MY PROMISE TO YOU

When all else falls,

By your side I will stand.

When all else fails,

I will hold your hand.

When everything goes,

I will stay behind.

When everyone judges,

I will hold no grudges,

And I will be kind.

When all is erased and gone,

I will engrave you in my mind.

when life makes you frown,

I will calm all down.

When everything goes astray,

Together we will pray.

When you don't feel right,

I will hug you so tight.

When you think I'm a superwoman,

I will embrace you, my super human!

Need I say more,

Even when you love me no more

I will love you to the end!

With Love

~ In Loving Memory of My Brother, Mentor, Confidante and Best Friend~

A MOMENT IN SOLITUDE

These words are my teardrops, 

The pen is my cloth and the verses are my sanctuary.

 Akin to a lowly creature I seek solitude amidst this loneliness I linger. 

Like an audience to my life, I take a moment, I step out of it. 

From a distance, I see laughter, I see no pain, I see roses. 

I draw closer,

 I see the tears, I see the pain, I see the thorns.

Gawking through the eyes of the world, 

I relish my life’s events, 

I realize I’m hungover and the party's over. 

Like an endless festivity, my life was an analogy. 

Riddled thoughts resound in my head, 

Did I sow enough? Did I garner enough?

Through this infinite quest, time is the culprit. 

It seemed in abundance and fed me with hope. 

Little did I know it was of the essence!

 Need I not lament more, what am I living for.

 I feel cheated; I feel betrayed for I thought it was in galore. 

Yet like a fine glass of wine, better with time,

 I yearn to keep trying.

 As there's a time to live, a time to love, a time to die,

 I make time to cry. 

For only then will I know, 

The worth of my moments in time. 


Tanisah Towo 

REAL LIFE FRIENDS vs VIRTUAL FRIENDS

Gone are the days when courtship was such a long process where our elders faced a tough time trying to go that extra mile to impress the counterparts of their interest. Life was very simple by then when two people were in love, thanks to the delayed communication process, letter writing was a very exciting activity where one would take their time to express their desires and yearnings towards each other decorating the letters with flowers sealing it with an essence of a sweet smelling perfume. (Well... that’s all gone now!)

By then, you could easily get the feeling of festivities by the flooding letters and cards that would stream in from our loved ones wishing us the best that there is at that moment and beyond. Greeting cards and beautiful writing pads were the hottest thing in the market at the time.

Then came the era of the internet and social networking sites plummeting the then booming business of card sales, post cards and writing pads. With the coming of “virtual friendship” in form of social networking sites, BBMs, WhatsApps and whatnot, we are forced to re-evaluate what we term as relationships and friendships. Today all you have to do is to befriend the person on Facebook, or get their blackberry PIN and the rest shall follow.

This has rather undervalued the traditional concept of friendship because, in the world we live in today, shutting a person out of your life comes with just a click! At the slightest argument you can instantly just block or delete the person and they will get a clear message that the friendship is no more. What I don’t seem to understand is that, are we to call such a setting, friendship or just a pastime experience with some random people we meet online?

It is only human to garner strong emotional ties with someone you only talk to but you never met. We sometimes get so emotionally attached with these strangers we meet online based on the assumption that our communication will cultivate into a more meaningful relationship. This is because it softens the idea that you are talking to a stranger. Communication is made much easier where people are free to express their feelings without the fear of rejection.

It always starts with a mere “hi!” to getting to know each other a whole lot more. However it is really hard to tell whether what you share is honest or it just happens that the other end is always at your disposal when you need someone to steam-off your frustrations to, or share your happy moments with.

All in all, be it the virtual world or real world, friendship should not be valued by the time you spend with someone but rather the moments you share together. It is the mutuality of the inner personalities that should count.

MY NEW YEAR PROMISE

As the Clock turns to another year, memories, resolutions and plans gush through... Like a gift to my thoughts the good memories are packed in my head, giving me a day at a time.. I keep asking myself, just incase I leave, what would my footprints portray, I pat my self on the back and thank God atleast I lived, I loved and like Beyonce would say, "I was here". 

Before I die I shall make sure I lived. Neither will I allow a heartbreak nor a turmoil kill me inside. As I grow older in the outside, I want to be younger on the inside. I shall live for the moment. I shall not regret a speck of my time, for that was my destiny. 

I may not be the likes of Ghandi, nor am I any closer to Mother Teresa, but somewhere, somehow, sometime, I know I touched a life I know I mattered and I know I was loved. 

A long mediation of my past endevours doesn't but make me want to change nothing. If anything, I want to re-live it. Dwelling on regrets of my past fortifies the dark cloud of fear covering my sunny future.

I want to forget all the wrongs I've done and like a new born, start my journey again. 

Happy New Year to all my readers! 

MONEY CAN'T BUY YOU HAPPINESS. SO CAN'T POVERTY.

Dear Readers, this article is written by my beautiful friend Pauline Mtui. She also has a passion in writing like I do.. she will also be posting some articles in time..  Enjoy! 
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There has always been a myth about wealth. It isoften said that money is the root of all evil and that it causes nothing butmisery. It is also a common anthem that Money won’t buy you happiness. What I failto understand is, does it mean that the penniless are happier?

I know I should not generalise, but I cancomfortably say in my humble opinion that this type of gibberish is usuallyuttered by those who have nothing to lose because they have achieved nothing intheir lives whatsoever. It is probably a way of justifying their failedattempts at life if I may say!

The sad reality is that the resultant of poverty is often depression,hostility, anxiety, emotional stress, insecurity and loss of dignity andself-respect. Poverty breeds feelings of failure, despondency,frustration and defeat. It can lead to violence, crime and brokenrelationships. Poverty does no one any good and it takes a toll in society.

On the other hand wealth does not automatically bring happiness, it nonethelessprovides an opportunity for a comfortable living, security and independence.Wealth encourages self-confidence and a feeling of contentment and well-beingat heart. With wealth comes overseas travel, extra leisure time, luxury carsand homes, the finest food and fashion, the best education and so much more.

Money itself won't make you happy but having moneywill provide the freedom to do whatever you want and to live wherever andhowever you want. Some people are fortunate enough to inherit, marry into orwin vast amounts of money. But for the rest of us it comes down to hard workand resourcefulness. As the common saying goes, “it is very expensive to be poor”.


It is high-time we are true to ourselves, the mainreason we all wake up in the morning is not only love and affection or the willto live and die eventually but rather the will to live a comfortable and happylife and that is why we work for it!  Andthat is what waking up in the morning is all about.

KNOW YOUR WORTH

Love is not blind. We just tend to accept the flaws that come with the person you are in love with or the relationship itself. We tend to lie to ourselves that with time maybe things will fall into the right place and all will be well. Others associate love with pain. Love should not painful, love is a beautiful thing and it should be the one thing left in this world that brings you solace and happiness.

As a wise friend of mine would say, “everyone should have principles in life”. This is because once you have principles, only the variables would change but the main idea never changes. The same applies to our LOVE lives. This is only possible once we know our actual worth as individuals.

The wrong choices we make at the initial steps of starting relationships usually haunts us later. Most people especially the women undervalue their true worth to an irritating extent. They tend to put themselves in very compromising situations for example, being the other woman or being abused and beaten just because they love the people who mistreat them. One is left to wonder as to why a person should subject themselves to such demeaning relationships under the umbrella of love.

Are you sure you want to be that other woman that he sees on dark and dingy corners on his way home to his beautiful wife? Are you really that valueless to be the one he hides from everyone? Why shouldn’t you be that person he proudly presents in front of everyone as his wife or girlfriend?

Yes sometimes life circumstances can force you into situations you cannot untangle yourself but, in most cases it is the lack of firm principles that lead people into such compromising situations. At times you see that a man is happily married or committed and you accept to be that other secret third wheel in the relationship. What happens here is that you are neither loved nor needed but rather you are the dispensable one he lures, to complete his insatiable wants.

Next time you think of demeaning yourself into such unfair situations you should remember that:

DO NOT HOLD BACK!

At the sight of seeing how painful it is upon losing a friend to a sudden death, it got me thinking as to how my story would end. I tend to imagine how things will be when my time comes. Would I die a legend or would I be just another number added to the fallen loved ones.  

They say when you are about to die, your whole life flashes in front of you. I wonder what the time-line entails, is it the good things that you did in your life or the bad things that flash by you. Time is a baseless concept at that moment because all that you have lived for is summarised in a concise theatrical manner.

The value of life is priceless because no matter how young a person is, when they leave us, the pain is the same. The series of unfortunate events served me a quick reminder on the value of living life without holding back.

In the pursuit of achieving our dreams we tend to get carried away with the day to day hustles of life forgetting that at some point we all die. We always emphasise on “living for the moment” but are we actually doing that?

 

In life we expect everything to fall in the right place and at the right time. To us, human beings, it is all about time. Time to study, time to have fun, time to love and time to marry but God retains the well-kept secret of time to die.

It is with this reason I would like to share my take on love. Love is not something we just decide to feel. Love should not wait for the right time because when it hits you, you will know! Do not be overpowered by the fear of falling for the right person in the wrong time. That is one thing that shall never wait for the right time because it is always the right time to love.

Once you find that person can “click” with, as the modern youth would phrase it, do not hold back! Even if it means you making the first move just go for it. Do not hold back because you never know when all that wonderful feeling will come to an end.

Emancipate your emotions to run free and experience the sweet side of life. No matter how tough life can get, one thing remains constant, and that is love! As long as you have love by your side, be it towards your family, friends or your soul mate, it is still a wonderful feeling.

The moral of my story:

Let yourself not hold any regrets when it comes to love because it is the very same feeling that makes life worth living.