Recently, as I was mulling over my past, I realized that primary school education was very easy. Which makes me wonder why I had to read a lot. All I did by studying intensively was complicating life.
The intensive reading I did in primary school must have been the cause of the confusion that people saw in me when I proceeded to Starehe Boys' Centre in 2002 for my high school and college education. Believe me, I would be bombarded with one remark after another about how confused I was. I just wasn't as bright as I would have wanted to believe.
At Starehe, I continued with the habit of complicating life. I immersed myself wholly in schoolwork, hardly sparing time for reading storybooks and for developing my social skills. Not surprisingly, I never had throughout my Starehe years a girlfriend with whom I could exchange letters.
Due to my habit of complicating life, I left Starehe in April 2007 as an over-ambitious teen. I wanted to start a business, become a music teacher, entertain people on the piano in 5-star hotels and apply to four top American colleges while I was a first year student at JKUAT, a local university where I had been admitted to pursue an engineering degree.
At one time in April 2007 as I was preparing to matriculate at JKUAT, I came across a newspaper advert of a certain church in Nairobi that was looking for a choirmaster. I thought of applying for the position. Mark you, I was just a 19-year old teen wanting to teach a group of grown-ups how to sing. How ambitious!
With such lofty ambitions, it's small wonder that my confusion never cleared up when I was at JKUAT. Some people at the university did accuse me of being as mentally mixed-up as a Form One student.
Because old habits die hard, I continued complicating life well into my adulthood. I would set very high goals that would leave me depressed when they failed to materialize. In 2010 for instance, I came up with numerous goals that I wanted to achieve in my life. They were:
- to write great books and articles
- to produce beautiful songs
- to start a business or an organization
- to advance my web development skills
- to be a compelling speaker
- to have a successful political career
- to be an inspirational teacher
To tell you the truth, I haven't become a roaring success in any of the fields I wanted to excel at. And it has dawned on me that my lack of success has been due to my habit of complicating life by chasing many big goals.
In recent years, I have simplified my life. How? By whittling down my goals to only writing inspiring stories and composing scintillating hymns, and then share them on this blog which I constructed using the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid!).
I believe that I can own a sleek car, build a magnificent home, have a colorful wedding, travel overseas and give my future children a decent education just from the earnings generated by the adverts on this blog. What I need to work on is growing my blog audience to hundreds of visitors each day.
My beloved reader, I urge you to simplify your life as well. Don't complicate it by chasing too many big goals like I did earlier on in my life. If you are a student, don't over-read the way I foolishly did in primary school; spare some time for exercise and socializing. That's all I am saying.
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RECOMMENDATION: If you've enjoyed the above story on simplifying life, you might also enjoy another one on "Setting Goals" that I wrote about three years ago. Just click on that link in blue to dive straight into the story.
