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Cock And Bull

• June 18, 2008
• 1:04

  Removing the Obstacle

   » ‎ Cock And Bull

  A few years ago, we traveled for a funeral of a relative to the agricultural town of Nyahururu in the Rift Valley. When we left Nairobi, it was bone dry but when we reached Nyahururu, it was pouring with rain and that is how we ended up in the sticky mud. When the bus that was at the head of the convoy got stuck, we all came to a standstill and the only alternative was for us to push it from the quagmire.

  Initially, just a few men were deployed to push the bus, and it seemed like they were not doing any good. After a while, several more joined them and still the bus would not bulge. Soon after the rest of us stepped into the rain to try and help the already soaked men in order to save the day. Still the bus would not bulge and its back wheels skidded in place while throwing mud at our clean clothes as if in protest. But we continued pushing and pushing until we all got exhausted and could push no more.

  It was while we were in this broken state that someone looked under the bus and realized that there was a stone that was lodged firmly in front of one of the front wheels. The stone was frustrating all our efforts to make the bus move forward and it was embarrassing that no one had bothered to look before. After the stone was removed, the bus was able to move almost without being pushed.

  This incident set me thinking about life; how we sometimes struggle so much with pushing when what we really need is to remove the obstacles that prevent us from going forward. Someone said that in every life, we can identify a single thing that if we change will enable us to succeed in ways that we had not imagined before. In Christian circles, I believe that this is referred to as a breakthrough. Take some time and look through your life, identify the single most important obstacle that you need to remove, and you will realize that instead of needing 10 of you in order to push through a day, you might just need yourself.

• 0:40

  Turning Weakness Into Strength

   » ‎ Cock And Bull

  I am sure you have heard it being said that everything happens to us for a reason and that all things work for the best. However, when we look at the negative things that happen in our lives, we might be left wondering what good could possibly come from those things.

  Take for example an undesirable habit that a person has struggled with for a long time. You will bear me witness that when it comes to these habits, we sometimes feel like captives and it might even seem like God Himself has refused to turn us lose from our chains. But then when one steps away from the problem and looks at it objectively he might begin to see a totally different picture.

  Take a moment to look at a habit that you want to change without judging it as right or wrong. You will realize that in the moments when the habit is ruling your life, it takes over almost all your resources so that it may be played out. You will notice is that the habit demands perfection and it is done with incredible planning in the mind such that when it starts to execute, the body runs in automatic with very little input from you. If you have heard personal development gurus talk about visualizing, concentration, drive, efficiency, emotions, and such kind of things then you realize that you apply them all very successfully in feeding the habit.

  If you think about it, you might realize that many of our most spectacular successes in life are achieved in actualizing bad habits. You perhaps know that a guy who really has to smoke at 2 am in the morning will smoke one way or another. The craving will result with him driving to the mall at that hour, something that he might not do if another person’s life depended on it.

  People overcome great obstacles in order to succeed in fulfilling bad habits. If a person who finds it difficult to lift a finger to do anything useful at work looks at himself in both situations, he might realize that his ability to act is intact, and that he just needs motivation in order to be effective. What if he was to isolate the motivation for performing the destructive habit and import it into a pursuing a constructive habit?

  I suppose that the challenge is for us to find the reason so that we can give our circumstances meaning. If we see bad habits as a constant reminder of just how good we are as planners and how efficient and focused we can be, then we might even begin to understand why God stands aside and lets us prove these qualities that are mandatory to success to ourselves over and over again. Just think, if a person isolates the motivation for performing a destructive habit and imports it into pursuing a constructive habit, then he or she will have turned weakness into strength and will most probably have changed his life for good.

• 0:00

  Taking What You Can Give

   » ‎ Cock And Bull

  I heard the story on the day following the one that the Prime Minister had a meal at the Ronalo Restaurant in Nairobi. When I went there for lunch, the restaurant was overflowing with customers, most of who did not look like the regulars and perhaps had just come in because of seeing the joint on TV the previous night. As a result, the sitting space was more squeezed than usual and I happened to share a table with the guy who was telling the story to two of his friends.

  The story teller was an expensively dressed huge man with dark spectacles tastefully aligned along his hairline and had that light complexion that makes a black man look dashing, no matter what his looks are. And he had such overbearing flamboyance that right now, I can’t even remember what his two friends looked like. But the story, I cannot forget.

  According to him, a guy he knows failed to keep a keen eye on the rising prices of petrol and ended up with an empty tank on the highway at night. The guy then decided that his best option was to walk to the nearest petrol station to get some fuel in a jerry can so that he could revive his car. Unfortunately, the guy was accosted by thugs before he got to the petrol station. The thugs were of a particularly nasty breed since apart from robbing him, they also sodomized him.

  At this point, the story teller posed for effect and took a moment to make a call from his cell phone. He must have been talking to a taxi driver because he asked him to pick him up from the restaurant and drop him at the airport so that he could catch a flight to Dubai. With that done, he went back to telling his story to the two listeners who seemed thoroughly impressed either by the story telling skills, or by the fact that they were having lunch with a person who apparently was going to have dinner in a different continent that evening.

  Back to the story, the traumatized man somehow managed to make it home where he found his wife and tearfully narrated his ordeal. However, rather than offer sympathy, his wife looked at him squarely and said; “Now you know how it feels like each time you ask me to do that with you!” She then added, “You are wailing and it has happened to you only once…what would you do if it was to be done to you each time one of those men came home drunk?”

  We never got to know what the guy’s response was, or what happened after that since the story teller’s phone rang and it turned out that the taxi driver was waiting for him outside the restaurant. He quickly snapped his flipping phone shut, picked up a small travel bag from between his legs, shook the hands of his two friends in a hurry and left them bewildered, just as a waiter came to ask if they needed any more drinks to be added to their tab. It must have been expected by everyone including the waiter that the flamboyant story teller would pay for the drinks and this was just a ploy to ensure that the two would be willing to take the responsibility. You could almost hear their mental calculators being punched ruthlessly as they recalculated their budgets before they grudgingly chipped in to pay the bill.

  As I left the restaurant, it occurred to me that the moral of the story was that we should always be capable and willing to give what it is that we demand from others.