My Life in Retrospect

You can only connect the dots looking backwards

It’s 5.2 AM this side (Nairobi time). I woke up to go the toilet. It’s been a while since I woke up this early. Something about the cold that sent back memories flooding, or maybe it’s the music (Listening to Emeli Sande and Jess Glynne)— how subtle and serene it is. Whatever the reason, all I know is I can’t go back to sleep without putting these thoughts to paper (or in my case thoughts to medium).

Memories are a funny thing. I’m not really sure the accuracy of the ones I am currently having. Maybe my brain is just making them up to fit the situation perfectly. Regardless of whether they are true, I feel a sudden bliss about myself and about life — a certainty about everything falling into place that truthfully has me a bit scared. It’s like my brain is playing a movie titled “my life” and all this flashes about different aspects of my life and how they have all led me here — to where I am today, to who I am.

In primary, my English teacher (Mrs. Okello) coaxed me to be her assistant. I would often help her out with lessons and lead class discussions. I swore the same would not repeat when I got to high school, because let’s be honest — no one really likes the “teacher’s pet”. And yet, in a funny twist of events, my high school English teacher (Mrs. Okore) “forced” me to be her student assistant after I was caught catching the forty winks. The decision, deliberate on her side, was meant to serve as a lesson to the rest of the students and to make me stay awake in all her classes. Yeap, time loop — that’s what I thought.

And yet, what seemed like torture at the time turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me. From discussing poems by Eneriko Seruma and Henry Barlow to having candid conversations about life — Mrs. Okore grew to become more than just a teacher; she became my friend, a mentor and a mother. Today, poetry is among the things I enjoy and songs stretch beyond just beats for me — I listen to lyrics, and I’m often moved by the composer’s or artist’s emotions or honesty in expression. The lessons both teachers taught me, especially those beyond the four corners of the classroom wall, have remained ingrained in me. Mrs. Okore would often say, “Talk with poise and confidence Henry, I’m training you to be a CEO!”. Am afraid she might have been right about that one.

Another funny tale is how most of my close ties today began on the wrong foot. Back in primary school, I remember meeting this cocky short kid with a bad habit of licking his lips (Get your mind of the gutter, much like you I also found the act repulsive). Turns out this boy and I would go on to have great history. He’s name was Derick James. And although Derick and I haven’t spoken for a long time, we were and will always be brothers.

Fast forward a few years later, I met yet another boy. He wasn’t cocky like Derick but he was equally weird. We almost had a fight on our first meeting. If I recall correctly, he’s actually the one who wanted to beat me. He’s name was Churchill. More than ten years later, and what started out as a feud has today metamorphosed into a friendship none of us could have fathomed.

A lot of things in my life have been serendipitous. Marvin, my childhood friend and I became friends when we were the only two kids who didn’t get invited to play video games in the neighbor's house. My introduction to programming was a mere chance when my friend Jophrey showed me a few “hacking” books ( They weren’t really hacking books). My co-founders and I became friends by mere coincidences. The list about the things that have made sense looking back are endless, and I’m sure so are yours.

In a speech delivered at Stanford, Steve Jobs once said that with life you can only connect the dots looking backwards. I don’t want to sound to hippie, but I’m a firm believer in the universe and things happening for a reason. Sure, similar to how you can trace the good things happening in your life to some small random occurrence in the past, you can also liken the “bad” things to another event in your past. But life is what you choose to believe. It’s all a matter of perspective — you can choose to believe that roses have thorns or that thorn bushes have roses — it’s all down to how you decide to look at it.

So today as this year is almost ending, I would like to be grateful — not only grateful to the things that have happened in my past that have made me the person I am today — but also to the things that are happening right now and even those that are yet to come.

I’d like to say thank you to everyone I call a friend, and even those we might not see eye-to-eye. Thank you, because you have helped shape this masterpiece I call life. Your influence, counsel and companionship has added color to my canvas and without you the journey wouldn’t have been this great.

Time moves fast, and often things pass us by without us taking notice. But as I look back at my life, I realize just how amazing the journey has been this far. They say it’s not really the destination that matters but that you enjoy the journey. And I know, like mine; sometimes it seems bleak and pointless, filled with endless questions of “why”— but if you take a moment to breathe and think, you’ll notice just how in balance and perfect everything is…