Taking stock – Page 7

Top 5 quotes that I live by

November 6, 2017

1. “Can miles truly separate you from friends…If you want to be with someone you love, aren’t you already there?”-Richard Bach

This quote connects with me a lot because I have a lot of friendships with people far away from where I live.

2. “The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear”

I think this is a variation of the quote that there’s nothing to fear but fear itself. I like the Nelson Mandela quote better because it acknowledges that it is okay to be afraid but you must have the courage to overcome that fear so that you can go after what you want.

3. “ I get more lucky when i work harder”- Dad

I am not sure who said this one first but I can remember my dad always saying this quote. Success is probably 1% luck and 99% hard work so the harder you work the more likely that luck will work in your favor.

4. “smile and wave”-dad & penguins of madagascar

The penguins of Madagascar definitely said this first but it’s another quote my dad loves to use. The basic meaning of “smile and wave” is to ignore your haters, focus on yourself, and keep doing what makes you happy.

5. “if wishes were horses, even beggars would ride”-brother

I am not sure who the original creator of this quote but I heard it first from my older brother. Anytime, I would say “I wish” he would stop me by saying this quote. The basic meaning of this quote is that if everyone could have their own way even beggars would not have to beg. So if you want something, wishing will not help the situation unless you put some action towards what you want.

Top 5 things I’ve learned in my early 20s

October 30, 2017

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Time really does fly by but I think it is always important to take time to reflect on lessons learned. Reflection reduces your chances of making the same mistakes over and over again. So here are the lessons I’ve learned so far in my relatively young life:

Sometimes you have to be selfish. Before you have kids, you are the most important thing in your life. So slow down and take time to smell the roses.
Most things that you go through in life are temporary so don’t be alarmed by the ebb and flow of life.
This one is a typical African parent proverb but I found it to be true: the roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. And again school is a temporary thing so just do your best and get that diploma and/or degree.
Friendships and relationships go two ways so will probably grow apart with many people but there is no need to beat yourself up about it.
As much as we all have people that we look up to, we should always keep in mind that humans are inherently flawed. No one is perfect, including yourself, so don’t be so hard on others ( this life thing doesn’t come with a manual).

I hope you enjoyed these lessons that I have learned in my life so far, I will definitely update them as I get more life experience. 🙂 ❤

How to continually inspire yourself

August 7, 2017

I am one of those people who gets bored very easily. What this means for me is that I get high bursts of creative energy during inopportune times, when I am busy with other things (i.e. finals week). When I was in school, this always presented as an itch I had to scratch so I usually ended up drawing various sketches on my study material. In retrospect, I’ve now realized that this usually happened because I used to continuously suppress my creative urges during the semesters while I tended to more “important” things at school or work. After many years of doing this wrong, trust me when I say that is not the way to go.

I think the most important thing in finding and sustaining inspiration within yourself is self-care. If you put you and your creativity last, you’re more susceptible to burn-out with whatever else you’re pre-occupying yourself with. I am not saying put your job and other priorities last. I am saying you should schedule time dedicated to you and your creativity. If you know you thrive on physical creativity such as through sports, you should find a way to include such activities through-out your week. If you thrive on mental creativity which is a little bit more challenging to come by, you should try to expose yourself to things that inspire you to create (i.e. going to museums if your creativity is based on art or reading books/poetry if your creativity is based on writing).

Lastly, creativity does not have to be a solo journey. We live in a time where we are blessed with technology and the ability to connect with people with similar interests. It’s completely fine to keep your creativity to yourself but I believe that you can grow your creative skills much more if you expose yourself to people who can give you constructive feedback.

My testimony about this advice that I am giving you is this blog of mine. I started my first blog during my senior year of high school and never shared it with any people I personally knew because it was more of a journal to me. I also wasn’t as dedicated and only blogged sporadically. As compared to this blog, my first blog barely captured my creative juices whereas I have never missed posting a new story every week to this blog. I know my art and fashion sections have some cob webs on them right now but I am planning to update those later this week.

In the spirit of constructive feedback, I would love to hear some honest reviews on my blog. Thank you for the support thus far.

Ten things I learned from my Brothers

July 31, 2017

bro pic

Keep calm in the eye of the storm because stressing never changes a situation.
Finding a sport you enjoy can help you have to lots of fun and most importantly to make friends
When you have a job, you should treat it as if you owned the place. If you treat the place like your own, you’ll always be considered for management positions.
This one is a dating tip from my younger brother. If a girl expects you to have your own house, car, and job, then she better have those things for herself too.
If a girl makes an effort to have a relationship with your mom, she’s a keeper.
Always try to save more money than you spend.
Family always comes first.
A girl doesn’t have to be a better cook than your mom but she should at least be a better cook than you (I guess unless you’re a professional chef).
Your connections always mean more than your grades.
Patience is the key to life. Everything happens at its own time.

Ten things I learned from my Dad

June 18, 2017

If you know my dad, you know that he is sometimes known for taking the autocratic route which might have something to do with him working as a high school principal in Kenya for over 15 years. One of his closest friends always makes it a point to talk about my dad’s “there’s one thing we must agree” principle. Basically, it’s a principle he uses when he wants you to take his way or the highway but instead of saying of that, he says what he wants by opening the conversation with “there’s one thing we must agree” which literally means you have to agree with him. Fortunately, the “must agree” talk was not necessary for the following ten things that I learned from my dad. Throughout my experiences, I naturally arrived to the conclusion that he was right about the ten following ideas:
1. Always protect your heart. My dad strongly believes that love is a choice so you can only blame yourself if you fall for the guy that is clearly not for you.
2. Never date someone just because you’re lonely. Too often we get caught up by our primal instincts during “mating season” and get a bae for the sake of it. Do yourself a favor and don’t be that person.
3. If you’re with a person who tries to push you to do things you don’t want to do, they’re not the one for you.
4. Love is 90% respect; if you don’t have respect in your relationship, it’s doomed to fail.
5. The definition of love is “taking care”. This reminds me of Le Petit Prince where the pilot tells the prince that you have an obligation to take care of those you love. This can be as small as taking your wife’s car to the car wash to planning a holiday together.
6. You must also take care of yourself so that you sustain yourself. If you’re not in good health, you can’t take care of anyone. If that means treating yourself every once in a while, go ahead and treat yourself.
7. Good posture is a must. They way you walk communicates how confident you are to others.
8. It’s always important to have a hobby; all work and no play makes you a dull person.
9. Considering my dad used to stay up late to help me decorate my science fair posters, he instilled in me the principle of working smarter not harder.
10. Gossip is for the feeble minded. Smart people discuss ideas not what other people are doing.

The vulture and the little girl

May 28, 2017

The vulture and the little girl As Nyadak lifts her head, trying to muster energy to continue her crawl to the feeding site, a vulture descends from the sky and lands a few feet behind her. The bird watches her every move waiting for her emaciated limbs to drop. This year of 1993 has had one of the best feeding seasons for the vultures in South Sudan as the civil war brought famine and famine brought death. Nyadak’s head now hangs low as she remembers the skeletons that remained of her family cattle when vultures swarmed from the sky to devour the last remains of their rotting flesh. She realizes this could be her fate as well considering that she has not eaten for five days, unless she counts the termites she managed to catch after the rain two days ago. Her only hope today was making it to the feeding site as she had heard a plane dropping food from the sky during the night before. A tear falls from her face as her hands are now starting to buckle from weakness. She has been crawling for the past two hours now since her bone-thin legs could no longer withstand her weight after four hours of non-stop walking. Both her hands and knees burn in pain from the heat and soil digging into her skin. Nyadak musters a scream hoping to scare the vulture away but the bird still looks on with stoic eyes.

She manages to lift her head and her wet eyes are now filled with hope as she identifies a white figure walking towards her with a bag in his hand. She thinks that the white man, now opening his bag, is about to save her from the vulture and from the suffering in South Sudan. However, the man opens his bag to retrieve not food but a camera as he envisions this scene on the cover of National Geographic.

Nyadak is 7 years old but her starved frame leads the photographer to think that she is half her age. With her head now back on the hardened grey soil and the vulture still looking on from a few feet away, he manages to get a good shot. However, he is not satisfied with the lighting and goes on to adjust the settings on his camera. After twenty minutes of tweaking his camera and snapping more shots, he is now confident that he has the perfect photo. He approaches the girl and she thinks that he is now going to save her. Instead, he walks past her, scares the vulture away, and continues walking further and further away. In his mind, he’s done the best he can as his photo of the vulture and the little girl can do more for procuring relief for the millions of hungry souls in Sudan than offering the girl a helping hand to the feeding site. For further consolation, he remembers that he was advised not to touch the people as diseases such as leprosy and meningitis were rampant in the area.

Nyadak looks back at the vanishing figure with sadness in her eyes. However, worse things have happened to her. A month ago, rebel soldiers invaded her home during the night and terrorized her family. The soldiers stole the little food the family had left before kidnapping her two sisters and then shooting her parents to death. Nyadak survived only because she had ventured against her mother’s wishes to use the outhouse in the dark. While crouching in the outhouse, she heard the last screams of her parents and the continuous cries of her sisters. Their cries faded more and more as the rebel’s truck sped off in the night. She stayed still in shock and never cried back. She continued crouching until day break as if she was frozen in time. She had fallen asleep while crouched and was awakened only by the sound of her belly roaring for food.

Her belly now roars again as she looks up to see the vulture shrinking into a small fluttering figure in the sky. Unlike her, the vulture has several prospects for a meal.

With the thought of her sisters and parents still fresh on her mind and heart, Nyadak continues on her crawl.

NB: This story is based on a real event that happened in 1993 during another famine in Sudan. The photographer, Kevin Carter, merely took the photo and left the girl to struggle. In 1994, he won a Pulitzer prize for the photo and was subjected to a lot of criticism for not helping the girl. Later that year, he committed suicide which mentions being haunted by memories of starving children. The full story on the photo and his suicide letter can be found on the following website: http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/vulture-little-girl/

On the “romphim” and the fragility of male masculinity

May 21, 2017

0CE3A083-831F-41A5-8B6C-021462E61282-3578-00000406C25C687E I find it interesting that my timeline this week was flooded with debates about the Romphim. When I first saw the concept of a male romper, my reaction was simple. I thought what a cool idea. I even thought maybe it was something that Kanye or Jaden Smith came up with and why I didn’t think of it. The first pictures I saw of nicely bodied men wearing them piqued my interest further in supporting this new gender norm breaking style. However, for the hundreds of supportive posts concerning the Romphim, there were thousands of posts bashing any male who would even consider wearing a romphim.

I’ve always known that male masculinity is very fragile but I was shocked that a male jumpsuit such as those men wear in prison but the “short” version would cause so much controversy just because it’s compared to the very feminine female romper. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be a man yearning to breathe free and express himself but being barraged with policing from other men. Is the box that defines what a man is so small that a man wearing a romper is automatically less of a man? Based on the responses from the romphim debacle, it seems that box is smaller than we even thought.

This debacle even inspired me to consider that the new miss USA might be right in doing away with the word feminists and taking up the word equalist. Let’s fight for fair treatment for all of us not just being one-sided in our missions. Let us speak out for injustice for all. Today I speak out for the injustice of men in their dressing of choice. So there you go boys, wearing a romper doesn’t make you any less of a man. If anything it makes you a more adventurous person.

Lessons I learned from my Mother

May 14, 2017

Every situation is temporary so you must never linger on difficult times.
Attitude is everything in life.
You can never predict the future. If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.
I should always pray for God to grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.
Always hope for the best but prepare for the worst.
Saving even a little every day for a rainy day is necessary.
Friends are important but family is priceless.
It is better to have a few loyal friends than a squad of fake friends.
When you encounter classless people, never stoop down to their level.
My mom who refers to herself as the black princess Diana taught me that you should always regard yourself as royalty. If you don’t see yourself as a queen, who will?

Fun fact my mom is actually named after Queen Jedidah, mother of King Amon of Judah in the bible.

Cheers to many more mothers’ day to come and many more lessons to learn from my queen.

13 Reasons why I love my parents

May 7, 2017

Because they left a country where they were comfortable and settled in their careers so their children could have all the opportunities that life in America offered
Because despite having to start from the bottom upon arriving to America, they always made sure that we never missed a meal
Because despite having to go back to school and juggling multiple jobs, they still helped us with our school work when we needed it
Because despite having to go back to school past 35 years of age and juggling multiple jobs, they still graduated with honors
Because when I had hard days in pharmacy school, I thought of them and how they succeeded in their education despite having to care for 3 children and work 2-3 jobs
Because they chose opposite work schedules so that we would always have one parent with us in the house even if that meant that they would see each other less
Because no matter how close the bus stop was to our house, our dad still insisted us on driving us in the morning and picking us up in the afternoon so that he could ensure our safety
Because my dad signed me up for science camps in the summer so that I could gain more exposure to STEM fields
Because my dad would organize outings for us even if my mom couldn’t make it, due to work, so he could bond with us
Because my dad gave up higher paying jobs that required him to always be traveling so that he could be with his children and help them with their homework
Because even when we went all to college, they were still involved in our grades and continued to be supportive
Because my parents continue to love and respect each other as they teach us about what makes relationships successful
Because they never forget where they came from and who helped them along the way

My Spiritual Journey (No propaganda involved)

April 30, 2017

Within the past year starting in Spring 2016 up to now, I have accepted almost every opportunity that I could get to explore my spirituality. Since my freshman year of college, I challenged myself to learn more about the bible and Christianity as I did a weekly bible study with my spiritual advisor at the time. As we continued with bible studies, propositions of getting me baptized were presented but I never felt ready to make that big leap into being saved and the strict lifestyle associated with it. The other reason was that I realized that I am more of a spiritual person rather than a religious one. I don’t believe Christianity is the one and only way to getting into heaven, paradise, nirvana, or whatever you want to call it. I think that all religions have validity and so I started to Identify myself more with a new faith called Bahaism which is centered around multiethnic inclusivity and belief in the commonality of all religions (i.e peace, love, and community).

When I told people that I was Bahai, they thought I was in a cult or some made up religion but to be honest, any of the religions we have in existence could be made up. Even though I considered myself Bahai since freshman year, I didn’t know any other Bahais to orient me to the culture and faith. Unlike other faiths, Bahais usually meet once a month to worship together either in their temple or someone’s house so I felt shy to go to their meetings. It wasn’t until fall 2015 that I contacted the Boston Bahai group through their website requesting to be connected with the Bahai youth. I have to say Bahais are very resourceful and can match you other Bahais anywhere in the world. They responded to me within 24 hours and I was invited to a devotional by one of their youth leaders. One of my good friends and roommate at the time was nice enough to tag along despite being a devout Christian as she was scared that this “crazy cult” would abduct or brainwash me. However, the people turned out to be very nice and the devotional was mainly reading some of the writings of Bahá’u’lláh (the founder of Bahaism) and singing from a hymn book (written by other Bahais from around the world). I also got to learn a bit more about how Bahai leadership works and was impressed by the fact that the nine leaders of Bahai are actually elected by the Bahais themselves. I attended two more devotionals and someone even gifted me a prayer book for women. However, after 5 months of being a somewhat devout Bahai, I decided that I wasn’t connecting to the faith. Understanding Bahá’u’lláh’s writings was kind of difficult considering that he wrote them in the 1800s. The writings also kind of seemed cult like to me as he sometimes writes as if he is a manifestation of God. To put that simply, he seems to think that God is speaking through him.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that Bahá’u’lláh’ thinks himself as a manifestation of God considering that Bahaism is based on the belief that all the religions are based on different interpretations of the same God. Simply put, the Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, etc all saw the same God but perceived him/her differently. If you understand anything about perspective, it does make sense. There’s no way we could all be visited by God and all view him the same way. However, I think what separates Bahaism from Christianity, which I grew up with, is that Bahá’u’lláh’ wrote the books for Bahaism whereas the Bible was written by multiple people so it can be interpreted as more reliable than a guy claiming to be getting direction from God and writing books praising himself.

Due to the less credible history of Bahaism and my inability to connect with the readings, I decided to go back to Christianity. My parents, especially my mom, was delighted that I was now sticking to the family religion. I started to read the bible again and even decided to get baptized in the protestant way (in total submission of water rather than my infant baptism in the catholic church where the priest sprinkles water on your face). Even though I now affiliate with Christianity, I still don’t believe that Christianity is the supreme of all religions. I still believe other religions have validity. My decision to be Christian is based on what makes most sense to me and what best facilitates my connection with God. I am not the most devout and I am still a sinner but I feel at peace now being confident in what I believe in. This journey of self-exploration with regard to spirituality was worth it and I would recommend it to everyone.