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I learnt something…

Kahumuzah 1 Comment

So I started university and let me tell you something, it is neither overwhelming nor underwhelming. I just feel like I took an extra-long break from school and now I am back at it again. Upon arrival here I had no excitement of any form nor did I have any expectations; in a way I almost felt normal, a sort of “let’s do this *cracks knuckles*” attitude.

I don’t mind people knowing I am a ‘fresher’ but I also need them to know I’m not stupid and naïve. I guess I can attribute this whole attitude I have to the fact that I continuously told myself over my long hiatus from academics that I am starting on a new slate, I don’t know anything, I’m here to do my best and possibly surpass what I think is my best and explore by getting out of my comfort zone. This is called conditioning. I have conditioned my mind a certain way so I can react to a particular event in this case moving to university in a particular way.

Conditioning by it’s dictionary definition is: 1. the process of modifying a person or animal’s behavior, 2. Any training or preparation especially athletic training of the body, 3. The storage of a material specimen under specific temperature, humidity for a specific time prior to testing. Basically a process of preparation for a specific event, a good example of this how they train guard dogs they are taught to react particular sorts of stimuli a certain way.

Conditioning is a fairly easy thing to do. One thing that is signature of it is repetition. You need to keep repeating the action or words for it to stick because you know what they say practice doesn’t make perfect it makes permanent. However conditioning isn’t always conscious. You know those habits you have that you feel you’ve done since forever? That was a result of conditioning, you did that one thing continuously that you are so used to doing it comes naturally to you.

The hardest part about conscious conditioning is the beginning of the whole process, especially it is a taxing thing to do like starting to exercise. The pain and shaky legs cause you to want to give up on the whole experience, it seems unbearable. The breakthrough comes when you can push through the pain and give yourself a small goal and discipline yourself to reach it. Once you can do this and do it again and again, your body gets used to it and it becomes routine.

It’s very possible to do you just need persistence, determination and discipline. So whatever it is you want to do go ahead and condition yourself.

The start is a high or a low

The middle a monotony and a stumbling block

The end is the reward

The journey is what makes it worth it, remember it always.

Kahumuzah

Loneliness

Kahumuzah 1 Comment

Being alone and loneliness are two different things, I’ve learned that the older I grew.
Being alone doesn’t necessarily mean that you are lonely, it is very possible to be alone and enjoy your own company. You could enjoy taking care of yourself, thinking over everything that you would want to achieve, evaluating your growth over the years and marveling at it and so much more. Jonathan Van Ness said “Loneliness is, like, when you wish someone else was there, and solitude is when you enjoy being alone. I don’t always wanna be alone, but I definitely like pockets of solitude to recharge and come back to myself. I think that’s so important for everyone.”

Loneliness on the other hand has no space for the type of light that can be related to being alone. Imagine loneliness as an island in the middle of the sea, your stranded on it and no one knows your there it doesn’t matter how many bottled messages you send out because no one will ever find them and you know that and soon you stop sending out bottled messages and accept your fate as you sink further and further slowly by slowly into the quicksand that surrounds the middle of the island. That is loneliness, it is soul crushing and it sits your chest and suffocates you leaving you a shell of yourself. However, it is also like a series but you just don’t know how long each episode will last or how it will leave you. One episode may leave you feeling like you don’t fit in and uncomfortable at social gatherings, the next episode may beat you up and leave you crying buckets on a bathroom floor. You can never tell how it will leave you, a hardened soldier or a survivor?

 What is loneliness?
 It's a place where you are on your own
 A place that shuts out everything even in a room full of people
 It's in your mind 
 Sometimes it sits on your shoulders
 Sometimes your chest
 Its weight is crushing
 You can't breathe
 Your hands shake uncontrollably
 You sink to the floor, wanting to go through
 Your knees reach your chest
 You can't even rock yourself
 You sit still
 And shed silent tears riddled with barely sobs
 You don't want anyone to hear you
 Sometimes you press your hand to your mouth to stop the sound
 It hurts
 But you don't know how to stop it
 You don't understand it
 It's a resident in your mind
 Making an appearance whenever
 It paralyzes you
 You hide to deal with it
 You don't want them to think your ungrateful
 Ungrateful for them, for being there, for loving you
 But you can't help but feel abandoned sometimes
 So you let the silent tears tear through your body 
 Then you stand up and clean up and hold on to your sunshine as it comes
 Even a single beam is essential

So what causes loneliness? Many things for example transitions in life, moving from one place in your life to another can cause you to lose interaction with others and social disconnect; mental health problems, not feeling connected and understood by those around you. So this helps you realize that everyone experiences loneliness at some point in their lives, sometimes only for a particular period and others it’s drawn out and can last awhile.

Can it be remedied?
I believe so, I think first you need to stop fighting alone time because we all need it seeing as society is energy leech that sucks you dry. Alone time provides you with the chance to re-group and get power, think of it like a game of Super Mario you have all these challenges but to meet them you need power-ups.
Then find and indulge in something you love to offset the feelings of loneliness (it can be done, easier said than done but it can be done) for example I write poetry and I am learning to write music, pouring my thoughts onto paper plus I listen to music. Both these things have a soothing and calming effect on me when I feel like the world is closing in on me like an escape. This allows you to see yourself beyond the loneliness you feel, it shows you that you are more than you think you are.
Plus, ask yourself why you feel that way and if you don’t have an answer that’s fine but just asking can trigger you to subconsciously think and flip through experiences buried deep and one day it will smack you in the face. Lastly, breath slowly and do what you need to do to get through your day or next episode.

However, this isn’t a self-help article on how to tackle loneliness these are just things I have done to help me deal with my lingering loneliness and have decided to share.
Have you ever experienced feelings of loneliness? How did you deal with them?

Kahumuzah and Lotus Martha

Fear

Kahumuzah Leave a comment 
 The Oxford Dictionary describes fear as:

An unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain, or harm;

A feeling of anxiety concerning the outcome of something or the safety of someone;

The likelihood of something unwelcome happening

but also

A mixed feeling of dread and reverence. 

The Urban Dictionary says it is:

an emotion which tends to take over your mind causing negative thinking, anger, and even more fear;

Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.

and

Fear is the only thing in your way from achieving your goals.

These days I like to call the Black Death or Saving Grace, for two reasons. One being fear is False Evidence Appearing Real, meaning whatever you are afraid of you can overcome but your own mind has tricked and trapped you into thinking you cannot. Two; sometimes we fear things with good reasons to for example walking alone at night, it is dangerous and this has been proven time and time again. So being weary of walking alone at night causes you to take the appropriate measures to secure yourself if you need to move around at night. Fear is an issue like any that has two faces to it.

This emotion can elicit a “rush” from you or terrorize you sometimes even paralyze you. The reason for this comes down to one thing the context; how we perceive a situation has an immense bearing on whether we react with immense excitement or numbing fear.

You live a life where you know where what goes, what happens when, who comes when, who goes when etc. You’ve you reached a plateau in your life where you can sit comfortably and once one is in a situation like this they do not like to be shaken or even poked, no sort of discomfort is appreciated. Now nothing shakes someones foundation more than uncertainty however small and with it comes fear, it’s like having the lights right in front of you being shut off when ever you take or try to take a step forward. However that’s all life really is lots of uncertainty and a series of fortunate and unfortunate events orchestrated by decisions you’ve made or external factors and your the explorer trying to trek your way through it. We always think of uncertainty as an obstacle that we must go over, go through or get around of but we can also see it as a curtain. A curtain that when pulled back holds either an amazing result or nothing much because what your doing behind the scenes is what eventually appears on the scene, never forget that. 

 That which you dread may be that, that frees you
It may make you cringe
You may make you cry 
You may make you lose 
But hopefully you won't die

"Oh the worlds a stage" upon which we perform
A scene upon which our stories are told
There are those that all see and those that they don't
You never know your next scene or next story to tell 
Next adventure or tragedy to befall you 
Next next or next next next
And all in all as Dory say "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming"

As a wrote this article I decided to do some research on fear, its triggers and what it entails as I did this I stumbled upon this simple but interesting answer on Quora: http://We all have our comfort zones. This plateau may occur when we’ve become good at our jobs and can show off a skill or complete a task without thinking too much about the process. We also learn society’s rules and regulations early in our formative years, and become confident that this knowledge is valid each day. This allows us to get to work, buy groceries, and cross the road without getting shot in the face. Mostly. Learning new tasks requires time and effort that we’d prefer to spend impressing people with what we already know, or going about our business, following rules that we’ve already learned to obey. We aren’t really interested in the government suddenly deciding to change which side of the road we drive on. That’s going to take massive amount of re-education, and a lot of people are going to get shot in the face. Some people don’t like change because they are too lazy, too fearful, under educated, or have physical or mental problems that make learning new tasks and rules difficult. People generally want to follow the path of least resistance. Luckily there are enough innovators and free-thinkers among the sheep who spice things up for the rest of us, and hopefully one of them will make the rest of us a bulletproof face-shield.

You can interpret that however you like but what I see is learning new things, change, anything we want to do but are not sure about requires us to rewire ourselves and go back to the drawing board sometimes needing us to unlearn some of the skills we’ve mastered in order for us to tackle this new wave that’s about to hit us. We just don’t want to do that and just thinking about it causes us to get afraid then the uncertainty of the whole situation looms over us, we consider all the ways it could go wrong and the two ways it could go right if we tried. In short we turn into a hot mess and want others to take the risks for us because . However, when faced with this looming fear of the unknown we need to embrace how uncertain we feel about it and only then can find a way to push through that curtain and onto the other side of our fears.

This is what’s up when faced with uncertainty.

Though finding “what is to be done next” is hard, breathe, step back and survey the situation as you do this a window will open and you will see it and jump through. Don’t panic or lose your head just breath and enter the murky waters riddled with fear however you feel comfortable doing so, because and it grounds you in a skewed kind of way.

Kahumuzah

With Love

Kahumuzah 2 Comments

Jesus told us to lead with love. Okayyyyy….but what does it mean ‘to lead with love’? How does one go about ‘leading with love’? What does it entail? And most importantly, what is love?

I remember reading a twitter post that said ‘you know you love someone when you want them to be happy even if its not with you’. I think this is a beautiful representation of what love is, it is not selfish and it does not envy. It takes you as you are and helps you along your journey till the very end. Basically it makes you feel light, you want to celebrate the success of people even if that means it isn’t with you but with someone else somewhere else. Even if it hurts you still derive joy and happiness from them being happy and this can ironically lead to you healing from the pain of being away from them but only if you let it.

LOVE IS LIGHT!
                        Like the Sun it brightens all that it touches.

We hear the statement ‘actions speak louder then words’ its true. How you act towards something ultimately reveals how you feel towards it. This is especially true when trying to lead with love as Jesus did for example
love is safe, love is care
it isn’t you dropping meaningless phrases
it isn’t empty grand gestures
it isn’t hitting me then buying me flowers
it isn’t demeaning me then saying you didn’t mean it like that
it is pushing me when i lose motivation
it is just holding me when I’m sad
it is comfortable silence
it is always being there
it is pointing out my bs
it is also knowing when to let go
love is safe, love is care

I read something somewhere that said ‘if you say something over and over it loses its meaning. I love you, I love you, I love you. See, nothing’. Now think of the phrase ‘I love you’, how many times is it thrown around everyday with nothing behind it? A friend of mine once told me (I,m paraphrasing here) ‘I don’t say that phrase a lot because it means a lot, you should only say it if you mean it’. She is right, when you say ‘I love you’ you’re basically saying how you are is how I accept you and I won’t try to change you.

Back to leading with love. First what is leading? A quick search on google brings up many definitions but a few stood out to me:
1. the initiative in an action; an example for others to follow.

2.  to be in charge of.
This brings to mind the statement ‘you need to lead by example’, if the leader does it then his subordinates are more likely to follow what they do. A leader is not coercion, brutality and fear. A leader is Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz; she was kind, she made friends with people and animals, she was genuinely liked. Dorothy led her little unlikely band to the Emerald City not by capitalizing on their insecurities but by gentle words, genuinely caring, encouragement, gentle prodding and genuine belief that good can trample over evil. Dorothy is a good example of a leader, rather unconventional but that’s never been an issue. She shows what it means to be a leader, she doesn’t really appear to be one but she is, she walks among those she leads in charge but also a part of the action.

Kahumuzah