Finding the Right Path

Have you ever seen a creature that has completely lost its sense of direction? A good example is a cock that has just been beheaded and escaped from its captor's hands. An even better example is me after I dropped out of JKUAT where I went astray when the engineering degree I was pursuing there became too hot for me to handle.

That I went astray at JKUAT is not something I am ashamed to admit because King David, one of my biblical heroes from whom I draw inspiration, says in Psalm 119:66-71 that he went astray. And like David, my going astray has inspired me to walk in obedience to God's Word.

I lost all sense of direction after I dropped out of JKUAT, something that made me suffer from severe bouts of guilt. At times, I would feel as dull and dank as a tomb. I would also frequently struggle to get out of bed.

What's worse, I would overlook personal hygiene. Imagine there were times I would go for several days without bathing, changing clothes and cleaning my room. Dad would sometimes criticize me for wearing a pair of shorts that had been darkened by dirt.

My miserable life was further worsened by staying in a leaking room with a potholed floor, bathing in a dilapidated bathroom which forced me to either heat water in a sooty kitchen or endure splashing myself with cold water. Back then, I used to live in an old wooden house before my elder siblings, bless them, built a self-contained brick mansion for our parents.

But what I loathed most in those days were the duties my modest parents made me do. Such soul-destroying duties as milking cows in a muddy cowshed, cooking meals with firewood that emitted blinding smoke, and tethering calves on a farm that was full of weeds and thorny bushes.

So much did I detest those duties that I would sometimes run away from home by pretending I was going to teach piano in Nairobi. It was during one of those runaways to Nairobi that I came close to messing up. Would you like to hear the details?

Okay, I met a damsel called Sophie [not her real name] in a cyber cafe in downtown Nairobi. After I struck a conversation with her as I browsed internet in the cafe, she readily agreed to accompany me to a basement room in a building within the city. When we entered the room, I tried to caress her. Luckily, for fear of getting caught, I didn't explore her further as I would have wished.

And that's the thing - when we hit rock bottom, we tend to escape from our misery by engaging in promiscuous behavior, drug abuse and alcoholism. Fortunately for me, perhaps out of divine love, I never messed up during those dark ages of my life. The closest I came to tarnishing my name was caressing Sophie in a basement room after just meeting her for the first time in a cyber cafe.

I really lost all sense of direction after dropping out of JKUAT, the dark ages of my life. At one time, I joked with my friend Chege Njuguna, who was pursuing a degree in electrical & electronic engineering at JKUAT, that I was living my life at a frequency of several "what-the-hell?" per minute.

With time though, I started finding the right path in life by reconnecting with my hobbies: reading, writing, designing websites, playing the piano as well as listening to music and speeches on my father's computer. Those hobbies often lifted my spirits.

When I designed a website for my high school class sometime in 2012 for instance, I felt a deep sense of fulfilment and progress. I also got to learn how to develop web applications - an enjoyable skill that helped me set up this blog which appears simple yet requires advanced computer programming knowledge to construct.

Thanks to reconnecting with my hobbies, I am now feeling as if I am walking down the right path. Well, I still have a long way to go especially as pertains making money from my hobbies but I am already so far from where I used to be and I am proud of that.

My beloved reader, if you have hit rock bottom like I once did, please don't commit suicide or turn to drugs, alcoholism and prostitution. Those vices will only make things worse. Instead, try reconnecting with your passions. Think about the things you loved doing as a child (it could have been singing, drawing or tinkering with machines) and start doing them again.

Don't get me wrong: I am not promising you that life will become a piece of cake once you begin reconnecting with your passions. You will face criticism and rejection, among other setbacks. So, as Bill Clinton's mother was, be like a rubber ball: the harder the life hits you down, the higher you should bounce. Adieu!

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RECOMMENDATION: If you've enjoyed the above story on finding the right path, you might also enjoy another one on "The Doors God Closed for Me" which I wrote last year. Just click on that link in blue to dive straight into the story.