INSPIRE, TEACHER

I have always wanted to be a teacher.

As a child, because i loved the way people listened to teachers. Teachers were important people in my eyes. They seemed in my eyes to know everything about everything. Their opinion about things actually mattered and most of all, they commanded respect. "Mwarimu" they called them.

As a teenager, because i just did not like how most of them did things. How they "coerced" student to learn, to study. I wanted to be a teacher so i could spark a "teaching revolution". One that inspired people to learn.

In my late teens, because a teacher saw in me what i do not think anyone else did. A teacher believed in me and nurtured something in me even i never knew i had. She called me to the office that fateful weekday -remember those lines back in primary school? Just like any other highschool "culprit" i started retracing my steps in my mind. Had i dozed off in her class? Did i miss my cleaning duty again? Who was i rude to this time?
To my utter shock, she handed me a book. She said to me,"For a few weeks i will be away on invigilator duty. Read,analyse and interpret all aspects you identify and teach them to the class." And i did. No consultation, no guide book.

Then it hit me! I wanted to be a teacher that inspired her students to have an opinion and not have anyone tell them,"child, that is not an opinion for you to have." I wanted to be that teacher that inspired her students to not just read a text and pick out stylistics devices and thematic concerns. No! Anyone can do that. I want to inspired them to identify with the writer.

You see, writing is the oldest form of art. It allows one to put in words feelings, attitude,conviction towards a person, an object, political organisation, a dog, Mount Kilimanjaro! To be able to feel what they felt when the dog died, even just an inch, to be able to see from the diction, the stress, the style what this gorgeous damsel did to the writing lad, to be able to climb with them the mountain that is Kilimanjaro, that is what i want to inspire my students be.

An author once wrote:"Writing is an art that allows one to dip their pen into the colourful ink that is their soul and to write out their very nature on paper. Writing allows one to bare his soul."

I want to be a teacher, not so i can teach, but so i can inspire my students to look at words and see a bare soul instead of just alphabets.

LOSS

Pat Conroy in his book "My Losing Season: A Memoir" wrote: "Loss invites reflection and reformulating and a change of strategies"

Losing. In terms of work,a loved one's demise or even breakup causes reflection. You suddenly start to think more about your life and how well you should have lived it. In the case of death you place yourself in the deceased shoes. As though you yourself have died and been resurrected. Given a second chance. That trip you've always wanted to take, that job of yours that you hate and so badly want to quit, that girl you adore but never had the guts to tel how you feel.

In a breakup however, love gone sour, friends parting ways, you suddenly start to re-think every decision you have ever made. Maybe if you had paid more attention, given more love, taken more time. You think "If this decision was so bad that it ended so ugly, what else have i made that could in my face blow up?" You hurt, you bleed, you ache.

You are allowed to momentarily feel all this, pain, regret, unsurety but NEVER unworthy, unloved or not beautiful. You are not in any instance allowed to feel not good enough, not pretty enough, not strong enough. You are not allowed any of that because the moment you allow such weak line of thought, you become of the sort.
Pat Conroy may have had a series of losses as quoted in this "best selling memoir" -see what i did there? But he is also quoted saying in this account of loss "Know this, i think you could be special if you only thought there was anything special about yourself."

WHAT TO DO?

There's this thing about choices. I simply cannot stop thinking about them -and i have been doing ALOT of thinking lately. I don't know whether it's their ability to affect our lives, those of our children and their children's children. Or maybe it's their uncanning ability to hold you responsible for whatever befalls you as a result of them. You choose to have unprotected sex, STI anyone? Unexpected pregnancy?? Anyone? Or maybe you choose to call your boss fat over the work phone extension to your "bff" and you get shipped to storage or worse, get fired! Yes, women are a tad too sensitive about choice of words. Maybe if you has chosen to call her "curvy" she might have taken it as a compliment.

We are faced with choices every single day. Some that define us, some that cause undefining moments. Do i choose Dan or Nate? What do i wear to this date? What course do i pursue in college? Extroverts find it easy to consult. I have found myself asking a complete stranger on my way to a date whether the red lipstick is too dramatic. Others find comfort in intuition. Listening to their heart. Maybe they are. Others have a track record of "Good Choices" Are there good choices? Or are they just afraid they will trip so they choose the "safe" path. The one often trodden. Take that job at Barclays Bank to please dad when you know full well you want to start a photography firm?

So after you choose, what next? WHAT TO DO? Well, a good friend of mine recently go out of an emotionally draining relationship. It's not the hurtful things he said but the hurtful things he did. Kissing another girl front of her and sleeping in the same bed a whole night with her might as well have been as painful as a blow to the nose. Maybe it was the things he said, "I love you,you just have to trust me. She's my girlfriend but you're my best friend. I cannot leave her. She has done nothing wrong"
I know what you're thinking, "How could she stay?" The question should be,"How could she not? " How could she not when she had grown so used to him. To share her deepest secrets, her worries, to reveal her weaknesses.

Good news is, she chose to leave. She decided she deserved better and she asked me,"What now? What do i do?" You have already made your choice, i told her. Now, now you hold your head high and VENTURE INTO THE UNKNOWN.

THE PATH LESS TRAVELLED BY

Robert Frost once wrote, "two roads diverged on a yellow road,and sorry i could not travel both"
Just like Robert Frost we are all faced by choices. He chose the path less travelled by and that made all the difference.
We choose everyday. We choose to take ten extra minutes of sleep in the morning before work or class. We choose to take the bus or the matatu to work or school. We also choose who we are going to be with. What we cannot choose sadly, is who we fall in love with. However, we can choose to tell and show them our deep affection. We can choose to move on and not let the fact that they do not reciprocate our feelings the way we want them to stall our lives. We can also choose to stay true to them if they do reciprocate our feelings. We did not choose to be human but we can choose to treat them as so. We can choose to embrace their faults as we would like them do ours. when they wrong us, we can choose to forgive. When it doesn't work out, we can choose to move on.
An author once wrote, the heart has no pain receptors, that it is all in the mind that our feelings have been "hurt" that only means we choose to wallow and be bitter and hurl hurtful things at the "culprits" or that we choose to let the mind be controlled by a momentary lapse of sanity. It is true, some of the things humans choose to do to others are unthinkably inhuman, but thinking of them and hating them and grudgingly speaking of them is a choice that will only stall you. Choose to move on. Choose to be the bigger person always and gracefully hold your head up high and venture into the unknown.
Isn't that what life is about?