Thursday 26 May 2016

Why You Should Not Ignore That Inner Voice.

All of us will easily remember that time that we went against our gut feeling and ended up in tears. I say easily because we've still not probably forgiven ourselves ever since.

It's a real, small voice that tries to steer our decisions to the right direction, to the most profitable or beneficial option. Its not a shout, no. Its not like anything you've heard before. Its gentle, considerate and loving. Its sounds like its from a source that knows all there is to know about us. Its more audible than the loudest shout. And even though sometimes we are so fixated with our own reason and thoughts that we end up ignoring it, we can't really forget the moment it spoke. Because it seems to leave these lasting memories. 

And over the years, i have had reasons to believe that if one has the guts to follow it through, its rarely wrong. 

Its promise may take time to come, but if we stay the path, they always come to pass. And it always leads the safest option, where every risk and danger, is covered. But many times, like i said, we go against it and end up wrecked on the freeway.

'Smitten' Eligible Bachelor

You are young and you possess this very hot blood that your entire clan is known for.  You have a bright future and this is not a muguka-induced illusion. Not at all. You really do. Your first job rakes in six figures a month and before long,  you are known by your first name in all the city's top entertainment joints. Even the entertainment magazines have ran a feature of you, placing you firmly in some Most Eligible Bachelors top ten list, that no one ever asked you about. Ignore the fact that you probably have no intention of ever getting married, largely because you are suspicious of this wilful sentence that begins with a party.

But your new found status soon opens a ladies windfall and before long, you are trotting around with a half-black, half-white damsel with a strange 'accent'. That rumor doing rounds that she actually hails from Shamakhokho is neither here nor there. This is not only a complete departure from what your mama taught you, its also in direct collision course, with a small voice that keeps equating  you to a zebra that is dating a crocodile. You dismiss her insatiable appetite for wild parties as a youth problem that will go away by the time she hits thirty, but the small voice is constantly reminding you of an English saying that has to do with men digging own graves. And it's so consistent, that we might as well be talking graveyards here.

You ignore the voice as being the result of a naive and unsophisticated past, and before you know it, all her leopard-spotted underwear are hanging in your bedroom as she marks her territory.

By the time you hit forty, you are known as the guy who dozes at the bar counter, because you are too scared to go to your own home. The damsel has since transformed into a full grown dinosaur that hates pot-bellied men, of which you've now become. You remember the small voice you ignored and you order another beer because that's the only way you can avoid crying in public.

Ill-Fated Journey

Its been raining donkeys and horses. You know that junction near your home becomes impassable when it rains, because water from the nearby hills first converge there, before deciding where else to go. For some reason, something inside you keeps discouraging you from picking your car keys. Its a feeling you can't really describe, but you know its against your driving out, at that particular moment. But you go against it because you have to go get a hair-cut, and half-an-hour later, a break-down vehicle is spotted headed towards that deadly spot, because you are now in someone's farm.

You are wondering why you ignored that little voice, that red light, so to speak, because you have no idea how the car drove itself out of the road, past the barriers, and into a farm. Now you have to be pulled out, and because of you, Christmas has come early for the mechanic.
You can swear you heard a warning inside your head just before you was closed the door behind you, but you don't know from whom. You escape without any physical injuries, but i wish i could say the same about your sleek German machine. The moment you see it lifted up by those breakdown chains like a bull that's about to do the unthinkable, then pulled away, that same lifting and pulling motion is happening to your entire insides, because this baby did cost you both an arm and a leg. But you can't do much about the situation now, can you...

The Lottery Miss...

This betting game has been going on for ages. You are perfectly aware of the addictive nature of gambling, and for that reason, you have always totally stayed out of its way, the way a cat would stay away from mud. You have no desire of going to any rehab in this lifetime like some people you know, so you stay out danger. 
And you have successfully done so, until this day, when your chic urges you to pick the numbers for her, because she's busy cooking dinner. You remind her of your new year's resolve to stay away from gambling.  She picks the numbers, swearing divorce if she wins, never mind the fact that you aren't even legally married. A small voice tells you to pick the darned numbers one last time, but you dismiss it as a voice from the pits of hell.

A week later, you are sitting in the audience as your girlfriend makes her way to pick the giant dummy check, that introduces her as the country's latest millionaire, having won with the opportunity you let go. You want to cry, not because she's won, but because you actually had the chance in your hands. Now its the survival of the relationship that you are worried about, since common sense dictates that unless you become a millionaire yourself within the next one week, she'll be inclined to go in search of fellow millionaires , for only they can give her 'sound investment advice'. Birds of the same feather flock together, she will say, as she wheels her last bag out of your servants quarters. She's now become a firm believer of that and other English sayings that encourage women to 'step', if for no other reason, to be seen as 'strong, free and liberated', especially in the single women's gatherings.

And you are now painfully realizing that small voice wasn't from the pits of hell, after all. Only, its rather late for you now, because the lottery game picked its last winners the previous weekend, and it wasn't anybody you know.

The New Craze

The enlightened, of which you are one, are rushing in droves to invest in the quail, arguing its more profitable than that piece of small land in the town's outskirts. Every thing you have read in school is in favor of the land option and the small voice is screaming at you to ignore the Quail direction.
 
But you are a firm believer in 'hitting the metal when its hot' and you go for the quail, sinking in hundreds of thousands in it.
The piece of land is snapped up by an 'unwise' investor before you buy your first batch of quails and months later, no one will touch a quail egg with a plastic ten foot pole. The craze has left, exactly the way it came.

Because you ignored that small voice, the money is gone and now you have to subject your loving family to endless quail dinners, because there is nothing else you can do with your birds. You should have known you live in a country of one craze after the other, and after the quail, who knows, maybe its going to be time for the lizard, because of the medicinal value of its head, especially the yellow-headed ones, if boiled for exactly forty and a half minutes. I mean, if no one gives Loliondo, he of the healing waters fame, even half a thought anymore, then surely.....

You followed the craze, against advice from the tiny little voice, and now its time for you to pay, between your clenched teeth.

(And if this is going to make you feel any better, please feel free to substitute Quail with any bird, or wrong investment of your choice).

Wrong Turn.

This is most common among people who find themselves doing jobs they find unsatisfying, meaning they are actually the majority of Kenya's workforce. That morning the still voice urged you to wait for the School of Journalism intake, you ignored it and rushed off to the K.D.F recruitment because all youths in your village were turned on by the uniform. Besides, you had overheard that girl you had a crush on, express her undying admiration for the men in uniform.You mistook a brief obsession with the real thing, a crush for love. Now, a year later you are an unwilling soldier and no amount of training will get you ready for the battlefield. Every time you watch war movies, you suffer endless migraines, and its on record you actually peed in your uniform once, when they asked you to carry the Rocket Propelled Grenade to the Armory.  Becauseyou are handling arms, when you were made for pens and cameras.

Or the office clerk who should have been an athlete, but took a wrong turn at some point despite protests from the little voice. Now the sight of all office chairs irritates them and the sight of a computer key-board gives them an immediate allergy. Because they find it grossly repulsive. The thought of that office layout sends them on a binge of illegal substance consumption, because that's not their environment.
The ideal work-day becomes torturous because one bright morning, they chose something else over a gut feeling that would have led to peace and fulfillment. And it wouldn't have been, had they given it more thought, more consideration, rather than dismissing it with a cup of Keg beer, bought on credit.
 
The examples are not about to dry up. But i have to stop now before i irritate someone who ignored the still voice and is now living 'behind closed doors' of Kamiti or Shimo La Tewa, sending dumb texts to an enlightened public, that refuse to buy the cheap con ploys.

If i knew the source of that still small voice, trust me i would tell you. But many times, its the difference between success and failure, even life and death. Trusting your gut feeling, will sometimes make all the difference.

Sometimes it makes no sense. But its there. And you can't run away from it, even if you wanted to. Maybe its your guardian angel speaking, maybe its God Himself, who knows. Next time you have to make a choice, take time to listen to that small, pure gentle voice from deep inside you.

It may lead you to a treasure!.

No comments: