The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts.
marcus aurelius
It is hard to see any good today.
Our world is a scary and depressing place full of bad news. Politicians and conspiracy theorists live to generate petty propaganda. That makes politics and associated deceit look like the most ingenious and influential occupations in the world. Haters have more energy than we can deflate. They give us sleepless nights and remotely control our daytime emotions. Imams and pastors make it worse by reminding us of inevitable afterlife fate, that this world is not meant for enjoyment. That it is a transitionary testing ground only meant for a heavenly or hellish ending. From all we see and hear, this place called earth looks like it was made for endless misery.
Our homes, our workplaces, our commutes and our leisure dens all make us somehow unhappy. We are miserable when spending time with the ones we claim to love. Grunting when doing the jobs we claim to enjoy. We stay restless while sleeping in homes we built to find comfort. We rage when driving the cars that others would die to take a ride in. Our minds don’t find peace while eating sumptuous meals we spend so much time preparing. Why so much mental torment? Why is this world such a stressful place for some of us and not for others?
Our village was the landing space of sicknesses.
You know, my hood had all the things that made pests thrive. Primitive homesteads with no toilets, flooded rice farms, and sharing of dwelling shacks with chicken and goats. Flies and ticks found company in our people and our livestock. Leeches, snails and mosquitoes sheltered in the river and rice paddies. Snakes and scorpions got cool hideouts in the nooks of our earthen huts. While bedbugs, fleas and lice found sanctuary in the beds and bodies of villagers. A day would never go without a bite or a sting. Our village was the Maasai Mara of vermin and venom.
People suffered from all manner of infections, poisons, and injuries. Rats gnawed on our feet at night, only to wake up with half the sole skin gone. Working in the paddies guaranteed encounters with blood-sucking leeches and snails. Peeing blood or pooping lengthy tapeworms was a common thing. Itching and scratching of all body parts in public was no big deal. Even openly taking off clothes under vicious bug attacks was acceptable. And so was picking and crushing insects with teeth and fingernails. Every season had its fair share of creatures and related public drama.
The rice-planting season brought bloodthirsty, miniature mosquitoes.
Mwea mozzies were tiny, crude warriors. Who attacked with the zeal of modern-day suicide bombers. They buzzed loudly without care, singing a monotonic dirge. They fleeted loudly like bomber jets, taking turns to refuel from our frail bodies. Well informed that we could not afford bed nets and insecticides. They cared less about our smoky repellents – lethal smoke from burning dry cow dung and croton nuts. These minute tormentors did their thing with sheer impunity while we choked in our useless repellents.
In drier seasons, the fleas took centre stage. First descending on our goats and pigs until they could not get enough blood supply. Then they moved to our chickens, covering their crowns and blinding their eyes. Finally, they invaded our shacks. Trotting to attack limbs whenever one stepped into the hut. They never heeded to the desperate watering, sweeping, and spreading of ashes on the earthen floors. They gored and firmly attached to our tiny toes. Eventually morphing into rounded, bumpy, jellyish white jiggers. That damaged and itched like hell. Those of little hygiene got their feet permanently deformed into a web-like structure. That could never, ever fit into a shoe.
In my family, I was the prime target of all infections.
Every school term saw me down and out of class with a severe malady. Malaria was a given case every three months. And so was Bilharzia and amoebiasis. If not, I contracted mumps or some weird skin infection. Every sickness that came to the village never left without paying me homage. At some point, I was convinced that our village witch was making me pay the price for punching her irritating daughter. If my parents were not committed Christians, they would have sought some magical antidote from supernatural assault.
Whenever I fell ill, the first line of treatment was to walk some six kilometres away to the nearest dispensary. It did not matter how severe the sickness was or what body part was ailing. I had to trek in the hot sun and meet our village “doctor”—a kind man who welcomed and registered my visit with patience and pleasantries. Asking about my parents, school, and all, while constantly glancing at the loud kerosene stove with boiling needles, pliers, and forceps. It was a clever way to dissipate the fear of his tools. Those days, the only trusted treatment for all illnesses was a painful poke on the backside.
A genuinely severe or exaggerated illness resulted in a car trip.
Failure to respond to drugs from the village clinic earned a referral to the nearest health centre, some twenty kilometres away. This is a place my father’s bicycle could not manage a return trip. So, getting there had to be a joyful ride in rustic “face me” matatus. My mother woke up early to prepare and leave. That was a day of great privilege – seeing her take a break from her large brood to pay attention and spend time and money on me. A day she was unusually friendly and comforting all along the bumpy ride.
We would finally arrive at the health centre. A prominent facility with a ubiquitous smell of medicine and countless nurses and clinicians in eye-catching uniforms. Their demeanour was less cordial. Often rude, shouting, and hurling insults at poor patients. This was probably because of their social status – good schooling and living in stone houses with glass windows, unlike my ununiformed village “doctor”, who rode his bicycle home every day. These arrogant workers took long tea breaks and ran personal errands while we miserably waited for their untimed comeback.
After several frustrating hours and treatment, it was time to go home.
The moment I always looked forward to “reward” my sickness. My mother, a fast and impatient walker, marched out of the hospital and straight to a nearby food kiosk. A tiny, smoky, rustic, corrugated iron sheet shack with makeshift tables and benches made from thin, unfinished wooden planks. It was a beehive of activity, crowded with hungry diners and shouting waiters and cooks. It was the best hotel in Kimbimbi, and possibly, in the whole world back then.
The aroma of foods in this hotel was out of this world. Chapati with boiled cabbage, meat and potato stew. The prestigious meal that was only eaten in my village during special feasts. Blazing hot chilli and potato samosas – the tasty snack that cooks could never hack to make in my village hotel. “Toast mafuta”, stacked fresh slices of bread smeared with a thick layer of margarine. “Toast mayai”, the uncomplicated, drab, village version of French toast.
And so were the numerous dining rules and words of wisdom pasted on the walls. Like “do put sugar in your pocket” or “payment is cash terms only” or “food from outside is illegal”. Some others were inspirational like “jiheshimu uheshimiwe” (respect yourself to deserve respect from others) and “kula kwanza kesi baadaye” (eat first and worry about payment later). Or even “maskini habagui” (a poor person doesn’t care about about making choices). The walls were truly satirical, with plenty of content from the handwritten pricelist and cyclostyled caricatures.
My mother’s thrifty and standard order would finally arrive.
Boiling mixed African tea and two mandazis for each of us. The mandazis, a sugared, salted, and deep-fried puffy dough, were the speciality item here. They were humongous, soft and fleshy pieces of pastry, unlike the thin, cracky, air-filled ones made in my village. The tea was milky and skilfully served, boiling from a blackened aluminium pot and poured into chipped, giant, enamel mugs. Sugar was unlimited and placed on the table. This hotel was the only place I was free to sweeten my tea to a syrup under my mother’s watch.
I dug in hungrily to wipe away the suffering of the illness. Or forget the hard pretence of it. The time spent in this hotel washed away the frustration of missing school and play. It was a pacifier for the gruelling walk in the hot sun for kilometres to get a worthless jab at the dispensary. It exceeded other home benefits of being sick, like being excluded from farm work and a break from hard-to-chew meals. This hotel treat was the ultimate reward for all my vermin attacks and illnesses.
There is always a good side to every bad situation.
If only we can look around. In good, there is evil, and in evil, there is good. In life, there is death, and in death, there is life. Everything has an opposite end to itself. However, our minds are trained to look at the wrong side of life. This is how nature protects us from life-threatening dangers akin to the ones we experienced in the jungle. But since we no longer live under that level of risky exposure, our brains scan for minor stressors. That is why we never notice much good in our daily life. Instead, we pay attention to the ugly side of it.
Bob Proctor, a proponent of universal laws, asserts, “the Law of Polarity not only states that everything has an opposite … it is equal and opposite.” Whatever you see or feel has an opposite and equal dimension or feeling. If something makes you sad, the same thing has its joyful content and can make your happiness with similar intensity. A situation that makes you feel like your life is coming to an end is the same situation that offers a fresh beginning. When nothing seems to yield anything, it is a time to sow something else and reap big time later. What you are craving to have exists in what you already have. Only that you are not paying intentional attention.
We need to train our minds to find and experience the good.
Our thoughts are generators of our bodily vibration and, therefore, determine the frequency of our existence. This vibration is what we call feelings. If we see the bad and ugly in our environment, we set our bodies to lower vibration. We feel stressed, angry, sad, desperate, hopeless, anxious, depressed, and the like. If we train our guns on the good of our surroundings, we initiate a higher vibration. That breeds energy, optimism, joy, contentment, pride, motivation, satisfaction, curiosity, and other high-frequency emotions.
Building our self-awareness on how we feel at all times is what is called emotional intelligence or EI. And the most significant element of EI is emotional regulation. Prof. Marc Brackett defines emotional regulation as the set of “thoughts” and “actions” we use to prevent, reduce, initiate, maintain, or enhance emotions to promote personal growth, build relationships, achieve greater well being, and attain our goals.
How we feel is our own making.
The cliché of defining and excusing everything due to genetics is slowly fading away. The things that you think are inherent in you are most probably not. Leading geneticists and medics have figured out how little our genes influence our health and habits. Our emotional states determine our physical, mental and emotional health. What ails us is not genetically inherited from our ancestors. It is because we practice their negative thought patterns and live in emotional states akin to theirs. It’s not their weak genes we carry; we ignorantly nurture their destructive thought patterns and emotions.
Our feelings are our responses and not the direct result of the stimuli. How we feel is not necessarily aligned to what caused it, but rather, how we have processed our thoughts about the cause. If you are quick to anger, it is due to how you interpret situations. If losing and disappointments make you sad or depressed for long, it is due to the conversations in your head. You are not in a sad situation; it is your thoughts that are on a sad wavelength.
Fortify your emotional environment and master regulation strategies.
I am not an advocate of positive thinking concepts. But I stand for the ability of humans to seize control of their emotional environment and responses. Choose people and places wisely. Ditch toxic company and cleverly build relationships that nourish your soul. Avoid being in depressive spaces. Control the type of content you consume on social and other media. Safeguard your exposure to negativity. But that does not mean that you can live in a happiness bubble. This world is full of toxic people and places, so you will find yourself in that zone of negative feelings once in a while. While there, feel it, and tell yourself it is okay. After all, you are just human. But soon after, get yourself out of it.
Learn and apply the technics of avoidance or getting out of depressive moods. Listen to your favourite music, seek laughter or sing it out. Take a walk or a jog, or anything else to break a sweat. Teach yourself breathing exercises, mindfulness and guided self-reflection. Raise your level of self-awareness and continually practice daily self-care by ensuring movement, nutrition, sleep, hydration and relating. Manage your inner dialogue through positive self-talk and intuitive self-reappraisal. Most importantly, remember that you’re not what you have been made to believe you are.
In the words of Mahatma Gandhi,
“Your beliefs become your thoughts, Your thoughts become your words, Your words become your actions, Your actions become your habits, Your habits become your values, Your values become your destiny.”
Change your everyday thoughts to redefine your life destiny.
