Follow your Dreams

Looking back I cannot help but wonder how people stay in one job for decades. When I first joined the foreign service 25 years ago my eyes were set on becoming an Ambassador, the highest civil service level for Foreign Service Officers. I shared an office with other FSOs some who looked the part of aspiring Ambassadors and others who were disheveled by years of serving time at the impoverished Headquarters as they prayed and hustled for their next international posting. I joined the game with gusto, prayed and hustled until I got lucky and landed my first posting to the United Nations Permanent Mission in New York. I still remember the excitement of receiving that posting letter in the 90s. Eighteen months later I was sitting in front of the Ambassador and his wife as they tried to convince me to stick with my career instead of returning back home to start a family with my husband of a few months. Their logical argument based on why I was lucky to be where I was, sounded like utter simplicity bordering on mediocrity compared to the determination I had to be with my sweetheart and bear us some little tots. And thus ended my dream of becoming an Ambassador as fast as possible.
Twenty years later I have worked as a contractor in the Ministry of Finance, started my own business and walked away from it, become a rabid activist who wrote consistently for a decade - not to mention squabbles on TV, Radio, Podiums, Rallies, 'street battles', nine years abroad, joined politics and lost two elections (before and after my self-styled exile,) and now am an international civil servant. In between that I scored two daughters in addition to a pre-existing son. Oh, and nearly all my Foreign Service cohort are Ambassadors somewhere. So I smiled when a friend I had not heard from in years asked 'Anne Mugisha life number what?' It struck me then that:

At 50 I know I have only this one life to live but there is no requirement to live it in a straitjacket guided by the rules of one career, chained by the goals of my earliest vision. Versatility has its risks and I may not be an Ambassador (yet,) but girl, do I have a story for you
 

— feeling amazing.

Keeping it Real

I catch myself moderating my children's dreams and then wondering if am doing them a disservice. I mean there are dreams and then there are wild fantasies. So my daughter wants to buy a Gucci bag with her first salary and she also wants a car for her Sweet Sixteen birthday. Yup! She has been watching the rich girl TV shows. So I dissuade her from both dreams the latter because I know there is no way I would buy a real, fuel powered motor car for a sixteen year old teenager even if I could afford it. Since I will still be paying her bills when she turns sixteen, that particular dream is in the category of wild fantasy. But what right do I have to dissuade her from using her first salary to buy a designer bag? Am I not tempering her dreams with my own reality - just because I could never have afforded any bag let alone Gucci, with my first salary? Am not only assuming that her first salary will be as meager as mine, I am also questioning her judgement and attempting to manage her priorities, after she becomes an adult. Do I have a right as a parent to determine her future priorities? This reminds me of my visits to my parents' house when my mother tells me to wear 'proper clothes' to Church and father tells me how to prioritize my spending. Sometimes I call it advice other times I feel so patronized and feel like saying, 'Mind your own business!

At 50 I know that parents moderate their children's dreams out of love and a need to 'protect' them from future disappointment. The trick is to find a balance between keeping it real and clipping their wings before they can even fly.

— feeling focused.

Release the Grief

Life does not prepare us to mourn. No matter how imminent and how certain, we are still unprepared for the gut wrenching pain. Easter Day 29 years ago I did not feel the joy of the risen Christ having just buried my brother. Death did not lose its sting that Easter weekend, the pain was too fresh and sharp. It made no sense. He was only 22 years old, he loved life and his life was snuffed out after a very brief illness. Nothing could have prepared me for the magnitude of that tragedy. I have since lost others dear to me, but something in my heart was buried with Emmanuel that Easter weekend 29 years ago. Today the pain of losing a loved one is still immense but it is not the same as that first time. I have found a place in my heart to draw comfort and find peace with the passing of loved ones over time. The deep sense of loss is tempered with the firm knowledge that death is only a stage in life that is as certain and as predictable as breathing itself. 

Once you get down to it why are we really hurting when someone dies? I found that I grieve for myself and those left behind rather than the person who passed on. We cry because we miss them, we mourn for what they could have been to us or to others in future, we hurt because we wanted more time with them. Grief can be a very selfish emotion indeed, so one important stage of grieving is learning to let go.

At 50 I know that I will never be prepared for the passing of a loved one and I cannot fully predict how deeply it will hurt, but I love this fleeting life and will not allow grief to get in the way of living it fully even as I prepare for the next life. Happy Easter.

— feeling peaceful.

Expect Nothing

The frustration in our lives is not always caused by what we fail to attain but rather what we expect to attain. When I was a political activist I shared my ideas and ideals on the issues of the day to help build that critical mass needed to cause change and to transform my fortunes at the polls - that altar of public perception. A political activist may be a leader of sorts but most activists expect that their cause and leadership can only be validated when they become titled - an MP, Chairperson or President - in the structures of power. So until they reverse their fortunes at the polls an activist may become increasingly frustrated and feel unappreciated. I beat myself up many times wondering why even the highest ideals failed to make a difference at the polls. I wallowed in self pity and pondered on the misfortune of a fickle society that failed to appreciate higher ideals. Yet I also willfully refused to acknowledge that my self-righteousness was an egregious flaw.

At 50 I know that everyone likes being rewarded for their contribution but society does not owe us any reward for our personal sacrifices. When the reward doesn't come in the form you had expected then bask in the good that your work may have brought to others. That is your reward.

— feeling satisfied.

Luck & Opportunity

I have experienced worldly comfort and I have been poor in the midst of plenty making for a unique perspective on good fortune and bad luck. A middle-class upbringing in Africa gave me just enough so that I never felt deprived. Even though life's luxuries were limited, I had three meals a day and my parents never skipped a tuition payment at school. I had clothes on my back even if they were not always in the fashion of the day. I took these things for granted, nothing more than the essential necessities of life. Later, life took me to America and I arrived in the lowest echelon of society. I was so poor that I needed help from the State to feed my children. I bared my life to total strangers, declaring my income, my bank account balance, employment plans; before I could qualify to get the food stamps that would shame me at the supermarket where others paid with cash and bank cards. I knew the humiliation of visiting only those clinics that would accept State health insurance. Still I was glad for a country that gave my kids a chance. The school bus picked them every morning and took them to class, they were never hungry and when they were sick they got treated. Later I would harness the solid gifts of my middle class upbringing (education, social networks, confidence and belief in my abilities) to work my way out of poverty.

At 50 I know that at the start of our lives luck has a lot to do with whom we are destined to become because we do not choose where and to whom we are born. Our efforts begin exactly where our luck stops but effort must meet opportunity for us to steer destiny. What we eventually become is a result of how well we applied ourselves to harness luck and whatever opportunity we got.

— feeling blessed.

Teachers are Mentors

The other thing I did not want to become besides a 'stay-at-home' housewife was a teacher. I often wondered where they found motivation to get up every day and follow the routine of preparing their students to be greater than them. School for me was just a place I needed to breeze through on my way to the real world and I felt rather sorry for teachers who had to keep going to school for the rest of their working life. Looking back I marvel at their patience as they prepared us for the future. Many of them served until retirement, content with an unglamorous, low paying job and simply happy with imparting skills so that others might have a successful life. I could not shake off what one teacher advised my class before releasing us into the world. "Try not to make your first home in a 'boys-quarters' because if you get comfortable in a one-room home you are likely to think that you have reached your full potential when you move into quarters with only two rooms." He was simply telling us to reach for the stars, to aim as high as possible and not to put undue limits on our potential. I understood that he used the one-room home as a metaphor, but once I finally had my own income and went house hunting, studio apartments were not an option.

At 50 I know that sometimes role models and mentors enter and leave our lives unannounced. They capture our imagination and influence our dreams whilst going about their modest jobs - without even trying.

— feeling grateful.

Read & Learn

Advances in information technology over the last few decades are amazing particularly for those of us born before a computer became a household item. Kids today cannot fathom how we managed even elementary research without an Internet search engine. I sometimes wonder too. Carlill vs. Carbolic Smokeball Co. the first contract case I needed to study in order to complete an assignment, was missing from the University library! Someone had selfishly plucked out the pages from the large case book and thus started my journey into the world of 'xeroxing.' You sought out someone who had a copy of the case you were studying and photocopied, or more than likely, wrote down every word in a notebook because photocopies cost money and we were broke. Somehow we stumbled through law school and graduated without the help of the World Wide Web. Now with Google, Yahoo, Maps, Wiki this and Wiki that, I get baffled when kids can't spell a word or find a place on a map.

At 50 I know that all the advances in information and communication technology still haven't figured out a way to imprint knowledge on your mind without your participation. So no matter how fast the Internet, we still learn the good old fashioned way: Read and study - hard !

— feeling accomplished.