Mind Boggling
By Njeri Mucheru-Oyatta
Changing my attitude towards lift sharing and accepting the sharing as part of life was also a positive change. At least when I was being a mean driver, the car I was being mean with belonged to me. In the lift sharing business, the lift I was refusing to share did not belong to me. I was stupidly imagining myself as the owner of the lift because I got into it first. I will repeat here that pride is a gynormous monster that can make you do stupid things and convince you that you are doing the right thing. At least if I owned the building where the lift was, I could start feeling like I own the lift and refuse to share it. I was nowhere close to ever owning a lift of my own yet I thought I deserved to ride in the lift to my floor undisturbed. Enough said. I am glad that that is in my past.
The exercise routine has been a challenge but I have kept at it and am feeling fitter and healthier. I do a lot of planning when am working out and some very good ideas creep into my mind at that time. I also feel re-born after a good sweating session. That alone is enough motivation for me to keep at it. The other day I went shopping for an outfit and discovered that my body was amenable to a wide variety of clothes, including figure hugging ones. That made me feel real good too.
When it comes to controlling weight, dieting does not cut it for me at all. I just look at pictures of people in famine stricken areas and note that there are no fat ones. You obviously cannot grow fat on eating nothing even if you suffer from some medical condition that makes you balloon faster than others. That medical condition will not save you from starvation if you do not eat. I tell myself to try to eat healthy and eat to satisfy hunger, not cravings, and exercise twice a week.
I have no time for thinking about food all the time and counting calories. I find that when I keep busy thinking about my life, who I am, where am headed and finding the missing ‘something’, I even forget to eat. Forgetting to eat is not a good thing so I try to keep to my meal times as much as possible. Occupy your mind with deep thoughts to keep food and other distractions out of your mind. You can only think about one thing at any one time, make sure it is something passionate enough to sweep away cravings of any kind. That’s what I keep telling myself but I will admit that there are times I just have to satisfy the craving and do so gladly, knowing that it will be a strong justification for my next workout.
My aim is not to look like anyone else, I just want to look like myself and be happy with what I’ve got and maintain the size I feel comfortable with. No body is perfect and when all is said and done, to quote King Solomon, fat or thin, we all die the same way.
Forgiveness is now second nature to me and am proud of myself for changing. It was not easy but after a while, I actually felt good about being on talking terms with everyone in my life and letting bygones be bygones. Learning how to forgive was a huge lesson for me. After I succeeded in doing it, I felt like I had graduated a class and could now move on to more strenuous exercises of the mind. I think that’s how I got to thinking about God.
As far as God is concerned, I realized that when I thought I was an atheist philosopher, I was cheating myself. The truth of the matter is that as human beings, we all yearn to find someone who knows us and understands us completely. Someone who finishes our sentences, someone who knows our different looks, someone who shares our sense of humour, someone who can tell when we’re lying about how we feel, someone to share secret jokes with, someone to be naked around, someone who makes you feel comfortable being yourself completely. We are excited when we visit a fortune teller or a palm reader or read our horoscopes and discover that someone out there knows something about us which we did not know anybody else knew.
The truth is that no such person exists outside of you. You will find those different qualities in different people but never in one person. If your own mother in whose womb you were formed, and your own father who raised you from babyhood cannot know and understand you completely, such that you leave home and go out looking for that someone out in the world, don’t cheat yourself that you will ever meet any person who does.
I have realized that not believing in God is a dangerous thing. When you refuse to acknowledge that yearning inside you and accept it as something that connects you with your true self, your God, the yearning does not go away, it becomes a flesh-eating microorganism which science has not yet ‘discovered’.
Just because we cannot yet see it under the microscopes we have today does not mean it doesn’t exist. I have seen it eating at a lot of people I know and when I discovered it in my body, I almost fainted. It is the most hideous thing ever.
By Njeri Mucheru-Oyatta
Changing my attitude towards lift sharing and accepting the sharing as part of life was also a positive change. At least when I was being a mean driver, the car I was being mean with belonged to me. In the lift sharing business, the lift I was refusing to share did not belong to me. I was stupidly imagining myself as the owner of the lift because I got into it first. I will repeat here that pride is a gynormous monster that can make you do stupid things and convince you that you are doing the right thing. At least if I owned the building where the lift was, I could start feeling like I own the lift and refuse to share it. I was nowhere close to ever owning a lift of my own yet I thought I deserved to ride in the lift to my floor undisturbed. Enough said. I am glad that that is in my past.
The exercise routine has been a challenge but I have kept at it and am feeling fitter and healthier. I do a lot of planning when am working out and some very good ideas creep into my mind at that time. I also feel re-born after a good sweating session. That alone is enough motivation for me to keep at it. The other day I went shopping for an outfit and discovered that my body was amenable to a wide variety of clothes, including figure hugging ones. That made me feel real good too.
When it comes to controlling weight, dieting does not cut it for me at all. I just look at pictures of people in famine stricken areas and note that there are no fat ones. You obviously cannot grow fat on eating nothing even if you suffer from some medical condition that makes you balloon faster than others. That medical condition will not save you from starvation if you do not eat. I tell myself to try to eat healthy and eat to satisfy hunger, not cravings, and exercise twice a week.
I have no time for thinking about food all the time and counting calories. I find that when I keep busy thinking about my life, who I am, where am headed and finding the missing ‘something’, I even forget to eat. Forgetting to eat is not a good thing so I try to keep to my meal times as much as possible. Occupy your mind with deep thoughts to keep food and other distractions out of your mind. You can only think about one thing at any one time, make sure it is something passionate enough to sweep away cravings of any kind. That’s what I keep telling myself but I will admit that there are times I just have to satisfy the craving and do so gladly, knowing that it will be a strong justification for my next workout.
My aim is not to look like anyone else, I just want to look like myself and be happy with what I’ve got and maintain the size I feel comfortable with. No body is perfect and when all is said and done, to quote King Solomon, fat or thin, we all die the same way.
Forgiveness is now second nature to me and am proud of myself for changing. It was not easy but after a while, I actually felt good about being on talking terms with everyone in my life and letting bygones be bygones. Learning how to forgive was a huge lesson for me. After I succeeded in doing it, I felt like I had graduated a class and could now move on to more strenuous exercises of the mind. I think that’s how I got to thinking about God.
As far as God is concerned, I realized that when I thought I was an atheist philosopher, I was cheating myself. The truth of the matter is that as human beings, we all yearn to find someone who knows us and understands us completely. Someone who finishes our sentences, someone who knows our different looks, someone who shares our sense of humour, someone who can tell when we’re lying about how we feel, someone to share secret jokes with, someone to be naked around, someone who makes you feel comfortable being yourself completely. We are excited when we visit a fortune teller or a palm reader or read our horoscopes and discover that someone out there knows something about us which we did not know anybody else knew.
The truth is that no such person exists outside of you. You will find those different qualities in different people but never in one person. If your own mother in whose womb you were formed, and your own father who raised you from babyhood cannot know and understand you completely, such that you leave home and go out looking for that someone out in the world, don’t cheat yourself that you will ever meet any person who does.
I have realized that not believing in God is a dangerous thing. When you refuse to acknowledge that yearning inside you and accept it as something that connects you with your true self, your God, the yearning does not go away, it becomes a flesh-eating microorganism which science has not yet ‘discovered’.
Just because we cannot yet see it under the microscopes we have today does not mean it doesn’t exist. I have seen it eating at a lot of people I know and when I discovered it in my body, I almost fainted. It is the most hideous thing ever.
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