From A Distance

 

One of the typical things with most matatus is their stubborn insistence on playing Classic 105. It is as if there is a constitutional requirement for them to play Maina and King’ang’i in the morning. Anyhus, the other day while aboard one, a very popular song plays (I know a majority of you have sung along to ‘from a distance’ by Bette Midler) and this day I sang along too, albeit in whispers, but the song still lingered in my head long after it had ended.

One theme that is consistent throughout the song is the fact that everything looks so beautiful when you look at it from a distance, she says ‘from a distance you look like my friend, even though we are at war.’ The song paints this picture of how everything looks so beautiful when you are observing it superficially. You see all these couples on social media posting happy pictures and good times and you cannot understand how they manage to be so much in love while you cannot get even the bare minimum!

You just visit any family friend upcountry today and they will be so glad to see you, some will even slaughter their only cockerel just to make you stew as you like it. They look so happy and their faces radiate genuine happiness. Or is it a couple that you look up to? Just spend some time with them and they will be at their happiest, you will love to be like them. Or that one friend who seems to have their life so organized? You will wish so bad to switch lives with them.

Please don't get me wrong here, I am not saying that we keep things to ourselves in order to maintain this image of perfection, far from it. I would encourage us, rather, to share our challenges with those close to us and also be a safe space such that they too can share their struggles with us. What I am saying, however, is that we should not be too focused on knowing about the details of their lives. Like the saying goes, the devil is in the details.

The apostle Paul in one of his letters to the church in Corinth said, ‘for I decided to know nothing among you except Christ, and Him crucified.’ I feel we can borrow from Bette’s song and only view people from a distance, that yes I am fully aware that you are going through a hard time, but I am not going to look at you through those lens, I am going to view you as God’s creation. I am going to look at you and see Christ. I am going to look at you with eyes of love. I am going to see my friend not the person struggling to quit an addiction, I am going to see my son, my daughter, my guardian, not the person who gives me a headache.

Let us change our perspective and view people from the view of God with love, with mercy and with a lot of grace. Like Bette says, see them from a distance.