Life & A taxi ride in Mombasa
One evening, while on my ride back home experiencing the
ever growing "jamming" of Mombasa, I could not help enjoying myself.
This was the perfect opportunity to delve into my own world...to build my
castles, present and argue my cases before myself and fight my demons. So I
switched into a daze, turned my eyes towards the almost blinding, almost
beautiful lights of the numerous cars stuck in the jam and started day
dreaming.
The taxi driver, uncomfortable with the silence I guess,
tried putting on some music to console himself to no avail. He attempted a
conversation, which I ignored, pretending to fall asleep. A statement about the
traffic here, about Mombasa there and eventually he hit the jackpot!
"What is your greatest fear Maureen?" He asked.
I immediately sat upright and looked at him straight in the
face and laughed! So hard he couldn’t help joining me!
"Nothing" I curtly told him. He went on to bubble
about how everyone has a fear of something or another, not knowing that he was
opening a well so deep he was about to drown!
You see, of late I have been thinking about the life, its
meaning, and all those things that I have come to realize most people are
either afraid to talk or even think about and what really is our purpose on
this earth.
He was a newly born Christian and was very excited to tall
me about the purpose of God for us and how, we will eventually live on earth
forever. That heaven will be here on earth and that there is no hell.
Apparently according to him, hell was not a fire really, but dying forever.
Now me being me, started challenging him. From issues about
the beginning of the earth, to whether Adam and Eve were that first people on
earth and where is it written that hell is a burning fire! We went on and on.
Now for those who do not know me. I just love arguments. I
am very good at arguing a point just for the sake of arguing...not because I
believe any part of it. Someone once said that the evidence of intelligence is
being able to entertain a n idea or a thought even though it goes against what
you believe in, and as any of us, I love thinking myself intelligent :-0
Anyway, my point in all this is usually simple, to show
people that things do not necessarily have to be the way you think them to be,
heck, most of the times they are not even how you think them to be. And
acknowledging this, I think, is the beginning of a rather exciting adventure.
Life is a matter of perception, eventually, you see. I
strongly believe from the bottom of my heart that we all see this world very
differently….where as I see a calm beautiful sunny day, someone else might be
seeing a horrifying blinding burning furnace of an afternoon in Mombasa.
Now this is nothing new, I know, but you never really know
its meaning unless you have the opportunity of experiencing it, entertaining
people's views and outlooks of life, it is just indescribable!!!
So back to the taxi driver, after taking him through a
marathon of what he thought were contradictions and me as a very very very troubled soul he says, i concluded by
telling him this;
- Eventually, all this is vanity, as the wisest man put it. When you drop dead and die, the world does not stop for you, it goes on and forgets you like a drops of sweat that eventually drip to the hot sands that drink them up leaving no trace of their existence. At times i think that we are just collateral damage to prove a point in what a friend of mine termed as a battle of egos!
- What is really important is a personal relationship with your God, and as in any healthy relationship it has to be two way and it has to be real.
- Lastly, there is nothing that you and I could do to make God love you any less or hate you any more. Stop trying to buy his love or bribing him, life will be much easier if you just let His will be done.
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