MANTALK: 40 questions

One day my brother-in-law, Dave, told me,

“Biko, my friends always ask me why you always feel the need to write about the places you visit.”

I told him that there were two answers to that very pressing question: the short one and the long one. We didn’t have time for the long one, so I gave him the short version: Because I’m a bit of a jerk.

So Dave, if your are reading this before your touchy friends, please ask them not to read today’s piece because I was in Greece recently and the ensuing account will make them retch with disgust.

I turned 40 on an island called Santorini, a 40-minute flight from Athens, which I skipped because I wasn’t in the mood for ancient ruins and museums.

I wanted to kick-start the 40’s sipping whisky while lying on the deck of yacht or a cruise liner or whatever sexy boat I would find myself in. Santorini seduced me with its luxury cave villas in the village of Oia. I don’t want to describe the view here lest Dave’s friends read this and fall sick.

The morning I turned 40 I woke up in an all-white convex bedroom without windows (it’s a cave, remember?) and stumbled out into the all-white living room (OK, the whole place is white) and sat outside on the balcony suspending over the caldera (when you are 40, you don’t fear heights).

One thought dominated my mind as I sat there in a robe, sipping my black tea: “I don’t feel 40 at all. This is how 40 feels? “ Two weeks later, I still don’t. I have been alive for four decades yet somehow I feel like I’m 29. When the small girls in our office call me “old man,” (they imagine they will never grow old), I always wonder who they are talking about.

I only feel old when people talk about Snapchat.

I have been interviewing many 40 year olds and they don’t seem to have any fears or dwell on regrets. I always get the feeling that their 40s is when they jump off a cliff and soar.

In their 20’s they are walking towards the cliff. In their 30’s they are at the edge of the cliff, debating, wondering, what ifs, bracing themselves, taking a deep breath. In the 40’s they jump off. It’s done. You fly or you fall. Most don’t care. They don’t make excuses anymore.

Some turn into birds, some become tortoises. Others fall like stones. But everybody jumps off. Jumping off the cliff comes with freedom, from fear, from excuses, from yourself.

I met an ageing American couple on the boat. The lady was very chatty, the man a bit reserved, but there is nobody a little alcohol won’t loosen up. After sharing my whisky with him (yes, I’m Kenyan, I carried my own drink to the boat), we soon got talking.

I asked him what his greatest regret was and the man said,

“Not being curious enough.”

Boy, did I love that soundbite!

“I lived my life in Connecticut with a preconceived idea of life,” he told me.

“I worked hard in school, got a job in an engineering firm, met Martha here, we raised our daughter who soon left to start her own family and then one day Martha came back home with the map of the world.”

He was quite the narrator, this man.

“Martha pointed at Egypt and asked me, ‘Do you think these people [Egyptians] live any different than us?’ and I told her without thinking, [insert a deep Southern accent here],

‘Well, let’s find out, then.” So they went to Egypt then India then Australia then Tanzania then Osaka then Greece.

“We should have been more curious earlier, curious about ourselves as human beings, curious about people who lived further afield from our state,” he said with a low drawl.

“Sometimes I feel like there is so much to see of the world, so many wonderful people to meet, things to do discover about ourselves as individuals, literature by men who make us uncomfortable by how they think, ideas that challenge us and yet I feel like we don’t have enough time to live to do all that.”

He looked at Martha who smiled at him reassuringly.

“But you are doing something about it now,” I told him, “That should count for something.” He offered me a big smile. His name was Ron Webber.

If there was any lesson in that boat for me it was this: live curious – and that doesn’t just mean travelling. It also means curiosity of self.

What more can I do?

How much further can I push this?

What is at the bottom of my well?

Do I even need to know?

Is there a philosophy I can explore now, not necessarily for purposes of adaptation?

Can I embrace the redefinition of contentment?

What is failure and when can I cede to it? How much further can the arch of ambition – and the quest for success – bend before it breaks something in you?

On what shelf does fear go?

What about lust and greed?

How does purpose get watered fast for it to blossom into fulfilment? And why the hell is that guy eating a hotdog with disposable plastic gloves on?

Forty doesn’t seem like a destination at all. It’s an invisible line in the sand. You cross it without knowing you have crossed it and you only know you stumbled into a different territory when suddenly hostile men on camels wearing arafats are standing over you, blocking your sun.