Precious Energy

A few years ago, when I was in the sixth grade, my dad thought it was a good time to get my sister and I phones for us to easily communicate with them whenever we wanted to since we studied some miles away from them. Instead of us having to ask my relatives for their phones every time we wanted to call my parents, dad thought it wise to get us our own phones. I was beyond excited when my parents handed me the well packaged box for me to unwrap. Once I finally unboxed the device and held it in my hands, all I could think of at the time was, “Wow! This is my very first phone! Not my mum’s or my dad’s, this is my phone!So this is how grown-ups feel?” As I hugged my parents and thanked them for actually entrusting me with a phone, I felt a joyful rush running all over my body and I was certain nothing could ever beat that feeling of getting your first phone as a child.

Unlike other sixth graders these days, my first phone was not an iPhone neither was it a fancy android smart phone like Oppo (Now before you guys come for my neck, this dude has been through a lot thanks to the harsh critics from people but ‘he’ actually a good phone and deserves a break from hateful comments. It has feelings too you know!) Sorry for the digression, I got carried away. As I was saying, my Samsung Keystone 2 was anything but fancy but I loved it a lot. I specifically loved the blue strip that went round the edges of the phone, I thought it gave it a ‘sleek touch’ and even though my sim card was registered under my mum’s ID it really did not matter because all I cared about was that, “I was ‘grown woman’ with places to be, people to see and phone calls to make.”

During that time, Safaricom was really generous and had this crazy offer where once you top up credit for ten shillings and subscribe to their unlimited text, you could send as many text messages as you wanted for free. So everyone and anyone that owned a phone especially the idle teenagers, who had plenty of time on their hands, really made the most out of this incredible offer. I was one of those idle teenagers who on most nights would end up sacrificing their sleep to chat up their friends. I got so accustomed to texting that I could send very long messages to my friends without looking at the keypad. These long text messages would surprisingly have no typos except for the intentional ones like ‘xaxa’ and ‘ua’ which I thought made me sound and look hip.

One year down the line, my phone’s keypad was reduced to just a pad since the only thing you could see was vague white spots that seemed to be forming imperfect shapes. The friction from my thumbs due to the constant and continuous texting made all the number, letters and punctuation mars on my keypad to disappear and look distorted. Of course this was not a major concern for me because my well-experienced fast thumbs could draft a grammatically correct message in a pitch-dark room within seconds. Despite the numerous times my phone threatened to join its ancestors in an electronics repair shop with a weird name (like Kangethe and Sons Repair) along River Road, I still loved it and was still addicted to texting. Months later, my beloved phone would eventually fell in water and since it was damaged beyond repair, I had to give it up.

As the years went by, I got to use different phones which seemed to be better upgrades of the previous ones. Nonetheless, with every upgrade came a different version of me, versions I never envisioned myself being. Ironically, I always thought that if and when I got a better phone, I would be way better in texting and keeping up with my friends and the trending topics on Facebook (the most popular social media platform at the time). However, every new phone I got unlocked a side of me that I never knew existed especially after other new social media platforms such as Instagram and WhatsApp came into the picture. I begun to realize that I loved having conversations via phone calls more than I did through text since phone calls were less time consuming compared to text messages. This went on for some time before realizing that this was a side of me which I might actually struggle with for a while but eventually learn to embrace it.

Fast forward to the present day, I came to understand certain things about myself which I initially struggled to accept. One of the things I learnt about myself was that I am a horrible communicator especially when it comes to texting whether it’s via Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook or normal text. There are some weeks where I would really push myself to keep up with all the chats on my WhatsApp and all my other socials but there some other weeks where I can barely find the strength to reply to a simple text like ‘hey’ let alone watch somoene’s status which lasts less than 30 seconds. You can already guess that the latter happens almost every week. I’ve had serious conversations with myself on numerous occasions on how I’m supposed to be intentional with all my friends and all the people I relate to by promptly replying to their text messages.

It’s safe to say that reasonable resolutions and conclusions were arrived at in the end of every solo-meeting I held. Consequently, the transformation would be evident for a day or three before I quickly slid back to my old self. I would feel embarrassed every time I replied to a message(s) that was sent to me two weeks or two months earlier and to be honest I still do feel some degree of shame when I actually sit down to type a response to a message which the sender has probably already forgotten about. Given the fact that I am a ‘certified overthinker’, I always end up playing the different expressions or thoughts that would possibly be running through the mind of this dear friend once he/she sees my message pop up on his/her screen. Thoughts such as, “Yaani! Now is when she is seeing my text?”, “…two decades later!”, “What if I was in an emergency 3 weeks ago when I sent this text but now is when your seeing it!”. The painful truth is that these thoughts are justified considering they took their time to text me and as the ‘ungrateful/awful’ person that I am, I responded weeks later. The nerve!

For many months, I beat myself up about this ‘unpleasant’ trait of mine thinking I should do better, be better especially during this pandemic season when I had plenty of time on my hands. The fat irony about this whole thing is that I’m a writer and I actually enjoy writing a lot. What is wrong with me? Well, I recently came to realize that there is absolutely nothing wrong with me even though others might beg to differ. I remember someone asked me this question a while back, “How come you’re rarely active on social media and yet everyone your age is so emersed in it and all the hype that comes from it?”. My only response was, “Not everyone is the same.”

A year down the line, I still stand by my answer, people are different. Not better than the others, just different. Personally, I would choose to have a long phonecall over a thread of chats based on different topics. I would rather send a 10 minute voice note rather than type a message containing five or more paragraphs. If the options are extended further down the list, I would pick a face to face conversation (especially with my close friends) rather than a video/voice call or a voice note. I prefer reading someone’s mood and attitude through their facial expressions, the tone in their voice and so many other aspects which cannot be easily seen or detected when talking through the phone. In face to face conversations, it’s almost impossible to mask your true emotions towards someone or a certain topic. Yes I agree that face to face interactions that happen away from the phone might sound old school to some extent but they are genuinely authentic and raw. According to me, it’s the rawness and genuineness in the interaction and the conversations which happen between two individuals that lead to a long lasting friendship, courtship, marriage e.t.c

In order to avoid certain titles and nicknames from people who got pissed when I didn’t reply promptly to their messages, I tried so hard to always respond on time, apologize if I reply a day or two later and sometimes even call to make up for the late response. I always described this as being courteous until the day I realized that I was extending this politeness to people who were less deserving of it (But Jesus did the same towards us so this was not a good enough excuse). I started apologizing to my contacts in an effort to try and save or retain the friendship that had been built before the late response was delivered. This went on for a while until I thought to myself, “Why I’m I trying so hard to apologize in order to maintain a friendship that was probably never meant to last past this stage?”. I then realized that if this person is a genuine friend, he /she wouldn’t get worked up over my late response to their messages (if it was not an emergency) and neither one of us ought to feel pressured to apologize when they fail to respond to messages promptly. Real friends remain to be great friends whether or not you talk frequently. Their friendship is not only sustained by how long or frequently you talk but by the connection you had during the initial stages of you getting to know each other. There is this amazing person in my life (hi Shushure😄) whom we rarely text one another but when we talk over the phone or meet up after a really long time it feels as though we had been talking every single day prior to the phonecall. No awkwardness, no judgement, no hard feelings just loads of laughter and joy: pure and genuine friendship that has literally stood the test of time. That’s my kind of friendship. Once I thought about this communication plus friendship thing and what it really meant, I stopped fighting to maintain anything that fell short of the kind of friendship Shushure and I had. I stopped wasting my energy on reaching out to people whom I thought were genuine friends but in reality, they only talked with me when it was convinient for them.

If there was one trait that was really tested throughout this pandemic and social distancing period was one’s intentionality towards others, friends and family alike. My intentionality was really tested, it hit rock bottom but it slowly started rising again. However, it was during this period when I didn’t feel motivated to be intentional with people I couldn’t physically see, that I identified those friends that are worth spending my energy and time on and those who are not. One question I kept asking myself everytime before I picked up my phone to punch in someone’s contact was, “Would this person genuinely take their time to reach out to me either through a phonecall or even a text when I fail to do so myself?”. Instead of being quick to make assumptions, I would take some time to let these people answer my question through their action. Unfortunately, most of them answered in the negative. Was I hurt? Yes. I’m I still hurt? No. I’m I happy I got to know the truth even though it hurt? Yes. I was happy because I finally understood who the real ones were.

Lastly, some friendships are seasonal (here today, gone tomorrow) and there others that are there for the long run in both the highs and the lows. The biggest mistake you can ever do is to invest your energy and time on the wrong category. The biggest life lesson I got from 2019 was that life is extremely short, and you cannot afford to waste it on things that bring you grief more than they bring you joy. Stop dwelling on things and people you’ll probably not remember a month from now.

‘Your energy and time is precious, spend it wisely on the right things and people.’

~Dheyya