Perspective | Letter to 16-year old self

A couple of weeks ago, I inched a year closer to retirement (or death – whichever way you view it, for death remains the ultimate retirement for all of us – unless you are another Prophet Elijah).

In the past, for many of us, such days passed without a whimper. We quietly went through our days, seldom pondering on a few aspects of our lives, and mostly letting this pass like “just another day”.

No pomp. No flowers. No cake. No hullabaloo.

Then we grew old and grew up and started setting annual resolutions and goals and objectives because society suggested so, struggling to avoid depression while at it.

Several years later, we are still here, still living on the edge and trying to get accustomed to (this) our new lifestyle.

Happy belated birthday? The champagne has since left its ice and found a new address elsewhere. Nonetheless, we still have a few "words of wisdom" we’d love to pass on to our virtual 16-year old selves.

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Your key decisions start NOW.

Between 17 and 19, you are probably preparing for your A-levels. At this point, your focal point is the As you envisage, a course or two after, and little or no long-term focus thereafter. This is the time you choose your path. Get a mentor so you won’t end up doing things you’ll never need in future.

Kinship is overrated

Anywhere after 17, you’ll fall out with people you once deemed dearest. Your brother, uncle, sister or cousin will screw you up and you simply won’t be able to do anything about it. But you’ll soon discover bosom buddies who won’t need blood relations in order to turn out nice. That is the world, for you. And you gotta get used to it.

University is just another phase

Between 19 and 23, you are likely to be at University. The world will be your oyster. It's going to feel like a different ballgame, initially. There’ll be this newfound freedom that gets you tingly and itching to do some mischief or forge some kind of premature self-alignment – depending on your company.

You’ll take weed and get away with it. You’ll drink yourself silly and crawl to your bed without the admonishing halo of your dad hovering over your sorry self at 03:47 AM. You'll miss class as long as you eventually get the grades.

You will spurn chance after another and still have another life. You’ll make new friends. Your class will feel like family until you graduate and realize it was all a façade.

You’ll never get to see some of them ever again. Some will show up every once in a while. Others will forget you, while the rest will keep tabs on you (while secretly comparing notes of their progress with yours).

Live and date right: 23-35

You’ll leave University and get eventually get a job – if lady luck smiles your way. So you’ll have the means to abuse every vice you craved when you still survived on that University allowance and handouts from your parents.

You are now in the cooperate world, living your dream. This is where you meet scheming females who’ll ask if you are circumcised, barely thirty minutes into your maiden date.

You’ll eventually find one with whom you are compatible, and after six months of bar and restaurant hopping, your friends will wake up to a flood of SMS spam reading: "Trevor and Trudy invite to the launch of their wedding preparation meetings at Casablanca […]" (usually at the behest of Trudy, because she is two-months knocked-up and her parents will be cheesed if there's no wedding in sight).

When are you building?

After 30, your peers start itching to know what you are up to. If you have no house yet, they’ll want to know where that money is going.

You’ll begin to feel like some public property where everyone feels entitled to know what is taking place in your life. Some will judge you, while others will gossip about you.

This is the stage where you start to sieve friends from acquaintances.

Death is real

From 25, you may want to get an emergency plan and let you kin know. The era of your loved ones freaking out at the mention of an insurance plan if and when you eventually meet your creator should now belong to the past. You’ll need a decent send-off. And this needn’t be a burden to your family.

Oh, and even if you don’t go soon, you are likely to lose a loved one. And you wouldn’t wish this to happen when your coffers are yawning and you have no plan B.

Plan and Invest

There’s possibly no excuse why you have no safe landing in case your career goes south, after 25. You may not have the ultimate entrepreneurship acumen, but you’ll certainly have cushioned yourself against the thud of sudden (financial) fall.

You’ll run into debt – the size of which may partly depend on your decision making and your income. At every level, there are folks surviving and living to see another day. By all means, try to avoid debt, if you can.

Join partnerships. Join an investment club. Or a SACCO. Buy land. Try treasury bills. Raid the stock exchange. Sell charcoal. Grow dodo. Anything. As long as it reduces your financial burden by a coin or two.

More discovery

After hitting 35, you want to feel you’ve got it all figured out until you repeatedly catch yourself making a schoolboy mistakes. Like investing in something that the world has since declared a bad idea. Like investing in the latest Ponzi scheme even after you’ve previously lost in ten of them.

Life is an eternal learning process in which you’ll learn new lessons every day. Like the fact that despite several Togikwatako protests, our resident leopard isn’t going anywhere.

Like eventually discovering that Cayenne Bar and Restaurant serves the best goat ribs in town, after several calamitous experiences elsewhere.