The types of people that you should always avoid

While going through my morning dose of catching up I got this post on Quora (your really should delete your facebook account and join this platform) that I felt I had to share.

people-to-avoid

There are 3 types of people that I tend to avoid as best as possible because they suck me dry of all my positivity, motivation and work ethic:
Blamers, Thinkers, and Settlers.

People who do not take responsibility for their lives. These people are like negativity magnets. Whenever something bad happens to them it is always the world who is at fault. It is never them, they just have a shitty life and they cannot do anything about it. These people are known as “Blamers”, always blaming some other event, person or thing for their misfortune.

These people tend to waste their entire life in the same job, are always stressed, angry or depressed, and never even think about making their life better because they do not think they have that kind of power.

The only thing they talk about is what happened to them. They will talk about all the crazy things that happened to them on the weekend, talk about past events that happened years back that happened to them and will rarely talk about what they did that was amazing.

Avoid these people or run the risk of you becoming their next scapegoat.

People who are too critical and never try new things. The “Thinkers” are people that always try to reason everything out before they ever start doing anything, to such a point where they logically explain it the way that sounds best to them.

Thinkers will take everything they heard and everything that sounds reasonable to tell you why they cannot take responsibility for their lives or make their life better. These people are very dangerous because they are exactly what society wants.

If they hear it often enough, or if they cannot reason anything else, they will not believe it. Period. And it is hard to get them to change their minds as their beliefs are usually very ingrained and firm. Most of those beliefs come from things they have no knowledge of, and of a fear based mindset.

Avoid these people because their logic will sound reasonable and it masks the laziness, apathy and depressed feelings they have inside quite well. Your parents are probably among them as they do not believe you can do it because they do not know about it.

Thinkers are dangerous because they seem to make great points but do so without any actual knowledge of what they are talking about! Meaning all their points are only right by chance.

People who do not seek to improve themselves. These people are just lazy, apathetic and selfish. They will not improve themselves not for lack of power, but just because it is too much work and they would rather give up.

These are known as “Settlers”, as they will always settle for “good enough” and never for anything more. Settlers are better than Blamers because they at least admit that they could do something, but they just choose not to, which is an excuse for living an easy life and not doing the extra work to make their life great, making them the most selfish people on the planet.

Settlers will always find excuses not to try and to avoid going for something unknown. This comes from a fear that they may not be good enough, may not make it, or will lack the motivation. All of that comes from the belief that they are not good enough.

Avoid these people or help them, but do not get sucked into their own self-pity that they portray. This mix of selfishness and low self-confidence is a very dangerous mixture that is like a vortex that sucks you in. Avoid them if you can!

Footnote: Apparently the gender debate isn’t dying soon as it’s controlled twitter for the past three days. Do check out my opinion on it here.

Gender Imbalance Still Haunts Me

So yesterday tweeps had the unfortunate duty of discussing the Gender Rule…Again! I say unfortunate because however much we talk about the 2/3 gender rule we will always come to the conclusion that you can’t force the  electorate to vote in someone if they do not so wish. Now 5 months ago I posted a post that was meant to belittle the so-called Alpha-females who at the same time demand for this piece of law to be implemented, crawled back into my shell praying nothing would get me back up. I mean at times I almost lost my cool (you’ll agree f you see the number of drafts I’ve got) with things like ODM/CORD constantly being on the defensive and reactive positions  (why can’t this group change the tone and be on the offensive for a change) then there was the unwarranted and stupid public outcry over Bahati’s stunt at a privately-sponsored public rally (Kenyans with their entitlement issues) and the list continues. Isn’t it thus amusing that the very last topic I rambled about is the same one that would bring me back here again?

Let’s get something straight. I’m the most leftist any liberal can be. I just don’t support women empowerment,  I am for gender equity. But today it’s not really an issue of gender equality. It’s of future leaders wanting to be handed their leadership roles on a silver platter. I need to have faith in my leader to be able to combat any situation and I don’t see that happening if said leader got their (I’ll start using gender-specific pronouns after this) positions through a functionality that didn’t guarantee finding the best. Here’s one tweet I find really catchy and by far the only sensible one in the FOR #GenderRuleKENYA Team.

But is it really empowering if you give out handouts? Isn’t that what you’re doing when you set aside seats like Women Reps to satisfy the female egos. Or can you tell me what else the holders of that position have done for the four years they’ve been in parliament? We have a phrase in my culture that goes “mia olowu kar rech.” Loosely translates to “Give me a fishing pole instead of fish.” The statement is self explanatory.

There was also this one whom I tried to reason with.

I fail to understand how our constitution as is does not guarantee equal opportunities for people of any economic or social background. There is a no discrimination clause somewhere in between those pages. (Full Disclosure: never read the book.) So we argued about her use of the term earn. Well it wasn’t really an argument as much as it was a statement of a fact. I told her there is no way the women will be earning their seats if they get no competition and she requested to revisit the meaning of the term earn so I pulled a definition from merriam-webster

“Earn.” Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 6 Oct. 2016.

{

//In case it doesn’t appear as I expect it to after post here is the meaning verbatim

 

  • 1 a :  to receive as return for effort and especially for work done or services rendered     b :  to bring in by way of return <bonds earning 10 percent interest>

  • 2 a :  to come to be duly worthy of or entitled or suited to <she earned a promotion>      b :  to make worthy of or obtain for <the suggestion earned him a promotion>

 

}

She never responded after that.

And finally there is this train of tweets that loosely purports that male members of legislative houses do not represent women’s interest. That’s what I and most people out there get when we see tweets like these. That’s what you mean!

 

 

Let me remind you that there was a woman in the ballot during the 2013 General Election and the 52% that @EmpressFionah just quoted above didn’t vote for her. Why? Because leadership is based on meritocracy and not gender-bias; the feeling of belonging with another in this case. If it was really about women knowing what women need they never would have chosen Uhuru over Karua and many other male MPs who had female competition and with majority of the populace in their constituencies  being women.

I’d like to conclude by saying that women can capture leadership positions without any special preferences being put in place as evidenced by the democratically elected women in parliament. Icons like Millie Odhiambo and Hon Gathogo. You just need to find out what they did to win their seats and am sure the answer will be a simple “Impressing your voters like hell!”

 

And now I’ll leave you with a quote from Colin Powell;

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.

Alpha Beggars; Informed Chauvinist

Male MPs gang up to deny women campaign funding. I knew I had to hear how Capital FM’s Eunia (am hoping I got that right. Not important though) Amunga would expound on this headline from the moment I had it briefed. It sounded like the male MPs grabbed women’s campaign kitty fund and looted all that was in it. You must have formed that image too. Don’t lie. To yourself.

You must therefore understand my amusement when I learnt that all Duale and Co were doing was saying no to an unfair start in a race. Here’s a brief of what happened: The female legistlators were driving a bill in the House that would force their respective political parties to fund their campaigns failure to which the parties would face punitive consequences. The men saw this as funding their competitors and give them (women) an edge over themselves. It’s like buying a full nitro before a race in Asphalt. Even you missus looking at me with that face laden with incredulity would understand that Duale and Co were only looking out for themselves as politicians (or conniving businessmen as in the case with our political leaders but that’s a story for another day). They weren’t looking at their female counterparts for what they were sexually but seeing them for who they were; whom they represented- competition. And in no world (whether ridden by Donald J Trump, quidditch or Klingon ) would you find a person ready to let the competition have a better start. Of course unless it’s out of contempt and disbelief in the competitions abilities and success. As it turns out the male legislators and men in general including yours truly believe that women have as good a chance as they in whatever they partake to and any uplift in their (women’s) race is nothing short of cheating.

I believe in not just women empowerment but gender equality too. If you’re going to say that a woman has just as much ability as or even more than (as I’ve heard insinuated and iterated on more times than I’ve cared to count) a man then you need to give both a fair shot in a competition. An equal platform. A level ground. Ok you get the idea. And by the way what is it with women always screaming how much they are the key to societal development, family upbringing and everything else that is intended to imply supremacy over men yet ditch that reasoning whenever confronted with a competition an like , again, equal platform.

If I was a woman  I’d be insulted by the two-third Gender Rule because it gives me stuff more easily like I’m some  charity case that’s begging for handouts. Like i can’t achieve anything on my own unless the competition is kept in restraints like a pitbull.  If men are as threatening competition as pitbull then for Pete’s sake be as cunning as a fox.

 

Editor’s note (man fancies titles)

I grew up in a very large family. The ratio of males to females in our household is 1:4. Just so you don’t start mentioning my hardworking mothers’ names or very intelligent sisters.

 

Once in a while it hits me that there is this child of mine I gave to on the internet two years ago and I don’t give it as much love as a parent should give their child to avoid future parental issues. So I step in here and upset a few souls then sink back into my hellhole called life.

Because We are Men

I like to imagine I beat darius to celebrating men’s day on my blog(https://awinogeorge.wordpress.com/2014/11/19/what-are-we-looking-at-while-celebrating-international-mens-day/). But this year rendered me lazy and when I realized it was finally the D-Day I couldn’t come up with something worth your while so I’m reblogging this to cover this year’s celebration.

The Slow Fade

image

Note 1: After taking more than half a year without posting anything on my site blaming it on the loss of my phone, I promised myself to post atleast once a week. The past week saw me hit a dry spell because it was unusually uneventful. I moved between talking about ladies’ social habits to campus wannabes with old toyota 504s and Vitz whose only strength (or weakness, depending on the possesion end you are on) are loud speakers. Untill I realised that most of my ideas come from the conversations me and the boys usually have. You see, T (I’ll call him T and he stars in this post) doesn’t read my blog (even though I personally bookmarked it on his browser) claiming he knows what I’ll write about; and how right that is! Our lame but equally funny jokes usually spur the humor in my articles and thus I sought them.

Note 2: I got the idea for the title after reading Darius’ post. You should check him out (of course after reading this and the previous article). He’s sort of my pro borno lifestyle therapist. But even so, I had my doubts about writing this fearing it would be misconstrued until I stumbled on Laura Turner’s piece (Jezebel)>>This is the only article I’ll allow you to read before mine due to the reference that I’ll make to it<<

A SHORT ANALOGY
T and I met in high school. In a way we had a lot of things in common. Yet we also had great parities. Where he was organized and careful, I was always in shambles and careless. I had just stepped out of my parents’ wings and thus didn’t know how to take care of myself. He on the other hand was in control of himself. But the similarities won over the differences. Most notable was our passion for civics and political ambitions. Of course he went ahead to become Secretary to the Student Council while I contented myself with the idea of Chief Counsel of Secretary to the Student Council (that wasn’t exactly an official post, but man fancies flattering titles).

Fuck dreams! And passion! Both of us are on our ways to becoming scientists in almost similar fields. But God doesn’t take everything without leaving you a condolation behind. While fate (actually, a government bureaucrat) took our Law School dreams, God gave us each other for comfort. We got to the same college. And even after months of separation, the friendship embers were still there. It just needed rekindling.
Note to that line: Sometimes I wonder if it was just the idea of seeing a familiar face in a sea of stranges that threw us together and that we would eventually break out of it.
But it’s the stuff we did and talked about that really built us. It was that friendship where even after weeks of not seeing each other we didn’t pass hellos; the conversation started right where we’d left it. It’s like we hadn’t been away from each other at all. I remember how we would loudly sing Luo Rhumba on the streets of our campus then laughingly explain it with “We are from the village. This is how we grew up!” And I remember even the wild dreams and fantasies we would share. Like what he would if he won the Sport Pesa Jackport (I lost that dream. Some you fulfill. Others you just let go). The talks about our future families. How he wanted as many kids as he could if he could take care of them. And how I would team up with his sons against him when we watched soccer together. My point? There are stuff that when you do or say to one another they seem like vows.

Then came H (I didn’t know how I’d bring him up so I just did it). He was T’s coursemate so they basically shared more time than we did. A friend of a friend is a friend. And he became my friend and we formed this trio gang. Made lots of noise in our native language in and around the hostel and thought that that made us popular. Actually, it did. Guys we didn’t know would stop us and refer to us as ‘Jaluo‘. It gave me this air of fame that made me consider myself as the mayor of our little crib. To date I still believe had I run, I would have won the Congressman post with a landslide margin.

Everything changed when we were sophomores. We were drifting apart without us noticing it. T and H remained on one side while I stuck up on the other. At one point I formed a WhatsApp group for just the three of us and christened it ‘The Three Musketeers’ but even that couldn’t help salvage the friendship. There nolonger were any embers to rekindle. The wood had burned to ash. I guess our friendship had run its course and it was time to let it go. Honourably so.

The time I realised we were never getting back was when I hit one of my worst lows and I had to move through it on my own. There’s this lady I had been crazy about for over a year and they kept telling me to either ask her how she felt about me or let her go. So I manned up and asked her to be my girlfriend. If man can be said to be mature, then the way this lady turned me down is the perfect example of maturity. And even after I got over her, I still respected her for the way she let me down. Then with a heartbreak and for an introvert (Behind the acquired and mastered art of self confidence that I exude looms a timid self. I’m that awkward kid in a party who sticks to a corner with a drink in hand and phone on the other), I seriously needed my friends. But none of them ever set foot in my room during this whole period. Like Laura, I like to play the victim card here. I was going through a heartache, the last thing I needed was to feel abandoned by the only people I had known to be there for me. Yet they hang me out to dry. Truth be told, I did some shitty stuff that must have scared them off. That was the time I took to alcohol (convincing myself that I was drinking because I wanted to  not because of the unresolved emotions running through me). There are stuff I don’t even feel comfortable relaying in this post. And now I look back at it and I just don’t beat myself too hard about it. I concluded we all played our parts in ending the friendship.

Forgotten Note
Society drills men to avoid being sentimental as much as they can. But that is the whole point of most of our mess. Dealing with unresolved emotions is never easy and sometimes, just like me, people do stuff they’d never imagine they would have done in ten lifetimes had they been in half their normal state.