By SILAS NYACHWANI.
A friend recently pointed out that girls who are 19-22 are the first generation in Kenya to have all the fun in the world without feeling guilty at all.
They can drink, finish all the drugs from the supplier, have sex, polyamorous sex, switch partners with ease and they won’t feel an ounce of guilt.
Older women always have fun, can do pretty much what young women do, but there is always some lingering doubt, shame, and guilt. Because of religion. Because society judged women. Because of what their mother taught them.
But the world has changed a lot. We are living in a neo-post-post-modern world. Any time I hang out with younger women, I literally realize that I am a dinosaur. A tall, unthinking dinosaur.
A 21-year old can’t believe the lengths women went to own their sexuality in the past.
My older female cousins could be skinned alive if their fathers even dreamt that they are dating even in college.
Women were raised to preserve their value for marriage. And a lot of judgement, punishment, criticism, was the norm to ensure they did. There were days in Social Studies classes girls were made to sing the dangers of unwanted pregnancies.
In fact, so many women in the 1980s and 1990s had to marry the men who impregnated them if they were to stay alive. Ever had the joke that if you are a firstborn, just know you made your mother marry a man she would never have otherwise married.
As a young man, I remember being chased down some ridge pale nyumbani when I went to Katia some ka-girl. I wonder if young men can chase their sister’s boyfriend anymore.
Nowadays, life and marriage has become like university.
Nobody sees the value of university. It is not life and death. Some of us had to repeat up to ten times in order to make it to university. But with papers and no jobs, young people see no value in college.
Same thing with marriage. Most of these kids grew up in broken homes. And there are increasingly fewer ‘picture-perfect’ marriages to aspire towards. This, there is no reason to preserve their value. In fact, more and more mothers are encouraging their daughters not to be trapped into marriages. They are telling their daughters, go out there and have fun.
To have all the fun in the world with no ability to feel guilty is a wild and beautiful thing when you think about it. Hedonism is only worth it when you don’t have feelings of guilt attached to the fun.
While it is a beautiful thing, there is a downside to it.
When we live our lives freely, drugs and all, we expend ourselves faster.
Even men who live as such, risk a nihilistic life in the end. You reach 35 and you have had all the fun in the world, life literally has nothing to offer.
In life, we are all given batteries to last us the life expectancy, of your respective country, barring a premature death. Those who live on the fast lane, expend so much energy that in their later lives, they are so drained, no ability to pair-bond, and one has to explore really dark stuff to find meaning in life.
In the meantime let the girls enjoy. Let them have all the fun.
And since they seem to copy men, I request they go one step better. Also, face the consequences of their choices.
As the world becomes a capitalist, dystopic place, there will be no one to blame for the outcomes of their lives later in life.
15 years from now, one cannot or should not say, “I was young and dumb.”
Because increasingly, the world (men will not own problems they didn’t create.)
This is a very uncomfortable truth that we have to face. One way or another.
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