My Days on Earth are Numbered
Despite my intention of clocking 100 years
I liked anatomy while he preferred physiology.
That was our first encounter.
Medical school is the kind of place where you can spend a whole six years with someone in the same space and still not know them.
Physics teaches us that light travels faster than sound. Many an encounter with a potential partner shows us just how deceiving a face can be. But when what you see matches what you hear, you’ve hit a unique combination.
The eyes often can tell you much about someone. Even the blind. The muscles surrounding the eyes, iridescent from the different colours of our iris can reveal ambition from its absence. Intention from nonchalance.
Dr. Keith Mandela crossed off these two traits. Countable times I remember him without a backpack on his back. Books were his close confidante. That is likely because he wanted to achieve much more than your average Joe.
But when he picked physiology, I picked anatomy. Presently, his anatomy is intact, becoming rigid with time, and cold from heat loss as his physiology shut down. You could tell that Mandela had big goals.
His brief stint in my life as in the lives of many others made me put my goals into perspective.
I have big goals
Life is a big game so you gotta play it with a big heart
Some of us gotta run a little faster ’cause we gotta later start
I did anatomy because I had big goals. Mandela likely picked physiology for the same reason.
What, however, do you say about someone who you believe was yet to achieve their goals? He was a year ahead of me. I am barely a year into my career as a certified doctor, and he too, was not that far off. How, then do you contextualize goals when they are permanently nipped?
I wonder if a time will come when I’ll face the full force of the world when my ideas on evolution are widespread. If they ever become widespread. What then happens if something happens midway?
The recent killings in my country are an in-your-face reminder that you could be chopped anytime. As a TikToker once said — you are choppable. What if you get chopped before realizing your goals? How brief is a single chest compression far from saving a life as it is from losing it?
We identify so much with our goals that we forget how permanently distant they can be from our short-lived lives. I may not get the chance to have my ideas spread as I wish they would and that gave me perspective. The goal can be the North Star, but the journey is just as important. Even better is the journey with amazing company.
I hope Keith Mandela had that. I mention my ideas because he is one of the few people I wish I got to share tidbits with. He might have taken the time to understand my perspective and even thrown in useful questions and feedback. The reason stems from a brief conversation we had close to the gate at KNH. He was walking towards the library in KNH, and I was headed to my room when we had a brief chat about cosmology.
We talked about the moment in space and time when our most tested theories became meaningless. The singularity. Einstein’s laws on space and time break down at the singularity. If you have no time and space to quantify your idea, does it make sense? We made a joke about it.
Singularity could also be the moment in space and time when our ideas about death don’t make sense. You never anticipate losing your classmate. Even more, a classmate whose potential was bigger than what people saw. The loss of Keith Mandela brings to mind Dr. Mary Mwandisha.
Mwandisha personified dedication. Dedication with a little sprinkle of life, because Mwandisha was always seconds away from smiling. The twinkle in her eye as she changed her visage betrayed her brilliant mind. And yes, she went to Alliance.
Immediately, I get reminded of Amayo Mordecai. He should have been a doctor by now. This was a student who embraced academics with a vice-like tenacity. I taught him anatomy. He never shied away from questions, most of which he would answer confidently.
Then I saw the picture of Keith Mandela circulating in the socials.
Moments of singularity happen in our lives when our best understanding of life and its meaning crushes into absurdity. Death doesn’t care about our goals. It is up to us, then to care about them.
The future remains opaque
You need to loosen up and live a little
And if you got kids let them know how you feelin’
For your own sake give a little
Some of my friends do weed. Tom Mboya did weed. I think. Some of my friends have experimented with psychedelics. They explain something called the Ego Death, where they become more empathetic after the psychedelic experience. Some of my other friends drink.
A common factor uniting all of them is their tendency to look out for each other. They would always call to ensure somebody had arrived home. They would be considerate of one another if they cannot foot part of the cost-shared bill. They are your closest friends.
I have seen a friend of a close friend hospitalized because of binge drinking. It was the friends who rushed him to the hospital. I have had beautiful moments with such friends that I will hopefully live to tell my kids when I turn senile.
I have heard paranormal stories from those who took weed and psychedelics. For some, the experience adds bars of empathy to their psyche. For others, it’s the kind of experience they would never want to relive. So they stopped.
I’ve also had moments when we raced with death chasing a train that was minutes away from departing.
I have had moments when a snake crawled into our house and saw my mother jump for the closest seat. Twice. On New Year's Day.
I have hit the streets during the nationwide protests.
I have resuscitated patients who walked out of the hospital, alive. I have resuscitated patients who never walked again.
When you die, you die. All or none principle. The one-way valve. But when you live, you have a chance to live a little. So live a little, before death strikes. It doesn’t strike a little. It strikes with finality.
Death is the opacity we can never anticipate. But life has a clarity to it that improves by living a little. So live a little. I hope Keith lived.
I remember when we finished the session of Ubongo Campaign in Chiromo. We were the International Brain Research Organization (IBRO) designates who were tasked with running the campaign during the global brain week. The event was always done on the same week as my birthday. I remember how we would always plan to have moments to unwind after the event. Mandela was always there. I guess he lived a little.
I hope he lived a lot.
His death, the singularity moment, contrasts with the reality I’m currently living. I write daily. I live a little more with every comment I get. So write I shall, for unlike the blank piece of document I use every day, death is the opaque space where my words shall not form.
What I’m trying to say is…
My days are finite.
I want to hit 100. My hope is that when I die, those who know me plant as many trees as the number of years I have lived. Big goals? Well, to me they are.
Sadness crippled my classmates and colleagues when they heard the news. I was rushing to collect the blood products of a patient when I saw the news that the blood had begun to clot and solidify inside that of a friend.
Death should not be how we see those whose lifepaths crossed ours. It is the lifepath that crossed. So it is moments when we lived that we should remember. Moments we got to share with those who no longer live with us but transition to live in us.
So live a little.
As we walk down the road of our destiny
And the time comes to choose which shall it be
The wide and crooked, or the straight and narrow
We got one voice to give and one life to live
Stand up for something or lie down in your game
Listen to the song that we sing
It’s up to you to make it big
I guess I’ll see you when you see me— Coolio
