It wasn’t fun lying on my bed in Malindi staring at the huge ceiling fan whir lazily, thinking of how everyone else in my batch was updating their Linkedin status to postdoctoral research in Europe or Canada.
But at some point something strikes you…
“Girl, wash your face.”
(And yes there’s actually a book by that title...and no, I didn’t read it. Yet.)
Life is short yet it is long.
It is short because you never know when it will end so you’ve got to make the best of every single day. It is also long enough to know that what matters now won’t matter in 6 months’ time.
Growing up, my dad used to always remind us of the following Hadith:
Sometimes you get so caught up in your goals, your ambitions, you lose track of what matters.
Focus on the Fundamentals: Energy and Time
If you really think about it, everything comes down to two things: energy and time. They’re limited resources, and yet everyday you and I squander them.
So every morning when you wake up, you’ve got to decide what few things you’re going to focus your energy and time on, then say “no” to the rest. But how do you decide?
It comes down to your values, what you prioritize, what you’re curious about, and most importantly, what you’re trying to build in the world. If you ever take a creative writing course, they always teach you a scene in a novel must do one of two things: build a character or move the plot forward.
Everything else is fluff and must be removed.
On Saying Yes
Learning Something New
This is something I’m just wired to do.
And everything about this experience provided ample opportunities for that.
I switched from Chemical Engineering to Mechanical Engineering to Digital Rock Physics. What I currently do now is a hundred miles from that – data analysis for product improvement, grant-writing and researching in the field of Education. I just realized at some point I always need to be at the growth part of any learning curve. The moment I plateau, I jump to another learning curve, because I enjoy the discovering process. I always like to say that the best events I attend are those that generate more questions than answers.
New Projects I Have Zero Experience In
Doing this over and over again made me learn something about self-confidence. It’s a learnt skill and not something you’re born with. As Mel Robbins says, “Confidence is the ability to move from thought to action, because when you’re a confident person you believe enough in yourself and your capabilities that you’re willing to try and share. Confidence isn’t the assurance that it turns out, but the willingness to try.”
On Saying No
No news
This doesn’t mean I don’t watch the news at all. I do but compared to the average Kenyan, I’m the most clueless one when it comes to the news and I’d like to keep it that way. These politicians whose lives people follow and talk about are not going to help pay my bills one way or another, and half the news makes me angry anyway which is not good for my energy.
No trying to change society
The Yemeni society in Mombasa has a certain set of expectations for women, and because I’m an outlier I always get to hear about it.
The most famous one is, “Women your age have four kids.”
There was also this one incident where someone actually said, “At least I have a kid who’s going to take care of me when I’m old.”
Her implied question was, “What do you have?”
And while the most common reaction I’ve seen people like me have is get all fired up about women empowerment, giving talks in an attempt to change the cultural narrative, I’ve decided from the very beginning it’s not an area I want to spend either time or energy in.
It’s not my job to change the way society views me. Instead, it’s my job to respect that people have different opinions, and to understand where their opinions come from.
If you really think about it, they’re really happy with themselves. Judging people like me makes them feel better about themselves and their lives because that’s how they measure their own self-worth. It’s where they get their sense of belonging, and those are powerful human traits you cannot battle.
Most people go through life having zero sense of who they are as individuals so the role they play in society really defines them. And sometimes highlighting that role happens by contrasting it against outliers.
So at the end of the day, I remind myself that all this has nothing to do with me and I move on to things that actually interest me.
So let me know: What do you say yes to? What do you say no to?
Header image taken in Nairobi