Elizabeth Radina

Life. Man. When you are 25, 35, or 40, it looks like a lifetime away. If in a good place at 25, say a graduate with good career prospects, and a steady lover, everything seems possible. You imagine you can squeeze a family, husband or wife, two kids, dream home, a PhD, and live your dream life by 35 or 40. At 25, you look at older relatives or people with messy lives, and you wonder what could have gone wrong. I remember the first time I attended my daughter’s PTA. I was a relatively young man. There were older folks, older men with vitambis, one or two with greying hair, and in my own youthful folly, I may have cursed inwardly, wondering, “where were they?” When you are young, you will never understand how someone can be older and be jobless or be rudderless or without a family. When you are young and successful, you become criminally blind to the surprises of life. Sometimes things go so right, you win so much, so consistently, you forget about failure or losses. And these are the people likely to be hit the hardest when life happens. A business partner in the UK told me how his sister recently alijitia kitanzi. The sister was a bright student all her life and ended up working in a large, global corporation. When she was laid off, the accumulated stress from the loss of her job and undetected depression sent her on a spin ending in death. She was 38. What is ten years? It sounds long. Right? Yeah, but all it takes is one bad, long-term relationship to waste some six years. And you need up to two years to heal. That is, if you are strong and there are no kids. Divorce is a different ball game altogether. It takes almost two years from the point you decide to divorce, to another long year of back and forth, doubts, and all. Post-divorce is a terrible time, and both men and women handle it differently, and people move on in different timelines. You think ten years is a long time, but all it takes is people saying “tutam” in a mannerless way, and you are stuck in a bad job or jobless for another three years, barely scraping by. We rarely talk about how bad governments keep being shackled in poverty longer than necessary. You lost a job, and before you know it, three years have passed since you got another one. Some guy commented on my post that it took him 13 years to find a job after losing his first one. Yaani, 25-42 is such a tumultuous period, and nothing in our constitution prepares you for the vicissitudes of that critical period. Marry right, and you have hit a jackpot. Marry wrong, and a decade of your life is flushed down the drain just like that. A lecturer in a Kenyan university can turn a basic master’s degree into a nightmare, and what was supposed to be a two-and-a-half-year course can turn into a harrowing five years. There is a year you will drop it altogether, until a sensible friend encourages you to go back and finish. You can fall sick unexpectedly and get derailed. Things can go wrong. May be ni wachawi wa kwenu. Maybe it is the poor choices you will make. For instance, in the deep throes of passion, when the sex is good, when her legs are on your shoulders, and you are fishing deeper, you don’t stop to think that maybe, this guy, so good and tender, is a deadbeat-in-waiting. When a girl is all feminine, all-loving, all respectful, as a man, you never think for a moment that in two years she will turn you into an alcoholic milaya, sleeping with anything to get back to her, which is foolish already. Nobody, at the peak of a good relationship, stops to imagine that their partner will be the source of their future anguish. And red flags? Useless indicators. Red flags occur to you in startling clarity in hindsight. In hindsight, everything is so clear. But in real time, we assume. Assumption is the mother of all blunders adults are likely to commit. Can you game life? Can you extract good outcomes if you play right? I bet you can. Or maybe, everything is predestined to happen, as it happens, and we are just unwilling actors playing out a script whose end we don’t know. I no longer know these things. Nowadays, I am willfully ignorant. I saw this meme, and it’s like all of us are here for the first time, so “tupunguze advice”. We won’t stop dishing advice; those of us who do need some humility. What I have learnt is that advice only makes sense after the experience. Not before. Sometimes people come to me and all they want is for me to agree with their preconceived notions. When I point out different perspectives, they either go cold on me or disappear, only to reappear a few months later, saying, “Silas, you were right.” I don’t revel in them learning the hard way. I am also like that. There was this girl I loved and was so head-over-heels into her. And she had a sparkling charm, and something I had desired in a woman for such a long time. One day, I went to pick her up from the airport with my friend. After we dropped her off at her place, my friend told me to dump her. He was unequivocal with his advice. I was adamant that she was a good girl and that my friend was being unnecessarily hard on her for very humane, if girly, mistakes. After all, no one is perfect. My friend gave me that weary look we give friends who are about to trip. I thought he was jealous. I thought he wanted her. I felt myself smarter than him. Roughly, a month later, the girl did the thing. No anesthesia. Ushawahi achwa hadi unajicheka? I had to hide from my friend for a while. He still laughs at me. And I hate him because of that. But after she did that thing, my friend’s advice made sense. He had seen what I could not see when I was in love. Anyway, to young people, live your life with diligence and discipline. There is so much within our control. And there is more that is beyond our control. A few things I have learnt, I can tell my 25-year-old self: 1. Your personal goals (career, academic, social, spiritual, hobbies) are yours and yours alone. Never let anyone interfere with them. Not a spouse, not a child, not a family member. Indeed, there is room for adjustment here, a compromise there, as sensibly as it is possible. But never sacrifice personal goals for the greater good of something that can end like a relationship. 2. Don’t judge. Most of us millennials became those unmarried uncles and aunts pretty fast. We became the lucky unemployed uncle and the struggling aunt before we even knew it. Accept your wins as a young person with grace, and your losses with greater grace. 3. Don’t be addicted to anything: alcohol, drugs, sex, or gambling. Nothing enslaves or wastes time like treating an addiction. If you must drink every weekend, if you must use drugs, if you are gambling, you are on a very treacherous path. Morgan Housel said that self-control is having empathy for your future self. Ask an addict how difficult it is to stop a habit that has become their second nature. 4. Quit bad relationships sooner. It doesn’t matter if his pipe cures your demons. Or she rides the ghosts out of you—date people who are likely to complement your life desirably. Nothing wastes more time or derails people more than staying longer in useless relationships. 5. For men, know that at some point, between 25 and 45, you will lose something extremely important in your life. It can be your family (wife and kids), a dream career, your health, yourself, etc. What matters is not that you will lose that thing. What matters is how you handle the loss. 6. Save. Save. Save. Invest. Invest. Invest. However little. However much. You are never too young to be financially wise. Being financially wise is more of an attitude thing than the income you make itself. That is why a government employee earning Sh 50,000 has a better savings portfolio than an NGO guy earning Sh 200,000. Invest in financial literacy, son. 7. Invest in knowledge. 8. Have fun, as in live. Eat your best food. Date your crush. Drink what you like. But all the fun must be earned. 9. Always remember that the years go by very fast. And sometimes, life happens. Your dreams of what you will be ten years ahead may end up misplaced, and you can never predict where you will end up. I have a friend who is working in Kyrgyzstan. Good luck finding that on the map. Dude had completely different plans for life. 10. This came last because it is controversial to most people, but I will always encourage young people to find God. May the week break. Uncle Silas.