Clueless Twenties

  It took me a surprisingly long time to get here. Not because I believed everyone should like me. In fact, I have never been a people pleaser in the traditional sense. I wasn't the person who bent over backwards for approval or changed entire parts of myself to fit into rooms I didn't belong in. But if I'm being honest, I carried some of the tendencies. I cared more than I admitted. I replayed conversations after they ended. I wondered whether I had said too much, been too loud, come across the wrong way, offended someone unintentionally, or made myself difficult to love. Not because I wanted everyone to like me. But because I wanted to be understood. And for a long time, I confused the two. Somewhere along the way, I developed this quiet expectation that if people truly saw my intentions, they would understand me. That if I explained myself clearly enough, showed enough kindness, extended enough grace, then misunderstandings would resolve themselves. Life, however, has a ...

  Nothing beats the gorgeous chaos and human traffic that is a Nairobi Friday evening. The hawkers scattered all over the streets, some being chased by kanjo, dondas screaming at the top of their lungs their destinations and fares, the mats hooting, and nganyas with the loud bass music. The people leaving their workplaces are bumping into each other, rushing to either get home or, most of them, rushing to get to the nearest club. Basking artists with their huge speakers, photographers scattered in cute places hustling, ladies of the night with their gum and short dresses and skirts and shorts scattered in dingy streets whistling and hollering at the men and sometimes women passing by, and men with their famous "Why aren't you smiling?" among other cat-calling they think is clever. On a normal day, this would overstimulate me and piss me off, maybe especially the bumping and cat-calling, but for some reason Fridays inspire writings like these, and it is the day I put my pe...

Death of Individualism. Everything feels… edited lately. Not calm. Not peaceful. Just… reduced. Conversations that never quite land anywhere. Opinions that arrive already softened. People who are easy to be around but difficult to locate. It is not that there is nothing to say. It is that nothing is being said fully. You see, dear reader, I find it uncomfortable, the comfort we have found in losing individualism, in losing a sense of self . At first, it reads as taste. As maturity. As a collective leaning toward simplicity. But sit with it long enough, and something else begins to surface, a quiet absence. Not loud enough to alarm, but persistent enough to notice. A sense that in trying to become more palatable, more acceptable, and more universally agreeable, something essential has been edited out: one's identity. We have, in subtle and socially rewarded ways, learned how to present ourselves in neutral tones. Not just visually, but conversationally, emotionally, and intellectual...

  There is a particular comfort in believing that people are either good or bad. It simplifies things. It allows for quick judgments, clean conclusions, and a sense that the world is, at its core, understandable. But that clarity rarely survives proximity. The closer you get to people, to systems, and to yourself, the more unstable those categories become. What looked like principle begins to resemble convenience. What felt like integrity starts to shift under pressure. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, “right” becomes less about what is true and more about what works. Simone de Beauvoir, in The Ethics of Ambiguity , resists the idea that morality is fixed or easily resolved. That human beings exist in contradiction, capable of both freedom and harm, intention and compromise. Not in dramatic, philosophical ways alone, but in the quiet, everyday decisions that rarely feel like moral choices at all. Because most of the time, they aren’t framed that way. They look like survival. In a ...

  I don’t think empires end the way we imagine them to. Not with collapse or spectacle, but with a kind of quiet confusion. It is not one event but a series of them, moments that feel important on their own but indistinct when placed side by side. An election that does not feel like an outlier but a signal. Wars that do not conclude only extend. Invasions were justified, then complicated, then forgotten. Laws passed, rolled back, rewritten, a constant state of internal negotiation. Nothing definitive. Just enough to make you pause. America was not just a country; it was a reference point. For culture, for success, for power. It was the center of things, or at least, it felt that way. The music, the films, and the language of the internet all carried a certain authority. To participate globally was, in some way, to pass through it. Economically, it offered a story. That there was a place where effort translated, where ambition had structure, and where “making it” was not abstract. P...

  “Be a good example for your brothers." He says it like instruction, like inheritance "They are younger than you they will emulate you do better.” And I learn quickly. How to step forward How to stand in place That was never called mine. First daughter But raised in the echo of a son Not in name, But in weight. To be careful with his silences To anticipate the weight of his days To become somewhere he can rest To hold the house steady When it leans too far To soften what lands hard To be watched Not as a child But as a measure Of what is working And what is not And I carry it well, Too well. Like something tailored But never asked for He does not see the shift, only the shape. How I arrive early How I stay longer How do I not break? Where I should And maybe this is what he means. When he looks at me With something like pride Not daughter Not quite. But something that holds Something that endures Something he can point to And say, This one This one is mine. And I, I have lear...

  I started noticing it in meetings. Not the agenda. Not the coffee. Not even the unnecessary icebreakers. The way people speak. Everyone sounds like a press release now. Smooth. Neutral. Over-rehearsed. Sentences that begin confidently and end without saying anything at all. You leave the room unsure what was decided but very aware that everyone “contributed.” We are not thinking more. We are sounding smarter. There is a difference. It took me a while to name it. Performative intellectualism. I noticed it first in corporate spaces. Meeting rooms where nothing is said beautifully. Decks filled with words like "leverage," "optimize," "synergy," "ideation," and "value alignment," language so polished it reflects your face back to you but tells you nothing about where the company is actually going. People don’t argue. They “add perspective.” They don’t disagree. They “offer nuance.” They don’t admit they’re lost. They say, “Let’s take thi...