5 reasons why failing is good

Nobody likes failing. In fact that’s the reason why if super powers were to be created, many would in the failure-repellant lotion.  Personally I loathe failing, I’d rather not attempt than failing. In light of this, here are five reasons why failure is worthy and hence you and I should not be afraid to try.

 Failure builds your character

This world is not for the faint hearted, a person has to have the character in his armory to withstand all that the vicious life bowls at him. Failing is the best bet that you can use to build your character. After the sulking, weeping, brooding, sleepless nights, teeth gnashing, regretting, you come out of a failure episode stronger and more ready to kick ass. Next time you get the same challenge, you will be assured in crashing it with a bat of an eyelid. With that, an individual will have acquired the skills of identifying the trip wires and pits that exist in the activity he is undertaking. In addition, failure makes you to be able to deal with disappointments that might arise in future. It makes you master the art of picking up the pieces after every failed attempt and try again. You might be aware of the story of the guy who invented the bulb. He tried like 1000 times before he got the right combination. He never quit.

Failure makes you notice other better avenues

Sometimes people are blinded in whatever they are pursuing. Maybe it is an ego thing. Yaani the only way for him/her to detach is if he/she hits the failure wall, hard in the face. The problem of being obsessed with only one avenue is that you might be missing better avenues on the side. It mostly happens in romantic relationships. Somebody is so engrossed in chasing after some girl who clearly does not want him while overlooking others who are ripe and ready to be harvested right under his nose. After being publicly humiliated in some official dinner, be assured the guy will end up settling for the available and willing lass around the corner.

Failure removes complacency

Success always breeds complacency. The successful individual will gradually start to drop guard assuming the success is there to stay. This would be suicidal because a single blow might bring the individual to his knees in whatever he is undertaking. But if the guy is subjected to occasional flop, he wouldn’t be able to loosen up in any way. This will prevent a large scale failure which might be a catastrophe to him. Failure also makes you think of better ways of improving yourself or your business. That means it will switch the innovation button on. Most companies bring forth new products because of a failure of another one. The new product might go a long way improving the revenues of the company.

Failure removes pride

Nobody likes pride. Scratch that, nobody like to see his neighbor seething with pride and arrogance. People will kill not to see you sitting in your verandah counting your money aloud. Trust me people will always look forward to the day you will fail for them to laugh and pop imaginary champagnes to that. You see, acting like you are the only guy with a wild card to heaven does not auger well with anybody. It feels the same as when accidentally; water/tea enters your lungs. An endless success run will give rise to smugness and that’s why failure is needed to square things up. Anyway, a successful guy needs to fail once in a while just to make the always unsuccessful guys to sleep at night *cue in Manchester united anthem*

Failure makes you to be aware of your weaknesses

The moment you approach that girl, try to vibe her in English, then get seriously stuck after saying ‘hi am natb’ is when you will acknowledge that public speaking and marketing is not going to be the career paths that you would consider going for.  Unless you try something out and you seriously fall on your butt, you might not be able to know your weaknesses. It is obvious you do not know your strengths if you do not know your weaknesses. That means that you will be operating on average gears because you might not be on the strong-point career path of your life. Sometimes you will be able to notice your weaknesses when it is too late to do something about it.

Boom box playlist:

No Matter What – T.I

A letter to my 17 year old self.

Dear Natb

Hey there, it’s me, you know, from the future. I know you are probably busy with something, like studying for your KCSE exams but just hear me out first. I know dad is saying he won’t be having cash to take you for a para course in campo. Probably he is not lying; I never got to know it. You will pass; in fact you will surprise everybody back in the village. Just keep doing what you are doing and you will make it.

Having said that, I know I have scrubbed off one of your greatest qualms. Yeah, I know there are other worries. You can’t imagine how things will turn out. Remember how you hate accounting? You will spend the better part of the next seven years crunching debits and credits. In fact you will be among the best that is. It will wake you up at 4 to undress and do bad things to it.

You have a beard. Yes a beard. Kwani what do you expect, to maintain that baby face forever? If you want to see how I look, take a look at Harun Mwau (hehe). At the moment you are in love and a virgin at the same time. That is the most sought after combinations nowadays which is extinct (I know I have lost you, ha). I wish you could write me explaining what love is. I can’t seem to remember it. Say a big HI to her. I know she still writes those letters. Damn. Enjoy the ‘love’ while it lasts. On the part of being a virgin…hehe. Am not going to blot it for you. I will not disclose to you whether (or how)you’ve lost it. But I will give you a clue; it is easier to catch Amos Wako frowning than to find a virgin.

Natb, great times lie ahead. You might not be serious about that natb name. You better be. That name is in everybody’s lips right now. I have a multinational business under that name. Ok, am messing with you. Am not yet 24, what did you expect? Right now I am an unemployed Kenyan youth. It’s your turn to laugh. However I will not rest till I take that name to the highest heights even if it means jumping from a balcony headfirst while drunk with a fat bank account with three wives and a panga wielding mom. That is what people do these days. Don’t fret, I won’t do that, I do not drink (yet), does not have three wives and mom will never hound people with a panga.

I know I have not told you much. That is because you are still under 18 and I was supposed to write a letter to my 50 year old self. That would be more useful than this. However you can use some advice. Stay away from women, develop a habit of more reading and less movies, be more active in church, avoid those things mom n dad tell you to avoid. With that, 21^st may 2011 would be of more significance. Before I forget, please work on you self confidence and social skills while you are at that age. These are the things causing me problems.

Something called facebook will come along and sweep you into some virtual world. When I said avoid women, those found here should be avoided too. Nothing good comes out of MKZ relationships. Let me end it right here. See you when you get here.

                                                                                                          Signed

                                                                                                          23 year old self

Boom box playlist:

Panic at the Disco- The Ballad of Mona Lisa

this n that

If you are a fan of ‘how I met your mum’, you must be aware how high Burney values his suits. The dude is literary suited up all the time except, well, when getting laid.

This week one of my longest runs came to an end. For the first time in my life I wore a suit. That marked another of my firsts in my life. It is a reason to be scared because the more you accomplish stuff in your life, the nearer you are to your death. This leaves me with few things that I have never done. For example, Sam Wanjiru accomplished like everything before he died. Just wait and see Messi and the bunch of Spanish football players who have won all trophies… or at least that are what I would hope for.

The day I wore the suit, I found it very rough walking in town. Ladies were all over me, causing traffic jams. I gladly smiled as cameras snapped away. The right honorable prime minister invited me to the Intercontinental for lunch just to be seen together with me in a suit. The city council officials worked unstintingly to clear lady panties that were littered wherever I had passed. The daily papers had a photo of me beaming from the top of a range sports that I had been given as a gift from a rich influential cougar. In the evening, the GSU had to be called to chase girls from my residence with tear gas…….sigh. That’s how I had imagined it would be. Unfortunately (or fortunately) it did not, apart from occasional stares.

I have never understood the excitement behind suits. Some people take it literally that since there are many pockets in a suit, the wearer has lots of chumz. People in suits are given far more respect than those without them. If you step into a Mhindi shop and ask for a gold watch, the Mhindi will give it to you and quote the price outright if you have a suit. If you in a t-shirt, he will tell you; “hiyo tunauza five thousand lakini kuna ingine ya mia nane hapa” he will go ahead and chomoa a fake one from under the counter. Now who told him that you cannot afford the 5k one? And what’s with the unsolicited alternative? I bet people loaded with lots of money are not usually in suits. People in suits (especially those under 28) are overworked and underpaid employees with girlfriend problems (read additional expenses) and probably have just three of them. Now that it is a belief that suited people have money, it becomes awkward when you stand there waiting for the boda boda guy to look for change to give you 5 shillings balance.   But again, most thieves and cons have one dress code. A suit.

In other news, I was stuck in a jam along Mombasa road on Thursday and some BMW was besides our mat. Some very beautiful chick was behind the wheels. Probably it belonged to her husband/boyfriend/parents/mpago wa kando/beshte yake. Probably it was hers. That was not the issue. The issue is the amount of stares that she was getting from the people in our mat (yours truly included). Even the driver was ogling too. At one point everybody was looking at her. I think she felt it on her skin. I understand ladies like it when people stare at them that way. Am just hoping the stares did affect her. So ms beautiful-girl-in-a-sleek-BMW, apologies if we trespassed.

In other news, did somebody see honorable Sonko on TV this week? He was leading a group of people in protesting against high prices of flour. So they had packets of flour which they were tearing and pouring on themselves. SMH. You know I will not call sonko mad. I fear that next time I visit a market, mad men might beat me up for soiling their name.

Boom box playlist:

 Jar of Hearts – Christina Perri

Why I read

 I have always reserved massive respect for writers of books. I can’t help but marvel at the thought of sitting down to write over 500 pages of pure genius work. When I was a kid I used to think that books/newspapers were written by computers. You just tell it to write on a certain topic and it just churns out the pages. Thereafter you open the big box (CRT) and viola! There sits a book with even the hard cover. The name of the computer was usually the author. I used to think that the biggest computer in Kenya was KIE, hehehe. Don’t snort at my early childhood thinking because you know naught about where I was brought up.

I never got the opportunity to read a lot when I was in primary school. I learnt to read English very late. I think it was in upper primary. My primary school had no arrangement to cultivate the reading culture. The only noteworthy books I read were the Moses series (remember Mukibi school for sons of African gentlemen?) and the adventures of that kaboy who used to slay giants like pop corns. Borrowing a story book from a neighbour was an uphill task and the time you spent with it was regulated.

In high school we were introduced to set books. This is the stage that made most people hate reading big books. Personally Kiswahili books used to make me prefer Wanjiruing to reading them. Those who read walenisi can verify that. I think the dude had a ambition of directing a movie comprising ideas from Star trek, avatar and inception. Putting it on Swahili took it to a new level. Though English books were better (a man of the people with its sexcapades) the thought of reading a book to for exams sucked off the joy of reading.

When I was older I met the foreign writers of fiction. I think this is the stage that built the little reading passion that I have. Books by Hardly chase, Sheldon, Grisham, Dan brown and others used to grace my days. I can’t forget Jackie Collins, that lady can really describe a sex scene *looks away*. Unfortunately this never lasted for long because the age of movies and series just took over.

Ladies and gentlemen movies are the prime reason why people never read as much as they are supposed to. It is said that you are supposed to read over 10,000 books before death catches up with you (really?). Movies are shallow as compared to novels. I read angels & demons then I watched the movie. SMH. They just did a big injustice to the book. Same as Harry Potter. While movies concentrate on showing flashy cars, guns and nude women with a stupid script, novels paint all the events in vivid mental pictures through powerful descriptions. Other people prefer listening to radio to reading (classic 105 in the morning? you are free to kill me now!)

Not all books qualify as good. Kenyan writers are letting us down. Very few Kenyan books are worth reading. The western African writers have stolen the thunder. Just ask any Kenyan to name five African writers he/she knows and western African names will pop up before Ngugi wa Thiong’o. I think contemporary Kenyan writers should step up. Somebody like Biko Zulu. His writings are just brilliant.

I was reading this Media madness blog post and it just hit me that I was letting myself down in the area of reading. Somebody commented that if you want to hide something from an African, just put it in writing. Going by our reading culture, it might be so true. It is recorded that the founders of reading and writing are the Egyptians (thanks to uncle Google). In fact the Greek sent their guys to study in Egypt. Afterwards lights went off (KPLC style) and the Dark Continent went into slumber. Yes there is no time for reading. People are always busy. The only free time is when I am stuck in a traffic jam. My girlfriend needs time. Those are the excuses we are busy giving. There is always time for watching an episode of your favourite series every night. There is a wide variety of books to choose from. If you aint a fan of fiction there exists motivational, financial, health, etc books. There are also religious books, especially those written by Ellen G. White with powerful messages.

Reading should be encouraged during the early age of kids. Just look around. Those kids with a strong command of English probably used to read a lot of story books when they were kids. Or used to be beaten up to read something. My experience in writing this blog has taught me that I would not be finding it this hard if I had read enough during my early years. Reading equips one with life skills and wide knowledge. It will make you relevant all the time. Guys, you will be superman before that chick you fancy. You will be chomoaing stories from all over.

I read Newspapers, magazines, and mostly blogs as much as I can but I feel more should be done. The problem is that people write blogs but nobody bothers to read them. Others like reading only pictures all through a magazine.  Kenya should cultivate the culture of reading as much as possible if we expect us to move forward. It all starts with you and me beginning it and thereafter passing it to our young ones.

 

Boombox playlist:

Just can’t get enough – Black Eyed Peas.