and a failure in comparison to our peers is certainly disquieting and one that requires addressing, but I am convinced that the seemingly innocuous tendency to think highly of ourselves is the more evil twin. It is easy to see how better we are than other people, how disciplined, how reserved, how beautiful, how gentle, how intelligent, how sharp, how graceful. Yet this is a form of self-delusion that holds us back from improving ourselves and keeps us from doing the real and important work. The temptation to make an impression has never been greater, we want people to think highly of us, to pay attention to us and applaud us, so without knowing it we have settled for appearances. I saw this in myself when I would raise my voice in conversations, wanting to be heard and to be the center the conversation revolved around; I wanted to be the one who gave the wittiest remarks, the one who shared the most laughable and interesting anecdotes; I wanted to be sympathized with and felt sorry for. And I have never been so disappointed. Many mistakes in people's lives remind us of how better we are than them. We occasionally claim how we could never be so careless and dumb as to fall victim to what they did. “Nijikute!” we proudly say. But are we really safe? It's so easy to judge and label other people for their mistakes and failures, and forget that we are not immune. ‭‭I Corinthians‬ ‭10:12‬ ‭NKJV‬‬ [12] Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. Temptations and compromises are greatly a matter of context and environment; so many of us would be liars, drunkards, thieves, idiots, even promiscuous if the circumstances favored it. Sometimes while we express our displeasure and loathing for people we think to be social pariahs and immoral, good for nothing idiots, we would do well to remind ourselves that may be we are just jealous of the freedom with which they do these things, or the fact that they always seem to get away with it. As much as we would want to change the world and make it a better place, as much as we would want to change other people and make them better human beings who thought like us, talked like us, dressed like us, loved what we loved, and despised what we despised, there is only one person that we can ever prod, shape or change with any degree of success: the person we see when we look into the mirror. Other people aren't some kind of robots we can program into obedience or compliance, they are facts we need to accept and acquiesce ourselves to. We can't be careful about improving ourselves and still have the time to meddle in other people's lives. I believe it's not many of you who will honor the words I say here simply because I said them, you will respect them because you saw me mirror them in my actual interactions with others and took note of the poise with which I carried myself. That’s the reason why it's so difficult to master the courage to put these things down in writing, because I would have set a standard of performance that I would have no excuse but to meet, or to at least try to. If we begin to think of how far we have to go down this path of destiny, how much we have to do to improve ourselves, getting our hands messy and heads full with other people's business is no longer a good idea. It is called self-discipline, a standard we apply ourselves to without wanting or forcing others to honor as well. Self-discipline is not about us burdening other people with what we think or feel is a right. Not everyone can be like us. It's not fair. It's not possible. How bleak the world would be without the Kidakes, how boring it would be if everyone was Henry. Our energies should be marshaled at living rightly than speaking rightly. We could be the compass by living virtuously, not pointing fingers at and shaming people we think are being careless or indisciplined. Sometimes a little self-searching reveals that these things we hate in others are actually things we hate about ourselves. That is exactly why it inspires all the self-righteous outbursts. We have a lot of work to do on ourselves, trying to change other people and force them to be us is the first sign that we are losing grip of that goal. Shall I show you the steep and thorny way to heaven, then take for myself the primrose path of dalliance?

When I emerged eighth best in KCSE 2020, I thought my life would completely turn around. That was enough evidence of my intelligence, and in my experience the intelligent always ace it in life. My whole family had been enthralled; it was glorious to have someone so brilliant in the family. Swamped up in my own achievement, I forgot that it was only an affirmation of my victory at that specific checkpoint in my life, and well, I would still have thousands of such checkpoints in future. I could not see it at that point; I am tempted to think many people wouldn't. Needless to say, I am now envious of all those people who never made it to the top ten nationally at that time. When almost three years after what was considered a colossal achievement and my life is still fraught with financial constraints and what I would call emotional dyscrasia — I beg the forgiveness of the medical fraternity for using the term, but I am typing this at 2 a.m instead of reading Haematology and I cannot think of any other appropriate word, not that there isn't — I can't help but wonder ( Eh! I wonder 😂) why life has been so unfair to me. Most of my once closest friends and fellow comrades seem to have made great strides in diverse fields, in a holistic sense that is, while I still struggle to keep afloat, especially financially if I am to be sincere about it. Yet I have failed to realize that whenever I set my life in contrast with other people's, I am always reminded of my inadequacies no matter how beautiful my life is. Recently, however, it has become clear how endless comparison is responsible for our constant depression, disquieting feeling of underachievement, and resentfulness. By becoming overly invested in other people's lives we have stopped working on our own altogether, and have been blinded from seeing the flowers that decorate our own landscapes. We end up forgetting how far we have come, how God has been faithful, and how thousands of people were never fortunate as we are. Because we want to be perfect, to be seen as perfect we have only managed to become insecure and strangely fragile to all forms of censure or criticism. We have ended up attaching our value on other people's perception of us. Apparently, we seem to have forgotten that even our most dearest of friends are fickle and undependable at times, and so are we ourselves. That doesn't mean that we should stop loving or hoping. To fail and be failed again and again and still live with the assurance that all will work out for our good takes the highest form of courage. To believe that we are actually made for success and are in fact worthy of good things takes more confidence than the resentment we nurse towards those who have done better than us. No matter what we achieve, there will always be someone else that will be better than us, in one aspect or another. We all have our races and could as well as stick to our own lanes. We should focus on improving ourselves instead of wasting energy comparing ourselves to others. Personally, I think the people who live the most disappointing and unfulfilling lives are those who want to be considered flawless and seen as perfect by their mates. We have grown ashamed of our scars when in fact confidence comes from embracing our flaws and faults, and owning them. When we expect other people to affirm us and support us at every instant, we painfully set ourselves up for disappointment. We are our own best buddies and our own worst enemies. We are the only ones who are to blame for our mess, to point fingers is proof of how we have failed to love and trust ourselves. We have derogatorily labeled most people jerks but it's disturbing how we still  crave their approval. We should never look down on ourselves simply because other people looked down on us. We will never earn the approval of the 7 billion people on earth and we could do ourselves a favor and well, dispense with it. In fact criticism is meant to advance us. We are the ones who take it as an affront when really it is an important feedback that is meant to inform how we are to proceed. Marcus Aurelius put it candidly when he said, “Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.” As we entertain glorious and high thoughts about ourselves, we would do well to remind ourselves that people do not think of us that way. Neither should we attach our self value to other people's opinions but instead focus on our work. We have work to do, and if we never take criticism positively, we may never know what it is that we need to improve on — criticism is important for recalibration, but it should be taken within the precincts of self-awareness. I believe the choice is ours.