The Abyss of Dreams

When I was in high school, my Kiswahili teacher would tell me that I should work hard and pass my KCSE. That after I landed in university, I could coast through without studying and get straight A’s. That girls would be falling over themselves trying to get at me etc. I was promised everything short of manna from heaven. I land in campus and the situation on the ground, ehehehehe…..In the spirit of political correctness, we shall refrain from mentioning the boy-girl situation in Campus. Suffice it to say, the only girl that fell over anywhere near me was trying to get past me to find a bin to hurl in, but that’s a story for another day.

Here I sit (licks quill, dips in ink, miraculously gains British accent) wondering which poor sap is out there falling victim to a high school teacher’s lies. It’s a travesty really, when you work so hard to get into heaven and then you meet Saint Peter who tells you it’s a labor camp. It’s not the weight of the work you have to do that hits you hardest so much as the shattering of your dreams of a lazy, liquor fueled heaven overflowing with damsels (falling over themselves of course). Granted, hedonism isn’t a very good motivational philosophy for getting into campus but rationality be damned! Promises were made! Falling damsels were envisioned!

Hence ensues the rage partying/ drinking /and the hem hemming (redacted for reasons political correctness). For those elders who have been wondering why college freshmen wild out, now you know, the Kiswahili teacher did it.

(Insert national geographic narration) And there you find the college freshman in his natural habitat, the club. He is clad in a T-shirt written, “Herein lies my dignity” with a motif of a tombstone or some variation of such. Part of him is caked in hurl (probably not his), and he smells like he took a two-hour dip in the Nairobi River. Despite this, he stalks his scantily clad prey, leering and lurking. Maybe he will get lucky, or he will spend another night braving the cold in solitude.

There are only two threads that the fates have deemed possible to weave for the drunken freshman. Whatsoever line one walks on, they are walking a tightrope with no end in sight, the only difference is whether they are high and scared, or sober and even more scared. The freshman on the first tightrope, dives headfirst into the haze of hedonistic pursuit, engaging in all manner of activities that would make R-rated television producers blush. The second tightrope walker, if they are lucky, never embarks on the road to hedonism. If they did embark on the gold-paved road, then they must have woken up in a cold sweat at some point, finding themselves staring into that empty void which every human must encounter on the path to adulthood, the Abyss of dreams.

The abyss of dreams can only be described by darkness, darkness so thick you can feel it on your skin as you wade forward in life. When you stare at the abyss, the abyss stares right back at you, and its stare is scary as hell. Dreams are the only things we can cling to in the abyss; every single waking moment we have to breathe life into the embers of our dreams.

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