Golf musings in Quarantine

“Keep your sense of humor. There’s enough stress in the rest of your life not to let bad shots ruin a game you’re supposed to enjoy.” – Amy Alcott

I am in quarantine and experiencing cabin fever. Reason being, I have been indoors for an extended amount of time, unable or maybe even too prudent to leave. I don’t miss the social aspects of life, as I am a solitary creature so the quiet and solitude works for me. What I miss is the exercise, the routine, the things that make up my everyday life. I normally try to play a round of golf each morning (my daily exercise). Due to this new situation that has befallen all of us, I am homebound. 

Before the COVID curfew, I had reached a point where my elbows on both arms were complaining. Too much golf, it was time to take a break. With my personality, I probably would not have done it on my own accord. I would have stubbornly, continued playing. Eventually reverting to Deep Heat and other things to ease the pains, instead of just giving my arms and body a break. 

Why is it so important to me? It is a form of exercise that gets me out early in the morning and has me out in nature. That time of the morning the world is just waking up. The dew is still on the grass and it is quiet and everything is fresh and sparkling. The sun is out yet gentle and beginning its steady climb up. Morning, when the suns rays just kiss my skin. As I walk, as I argue with this little ball, about who will get the better of whom? 

I listen to music as I play golf, my choice of music, depending on my mood that morning. Sometimes I take my headphones off and listen to the songs of nature as the world awakes. It is lovely and new, the birdsongs, the sounds of the ocean as it hits the shores. I walk in solitude, listen to the “quiet” of the morning. I have time to look around, admiring the beautiful the course with its well-cut fairways, not very challenging rough, and its beautifully manicured greens. 

The sand bunkers beacon me and I graciously decline, I don’t do well with bunkers. I watch the grounds team as I walk by. They are clearing, cutting busy making the course even better. I watch the sprinklers as they water the fairways to keep them green. So much effort goes to keeping this course in top shape. The club employs many people to man the grounds and ensures that our playing experience maximized.

I fell in love with the game. From the very first day, when I ventured onto the range to “give it a try”, I became besotted with the game. A love affair that has persisted all these years. As time passed, I got better acquainted with golf. The more I played more the more I fell deeply in love with golf. 

The game of golf, I love, though not all the fluff that comes with it. I do not like the 19th hole. Socializing at the club is not my strong point. I have made good friends at the club, but I do not spend much time in the clubhouse etc. 

I do not like the politics associated with golf clubs. There is also a lot of elitism which is not very pleasant. I am not very keen on the way people deal with each other socially at the club. However, because mine is to come into the club, play golf, and leave. I only socialize with people I like and deal with only those that I chose to deal with. I am having a great time of it. Currently, the clubhouse isn’t even open, the only people that frequent the club now are the ones playing golf. 

The thing I love about golf is the individualism of it.   My preference when playing with other people, once the pleasantries are dealt with, is to concentrate on my game. Testing myself, by focusing on every shot. I love to take risky shots, shots that maybe a more prudent golfer (person?) would shy away from. These risky shots are great when they work, and hilariously bad when they don’t. Many serious golfers get annoyed at me when I laugh when my risky shots turn into foibles They tell me I could be a better player if I took the game more seriously. My response? I play golf to have fun!

This was my normal, before COVID before I was locked down in my house. It took a while for the club to decide what to do about us playing golf. With the lockdown and the initial panic and social distancing, it became a bit unclear whether we were welcome to play or not. No matter, I am sure they will find a way for me to continue playing this game I love so much. In the meantime, I just look into my mind’s eye and remember my morning golfing moments and that will keep me going for a while.

Perspective

“One moment the world is as it is. The next, it is something entirely different. something it has never been before.” Anne Rice, Pandora

Sitting in the patio, at home in the coast. I am surrounded by beautiful gardens full of palm trees, tropical flowers and 30 degrees (Celsius) weather.   I feel blessed, spending quality time with my Angel, listening to music and loving life.  All of this while I work remotely, in this case from the safety of home.

I am settling into quarantine far better than I thought I would. 7 of 14 days of self-quarantine, life has never been so sweet.  I am healthy.  My angel is here in quarantine with me she is the reason for it.  She just returned home from Costa Rica! 

Sadly, the world is in crisis right now with the Covid-19 situation affecting most countries in the world.  Things are dire in many parts of the world, with people losing loved ones, people fighting for their lives. More people are losing their livelihoods. Businesses are shutting down, and most of the worlds’ economies are in a downward spiral.  

Then there is the fear of this virus that is raging through the world.  Forcing nation after nation to shut down, no end in sight.  Knowing, that too that when we get a handle on the virus, we will feel the repercussions of it for years to come.  

What is happening is happening and nothing I can do will stop it or make it go away.  I am concerned, yet grateful. Having a roof over my head, food to eat, and a secure job through this ongoing global pandemic is not something I am taking for granted. 

I will do my part by staying home during quarantine. When the period will ends, continue to maintain social distance. I will do all that has been prescribed, so as not to infect or get infected.  

Let us all be hopeful for a better tomorrow. In the meantime pay attention to what is happening in nature. Look for the silver lining these dark times.

  • The canals of Venice clearing and returning to blue, fish and other water animals returning,
  • the pollution levels in China dropping as a result of the overall confinement of people due to the virus.   
  • I am also sure that parks like Maasai Mara will have a reprieve of the constant year-round human traffic.  
  • the time spent in traffic in cities full of smog emitted by the fuels we burn in our cars.
  • The hours we spend commuting to and from work. Precious hours to spend quality time with families who are home with us now

The world is resetting it seems, and I believe we are getting a second chance to remember what is important; family, quality of life.  The environment seems to be better for the break we are giving it.  A part of me secretly wants the restrictions to continue a little longer. Selfishly I want even more time with my Angel.

Whilst at home, we give mother earth a chance to recover somewhat.  Things may seem dire right now. Depending on the perspective we use to view our current experiences, we can see a lot of good that is coming out of this, not very good situation.

Corporation at the market

For it is in giving that we receive  Francis of Assisi

For the longest time, I looked at giving to communities as a corporate venture or at least one done on the Non Governmental Organization (NGO) level.  I saw philanthropy as a big word practised by big business; as a way to circumvent the negative effects of their presence (read oil business), or as a way to feel good about all the billions they make each year, whilst there are people in their immediate surrounds going without food, shelter or even basic healthcare.  I recently heard a story that helped reshape my thinking.

This is the story of a young girl and her slightly older sister (18 if she was a day) who ventured from our capital city to our second largest city in search of gainful employment. These young girls had spent a stint in Nairobi unsuccessfully, in the hands of so-called relatives who had brought them from up-country on the pretence of “helping” their poor relatives. The experience was a disaster for the young girls as they discovered quickly that they had been brought to be slaves by their “relative”.  Eventually she kicked them out in the middle of the night and it took a kind neighbour to both house them for the night and give them enough bus fare for them to travel to Mombasa.

Silly, brave girls had no real plan, they just believed that when they arrived, they would find work and begin their lives.  They also knew that they could not go back home to the hardship and poverty they had left behind, continuing to be a burden on their parents who had 14 other mouths to feed.  The ride to Mombasa was uneventful and the girls found themselves in Mwembe Tayari with nowhere to go and no one who knew them or cared. They arrived at night, frightened by the dark and unfamiliar with their surroundings, they harboured by the side of a building and spent the night, with the night watchmen as their only involuntary security.  Night passed into dawn and in the morning the hustle and bustle of the day began.

Two young girls, terrified yet brave, huddled in the corner like two abandoned kittens, vulnerable to the world, yet not crippled by it into inaction.  This is how she found them, wary yet curious.  She could see their terror just layers from the brave faces they put on.  Watching them, memories of times past flooded her mind and allowed her to make a decision. She knew well the look of abandonment, the sour taste of wretchedness, tossed out with yesterday’s garbage to face the elements. She saw it all in these two girls huddled together on the side of the building. These children needed rescuing and she was going to be their saviour.

She took them home, not much yet a safe haven for her and her foundlings, nursed their insecurities, fed their undernourished bodies and allowed them to have the space and mindset to organize their heads and look for work. Each day they ventured out to work (they eventually got gainful employment) and she went to the market to find her fortune, she worried about them, unable to eat her evening meal until “her girls” came home safely.

They lived with her, laughed with her, grew with her and became whole with her, for seven long wonderful months. They gave her a sense of family, something she had not experienced in a long time.  She gave them love and security, something they had not really experienced before with 14 other siblings around and being in the hands of abusive relatives.  She knew that they had grown and were ready to take on the world on their own terms.  In month eight when her son from a forgotten past came to get her, she was ready to leave, happy to reconcile with her son. He came to give her a back a portion of what she had given him, rescue her; he came to take her home.  It was a happy reunion and her departure from her “girls”, a bitter-sweet parting of strangers who had become family.

As mentioned earlier, my thought of giving has been somewhat restricted by the idea that corporations and organizations and other big groups are the ones that give, really give and have the greatest impact.  Yet per our culture, our own traditions are steeped with people reaching out and helping each other (it takes a village…..).   This true story is my emancipation from that thought onto a more enlightened place. Hearing it convinced me that it is possible for each and every one of us to make a difference in the lives of those around us (our village).  We just have to have faith that doing good for others, is not limited to just organizations and corporations, we can be corporations within ourselves.

Sacrifice!

“Let us sacrifice our today so that our children can have a better tomorrow” A.P.J Abdul Kalam

The season of lent is over and the holy weekend of Easter just behind us. All this brings to my mind the issue of sacrifice. Lent: we are supposed to sacrifice (give up) something we hold dear for a month. According to Dictionary.com we are to “abandon a pleasurable habit as an act of devotion and self-discipline”. Sacrifice is defined by the Free Merriam-Webster dictionary as; “the act of giving up something that you want to keep, especially in order to get or do something else or help someone”. Well, considering Christians beliefs and the act that led to Easter, we see the ultimate sacrifice made by God in giving his son Jesus Christ to die on the Cross in order to save mankind from sin. A selfless act indeed!

What about us? Do we live in a selfless or selfish way? Are we governed in our actions to do for gain or for the good of others? Are we living a life where we are always looking within or do we actually make the sacrifice and give of ourselves so that those “without” can benefit? I believe we should be asking ourselves these questions daily. Why am I doing this? What is my ultimate goal in taking this action? What do I hope to gain, or who do I hope will gain? A lot of questions with probably as many answers as there are people in this world.

As a parent it is my belief that I have a good understanding and experience with sacrifice. In “putting in the woman hours” I have many a time chosen to concede to my Angel, in lieu of personal gratification. I have knowingly made many decisions that suited her because in my opinion, when you make a commitment such as becoming a parent, you should be ready to sacrifice. I mean look at the whole process of childbirth from the perspective of a woman: The pregnancy, you give over your body for the pure benefit of the child forming and growing inside of you, you gain weight, suffer discomfort, pain, you are inconvenienced, and can’t sleep, you sometimes even eat stuff you would not ordinarily eat, all for this being inside of you. For nine months you let it take you where it may. Then when it is time, you suffer more pain than you can handle (thank God you cannot revisit that pain after the fact. I don’t think there would be more than one child born to each woman if that was not the case), your body is extended beyond belief, and all for the safe passage of this amazing little being to enter into this world.

Okay so that is my example of sacrifice, and I don’t believe for a second that sacrifice is only made by women and only by the process of carrying and birthing a child. There are many examples and ways people make sacrifices. Its my opinion though, that when one makes a sacrifice then they are looking ahead, looking at the greater good and not at their own personal needs and wants. Even in business in all the books I have been reading lately, the constant message that to succeed in business you should look to do things that benefit others and you have a better chance of success. All around us is the push to look outwardly at what we can do and who we can help and how we can give of ourselves for the benefit of others. Surely the universe is sending us a message? All the people we honour for greatness ,mostly for their self-sacrifice: Mother Theresa, Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and closer home for me, Wangari Maathai; all great people who looked beyond themselves and gave up personal comforts and pleasures for the greater good, willing to die for what they believed in.

Sacrifice: What are you willing to give up? And for who?

Putting in the woman hours!

“To be in your children’s memories tomorrow, You have to be in their lives today.”
― Barbara Johnson

Wow, thirteen years ago today she came into the world, my angel.   I never really knew then how profoundly she would change my life, my world and all my perspectives of every value and belief that I had.  Now I try to hold on to every single moment that I can, I feel that she is slipping through my fingers each and every day, more rapidly than the day before.  She said to me at breakfast today “mummy, you have been in my life since I was born” and I have, from birth to 13 and beyond.  I am in awe of this wondrous creature that I call my Angel, how she has grown and changed and the spectrum of emotions she can invoke in me. Am not sure there is another person alive who can take me from delight to despair and back to delight again with the span of seconds. Continue reading

The Journey Continues……..

Ever Tried.  Ever Failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better! Samuel Beckett

It’s been a while, a long while;  I guess this is what is called taking a hiatus from writing.  I am not sure what brought it on, but there it was,  I stopped writing regularly and posting in the blog, and looking back I think it is a shame.  I used to enjoy the dialogue with friends old and new from around the world, friends who would read the blog on a weekly basis and comment. I felt honored words I wrote would inspire people and make them feel good. Then it all stopped, the drive I felt to write remained but to write for the public domain did not.  Not until now. Continue reading

“Voices of Light”

Do not go where the path may lead.  Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” – Emerson

It is amazing how music transcends generations, how it is that for music lovers the past, even as far back as 60 years ago can be a lesson on vibrations, rhythm,  and beats; how the past can be utilized as a baseline for creating future sounds.  Recently I had an encounter with some great young men, Kenyan to the core, I fell in love with those guys, I liked their vibe, the way they expressed themselves, the way they were so real! Continue reading

Boyfriends, memories and the tapestry of life!

We don’t accomplish anything in this life alone…and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one’s life and all the weavings of individual threads from one to another that creates something.       -Sandra Day O’Connor

A while ago, I happened upon an old boyfriend, actually my very first boy friend, talk about a blast from the past! Anyway in conversing with him, he reminded me of a ritual we used to have whilst we dated back in the day, and it was way way back trust me! Continue reading

“Don’t worry be happy” *

“No one is in control of your happiness but you; therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change”.  Barbara De Angelis

What is happiness? “Happiness is a mental or emotional state of well-being characterized by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy.” This is according to Wikipedia.

How many times in life does someone ask you “are you happy?”  Who or what defines your happiness?  Taking a glimpse within, I must admit there was a time in my life when I thought and believed that my partner defined my happiness, he was responsible for ensuring that I was content and experienced that intense joy, after all he loved me right? So he should ensure that the person he loves was happy!

 Back in those dark ages, when I had little enlightenment about this thing happiness and knew less about myself, one of the ways I wanted my partner to signify without a doubt that he loved me was by buying me flowers. I felt that if he loved me and knew how much I liked flowers, then he would surely want to make me happy and buy me flowers.  I waited and waited and waited, for flowers that were not forthcoming, he bought me other things and in his own way showed me he cared, but he did not buy me flowers and I was not complete, I still needed this symbol of his love and I really did like flowers so much, still do.

Many years later I would go out, see a lovely bouquet of flowers and dare to buy them myself.  I would bring them home or to the office, put them in a vase with water and I would love them, they would make me happy! They would give me that intense joy! What a surprise! So it is the flowers that made me happy, who bought them was not important! What an epiphany for me! What power I had returned to myself! This being one example of many, I learned quickly that ultimately, I was responsible for my happiness.  I decided whether I was happy or not, people or things around me could not make that decision for me, unless I gave them the power.

Now I know that though surrounding myself with positive people and attracting positive energy lends in my happiness, yet those around me can only take away my happiness if I let them.  They may try to create misery, and unfortunately in life, many succeed.  However, I have the power to decide how I will allow people to affect me.  I decide who I surround myself with and if they do not make me feel good inside my soul and they don’t add value to my life, then I have to be strong enough to make the decision to sever ties, even though at times it means remaining alone.

Many things make me happy, life, the laughter of a child, the dawning of the day with the warming rays of the sun, the pitter patter of raindrops against my window pane, the light breeze over the ocean as the sun sets and the day draws to a close.  The sound of music (no pun intended, I do like the movie as well), the smell of pastries right out of the oven, the sight of my angel, sleeping, smiling, being pensive or concentrating, my angel period, a great source of happiness for me.  A rainbow in the distance, I still love cut flowers (hint, hint J), a good book, my friends:, their love, support and all the moments we LOL* together! I could go on forever, and for that I am grateful. I have so much that makes me happy,  and thank God that I am enlightened enough and know myself well enough to be able to recognize happiness and differentiate it with that  which has the opposite effect.

The world is full of sadness and misery, every time we look around we see something that just depresses us and makes us feel bad.  But the world also has so much good, beauty and joy. We need it all, it is imperative that we find individual ways to be happy. I believe that happiness will give us hope and make everything else palatable.  If we live with anger, sorrow and despair, then we do not live.   We crush our hopes and diminish our souls, our possibilities to be greater, better, wiser people.  On the contrary,  if we can make the choice to be happy, look for and find that happiness around us, then we can continue to feed our souls with hope and inspiration and be able to take the next positive step into our future!  You have the power make the change, use it, make the decision to be happy!

*Bobby McFerrin 1988