Opportunity Costs

NB: this was written as a stream of consciousness, so I apologise if some bits are repetitive or slightly incoherent. I didn't edit it too much because I wanted the aforementioned structure to shine through.

I've been thinking, a lot; about the roads less travelled and about the costs of, not only my choices but the choices that have been made for me. Understand that when you make a choice, being able to live with the consequences of that choice is important, but so is being able to bear the regret of not choosing the alternative. Some regrets are easier to bear; like choosing option A over Option B at breakfast. Others, weigh on your soul, shaping a life yet unlived in unforeseen ways. 

So I've been thinking.. can I live with my regrets? Can I bear the opportunity costs and still be solvent? Can I bear the costs of knowing nothing about my culture? A cost, born from the activities of others, and my own passivity. 

I grew up wanting to feel normal and from a young age, I learned that black was not normal and, perhaps worse still for me, that African was, somehow, more abnormal. and I wanted to be normal. I knew that I could never stop being black, but I could stop "being" African, because "being" African was present, continuous and self-perpetuating. So I let that part of me go. I wish it had been harder, more painful at the time. I wish the action, or rather inaction demanded something more of me than simply, ceasing to be. Yes. It was simple. At a young age, when we are all malleable and with the hindsight of reflection, it was incredibly simple to abandon that which marked me out as different in favour of something that didn't. It was simply because I also knew nothing. I knew nothing of my history, nothing of my people and, as a result, nothing of myself.

I want to be able to say that this was a byproduct of colonialism. The Kenyan Colony could only exist if her people no longer felt bonded to their old ways of living; no longer felt bonded to each other in their own ways. The Kenyan Colony could only exist by destroying those abnormal connections and supplanting them with something normal; something familiar to the colonisers, something they could control. and I am living proof of this. I am familiar to everyone but my own people and that is the opportunity cost of their actions as much as it is my inaction to breed that familiarity.

In school, I learned about European history and customs before I learned my own. Until I was 8, I thought my history was Victorian England, Ancient Rome and the French Revolution. Although I saw myself in the resistance struggles of the Aztec and the Maya, the way I was taught about those rebellions, was just that; as a "rebellion." But rebelling against whom?" was a question I deigned to act. And, in so doing, my costs tallied up. 

and I'm not sure I can live with these costs any more. and I don't know how to wipe the ledger clean. Perhaps that very desire, of absolution, is the problem and not the solution. Maybe the only way I can move forward, is to stop wishing for a clean slate and to work with what I've got; promising to learn from my mistakes.

Hopefully, this is a lesson I can apply moving forward