A letter to my 21 year old self

Some hours ago, at midnight of 28^th May I turned 36 years old. Yes, I have been around for 36 Januarys. It is time to write my 21 year old self a letter on what the world has in store 15 years ahead.

Dear Tom,

I know you are so excited having turned 21 years old a day ago. Your feeling is understandable. When people hit 21, they feel like they have actually got a congratulatory SMS from God for making it alive. You are super happy feeling like the whole world needs to know how old you have become. Oh, wait a minute! You are not anywhere called ‘old’. There are human beings alive who are 5 times older that you at this very moment. You are feeling high because the Government now knows you, it gave you an ID card and you are now in the big guardian database. The government is not your guardian; it will tax your ass off in just a few years and for the rest of your life.

Now listen and listen good young man. The world is warming up to receive you and the future is bright. Actually you see people shielding their eye from the sun; they have no idea that it is the brightness of your future that is shining upon them and making them shield their eyes.

Let me share with you a few facts of life so far. Fifteen of them for a start for the fifteen years ahead.

One, Your mother is and has always been right regardless of how irritating she has sounded as she advised you in the course of your life. She is not your age mate and so is her husband, you father who is and has always been right as well.

Two, you are fully responsible for your life and the results of all the actions you will take as you navigate the many courses.  Do not be cheated that it is time to make mistakes and that you will recover from them later in life. Some people made mistakes in their 18,19,20 or 21 years hoping to correct them later but life never gave them a chance to correct each of the mistakes they made. Life has an ‘undo’ button yes but the ‘do’ can have permanent impact on your life. Unlike the computer ‘undo’ button, the one in life works after saving automatically. Please note that there are those people who are very successful in life either as professionals, parents or entrepreneurs (employers) from decisions they made at 21. You are not too young to be like them.

Three, you have a great deal of friends currently and that is the beauty of youth. Sadly, your circle of friends will shrink as you grow older, as your interests change, priorities differ or as your values and beliefs change. There is nothing personal about losing contact with a couple or a dozen of your current friends. You will also get sacked from friendship zones for refusing to fund people’s weddings and the like. Make sure your position on financing weddings is clear to all and in the very beginning. You will however build new relationships and circles along the way.

Four, do not have small dreams and ambitions in life. Do not ever be contented with what you find. Be it a job that pays you a salary that looked like a loan to you in the past or a plan to achieve either academic or personal growth. Always aim for the highest attainable level in life. You can, many have made it by staying focused on their course. Do not be mesmerized by people and their achievements; be a believer that you too can just be as good as or better than they currently are. That ‘Toyota Corola G Touring’ you are admiring as the best car you will ever wish for will turn to be a public service van in Oyugis and carry bananas in Kiambu. 

Don’t focus on the current state, place your energies on the future which is the better, always. It is however okay to wish to have some nice house, car, clothes etc. The wishes bring with them the drive to reach the targets. You are however not too young to invest. Do not wait for your salary/income to have 2 comas to begin saving.

Five, this is big stuff for you. Girls; Yes, girls! The world has more girls than you can count. They are so many such that the world ran out of names to give them. They will be named after flowers, cars will be named after them. They will be named after characters in soap operas and body lotions as some perfumes will be named after them. That is how many they are and will be. Take your time young man, you cannot finish the women on earth – alone. I know some young men have been saying that they feel like a bag of sugar and cannot be licked by one woman alone; that they have to be licked by several women in small bits so the sweetness does not kill one alone. Now listen, if you carry that thought for long, it is that sweetness you think you carry that will kill you – alone.

Six, what your dad told you about the workplace is true. It is not your mother’s house where all you will be showered with is love. The workplace can be hostile at times when you caught up in an office war between senior colleagues when you are a beginner and even between yourself and other colleagues as you grow your professional muscle. You shall have to learn how to stay afloat with your head up in these situations. Unlike, school or estate scuffles with your playmates where you could run to your mother for backup; the workplace wars can get you out in the cold streets of joblessness.

Seven, you will have a couple of joblessness cycles which will run for months or a year. These will be moments of trial for you and your circles. Always remember what I said about circles. Your circle of friends will shrink further when you have no job. Value in Kenya, is attached you your ability to help others from your job and not vice versa. If you have no job, you are assumed to be a broke bother and your phone will cease to ring and calls out will not be answered. You will be able to leave your phone at home for 3 days and it shall not ring, will run out of power and get lost in your house. So, stop telling yourself that you cannot survive without a phone. It is a phone as long as it receives calls otherwise; it remains some gadget for playing brick games.

Eight, as you grow your professional muscles you will get some pretty nice roles and jobs that will be very exciting on paper until you get into the organization. You shall find varied levels of dirt in some hidden corners in some organizations and some filth on the reception desk and your working station in others. You will learn as well that no organization is perfect in systems and people and those are the ones that will have dirt on some hidden and unreachable corners. You will only see the dirt when your phone falls between your desk and the wall. For those that have filth all over, bad systems that are deliberately sustained, be brave enough to be jobless rather than stay there. It will cause you more harm than good to stay in a bad system.

Nine, do not carry the notion that jobs are given out by those who know others to only those whom they know. All your jobs in your career will be advertised in the newspapers and you shall apply and get the jobs without knowing the persons making the hiring decisions. As you grow to be a seasoned HR Practitioner in the future, please allow those who know nobody to have a chance to prove to everybody that they too can deliver results. Hire people on merit as you will be.

Ten, people will get married and some will separate from their spouses. That should not scare or discourage you. Don’t use movies, novels or Facebook post to imagine that everyone is in bliss. If you can disagree with your parents and your siblings, it is okay to occasionally disagree with your girlfriend or wife. As your dad says, a woman has that ability to compliment a man in more ways than the man could ever imagine before she came into his life. However, as he also said; they have the ability to piss you to the moon and back but that is what makes them fun. The world would be unbearable if the only people who would piss men would be other men. We would have made the male species extinct from killing each other in rage.

So, marriage is part of life and John Ngere said women do not bite or eat people at night or during the day. You do not need love to stay married; neither do you need commitment to live together. Worse still, do not think that having a baby makes a marriage so do not marry someone because you sired a baby together. Marriage requires something stronger than love and commitment. Until you reach that level, don’t get married but continue to stay in the ‘I love you’ stage where you can refuse to talk to one another because s/he never replied your text message. Where you have to send ‘I love you’ texts three times a day as if it is paracetamol.

Eleven, I said before that you are still young. The dating scene is full of men of means and as you have noticed, they take away girls you thought were your range. That is nature boss and get used to it. You too shall slice away someone and several of them from other men and the cycle continues. You have heard of sugar mummies by now; they are thought to be women older than you by say 2 and more years out to get you for sex. You may be right. Remember me talking about sugar in point 5? Now, sugar mummies believe they have so much sugar and it cannot be licked by one man alone. As you grow older, they have sugar and money and they are called cougars. You will hear about them and even see the miracles they will do to some people you know.

Do not look for easy sugar; grow your own cane, harvest the cane, crush it, package the sugar and partake of it in your own comfort. Always keep in mind that the government does not allow importation of vehicles older than 8 years. Look for a car whose timing belt has not been changed severally and all linings are in place, they run better as all the moving parts are always authentic.

Twelve, do not despise people you encounter in the course of your life. Everyone you meet in running their own course. Allow them to be and complete their laps at their own paces either as sprinters or marathon runners who encounter hurdles. Always remember what dad says, what you are today may not and is certainly not going to be what you will be tomorrow. That applies to the many people you meet in life. Respect them, help those you can help and guide those you can guide and let the cycle continue. 

Always try to make more friends and have a lasting impact on the lives of those you meet. Give hope to those who are giving up, give out your clothes to those who do not  have some, buy lunch or invite people for a meal in your house so they walk with a full stomach like you.  Do not ignore phone calls even from numbers you do not know as many times they will turn out to be the calls you have always wanted to receive.

Thirteen, there will be practical applications of the parable of the mango and the hot potato from the book of ‘Mafisi’ which will be an imaginary book that guides a lot that happens in the dating life in Kenya. The parable of the mango states that, ’as you wait for the mango to ripen, someone is eating it up the tree with salt’. That of the potato claims, ’as you wait for the potato to cool, it will cool in another man’s mouth’. You will meet ladies who will refuse to speak their feelings and wait for the potato to cool; it shall be eaten with a fork. You too shall wait for some mangoes to ripen only for the mango seed (stone) to fall on your head as you wait under the tree. So will be life and the cycle will never stop as long as life goes on.

Fourteen, do not sleep with your colleague unless you have all intentions of getting married or having some serious relationship with her.  The consequences are as real just as the adrenaline rush that comes with the imagination.

Fifteen, consistency in values and principles is key. Always take a stand on issues of principle or morals and let that position be known to all. That person who knows you now should be able to recall your values and principles as unchanged for many years to come.