A Little god Within Us

If anything, I pride myself in having a brilliant memory. I can remember pretty mundane things, that may have happened years ago. Plenty of them are embarrassing, which gives them the street cred to run riot in my head every once in a while. Even with a brilliant memory, I still manage to forget really important facts such as how to make money by simply not doing anything.

Today however, I do not choose to recall embarrassing things that have happened in my short career of not doing anything meaningful. It was a Sunday. I remember lying on the bed waiting for the clock to hit one so that I could join the queue filled with rich kids clamouring for that one meal they clamoured for- French fries or chips to the common man. The details have escaped by brain, although I could have been counting the number of the squares on the mesh that was part of the upper deck bed. My leg could have been suspended on a red shoe string that acted as a sling. I don’t remember any of those, except I was lying down on the bed when she texted me.

After we exchanged pleasantries, she asked me what I was doing. Previously, I never thought of anything other than blurt what I was doing. It was somehow special when a girl asked one what they were doing. It was as if they were weighing if they could interrupt you without deviating you from saving the world from its evilness. Also it was as if she wanted to show up naked on your door. Now it is not special at all. You could respond with a bland message, texting you.

And so she asked me what I was doing.

‘Fantazing.’ I had replied.

‘About what?’

‘About (insert the name of that person you hate) naked and lifeless body.’

She laughed-in text-and replied that I had just made her day.

I thought myself as a little god who had made someone’s day. Just with a fantasy of someone’s dead and naked body. I wanted to let her know that I was a god, something I had once told people. Just to emphasise the point, I had put it my whatsapp bio: I am a God, it read. We then were in a makeshift relationship, one that never quite took off. And she reminded me, when she got the chance to tell me, that I was blaspheming. To me, it was far from blasphemy because I didn’t use the article the. Better yet, the words were a title to a Kanye West song that I sort of loved. The lyrics to the chorus were:

I am a God

Hurry up with my damn massage

Hurry up with my damn ménage

Get the Porsche out the damn garage

I am a God

Even though I'm a man of God

My whole life in the hands of God

So y'all better quit playing with God

Soon as they like you make 'em unlike you

'Cause kissing people ass is so unlike you

The only rapper who compared to Michael

So here's a few hating-ass niggas who'll fight you

And here's a few snake-ass niggas to bite you

I don't…

Speaking of being a god, I have countless thought that there is a god in each one of us. Just devoting our lives to not, consciously and unconsciously, hurting others, and perhaps helping that person in need may be a godly act. You could be walking on the street and you stumble upon a street kid begging. Something may stir within you, and you hand that child a few coins you had although you had vowed not to sometimes back. You have however acted as an agent of god.

In the course of our lives, we’ve encountered people with seemingly incurable ailments. Pictures of their bodies devoured by invisible creatures are splashed in social media, ruining your browsing experience because all you ever wanted was to see pictures of girls in tight clothes, escorted by captions about an earth quake that devastated a remote village in Indonesia. You are forced to abandon your mission and concentrate on this human being, whom, with all due respect, God has decided he suffers from an ailment that leaves his external body parts either excessively swollen or simply nauseatingly unsightly. Below the description will be an m-pesa till number, urging you to contribute money for treatment in India.

Then the fear that it would you next triggers a hormone that is responsible for philanthropy. You reach for you m-pesa account and send something small. It’s not only you, millions others will contribute. Millions will be raised and the sick person will fly to India for treatment. Most often this person will thank God for having heard his prayers.

A simple act of kindness shows people that there’s God above, watching the downtrodden, and the helpless.