Life is beautiful. I know this statement might be a cliché or seem like a mundane saying. But indulge me for a moment. The word “beautiful” traces its etymology to the Latin word “bellitas”. “Bellitas” means “a pleasing state”.
So let us reframe our first statement again. Life is a pleasing state.
Now, that’s where the catch is, because life is not a pleasing state at all times. Sometimes, it’s difficult to find the pleasure in life. And I have been through my fair share of such times. I've even documented some of them on Qazini. Let me fill you in, using an interesting—at least to me—analogy from aviation.
According to physics, at the ground level, you experience a gravitational force of one atmosphere. So the scientists would say, You are experiencing 1 G. If you start accelerating, the amount of pressure you experience increases, and so does the G. You go fast enough and you start accumulating more Gs. The human body can only handle up to about 5 Gs, but if the human being is a fighter jet pilot, they are trained to handle as much as 7 Gs or more.
When you are in the pleasing state of life, you are experiencing life at 1 G. Here, life is beautiful.
Sometimes you might not be travelling at a higher speed physically, but life is really pushing you. And instead of experiencing the G-forces physically, you are experiencing them mentally. This is what I was experiencing in 2022. I was handling G-forces beyond my comfort or training level. I documented this through a four-part series of articles titled “Wrestling with Death” here on Qazini.
The sinister part of experiencing these mental G-forces is that you might have people around you who cannot tell that you are almost blacking out.
You see, when the fighter jet pilots are pushing the Gs, gravity pulls blood towards their lower limbs and away from the head. Because of the change in atmospheric pressure, it becomes difficult for the heart to pump blood to the head. So the brain, being the ultimate adaptation organ that it is, starts shutting down the field of view. So as the pilot flies on higher Gs, their field of view keeps decreasing, and it seems as if the world is closing in on them. If you happen to black out because of excess Gs, your field of vision reduces till all you can see is just a dot in front of you.
When I was writing “Wrestling with Death”, that is what was happening to me. My field of vision was closing in. It was like darkness was filling in most of my field of view. That was not a pleasing state.
Looking back today, I have learned that there are two ways of not blacking out. The first one is the easiest one: never leave the ground. The body is well adapted to the 1 G pressure. However, in this state, you have to give up any ambition of building, climbing, seeking, or becoming. The second way is to train for the Gs so that, like the fighter pilots, even when you are pulling Gs beyond what your body can handle, you are well trained to not only pull the Gs but also operate with precision and excellence under such pressure.
Today, writing this piece, I feel like I am in a better place to pull more Gs than I could in 2022. The funny thing is that after writing those articles in 2022, things didn’t get better; they got a lot worse. The dungeon I thought I was in was only a holding cell for the hell I was about to go through.
In the following year, I would lose all work, decide to start a business that I financed using a loan from a Sacco, and then the business failed within three months. I was left without work, without a business, and with a mountain of debt.
I was forced to move back home to the village, where I stayed for a few months. Then, coming back to Nairobi, I had to be hosted by my younger brother, who was a student, in his small hostel bedsitter.
But since then, I have built back up, and I am in a better place than I have ever been.
That period was my period to learn how to handle more Gs.
There is a famous video that is on the internet by Morgan Freeman, where he connotes that if you pray for patience, would God give you patience or the opportunity to exercise patience? The opportunity to learn and exercise patience is what you get.
But then, does that mean that you have to experience difficult times in life? What if you don’t want to experience these difficult moments?
A quote from Miyamoto Musashi is the best way to understand this: "It's better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war."
It does not mean that you will forever be at war (or pulling 7 to 9 Gs according to our analogy) every time. But when the time comes, because life is life, those times are just around the corner at any moment, and you will be able to hold the pressure and not black out.
Additionally, this expands your capacity to experience a beautiful life, a pleasing life. If you can only handle life at 1 G, then life will be unpleasant anytime things move a little faster and a bit of pressure builds. But if you are capable of pulling more Gs, your pleasing state is a lot wider, giving you a richer and more beautiful life.
Three years later, looking back, I am very proud of the Stephen that has become. I’d love the younger Stephen to know that he will be alright. That, despite the darkness, better days are coming, and not because of anything else; it's because he became a better person. From where I am sitting today, I don’t know what will happen in the next three years, let alone three, or even tomorrow. I am in a period of transition, but because of the dark times, I am better poised to handle anything that comes my way.
I am not quite sure how many Gs of life I can handle right now, definitely not seven yet, but I am excited to keep training so that when the moment comes, I’ll handle it.
But for now, life is beautiful.
But not for everyone—at least not for all of us at the same time.
Sometime last week I reconnected with a friend who we had lost touch with for a while. He called me and told me that he needed to talk because he was not in a good place. I invited him over, and after a very long, emotional and sad conversation, I learned he was struggling because life was putting him under extreme stress. His suicidal thoughts were creeping in. He said he didn’t have anyone to talk to. This was not a lonely person, at least from the outside. If you walk with him, you’ll hear someone say Hi to him every two or three minutes. But he didn’t have anyone to talk to till he came over.
June being men’s mental health awareness month, check on the men around you. And even as the month ends, keep checking on them over and over. They might be pulling serious Gs, almost blacking out, but they are just smiling with you.
As for what you can do personally, find someone to talk to—a friend, a professional, a stranger, anyone. Because a problem shared is a problem half solved. Secondly, build resilience, either through physical exercise, mental exercises such as meditation, or by building a circle of really good friends.
And at the end of the day, life is beautiful.
