Weekend Precept II

Today morning, I walked the infamous ‘Walk of Shame’. That Walk of Shame from an estranged house to my house. In a black night-dress and black thick socks, I jaunted on what seemed the longest stretch to my house. I pulled my grey hat to my nose so that the men & women who were already up and doing their business didn’t have a face to describe to their families in the evening ensuing the mingy conversation.

Walking around in my sleeping gear around the estate in the early morning, that was shameful considering that it is just a Thursday. The ‘Walk of Shame’ was not that shameful because I was from a sleepover at my sister’s. Some days ago, she was ‘my brother’s girlfriend’ but she’s so nice that she has officially been crowned the sister title. Good for her! Hollowly digressing, I was only imagining how the walk of shame would have been if I was not from my sister’s house (if you know what I mean ). I could only imagine my neighbors digging burrows and cavities of judgement into my skin. It was a funny start of the day.

On to the Weekend precept. Last Sunday, I was inspired by a simple & precise church sermon. It was very ‘non-churchy’, so to say. ‘non-churchy’ in this context means it was far from the ‘Halleluyah M-Pesa’ preaching that our people (look what was on the news during the weekend) are getting accustomed to.

We are hardly grateful of the small things that we have. We are used to the averagely accepted “I want big things! I want to have great stuff!”. In no way I’m I saying that wanting big things is a bad thing, but human beings tend to forget that big things are small things that, under the right conditions and environment became big. We forget to appreciate the small things because our focus is in this case, sadly at something that we do not have. Big things are small things in numbers. It is alright to dream big and think big about the future, but it is in no way swell to forget that to become big you must start small.

Being a visual generation, we have been integrated to thinking big. Well, I know that at the back of your mind you might be suggesting,

“Miss, thinking small wouldn’t be a good thing, would it?”

Well, I appreciate the attitude and idea behind thinking big, but for some of us it has grown to become an unrealistic kind of big! An example perhaps?

There is a young man somewhere who wants to be rich and famous from his mechanical skills. The problem is that this young man has just been sitting down in his room reading comics and watching TV, dreaming. BIG.

Can I go any further than saying that that is the ultimate cliched unrealistic kind of big? To have something big, you must have something small to fertilize, take care of, have a dream for. You just cannot sit down and expect someone to learn the guitar for you, go for vocal lessons for you, walk to class for you etcetera as you dream big! You must have something to nurture so that you can watch grow. This is a very common problem with our generation. We have watched our parents and guardians become big without remembering that they actually had something small to work with. And just like that, we are expecting to be BIG just like that. Isn’t it sad?

Again as a visual generation, our society has made us quite familiar with big things. Big TVs! Big and beautiful gadgets! Big and furious cars! These things are good, I will not refute, but we have divulged so much in these that we forget to get there, most of the times we have to start small. Before we got the 3D experience, heavens know we started from black-and-white television. This awesome big things we are currently experiencing and seeing had a small origin. Our children are growing to think that before iPhones there were iPhones. That is as dangerous as it sounds! It cancels out our success timelines! And guess what? Our success timelines are what we make from our success stories. Without success stories, we have nothing to inspire our next generation. Dear reader, we have worked too hard to not have success stories.

Our  small things matter! Your small things matter! And when you get your big thing, may it be car, job, status, you will have a “Once upon a time I had a ___. I appreciated it and then worked at making it what it is now.”

Love that small thing now. When it will become big (if it hasn’t yet), you will appreciate it even more since you will have watched it grow into the success it will be.