“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
rumi
Our default position is that of perfection.
That we are flawless, the standards of what a human should have been at the Garden of Eden. We believe that we are the embodiment of virtuous people, living in a world of imperfect mortals. What if others were as good as we are? What if they all came from wonderful families and were imparted with the enviable values we live by? Couldn’t this earth be turned into a bit of heaven? So we judge their genes and gender, tribes and races, religions and cultures, even their education levels and occupations.
When we cannot figure out anything else, we blame the serpent. That horrible creature that sweet-talked an innocent woman to eat a sacred apple. And slyly turned a magnificent world into an evil dwelling. That is why we must toil, beat drums and chant to overturn that sinful haunt. And if we are genuinely committed to overturning this wrong order, we convert others. To become enlightened and pious as we are. That way, we can lead a happy life and help them do that too. Today’s society has embedded the culture to judge and incessantly change other people out of religion and other self-righteous systems. Mainly for our own good, not theirs.
But why try to fix the weather for you to enjoy it?
That is what my mother committed to doing to my father at some point in her life. Her being married young and from a background of immeasurable poverty and colonial oppression, she was determined to enjoy the beauty and success of life. She spent her leisure time hanging out with friends at our homestead, sorting grains and chatting about village news and history. At other times, she went out just like any other woman of that generation, boozing with mates. Often leaving home after toiling on the farm in the afternoons with her bevy and coming back a bit tipsy in good time to prepare dinner. And occasionally, she did the hosting after preparing several gigantic gourds of a local brew at home.
That was Marwa. A fermented drink from the hand-milled flour of dried bulrush millet sprouts. Even though it no longer exists in my motherland, it is still commonly enjoyed in other parts of Kenya and widely known as Busaa. This is the drink women in my village brewed when they held ritualistic celebrations or hosted neighbours for communal tilling, sowing, weeding or harvesting. These exciting, rotational events always ended with afternoon adult merry-making of feeding and binging. My mother being hard-working and friendly, on occasion accommodated such events until the church started a campaign for women to stop imbibing and wrestle family leadership from their reckless, drunken and adulterous husbands.
This was in the early eighties.
The Catholic Women Association (CWA) became aggressive and a formidable force in our parish. My mother and her close friends joined. One of the joiners’ rules was that every member had to quit alcohol, so she did. The sobriety conversion launched a social movement in our village. Sober women became the voice against excessive drinking and family negligence. They began to pay more attention to their children and cook decent meals for their families. The nightly screams, brawls and running battles between drunken spouses started to vanish. Homes got cleaner and more organized while school enrolment and household incomes began to rise. For the first time, my village woke up to see the ineptitude of patriarchy and witnessed the transformative power of women in society.
This is the same time a new power struggle in the family began.
Women refused to be homestead brewers. The ladies were empowered by sobriety and wanted men to stop drinking too. This call was a tall order in a society where a man was the family captain, that social vessel whose steering had to be fuelled with alcohol. Men retaliated by disappearing from homes for days to drink and cheat in distant villages. Their unrestricted control of homesteads began to wane.
My father was a lover of his drink and the socials around it. Life became hard because my mother refused to brew just like the other converted women. He had to survive and resulted to visiting bars during harvest seasons after selling cotton and grains. He opted to brew the man’s drink more often —a mead known as Muratina. A honey concoction fermented with bacterial culture ingeniously stored in the dried fruit of the highly medicinal African Sausage Tree. Despite its higher cost of brewing, I guess he loved it for its class, taste and kick. Besides, it was less laborious to make than Marwa. That thick, smelly, gut-packing porridge that one must sip the whole day to get a little high.
Partying at home became stressful.
My mother’s mood dipped as soon as my father began merriment. Until he was out of his morning-after, intensive-care-unit type of hangovers: deep croaked voice, bloodshot eyes and zero appetite for the man who loves devouring. For years, she got infuriated with his stubbornness to cut out binge drinking despite his advancing age and doctor’s advice. And him of wit and determination, relentlessly reminding her of how conniving doctors are.
That they prescribe placebos and schedule endless appointments to keep bread and wine overflowing on their tables. The same things they tell their patients not to consume. Sternly stating that a man in the village must drink unless he is a preacher or submissive to his wife beyond rescue. The arguments went on and on, with my father and his friends occasionally hosting loud drink-ups. Whenever this happened at home, my mother remained sullen and protestant. And for nearly four decades, she never gave up the battles. Neither did she win the fight in the end. But somehow, she managed to save her children from going down the boozy road.
What we see wrong in others is all about our judgements.
In my opinion, her frustration was not much about his irregular drinking nor his wellbeing. It was questioning his level of faith. That he was not a good Christian, and that was a fact. Because he still deeply slumbers through an entire church sermon. But my father being peaceful and content in nature, enjoys life to the fullest. He does not care whether his soul will bake or ballet eternally. He very well knows how bad his singing voice is. That he can never pass the audition to join the choir of angels in heaven, unlike his late wife.
When vexed beyond desperation, my mother repeatedly said one thing over the years. That “no one will die holding the other’s hand.” Meaning that everyone will die alone, no matter how much they love each other. And so is living. Everyone has a life to lead the way they want. That is why we should let people live without our moralistic expectations and judgements. Because our good and evil beliefs are not based on any universally acceptable code but on systems created by those who raised us and the interpretations of our personal experiences.
Our desire to be right or control is violence.
This maniacal behaviour starts with fault-finding. We invent all the reasons to find children, spouses, parents, neighbours, competitors, workmates, strangers, and all at fault—everyone and everything apart from ourselves and what we approve of falls short. We never get to see our laziness, procrastination, jealousy, ignorance, or incompetence. Blaming others is always the easiest thing to do to cover our fears and insecurities.
Philosophically, the egoic need to be right is a form of violence against other people. We all know folks who always want to be correct. The characters that heatedly defend their point of view in every conversation. Those who forever think what they know and believe is the only, universally acceptable truth. Many of us live with spouses, parents, bosses, relatives, acquittances and neighbours of this type. We ignorantly excuse and condone this narcissistic behaviour in all manner of ways. From today, know that tolerating this treatment is allowing violence against yourself and your loved ones.
And so is silence. Silence can also be an effective strategy to control or punish. It is usually more painful than the direct verbal violence of intimidation and threats. It is meant to disconnect the other party emotionally. It is typically a tool for those who always want to have their say. And the physical and emotional consequences that come with it are enormous. Incidentally, it is a universally accepted manipulation tool in our families and other relationships.
We should only expect others to be what we are.
The fact is, if you want a happy and united family, become a joyful and engaging husband or wife. If your dream is to build a successful business partnership, then start thriving as a solo entrepreneur. A loving, caring, and trusted person is only deserved by an affectionate, compassionate, and loyal individual. That person you want to have begins with the one in the mirror.
Therefore, we should not waste time trying to drag people to walk the path of our unmerited achievements. Or to compensate for our shortcomings. It is not their weakness; it is our fault. We must do the work to change ourselves and not control others to fit our expectations and self-approved ways. This way of life is even more bizarre in parenting, where adults proclaim the “do what I say and not what I do” misnomer.
Quit the delusion of seeing perfection in your life.
Classifying others as right or wrong blocks us from facing the truth of our own lives. It deflects you from internalizing how others make you feel. The admission that you will never be perfect is the beginning of a progressive personal change. Followed by stopping to find fault in others. But instead, using their behaviours and actions to mirror our inner self and find the weaknesses that we need to fix.
Haemin Sunim, in his book The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down, writes: “The flaw that you notice in someone is probably the flaw that you have. If you never had it, then it would be hard for you to notice it in the first place.” And so does the Holy Bible in Mathew 7:3. “And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye but do not perceive the plank in your own eye?” Meaning, no one is perfect, so focus on your damn weaknesses.
Start to pay retrospective and present attention to yourself.
Begin by admitting that you are an imperfect mortal in a world that can never be perfect because of people like you. Accept the fact that nothing in this universe lies within your control, apart from what happens within yourself. Recognize that you did not come out well, and you need some deep, self-reparenting. That you should have been raised better if only the ones who nurtured you knew how. That what you genuinely value as good is only a perception based on what you know. Wake up to the fact that you are not that righteous and do not know as much as you think you do. This way, you will open your heart and mind to embrace other enriching perspectives.
Understand that the only way to a genuinely lasting personal change is attained by raising your level of self-awareness—the ability to see yourself clearly and objectively through constant reflection and introspection. Self-awareness is about being constantly aware of own feelings, behaviours, and attributes. It is a psychological state in which one shifts immediate attention to the inner self.
Change is only possible in the inner self and not the outside world.
When you become self-aware, you stop paying attention to other people and the environment around you. Instead, shift the spotlight on yourself. If someone annoys you, do not dwell on how hurtful their action is. In its place, recognize the emotion of anger and the feeling it raises in your body. Probe yourself on what made you angry. Is it what that person did to you, or is it your unconsidered response to their action? You will most likely find that it is only your ego, the inner conversation you have with yourself, that has led you to rage. If anything, that same action, if meted on someone else, may elicit laughter.
Forgo self-righteousness and embrace self-awareness. This will in turn, lead you to newer, better perspectives and responses to whatever happens in the world around you. And you will become an emotionally and spiritually grounded and holistically changed person. In the words of Debasish Mridha, “There is only one way to change the world; change yourself.”
When you make your inner self the centre of attention, the universe obliges to recreate a brand new you.
