The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step
lao tzu
Everywhere you go, there is a code of unspoken language.
The way you dress, the style of your hair, the way you walk, the tone of your skin, even the heaviness of your tongue. There are societal measures of belonging or not amongst any group of people. Whether going out for drinks with friends or going to a place of worship. You are subjected to judgement by waiters and worshippers alike. If you do not belong, they will figure out the faux pas in your dress code.
And so was to land in the city dressed as a villager. The choices of village fashion are distinct and frowned upon by town people. They make you stand out and declare yourself an immigrant—a novice of fabric tastes and other things in life that sharpen and spice up your social standing. You not only become a victim of silent ridicule but of town vices. Especially frauds, errant cops, muggers, and pickpockets. And before long, you learn that the only way to survive is to become unmarkable by reforming the wardrobe and upgrading the walking style.
To survive, debut city shopping was urgent.
I had heard of Gikomba, the unimaginable second-hand open-air market where the trendy people of Nairobi bought their clothes. My village market fashionista had always talked about it. He claimed to go there routinely to learn and purchase new stock. I loved spending time with him whenever he came back to catch up with styles of my urban contemporaries. I always knew deep down that the village was never going to be my home for long.
But soon after landing in the city, I realized that he might have been phoney, after all. There was no doubt that despite having paid him a final visit and getting primped for relocation to the city, I clearly stood out as a country cousin on campus. And that was somehow depressing because I was forever known to be the most well-dressed lad in the village. My mates depended on my shopping and dressing counsel whenever they had big events like meeting a new girlfriend or travelling far to visit their relatives. But looking at how young people dressed in town, my style was backward and needed an emergency upgrade.
I was not the only one on campus with a wardrobe challenge.
Classmates fresh from upcountry schools were in a similar situation. Some of them wore ridiculously oversized outfits and shoes. For some, you would know the part of the country they came from by their weird colour combinations. Others silently displayed the remoteness and weather in the villages they came from. And for others, it was easy to tell their religions and sects and their grade of devotion. It was easy to separate the guy who would get hitched on campus and the one who would graduate and go back to the village to look for a job and a bride.
After wiping out my first student loan from the bank account and pocketing the most significant cash ever, clothes shopping was the top agenda. My friends and I planned to visit downtown and indulge in this new pleasure of city spending. The problem was, we did not know where Gikomba was and how to get ourselves there. We could not even dare to cross the busy street outside the university hostels on our own, nor make good choices of the things to buy. But most of all, the fear of being robbed and losing our monies was the real scare.
We spread the word of our dilemma amongst other rural migrants on campus.
After a few days of waiting, we got a connection to a city college mate willing to be our shopping guide. A meeting was arranged in one of the evenings to introduce ourselves and brief him. We spoke about our desires to look nice and own expensive things. The guy was friendly, polite and spoke very little. Only nodding to signify his understanding of our wishes. In the beginning, he raised my doubts on whether he was legit and reminded me of my fake village couturier. But after long observation, I figured that his confidence and posture were that of a true urban lad.
In his parting remarks, he warned it was going to be a long day of fast walking. And if the day is going to be long in the village, you start it by heavily stuffing early in the morning. Because a villager is never hopeful in finding eating places in a town, nor make sense in their prices and portions. The quantities they serve never live to the expectation of a full meal. So, I planned to wake up early and begin the day by double loading with portions of bread, boiled eggs, sausages, and milky African tea.
The set-off was a clear sign of an exhausting day.
The guy kicked off with a walking speed similar to that of a village runner. My taller friends upped their game and began to pace faster without much struggle. Being the tiniest and shortest in the group, I began to pace up quicker, but all in vain. No matter how hard I tried, I found myself left way behind, and I was finally compelled to jog. Eventually, we made our first shopping stop.
One of us spotted shoes on offer through the window display of Nairobi Sports House. We checked out the large, screaming price tags and decided to make our first buy of the day. The wide selection of stuff was unbelievable, having been used to small village shops. I somehow chose a sports shoe I thought was trendy and affordable—all plastic with a white sole and brilliant yellow, lilac green, charcoal black and crimson red body. Everyone else opted for the same.
We went further downtown, which became more crowded and hectic. Rude handcart pushers, hostile hawkers, speeding cyclists, bullying pedestrians, and menacing matatu touts. We frequently stopped to gaze at things that urbanites found mundane—wanting to buy everything along the way and getting into trouble with the street crowds for blocking their route with our slow walking and endless ogling.
Eventually, we arrived in Gikomba.
It was way different from my village market. Our vendors politely smiled as you passed by their neatly arranged stalls. This place appeared like where the rest of the world dumped all the stuff it found unworthy to bury or set on fire. Broken furniture, tired toys, torn underwear, rustic shoes, vintage bedding, name it. Noisy men bellowed strange tunes to attract customers while doing all manner of weird things, like wearing bras and adorning women’s underwear as headgear. I had never imagined getting myself into this kind of madness in the name of shopping.
We soon settled for business. We fitted all sorts of clothes before seeking our guide’s approval of taste and price. We bought socks, shoes, belts, caps, bags, electricals, and anything else that lacked in our villages. After hours of random spending and stressful walking, we turned back to campus, carrying large bags of belongings. We reached our rooms tired, raring to display our wares and upgraded looks. That is when I discovered that I had spent the day and money buying ridiculously crappy stuff. Despite this final frustration, the shopping trip reduced my fear of walking in town and opened my way to dress like a townie.
Fear is mostly the thing behind inaction.
It is the basis of laziness and catastrophizing – thinking that the worst will happen in every unknown situation. Catastrophizing regularly is embracing desperation as an objective in one’s life. It is about seeing small happenings as significant calamities. It is mentally exaggerating negative situations and seeing them worse than they are or can become. In the extreme sense, it is a cognitive distortion that prompts people to jump to the worst possible conclusion without a sound basis. Catastrophizing makes things appear to be way harder than they indeed are.
In their book, The Net and the Butterfly, leadership experts Olivia Fox Cabane and Judah Pollack note that catastrophizing is meant to emotionally prepare us for the worst. In our nature, the absence of fear would lead to extreme enjoyment and, as a result, expose us to lots of life-threatening indulgences. Therefore, fear is a default instinct meant to make us survive. Meaning that fear is part and parcel of our lives, and as a result, catastrophizing is inevitable.
We are not born fearful.
The only innate fears we have from the start are the fear of falling and loud sounds. The rest of our fears are learned. While growing up, our environment trains us to be scared. We are taught to notice and remember harmful incidents, which reinforces a perception that the world is scary. That people out there are not to be trusted and are dangerous. That failure and disappointment are harmful and irreversible and should be avoided at all costs. Through this coaching by our raisers and our environment, we slowly lose the courage and confidence of our childhood and begin to prepare ourselves for fearful adulthood.
We start to read and dread people and situations around us. We form beliefs that are far from reality and rely on our and other people’s fearful imaginations. We inherit the fears of those who raised us and those that raised them. What scared your parents is likely to be what dissipates your courage. If your raisers got butterflies in hard work and success, you are likely to become a slacker and a pauper too. If they never embraced growth and competitiveness, they probably tempered your energy and trained you to become submissive.
The problem is not being fearful but unable to overcome basic fear.
Everyone encounters fearful thoughts whenever they think or want to do something new or challenging, which means that fear of failure or the unknown is indiscriminate. All of us must face this dilemma of overcoming fear to progress. However, our default setting is to avoid the risk of making blunders and becoming failures. This avoidance of loss is what makes us want to do what is familiar. The problem is, what is well known to work can be done by anyone and everyone. It can never be innovative or progressive and is uselessly competitive.
Since we no longer live in the jungle, our fear instinct doesn’t save us from beasts but now inhibits our individual growth and advancement of society. Besides limiting personal improvement, the extreme levels of this negativity – amplifying behaviour leads to a cognitive disorder. It can affect the physiology of the brain, intensify chronic pain, and worsen fatigue. It can lead to an increased sense of hopelessness and result in anxiety and depression.
The first step in any new direction takes courage.
The anxiety about fear of failure, judgement or even required effort is genuinely frightening. Taking a new action is never easy because it requires a great deal of energy and change. In most cases, we know what we need to do, but fear of the unknown and the joy of our comfort stand in our way. Yet, we know that doing things differently is the only way to make our lives better. But somehow, we choose to stay where we are and nurse our fears at the expense of our growth.
The first step is to realize that you are not in the right place or you are doing things the wrong way. Next is to make a move in a new and better direction. When you start moving, you discover a path that is invisible while standing still. The moment you make the first step, you immediately begin to see where to land next. This action gets you out of your comfort zone. Your confidence rises, and self-doubt dissipates. Your brain starts to grow and forms new connections – enhancing your capability.
Progression is only possible through overcoming fear and acting.
Making the first move is all about believing that what lies ahead is surmountable. The first step is never the hardest because more challenging moments always lie ahead. Being fearful of change is what makes a new beginning hard. Because change is scary in all forms. Breaking the mould causes pain and discomfort. Living in comfortable misery and catastrophizing failure feel much better, even though one knows that there will be a heavy price to pay in the end.
You have failed before, and that tends to make you believe that you are a failure. This is never true; it is just a trick that fear plays to hold you captive. Instead, take failures as valuable lessons of enriching life. The most sensible thing is to bring along the wisdom of past experiences in each new beginning. The more you learn to fail, the more courage you gather to try, and the higher the chances of building something genuinely successful in the end.
You have done it before, so why not now?
We all have demonstrated courage and made great leaps of faith in the past. Pushing out of our mothers’ wombs – courage, a big one for everyone. Remember learning to drive and doing that test? Or do you recall the first date or the kiss that came along with it? That was an actual moment of courage, my friend. If you took it further and got married in the hope of spending the rest of your life happily with someone else, that was a giant bet. All our lives are marked by many firsts that have ended well.
Reflect on the many things that scared you and ended easy. Know that what you fear is not absolute and can always be overcome by your choices and actions. Stop idolizing fear, and instead, face it by making the first move in whatever you think will open new horizons in your life. In the words of Brian Tracy, “the act of taking the first step is what separates the winners from the losers.”
If you find the first step hard to take, be comforted to live a loser.
