I GIVE UP

Last week, four of our lecturers decided to return out CAT papers, at the same time (talk about giving a student a heart attack). One of my classmates in a fit of rage threw up his papers and said: 

“siku hizi ni kuchimba tu lakini sijali…..nili give-up kitambo” (these days all I do is fail but I gave up long time ago)

Our attempts to cool him down were in vain and one of us ended up with an emotional wound since he started saying so many nasty things (I thought women were the drama queens…this one made me leave that opinion open). So  there he was, he “threw in the towel” and to think that it is our last semester in campus made me feel so bad.

The wise old man, now deceased and decayed, Solomon said in the book of Proverbs “For a righteous man falleth seven times, and riseth up again; But the wicked are overthrown by calamity.” (Proverbs 24:16)

I am just thinking how you would fall seven times…really, not unless it’s in the rain and your shoes have no grip, there are plenty of bananas on your way or you’re just crazy for you to fall seven times at once. But anyway the main purpose of this verse is to encourage us not to give up. Just imagine falling down seven times (even in different days) and just waking up each time.

 Most of us have become experts in giving up. our common vocabulary is "I give up". You fail once and you give up immediately, without even giving it a second thought…be it exams, life goals, relationships(especially this one, I hear some young people as young as 20 years old say that they have given up on love and I’m like seriously?! You have not even lived a bit of your life to give up), conflict resolution or on life goals. A tiny slip and you throw in the towel (to wherever those towels are thrown into). By the way, where do all those towels that are thrown “in” go?

I attempted to quote that verse to my classmate and the response was, “aki sasa bado ntachimba six times ndio nipite! Na exams ni next week” (oh great! Now I have six more times to fall so that I wake up and we are having exams next week) and then the therapy session started. My point, anyway, is and was THOU SHALT NOT GIVE UP!! 

For those of us familiar with the theory of probabilities (yes I love math, students are in an “exam-mode” and this would not end without throwing in a math “something-y”), you are aware that the probability of getting 1 right in of 10 attempts increases as you tend to move from 0 to 10 attempts :-)