2019 Lessons

It is the last Friday of 2019 and we had to cap it off with an article despite being late for it. It has been a busy day and local man could hardly get the time for it. Well. Here he is at 20:46 hours, writing about the year thus gone while cooling himself with a cold one.

A couple of days ago, one human posted a WhatsApp status update prompting us to share what 2019 taught us. For some reason, I went on to write “parte after parte” after the popular song, titled Party after Party. My response was ignored for a very good reason, but the rude response didn’t mean I did not learn anything this year. In fact, I learnt one very important thing; moyo siophweka. If I am to put it in simple English, life is not straightforward.

Those of you know me in an up close and personal, you would know that I am that one person who like to get everything I want the way I want. Not getting it implies frustrations on my end and this year had been punctuated by little frustrations with little victories to dampen them out. All in all, I would say that this was a very good year because beyond my own little achievements I have seen my friends rise to the point where they are getting better livelihoods. Getting better jobs, getting married, having children, getting post-graduate admissions, graduating with all sorts of papers, quitting (and starting for others) alcohol and everything else that can be celebrated.

I will share a little recap of the year for me as that could give me a very good ground for setting pace for the article. This year I changed houses twice. I will let you think of whether that was good or not. At the end of this year, I have made a decision I never would have imagined a couple of years back; I will be hanging up the stethoscope for good to nosedive into the jungle of research. This, however is something that has just popped out. For those of you who follow these scribblings, you will know of the article in which I mentioned that on a day like this, last year I posted the three things that I would want to do in 2019; quit alcohol, lose weight and get married. If you have been following what I wrote in the first paragraph, you could note that I have miserably failed on the first one; with an explanation. I feel a bit fat from all the Christmas eating, but I think that can be sorted after the festivities. Let us take a minute to discuss the more important issue of getting married, though.

Of course I did not mean that I wanted to get married in its literal sense when I made that post. You do not start a year and get married before it ends, in my view, unless otherwise. I will leave you to imagine the “otherwise” part. The bare minimum I wanted was to get someone I can marry in 2023. I have come to realize that I have miserably failed in that because with a few days remaining in the year, there are days that pass without me getting a phone call or the important “I wanted to check on you” text from a potential suitor. I was about to start complaining about this but I was silenced by people who have since pointed out that I am not very good with communicating my feelings with others and so I might remain single for the next five years if I do not put a whole lot of effort in my social endeavors. That brings us to the first class I had along the moyo siophweka lines.

Communication is not as straightforward as some of us might think. You might think you are sending a perfect message that will be perfectly decoded in the same way you packaged it in your frontal cortex. For some reason, that same message may be perceived in its perfect opposite sense at the point of reception. I have had struggles with this issue both as a sender and recipient of communications this year. At some point, I found myself looking at some people as “not-so-friendly” humans only to understand what their raised voices meant well… but months later. I have sent hostile messages to people, showing them the exit door from my life only to see them coming back with an irresistible smile. Then there is the painful part; trying to be chocolate nice to people only to be perceived as someone who doesn’t care.

Then there is the issue of interpersonal relationships. The complexity of the interaction between two people is already interesting. Add a third on to the mix, it reaches gargantuan proportions. Some of you might relate to this thing that you have friends that leave when your other friends leave. That is why we have this whole term; anzawo a anzathu. Friends of our friends. I am not saying that you need to make friends with all the friends of your friends, but they do not need to be enemies. This year of ruin, 2019, left me in a situation where I ended up being out of favor with some of my friends for siding with others and this messed up some of my most important relationships. At the end of the day, you tend to wonder whether you could have done something differently, but life has to go on, anyway.

Under the same issue of interpersonal relationships is the issue of personal expectations from friends. I have seen people go out of their waters to help me when I least expected it and when I thought I did not deserve it. I have also seen people not come through on what I expected from them despite a serial lowering of my personal expectations from people. Great expectations create frustrated men, they said. You have to believe that to a greater extent. Nkhani ija ndiyoona. I am pretty sure I have been on both ends of the spectrum on this one too; been on the side of not meeting expectations for some and been on the overkill for others. I guess such is life.

There is this other issue of managing finances> I am not too sure how others manage to work this out but somehow this seems to be something that is very difficult to juggle. Others have written that the natural instinct of a human is to increase spending once income increases. It gets to be surprising that someone who knows this and is supposedly equipped with the mind tools to counter the same would happen to be struggling. I seriously need tips on this from those of you who have mastered the art of financial management. Books are welcome.

Having said all that, the lesson that life is not as straightforward as we would want it to be will go a long way in helping me plan my accidents and expect surprises from all angles of life. Having sat down to reflect on all this, I have come to the conclusion that I will leave the new decade to manage itself with its twists, curls and turns. No fancy plans about  life other than the regular things. It is about going to work, church and repeating; fitting the gym and the pub in the mix wherever necessary. Friends? Well. Let’s see who will be there and who will not. And of course, who we will be there for and who not. No deliberate efforts to cut out people. I mean, it might be a new year and new decade but I don’t think there will be much of a change in everything else. Nonetheless, those of you who would like to make “calendar-based” changes for the better, are welcome to do so.