When Your Heart is Breaking....

It’s a dull, subdued sensation when your heart is breaking, like the a muffled sound of a distant gunshot. It doesn’t physically pierce your skin or tear you to pieces, but the sensation is physically present – the paralyzing discomfort of realizing that something you loved (or took for granted) is leaving for good.

Although it’s hard to accept at first, this is actually a good sign, having a broken heart. It means you have loved something, you have tried for something, and you have let life teach you.

Life will attempt to break you down sometimes; nothing and no one can completely protect you from this reality. Keeping it all inside and hiding from the world won’t either, for endless, stagnant solitude will also break you with unhealthy nostalgia and yearning. You need to speak with someone—a friend, a family member, a coach, a confidant—and open up about how you feel.

You have to stand back up and put yourself out there again. Your heart is stronger than you realize. I’ve been there and I’ve seen heartbreak through to the other side. It takes time, effort, and patience.

Deep heartbreak is kind of like being lost in the woods – every direction leads to nowhere at first. When you are standing in a forest of darkness, you cannot see any light that could ever lead you home. But if you wait for the sun to rise again, and listen when someone assures you that they themselves have stood in that same dark place, and have since moved forward with their life, oftentimes this will bring the hope that’s needed.

It’s so hard to give you advice when you’ve got a broken heart, but some words can heal, and this is my attempt to give you hope. You are stronger than you know!

Please remember…

1. The person you liked or loved in the past, or who treated you like dirt repeatedly, has nothing intellectually or spiritually to offer you in the present moment, but more headaches and heartache.

2. When you don’t get what you want, sometimes it’s necessary preparation, and other times it’s a necessary protection. But the time is never wasted. It’s a step on your journey. Someday you’re going look back on this time in your life as such an important time of grieving and growing. You will see that you were in mourning and your heart was breaking, but your life was changing.

3. Some chapters in our lives have to close without closure. There’s no point in losing yourself by trying to hold on to what’s not meant to stay. Remember this, and always keep two simple questions in mind: What opportunities do I have right now? What's one small, positive step forward I can take today?

4. One of the hardest lessons to learn: You cannot change other people. Every interaction, rejection, and heartbreaking lesson is an opportunity to change yourself only. And there is great freedom and peace of mind to be found in this awareness.

5. It’s always better to be alone than to be in bad company. And when you do decide to give someone a chance, do so because you’re truly better off with this person. Don’t do it just for the sake of not being alone.

6. Be determined to be positive. Understand that the greater part of your misery or unhappiness from this point forward is determined not by your circumstances, but by your attitude.

You are not alone.  

The power of cooking during the coronavirus crisis

The power of cooking during the coronavirus crisis

Identity

Eating is one of the most powerful things. It’s one of those things we do every single day of our lives alongside breathing and sleeping and yet unlike the latitude, food is just so much more than something we do to stay alive. It can be a comfort and help us to connect and convene. Mealtimes act as nourishment of the body and mind. This week, I spoke to family, friends and acquaintances across the country and beyond about their experiences while cooking and how mealtimes have helped them reconnect with themselves and their loved ones during the coronavirus pandemic.

What led me to write this has been inspired by what is happening just in my neighborhood. Typically, I’d go to the office every day, at this time of the week, I am usually oblivious to what is happening in the neighbourhood. The first week was just joyful, thinking that everything was canceled. More like having that feeling as a child, that school is canceled. You can stay at home, but you have a lot of stress and anxiety at the same time because the news was really horrifying. Going to and doing some office work in the first days of lockdown helped break the anxiety. This week it is different, because it finds me right at home, not working from home, but trying to work while at home. As days turn into weeks, a theme started to emerge, cooking and quarantine.

Where I stay, I cannot readily buy food from outside, there aren’t a lot of restaurants and cafes or where to afford to buy cheap readymade food. In any case, most I’d consider close are closed. Soo…there was a practical reason to resort to the kitchen. I’m in a WhatsApp group where friends send recipes or record their voices and they appealed to me. I have a daughter who likes trying out exotic recipes especially keto diet, and we could do this on Saturdays and sometimes Sundays when the housemaid takes the day off. I found I could relax from the panic and anxiety because I was doing something with my hands, and was concentrating on something essential

Fulfilling; Healing

While for people like Peris, who is alone and has nobody, cooking in this corona period is simply fulfilling. It helps her feel like she isn't alone. For Cyrus, living in the centre of Satellite Kawangware, cooking during corona has had a different effect. He has been operating from home since mid-march.  ‘On a normal day, you hear cars, more than anything else. horns, brakes, motorbikes, and people shouting sometimes, but during the quarantine time, there has been silence, heavy silence. I could hear birds singing, I could also hear sounds of spoons and forks from the other windows which are close to my balcony with a heavy smell of food of course’.

For Cyrus, the power of cooking lies in its healing….’The kitchen is not a very relaxing and calming place for me. If I have ever cooked actively, it was for my friends but more like party time setting…nothing much like a basic need, wasn’t meditating or healing, … because I loathe washing utensils.  But now, cooking is an act of healing’. That repetitive tap, tap, tap on a chopping board as the knife sliced through an onion, the sizzle of its flesh when its dropped into a hot pan and the first waft of herbs as you roll them between your fingers as you add them to the mix. These daily rhythms of cooking is what made many of us who have the luxury of a kitchen come to appreciate more and more. It has become a way to slow down and reconnect with ourselves day by day. Along the way, some of us have come to learn a few things about their psyche.

Love

This is true for Anthony, an NGO worker living in Lavington, Nairobi with his fiancée Annaliese. Before coronavirus, they’d eat out at restaurants a lot of the time. They’d go to whatever restaurant associated with particular dishes depending on what they wanted to eat, they knew where they had to go. With instructions to work from home and a lot of time at home to kill, they took matters into their own hands. But it wasn’t just that, there was another need that cooking addressed. For him, who has been looking for ways to try keeping each other’s spirits up, sometimes cooking a meal was something to look forward to in the course of the day. And for him, her taking pleasure in preparing food for him is credibly important. ‘There is nothing sensational in the world like to know that something you have made with your own hand has brought joy and happiness to the people you love with your whole heart more than anything in this world’.

I asked him what things he knows how to prepare and what it has that taught him….’ when you are boiling tomatoes for the whole day and while you are doing that you chop onions and celery and you peel the garlic cloves and you ….when the tomatoes are done cooking down, you have to blend the tomatoes to get a smooth blend of sauce then you put in the vegetables then they simmer for an hour or an hour and a half then you blend it again then you season it, at the end of the day you are talking about 3hrs and that’s just the tomatoes sauce on the spaghetti alone.’

For Shifra, Andrew's wife, both living in Nakuru, It’s nice to have the roles reversed. For Andrew, Shifra was doing most of the cooking, and she now relishes that she basically doesn’t have just a husband but also a servant. And it’s been wonderful and delightful because he also enjoys it. But Andrew has also learnt a lot about himself just by the art of cooking, he has come to know himself. He is struck that there are a couple of qualities you need in order to really cook well that he had never been good at. One is patience. 'There are certain things that you just can’t really rush. You can turn up the heat and try and have things done faster but it’s not just going to taste nearly the same. The other is restraint…. there are times when two very well-chosen ingredients produce a much better effect than 20 randomly thrown in ingredients just because you have them. And as a Kikuyu man, I have often believed in the application of overwhelming force and have to learn the virtue of restraint as well, because it often produces a superior outcome'. In other words, he hopes to come out as a more patient and restrained person not just in the kitchen but everywhere else.

Identity

For Andrew, quarantine cooking has shifted his persona. For others, it has helped them reconnect with parts of their identity. Lilian, my sister, has been living in Mogadishu Somalia for the past almost three years. Since the restricted movement started in Mogadishu, it gave her memories from Kenya. Somalia has a lot of civil war around it and its infiltrated by the al-Shabaab. It’s always some kind of emergency situation…bomb blasts, shootings, suicide bombing, curfews, etc. and sometimes they have to stay home. And sometimes, you have to pretty much manage with what you have. Our dad died when Lilian was just 10 years old, and our mum when she was a toddler. She grew older and moved to Somalia to work in a hospital as a community nurse. She tells me that recent weeks have helped her reconnect with Kenyan dishes that she had left behind. It gave her the memories of food and the life she was living because she has plenty of time now, she can try recipes that her mum and aunt cooked for her. She lives with her boss’ daughter who actually helps in the kitchen. Her boss was a victim in one of the recent suicide bombings. She suffered multiple injuries and had to seek medical treatment in Turkey. With the corona pandemic, she was locked down there and won't travel back for some time.

She tells me, her boss’ is in the same place of life which she was in years ago. She doesn’t have a clue what Is going on outside so she asks her to help her during cooking like pounding the spices. When talking to her, I got a sense that She really misses Kenya, and today's lockdown has reminded her of that connection she feels she has lost in a way. 'It’s amazing how nostalgic food can be and also such a comfort. She says ‘When I’m cooking I feel like even though things around me and in the world are happening in an uncontrollable manner, at least I can control this part of my life. And that gives me some sense of hope and some satisfaction’.

PART II LOADING

Smiling at CoronaVirus times

How to survive Coronavirus tough times

Sometimes life slams us in the gut, dealing us such a devastating blow it literally takes our breath away. A pandemic hits, a loved one gets ill, we lose a breadwinning job, someone we know dies, money gets tight, feelings of depression and despondency overwhelm our better judgment… everything just seems to be going wrong. So, what to do when the world around us shatters, and we can’t seem to pick up the pieces?
The times when things are falling apart are precisely the best times to practice presence and mindfulness. These are the times we’re always preparing for, in a way, when we pray, meditate, self-reflect, and generally invest in our personal growth during good times. Truth be told, when the world seems to be crumbling, there is an immense opportunity. But we must be willing to do some tough things. We must be willing to change our perspective and our response.

First, Be patient with the pain you feel. Don’t hide from it, don’t rush to cover it up or fix it immediately. Just start by acknowledging its presence and facing it with courage. Then, challenge yourself to sit quietly with what you are feeling for a full minute, with compassion and gentleness. Find the braveness to just sit with it like you would with a close friend who’s hurting. Notice when your mind wants to run, hide or rebel. When this happens, take a deep breath, re-center yourself, and begin again. You will see clearly that what you feel is just a feeling, and that you can stay with what you feel without the world ending. You will see that you are in control of your feelings, and not the other way around. And you will begin to take them less seriously, hold them lightly, and give them some much-needed space in your worried brain.

I’m certainly not downplaying the real nature of our present circumstances with COVID-19. The virus is still spreading around the world and within our country and we are all facing a very difficult reality. These are not “good times.” I’m not suggesting we should rejoice at living through this disappointing and painful life experience. But it is absolutely prudent to consider the impact this event is having on our collective behavior. So, let’s look at some tough yet necessary things we can do for ourselves right now to ease our pain and experience a little more happiness in the days and weeks ahead…

1. Be fully present in each moment.

Life is not lived in some distant, imagined land of someday where everything is perfect. It is lived here and now, with the reality of the way things are. Yes, by all means, you can hope for and work toward an idealized tomorrow. Yet to do so, you must successfully deal with the world as it is today.
Sometimes we avoid experiencing exactly where we are because we have developed a belief, based on past experiences, that it is not where we should be or want to be. But the truth is, where you are now is exactly where you need to be to get to where you want to go tomorrow. So practice appreciating where you are.
Your family members are too good to ignore. Call them. Text them. Take a moment to remember how fortunate you are to be breathing. Take a look around, with your eyes earnestly open to the possibilities. Much of what you fear does not exist in the space around you. Much of what you love is closer than you realize. You are just one brief thought away from understanding the blessing that is your life.
Happiness is a mindset that can only be designed into the present. It’s not a point in the future or a moment from the past, and yet this misconception hurts people more often than we realize. So many young people seem to think all their happiness awaits them in the years ahead, while so many older people believe their best moments are behind them. COVID-19 is only exacerbating these kinds of mindsets right now. Don’t let it get the best of you.

2. Bring gratitude and passion into the little things.

Finding sincere gratitude and passion in tough times is a process—a process of stepping forward gracefully, no matter what. A friend of mine, who got paralyzed from the breast downwards due to freak car accident two years back, told me his only regret was, not appreciating every year before the accident with the same passion and purpose that he had in his life today. he had accomplished so much recently—so much inner growth—and truly appreciated every moment of it, that if he had only known, he would have started sooner. 
What was truly miraculous was seeing the genuine gratitude in his eyes at that moment. He was immensely grateful for actually being able to accomplish the little things he had accomplished in his time in the wheelchair. His sentiment has always remained with me and sits at the top of my mind right now. While I agree that dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic is disheartening and that it can be very painful and debilitating for some people, the pain for most of us can still be mediated by a sense of gratitude and passion for being alive. For still having a chance to do the little things that bring us joy. For still having a life worth living, from moment to precious moment.
Honestly, you’re doing it right when you have so much to cry and complain about, but you prefer to breathe deep and appreciate your life instead. Because there is always, always, always something to be thankful for and some reason to take another step forward. Just invest your heart and soul into whatever you have right in front of you. Bring gratitude and passion into otherwise ordinary moments.

3. Be consistent with healthy daily rituals.

About two decades ago, when I was intensely focused on weight lifting and physical strength training, I gradually learned that you can’t be truly committed to anything worthwhile if you have a weak mind that’s unwilling to do tough things. Weakness of the mind can easily get the best of us, especially when the going gets tough. And the only way to fix this weakness is a daily practice.
Far too often we think inner strength is all about how we respond to extremely dire circumstances, like actively coping with COVID-19: Can we keep our lives together even after suffering from a major illness, or losing our livelihood?
There’s no doubt that extremely dire circumstances test our bravery, determination, and inner strength, but what about less dire, daily circumstances? Perhaps just passively coping with Covid-19 from a distance, when it’s not directly and personally debilitating us. What we need to remember is that the mind needs to be exercised to gain strength. It needs to be worked consistently in healthy ways to grow strong. If you refuse to push yourself forward a little bit every day, of course, you will feel completely stuck when the going gets tough.
But you don’t have to feel that way right now…Choose to do some sit-ups in your bedroom in the morning when it would be easier to sleep in. Choose to do the ten reps when it would be easier to quit at nine. Choose to create something special (like a new journal entry, drawing, or youtube video) when it would be easier to consume something mediocre on TikTok or Instagram. Choose to send loving texts to family and friends when it would be easier to watch another show on Netflix. Prove to yourself, in a dozen little ways over the next few weeks, that you have the discipline to get in the ring and wrestle with life.
Inner strength is built through lots of small, daily victories. It’s the individual choices we make day-to-day that build our “inner strength muscles.” We all want this kind of strength, especially in tough times, but we can’t simply think our way to it. If you want it, you have to do something about it ritualistically. It’s your positive daily rituals that prove your mental fortitude and move you in a positive direction.

The bottom line is that as times get tougher over the next few weeks, many people will find something easy to do—they will find an easy distraction. But when things get tougher for YOU, remember those three things. and we will be smiling at coronavirus daily. 🙂

ZEN MAN

As i travel around