Balance

It is another Friday. If you are reading this, you are probably one of those people who find Friday joy in reading these articles. You are probably also one person who hates me for my inconsistencies in bringing the same. Well, here I am. Disturbing your judgement day countdown by bringing an article. You need this distraction, anyway.

There are things I have been wanting to write about only to get nods of disapproval from the Richie Online Censorship Board which consists of people who are paranoid that I will write about them. I am hoping that I will rise above their invalid opinions to bring you what lies within the deepest of my mind. Anyway, let us get to the business of the day.

Last year, I made a radical decision to quit my job as a Study Coordinator for an internship in Geocomputation and Spatial Epidemiology or that sort of thing. The idea was that I was going to leave the things I was going to do for survival for things I would be doing for love. Steering my career into the right direction, I called it. In my mind, I understood I was taking a pay cut but to me that did not matter as long as I had my focus on the end game.

A couple of weeks into January, people found me on my desk at work, smiling like an idiot while staring at my computer screen. To their surprise, my phone was nowhere in sight as such a smile would usually come from a text from a compliant lover (or a bank alert kwa anthu okanika ngati ife). I later explained that the code I was writing had been nicely working and producing the results I was looking for. For that day and the next week or so I ended up leaving the office well after 2000 hours for the love of the work I was doing and the hunger to learn more. For the first time I experienced the reality of the goodness of doing something you truly love.

Then came payday. The money that had come into the account was so little when compared to what I was getting previously. So little so that they might have as well just given it to me via Airtel Money as opposed to going through the hustle of giving me through my sacred National Bank account. In other words, the little amount did not match the plans I had. When I think about it now (now that I am broke and wise again), I think it was not so little. In fact, it might be way better than what a lot of folks are getting around town. All I needed was to adjust to the new condition, and I did not do that very well.

The headaches I had trying to figure out how I was going to survive town reminded me of the chat I had with one housemate of mine at some point. At that point, neck-deep into our clinical internships, we could not see a future outside clinical practice. As such, we were busy looking into specialties that we could venture into by considering two factors; job satisfaction and (more importantly) the returns. After lots of considerations, he settled for Ophthalmology while I fell for Orthopedic surgery. Well. The young man is working at some private hospital in the dusty capital while I am here, writing code while rocking a Valencia jersey in the office. Life does not always turn out how we plan it. That, however, is not the point I wanted to drive home. What I wanted to talk about was how polarized our discussions were when we were choosing the specialties. While I emphasized on job satisfaction, my good friend had his eye on the money and the free time a specialty would offer for him to do other things that would bring more money. Looking at it now, I understand the importance of his assertions. I might get the job satisfaction I want but the smile I get from getting my code working, I realize, is not in any way helpful in footing my electricity bill. I will get back to this later.

A bunch of weeks ago, I met a friend called Victor. This particular chap, who happens to be an expatriate working for one of the charity organizations in town succeeded his greeting with a question on why he had not seen me at the lunch hour mass I used to never miss prior to December 2019. With the Izeki syndrome, the response was a more diplomatic version of “ndimakhala bize”. His question, though, got me thinking about my spiritual life and how best I can work it out to the best it can be and it got me to some action points. I am not sure if there are any atheists who feast on these articles but as a spiritual being sometimes you do get to have moments of spiritual dryness. You feel incomplete and things do not work as nicely as you would want them to and usually the cure to that happens through divine intervention; without getting too technical about it. One needs to constantly feed their spiritual life because once that dryness comes in it affects pretty much everything else in life. More importantly productivity. We are not yet in the second month of the year but I have had a spell of this dryness already which made me do some soul searching on how best I could be managing this element of life. Answers are coming, and tikhala bwino.

Yesterday, I posted a warning shot on Facebook. Not a usual warning about flooding or anything of the sort, but a heads up about a chat I will convene to discuss the issue of excitement. In my view,  excitement is something that needs a great deal of control. Unfortunately, control of excitement is not something that a lot of us pay attention to. Instead of commenting on the issue at hand, however, people diverted the whole thing and suggested an alternative topic; my wedding. Now, that is a long shot because I am single with no hope of catching or getting caught anytime soon. A bunch of hours after the unrelated comments came on my Facebook post, someone decided to create a WhatsApp group. From the topic, I was getting married to someone on the 13^th of March or some date around that. They even looked around for a good picture to make the group icon and the group, as per the creator was for the bridal party. After hours of chatting, the admin removed everyone at midnight and exited the group.

You might be wondering as to what my point is from the whole narrative. Well. I will tell you what. Despite me being a 26-year old toddler, there are some who are of the opinion that I am way past my sell by date for marriage. I do not agree with that, for some reason but the good thing about me is that I treat opinions as they are. What I partly agree with is the assertion that I need a girlfriend because the chimp-like life I am living now is not healthy. But again, this all goes down to a conditional agreement. I only agree to this when it is a Sunday afternoon and my DSTV is disconnected. The loneliness that comes with such an afternoon sort of makes me agree that I need someone who can commit to talking to me or keeping me company; but again, as some of you would agree, that is no good reason for dragging someone into this mess called my life. Well. Another deficiency.

Let us tie it all together then. From where I stand, it seems like there are a number of deficiencies in major areas of life. Social life is in shambles, my account is injured and spiritual life is running in recovery mode. So, what do I do? Complain? No. I will not complain but try to fix it, and while I am at it, I will try to make notes for others to live better, and here is one for today. From my deficiencies, I bring you the definition of life and good living. A good life is not just about smiling ear to ear about your finances when your spiritual and love life is not working out. It is not just about celebrating your career when your morality is not higher up there. I will try my best not to use examples from the ConCourt case but there was good example on how to balance different aspects of life. That is the keyword. Balance. One needs to balance and juggle different aspects of life in a way that makes them complement each other.

One experience I forgot to share.

One of my good friends, armed with a two-month marriage experience sat me down to ask me why I am not one of those people in town called “bae”. When I gave him my excuses, he gave me that whole thing I just explained about letting things complement each other. He precisely told me to first discover myself and what my goals are; then define the spiritual habits, financial plans, relationship goals and career plans that I need to take me there. And all those, according to him, need to be complementary to one another. Amalawi anzanga, that was the wisdom I got.

And so…

From the deficiencies of my life, I bring you the definition of a good life and it is one word. Balance.

A nice weekend and happy judgement day to you all.