Mind Boggling
By Njeri Mucheru-Oyatta
When I was single, before I met my husband, I had resolved NEVER to get married. I had had my heart shattered to smitherines and had decided that I was just fine on my own. I was actually a very happy single person. My life was so well organized and I knew what I wanted and where I was headed, all on my own. I cannot now remember what that was that I wanted and where it was that I was headed.
I told myself that the reason I got my heart broken was because I had settled for less than the best when I was the best. Good and better were not good enough for me. Looking back on this experience. I saw clearly, the danger of atheist philosophy. I was yearning for God and trying to find Him in the people I met, expecting them to understand and know me completely. An impossible task for them.
Most people who know me well will tell you that I am too good to be true and that they cannot figure me out. These days I do not try to explain myself to anyone and I am not surprised when people doubt me. I just get on with my life and hope that they will come around eventually and see that I am just like them. Just like now on my quest, I was alone. I am a veteran at being alone in a world of billions.
After that heart rending experience, I decided that if ever I was to allow anyone close to me, whether as a friend or a husband, that person would have to be better than me. As good as me was not enough. I needed someone who could bring out the best in me and challenge me to be better than the best person I thought I was. Although I was happy, I was still missing ‘something’. I was convinced that such a person does not exist but I still hoped that there was such a person. I knew it was too much to ask to expect there to be more than one such person.
When I got to know my husband, I realized that he was better than me. I was still a giving person at that time but his giving outshone mine by miles. I was working out on a daily basis at home but he was working out on a daily basis at his gym. I was employed and working for myself, just on the brink of breaking free and he had his own office for many years. He was older than me but the things he had achieved by the time he was my age, I was nowhere close to achieving. This guy actually made me feel small when I thought I was big. He was like me but better than me. I did not bother myself with whether or not he understood and knew me, I only wanted to know if he would act in my best interests.
When we met, he was driving a Toyota land cruiser prado while I was driving a Toyota rav 4. I thought our cars clearly represented how we were related. We were manufactured in the same factory, our designs were similar but our performances were worlds apart. We were the same but also very different. As a rav 4, I needed to work extremely hard to catch up with that land cruiser.
I have a friend who knows my criteria for a suitable mate off-head. I had told them to him enough times for him to recite them like a nursery rhyme. Absolutely no smoking. I hate cigarette smoke but I detest the smell of nicotine on anything that is not an unlit cigarette safely tucked in an unopened packet. This does not mean that I do not have friends who smoke, but the smoking will ensure that I keep a substantial distance from them. This friend of mine is a smoker. I will never understand why people choose to smoke. It is not an addiction as many will say, it is a choice. If you stop and think deeply about what you are doing when you smoke, you will realize that you are making a choice to smoke and you are responsible for the consequences of that choice whether to yourself or to others. Everyone, even the smokers know that it is not good to smoke. Shallow thinking makes sure they keep at it. As I said, I can only control what I think and do, so I accept the smokers’ choice because it is theirs to make even though it affects me.
Alcohol was a dicey factor because I could drink sometimes. But I was not sure that a guy who drinks could control his alcohol intake as well as I could mine. I also do not like the smell of alcohol on anything other than an alcoholic drink. The behaviour of an intoxicated individual, which I had experience of, was out of the question. I decided that I did not need to make any decision on this one since anyway it was not relevant in my happily single life at the time.
Never in a million years would I share a man with another woman. But, if my man wanted another woman, I would not stand in the way of their relationship. The lives of both my mother and my mum fortified this requirement.
I could not imagine a man younger than me understanding someone as complicated as me so I was not ever going to hook up with a man the same age as me. He had to be at least 5 years older than me.
My home for me was my refuge. It was a place to run away to from all the madness and stresses of the world. No way was I going to live with someone who brought home that madness and stress. Only a person whose presence improved the silence of my empty apartment could qualify.
My husband was surprisingly available and a teetotaler when I met him. He qualified on all counts so I only needed minimum thinking to respond when, after dating for 3 months, he asked me why it is that we were not getting married. I told him that I did not have the money and he looked at me and laughed. Another 3 months later, we were married.
I remember when we decided to get married, we made a pact with each other. That we would NEVER engage in any ‘petty squabbles’. Petty squabbles are the mothers of broken marriages as far as am concerned. The mother of petty squabbles, is feminism.
By Njeri Mucheru-Oyatta
When I was single, before I met my husband, I had resolved NEVER to get married. I had had my heart shattered to smitherines and had decided that I was just fine on my own. I was actually a very happy single person. My life was so well organized and I knew what I wanted and where I was headed, all on my own. I cannot now remember what that was that I wanted and where it was that I was headed.
I told myself that the reason I got my heart broken was because I had settled for less than the best when I was the best. Good and better were not good enough for me. Looking back on this experience. I saw clearly, the danger of atheist philosophy. I was yearning for God and trying to find Him in the people I met, expecting them to understand and know me completely. An impossible task for them.
Most people who know me well will tell you that I am too good to be true and that they cannot figure me out. These days I do not try to explain myself to anyone and I am not surprised when people doubt me. I just get on with my life and hope that they will come around eventually and see that I am just like them. Just like now on my quest, I was alone. I am a veteran at being alone in a world of billions.
After that heart rending experience, I decided that if ever I was to allow anyone close to me, whether as a friend or a husband, that person would have to be better than me. As good as me was not enough. I needed someone who could bring out the best in me and challenge me to be better than the best person I thought I was. Although I was happy, I was still missing ‘something’. I was convinced that such a person does not exist but I still hoped that there was such a person. I knew it was too much to ask to expect there to be more than one such person.
When I got to know my husband, I realized that he was better than me. I was still a giving person at that time but his giving outshone mine by miles. I was working out on a daily basis at home but he was working out on a daily basis at his gym. I was employed and working for myself, just on the brink of breaking free and he had his own office for many years. He was older than me but the things he had achieved by the time he was my age, I was nowhere close to achieving. This guy actually made me feel small when I thought I was big. He was like me but better than me. I did not bother myself with whether or not he understood and knew me, I only wanted to know if he would act in my best interests.
When we met, he was driving a Toyota land cruiser prado while I was driving a Toyota rav 4. I thought our cars clearly represented how we were related. We were manufactured in the same factory, our designs were similar but our performances were worlds apart. We were the same but also very different. As a rav 4, I needed to work extremely hard to catch up with that land cruiser.
I have a friend who knows my criteria for a suitable mate off-head. I had told them to him enough times for him to recite them like a nursery rhyme. Absolutely no smoking. I hate cigarette smoke but I detest the smell of nicotine on anything that is not an unlit cigarette safely tucked in an unopened packet. This does not mean that I do not have friends who smoke, but the smoking will ensure that I keep a substantial distance from them. This friend of mine is a smoker. I will never understand why people choose to smoke. It is not an addiction as many will say, it is a choice. If you stop and think deeply about what you are doing when you smoke, you will realize that you are making a choice to smoke and you are responsible for the consequences of that choice whether to yourself or to others. Everyone, even the smokers know that it is not good to smoke. Shallow thinking makes sure they keep at it. As I said, I can only control what I think and do, so I accept the smokers’ choice because it is theirs to make even though it affects me.
Alcohol was a dicey factor because I could drink sometimes. But I was not sure that a guy who drinks could control his alcohol intake as well as I could mine. I also do not like the smell of alcohol on anything other than an alcoholic drink. The behaviour of an intoxicated individual, which I had experience of, was out of the question. I decided that I did not need to make any decision on this one since anyway it was not relevant in my happily single life at the time.
Never in a million years would I share a man with another woman. But, if my man wanted another woman, I would not stand in the way of their relationship. The lives of both my mother and my mum fortified this requirement.
I could not imagine a man younger than me understanding someone as complicated as me so I was not ever going to hook up with a man the same age as me. He had to be at least 5 years older than me.
My home for me was my refuge. It was a place to run away to from all the madness and stresses of the world. No way was I going to live with someone who brought home that madness and stress. Only a person whose presence improved the silence of my empty apartment could qualify.
My husband was surprisingly available and a teetotaler when I met him. He qualified on all counts so I only needed minimum thinking to respond when, after dating for 3 months, he asked me why it is that we were not getting married. I told him that I did not have the money and he looked at me and laughed. Another 3 months later, we were married.
I remember when we decided to get married, we made a pact with each other. That we would NEVER engage in any ‘petty squabbles’. Petty squabbles are the mothers of broken marriages as far as am concerned. The mother of petty squabbles, is feminism.
1 comment:
3 months? How now?
Criteria like it was a job application...
But I understand
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