Life abroad is a great challenge and the expectations we tend to create to the people at home become the real test to true loving (we do really love our friends). Unfortunately we want to impress so much (beyond our abilities) and we often fall short of this which makes us depressed. When coming abroad we tend to make many promises to our friends and relatives such as I will call you, I will send you monetary help or I will get you this or that. Very few of these initial promises get fulfilled. I have come to realize that at times I was extending help or even promising help because I wanted to impress. Now that I am maturing abroad I come to realize that this was a great mistake and that I must have hurt enough people back at home. The people I wanted to impress also seized the opportunity and utilized it properly singing my favorite songs and playing my favorite drums. They kept communicating to me up to this day at times I forgot to answer their emails and slowly they stopped writing. Or I would write back impressing them on how busy I was and the fact that I am rushing for my next appointment blah bleh blih bloh bluh etc! In this process I must have hurt the people whom I truly cared for and loved. On the other hand the people who really love us only need simple acts of love and not a patronistic or benevolent love. They are always happy to receive the smallest gift we give to them including a simple email and they do not make demands or create impossible situations in order to benefit. This is plainly explained by the following chat lines between two friends living abroad. People are always thinking of how to create a permanent solution to help the people at home so that they may move on with their lives comfortably. The entire chat is as follows
Elvis: lol
Gabriel: Yo man
Elvis:
Gabu, am sorry for my silence, but pia wewe umenyamaza sana. Kwang maze ni shughuli, I know this is not a valid excuse, but I am going through a lot and I do not know how to explain it.
Gabriel: El, sisi ni mabro, and tumetoka fa so apart from kununuliana bia we can help each other remain sane in this insane world
Elvis: That is true Gabu, leo umeguswa hau
Elvis: Gabu, .......
Elvis: Wow,
Elvis: I sometime stop and look where we are standing and I thank God
Elvis: It has been a long journey
Elvis: to where i am right now
Elvis: looking back, I see you teaching me how to play the piano,
Elvis: and that is where my door started opening, so my brother, it is amazing how a simple piano could have provided the confidence and motivation to find the spring board and wings.
Gabriel: U see El, I have this great movie called the secrete. Please try to get it. I liked it so much. I think that the past is important but now we must focus onto our dreams.
Elvis: I don care when you get mad at me because I know, it would go away after sometime
Elvis: ha
Elvis: I heard about that movie, but have never got a chance to read
Elvis: watch
Elvis: sorry
Gabriel: Ask ya self What do you really want? And go for it
Elvis: I read all the time that is why
Gabriel: Visualize what you want and it will manifest it self to you.
Gabriel: All the things you have now it is because they were part and parcel of your imagination.
Gabriel: You want a good woman walah there she is
Gabriel: Yu want a great bottle of beer walah...
Gabriel:
What do u reaally want?
Elvis:
happiness!
Gabriel: Visualize the things that will make u happy (love, friendship, a comfortable non exaggerated life). Visualize very strongly and you will find it. Do not let other people define happiness for u. Do it urself. Is happiness really what u want?
Elvis:
yesGabriel: Define it
Elvis: I would be happy, my half of my goals are accomplished
Gabriel: define the goals
Elvis: for example, helping my family (grandmom, auntie, uncle and my cousins) who do expect all the help from me.
Elvis: I have been thinking of a business, which would be generating something for them and now I could go and find my own life
Gabriel: How are u planning to achieve this?
Elvis: I don't know gabu
Gabriel: Just tell me now your simple plan to make your grandma happy
Elvis: build her a good house a self contained one
Elvis: and providing her some stipend every month
Gabriel: Let me get to the second cos it is much simpler. How much can u afford to send her even let us say in a period of two months
Elvis: 50 - 100 dollars
Gabriel: I send my mum 100E when I find it and she is happy. She even bought a goat and two dogs. She also pays school fees for some of my nephews and has rented a small farm.
Elvis: that is good
Elvis: my grandmom is always happy
Gabriel: How much money do u think would make ur grandma appreciative
Elvis: even when you give her a
pennyGabriel: Then send her something greater than a penny that makes ur heart happy and does not throw you in misery
Elvis: That is true
Gabriel: Just think about small and simple things that would make the old lady happy. Great things will later find their way after you take care of those small things
Elvis: u r right,
Elvis: but i was in process of explaining how I want to be happy
Elvis: lol
Gabriel: Do not worry if other people have mansions, you have a great palace of love in ur heart and that is what matters
Elvis: now you talk like her
Elvis: I know that riches are not everything
Elvis: I just think that I have to pull up my sock
Gabriel: Yes, remember I saw her in Nairobi and just loved her so much. She has the same ingredients that have gone into the making of my own mom (i.e. great and unlimited love)
Elvis: gabu, you made my day, you made me reflect a lot, now i would live you because i want to take a shower to go to work
Gabriel: Please go to work. But remember to be happy. Love is those small things and not so much the big shows
Elvis(
11:19 PM): God bless you
After the chat ended, Gabriel followed it up with a message to Elvis
ELIXIR!
I felt propelled to send something additional to our chat that comes from quoting you "looking back, I see you teaching me piano." You can remember the piano and yet it was a very small thing but you can see how strong a visual image it gives u. It is not really any other great thing that I might have given u that will make u cry if I dropped dead today.. it is that piano moment (it was simple and not perfect because I was not a professional. The joy and satisfaction accompanying the giving process is what matters - the penny given by the poor woman was much appreciated by Jesus and not so much the gold and other precious gifts from the rich that were a surplus) ... which was so small but with a big impact on your memory. Give your people too, something as simple as that and you will be happy. LOL
Later a friend of mine posted to me a nice paper linking theology and economics from a Lorneganian perspective. And I used the following reflection to further our discussion with Bob. Lonergan's forces of progress and decline go further than utility maximization in describing the limits of the business cycle " leaving the system to the free interplay of market forces, driven by profit maximisation, means losses, crisis and finally recession and crash of the economy." Here Lornegan seemed Keynessian somehow proposing something similar to state interventions in remedying the market. But he also takes his analysis further than the state when he speaks of transcendence, moral idealism (This points to the individual hence putting personal responsibility above all economic forces) and grace (God's love does not prohibit us to pursue material wealth but challenges us not to be slaves of wealth and materialism) hence the love of God has true aspects of empowerment. We should pursue material well being but with a sense of personal responsibility and justice. Hence we regulate our selves using moral idealism better than any outside forces can be they the government or market forces etc.
Loving too is not an outside manifestation (this is too cosmetic, routine and enslaving). It is deep within us and it is something abundant and easily flows from our hearts like a river down a hill. Love is found on all planes be they linear or dynamic. Speaking of Lorenz's chaos theory with repellants, chaotic attractors and true attractors arising out of simulating a love plane is very interesting. If the entire bifurcated solution to be simulated is love then each and every solution is very tangible. Repellants in this plane describe situations that would propel us to move away from love, chaotic attractors in the plane would be the points where we are in an indecision phase or finding temporary solutions while on transition to the solution (true attractors). The solution point is a point that mixes my own ability to love with that of God and this is the most primitive point of love where there is no pretense and where God is. Our grandmothers and mothers have reached this point. The piano moment for you also symbolizes this point. Sometimes I feel that I can hold love in my arms and in fact it is not hard to know the people who really love me. I can describe the shape and beauty of love from all the people who do give it to me. With some it was only the time or a simple prayer or a meal that they shared with me or that piano moment which might have been short but very empowering and to others greater sacrifices, gifts and accompaniment and this is much greater to me than all the education and success I have received todate. In the plane of love therefore, I think that the true solution is the least expensive one because the happiness and feelings of justice it generates in us and it is spontaneous and does not need complicated proofs.
Hey, the argument above is highly mathematical and uses non linear dynamic modeling. I tend to love modeling because it leads to higher levels of understanding reality. Hey, may you find peace of heart and serenity that comes from living the real African in you and not the complexities that surround you each and everyday abroad. May we all find a true essence of justice in our mission to loving!
