Mind Boggling
By Njeri Mucheru-Oyatta
Phew…….that forgiving session was tiring. Have you done it? Then you know what I mean. I don’t even think I felt happy about forgiving. The good feeling I was getting from giving evaporated and I felt tired and kind of lost I also felt resentful. Its tough to swallow your pride.
Let me start afresh. I was searching for the reason I was born then I thought that the best way to do this is to make myself aware of what I was doing in my life to understand why my life is the way it is. In this process of awareness, I discovered that I was a mean driver and lift sharer, I was lazy and I was unforgiving. These things made me feel guilty and took away the happiness that I desired to have in my life. So I changed them. Whereas changing the first three was a breeze, the forgiveness one left me in this exhausted and deflated state.
I needed to do something to lift my spirits and make me feel like am a good person. I could not imagine that inspite of everything that I thought I was, the same person who was too big to forgive, I could feel so small because of some silly little aspect in my life. There is a lesson to be learned here. I have realized that everything you do and everything that you are matters. Because when one part of you is wrong, then the rest of you cannot achieve happiness in the sense of feeling complete and content with yourself. No wonder I was feeling like something was missing in my life. But why didn’t I feel like I was on the right track to finding that missing “something”? Perhaps it was because I had not completely let go of the pride that was making me a hardhearted, unforgiving person. I had not forgiven myself for not knowing better and turning the tables on myself when I was on the winning side after I had been wronged.
If forgiving another person is difficult, forgiving yourself is hardwork. I took a break. I sat by myself outside in the garden and conducted a small funeral. I grieved about my stupid pride, I lay it down in front of me and took a hard look at that pride, I buried it, cried, then got up and went to do the things I knew would make me happy and make me love myself again. I spent time with my daughter. She is the apple of my eye. When I prayed to God for a healthy normal baby, he exceeded my expectations tremendously. He gave me the perfect baby in my eyes. Just the sight of her lifts my spirits to the sky in seconds. After she fell asleep, I watched Grey’s Anatomy then I slept. Next morning I was dying for a work out and jumped into my gym room with glee. Working out is very easy when my spirits are down. I don’t know why. I just feel so much better afterwards.
After that ritual, I was ready to move on. I forgave myself and comforted myself by accepting my mistake as part of the great person I am today. It is this great person that I know I can be that makes me yearn for that missing ‘something’. Don’t get me wrong, am not interested in fame and fortune, am interested in looking at myself and seeing myself in the same way as when I look in the newspapers and magazines and see those who have fame and fortune. I want to know myself as a great person. It’s a personal thing.
I think that greatness belongs not to those who have achieved fame and fortune in the eyes of the world (like politicians who break their promises as soon as they get voted in), but to those who truly know themselves, are fully aware of what they are doing and who change the lives of those they meet for the better. I want to be one of those people or at least try to be one of them because I think that a life of constant self-improvement and learning is a happy life. Also, when you are one of those people, you possess a power stronger than a man with a gun because you are ready to welcome anything that life throws at you, including death, with open arms.
Such people live their lives like us when we play video/computer games. The more difficult the level, the more exciting it is to play. They are able to turn a tragedy into an opportunity to do good and to learn. To these people, there is no such thing as a ‘bad’ or ‘good’ thing. Just like everyone does good and bad things every now and then, a thing is only good or bad based on how you look at it. They always look for the good in people and in events and in things.
Unfortunately for me, I have never met such a person. I have only read about them. Everyone I know is like me. Those who are alive and who I think might be one these people (like Nelson Mandela) are too great for little me to ever meet. But even before I got to know about Nelson Mandela, I knew that there was greatness in me but I was afraid to pursue it. The same fear that was discouraging me from starting this quest for the reason I was born had made me believe that such greatness belongs to them not us.
I am not willing to accept that position any more. All of us were born with nothing but a body, mind, soul and spirit. Why should some of us be greater than others? I don’t even know who are ‘them’ and ‘us’. This grouping is warped. We are all one species of human beings and no-one is better than anyone else since we are all different and unique. We all have our own special talents. It is only that some of us are better at thinking and digging through the massive rubble of life and finding their purpose than others. Some are too busy getting distracted by the many distractions that life has to offer like alcohol, drugs, sex, jealousy, envy, pride, selfishness, food, sports, education, politics and of course, the biggest distraction of all, MONEY.
In order to steer clear of these distractions, which I admit are extremely attractive and have distracted me many times before, I needed to get myself a mentor, someone I could learn from and who to me is one of those great people I was talking about. After a long spirited search for a prime candidate as my teacher on how to be great, I picked on none other than Jesus Christ. Why Him? Because, He achieved fame and fortune throughout the world in a very short time when cars, trains, telegrams, television and internet did not exist, he did not have a career, he did not make any money but always had enough to eat, clothes to wear and a roof over his head. He was crucified and people talk about Him as if He’s here with us.
Ok, well truthfully, at the time, the hit movie ‘The Da Vinci Code’ had just been released. I am not good at choosing from a huge selection of things. I prefer to buy things at the last minute when I don’t have enough time to look around and are limited to the first shop I go into. So Jesus was the choice for me. Seemed appropriate for me to jump on the bandwagon and form an opinion about Jesus. I really didn’t care about whether or not He was born of a virgin or whether He rose from the dead or whether He performed miracles and all that stuff. I just wanted a great person to mentor me and He qualified.
There was just one small problem. I did not believe in God.
By Njeri Mucheru-Oyatta
Phew…….that forgiving session was tiring. Have you done it? Then you know what I mean. I don’t even think I felt happy about forgiving. The good feeling I was getting from giving evaporated and I felt tired and kind of lost I also felt resentful. Its tough to swallow your pride.
Let me start afresh. I was searching for the reason I was born then I thought that the best way to do this is to make myself aware of what I was doing in my life to understand why my life is the way it is. In this process of awareness, I discovered that I was a mean driver and lift sharer, I was lazy and I was unforgiving. These things made me feel guilty and took away the happiness that I desired to have in my life. So I changed them. Whereas changing the first three was a breeze, the forgiveness one left me in this exhausted and deflated state.
I needed to do something to lift my spirits and make me feel like am a good person. I could not imagine that inspite of everything that I thought I was, the same person who was too big to forgive, I could feel so small because of some silly little aspect in my life. There is a lesson to be learned here. I have realized that everything you do and everything that you are matters. Because when one part of you is wrong, then the rest of you cannot achieve happiness in the sense of feeling complete and content with yourself. No wonder I was feeling like something was missing in my life. But why didn’t I feel like I was on the right track to finding that missing “something”? Perhaps it was because I had not completely let go of the pride that was making me a hardhearted, unforgiving person. I had not forgiven myself for not knowing better and turning the tables on myself when I was on the winning side after I had been wronged.
If forgiving another person is difficult, forgiving yourself is hardwork. I took a break. I sat by myself outside in the garden and conducted a small funeral. I grieved about my stupid pride, I lay it down in front of me and took a hard look at that pride, I buried it, cried, then got up and went to do the things I knew would make me happy and make me love myself again. I spent time with my daughter. She is the apple of my eye. When I prayed to God for a healthy normal baby, he exceeded my expectations tremendously. He gave me the perfect baby in my eyes. Just the sight of her lifts my spirits to the sky in seconds. After she fell asleep, I watched Grey’s Anatomy then I slept. Next morning I was dying for a work out and jumped into my gym room with glee. Working out is very easy when my spirits are down. I don’t know why. I just feel so much better afterwards.
After that ritual, I was ready to move on. I forgave myself and comforted myself by accepting my mistake as part of the great person I am today. It is this great person that I know I can be that makes me yearn for that missing ‘something’. Don’t get me wrong, am not interested in fame and fortune, am interested in looking at myself and seeing myself in the same way as when I look in the newspapers and magazines and see those who have fame and fortune. I want to know myself as a great person. It’s a personal thing.
I think that greatness belongs not to those who have achieved fame and fortune in the eyes of the world (like politicians who break their promises as soon as they get voted in), but to those who truly know themselves, are fully aware of what they are doing and who change the lives of those they meet for the better. I want to be one of those people or at least try to be one of them because I think that a life of constant self-improvement and learning is a happy life. Also, when you are one of those people, you possess a power stronger than a man with a gun because you are ready to welcome anything that life throws at you, including death, with open arms.
Such people live their lives like us when we play video/computer games. The more difficult the level, the more exciting it is to play. They are able to turn a tragedy into an opportunity to do good and to learn. To these people, there is no such thing as a ‘bad’ or ‘good’ thing. Just like everyone does good and bad things every now and then, a thing is only good or bad based on how you look at it. They always look for the good in people and in events and in things.
Unfortunately for me, I have never met such a person. I have only read about them. Everyone I know is like me. Those who are alive and who I think might be one these people (like Nelson Mandela) are too great for little me to ever meet. But even before I got to know about Nelson Mandela, I knew that there was greatness in me but I was afraid to pursue it. The same fear that was discouraging me from starting this quest for the reason I was born had made me believe that such greatness belongs to them not us.
I am not willing to accept that position any more. All of us were born with nothing but a body, mind, soul and spirit. Why should some of us be greater than others? I don’t even know who are ‘them’ and ‘us’. This grouping is warped. We are all one species of human beings and no-one is better than anyone else since we are all different and unique. We all have our own special talents. It is only that some of us are better at thinking and digging through the massive rubble of life and finding their purpose than others. Some are too busy getting distracted by the many distractions that life has to offer like alcohol, drugs, sex, jealousy, envy, pride, selfishness, food, sports, education, politics and of course, the biggest distraction of all, MONEY.
In order to steer clear of these distractions, which I admit are extremely attractive and have distracted me many times before, I needed to get myself a mentor, someone I could learn from and who to me is one of those great people I was talking about. After a long spirited search for a prime candidate as my teacher on how to be great, I picked on none other than Jesus Christ. Why Him? Because, He achieved fame and fortune throughout the world in a very short time when cars, trains, telegrams, television and internet did not exist, he did not have a career, he did not make any money but always had enough to eat, clothes to wear and a roof over his head. He was crucified and people talk about Him as if He’s here with us.
Ok, well truthfully, at the time, the hit movie ‘The Da Vinci Code’ had just been released. I am not good at choosing from a huge selection of things. I prefer to buy things at the last minute when I don’t have enough time to look around and are limited to the first shop I go into. So Jesus was the choice for me. Seemed appropriate for me to jump on the bandwagon and form an opinion about Jesus. I really didn’t care about whether or not He was born of a virgin or whether He rose from the dead or whether He performed miracles and all that stuff. I just wanted a great person to mentor me and He qualified.
There was just one small problem. I did not believe in God.
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