Edwin's Corner

  The Shame Chronicles A story about power, identity, and the habits that quietly ruin us. Mark remembered the street long before he remembered the feeling. It was always clogged—cars inching forward, boda bodas weaving dangerously, horns blaring in frustration. But what slowed traffic wasn’t poor planning or bad roads. It was people. Too many people. Sitting on pavements and leaning against walls. Hands stretched out with a tired familiarity, as if they already knew what the answer would be. Mark hated that street. Not because it inconvenienced him; he had time. Not because it offended his sense of order, his life was carefully ordered. He hated it because it unsettled him. It stirred something he refused to name. “Why doesn’t the government do something about this?” he would mutter, tightening his grip on the steering wheel. “Give them work. Or clear them out.” He told himself it was about policy. About efficiency. About responsibility. But it wasn’t. It was about fear....

  A question quietly arises during moments of stagnation. It usually doesn’t make itself known loudly. It sneaks in when effort stops yielding results, when relationships feel burdensome. When health, money, or direction seem to slip away, no matter how hard you try. The question is simple, but loaded: Can someone curse your life? In many African contexts, the question is posed differently. Someone might say, almost in a whisper, “ Your star has been taken.” And as soon as those words are spoken, something shifts. Fear finds words. Confusion becomes a story. Pain receives an explanation. I’ve spent years sitting with people who believe this—intelligent people, thoughtful people, those who have worked hard and still feel stuck. I don’t dismiss the question lightly. I believe words are powerful. I believe in a spiritual realm. I also believe that outcomes follow patterns. And over time, one thing has become very clear to me: when awareness is low, influence seems like destiny....

In the first two articles of this series (see the second here ), we examined the struggle to survive in the river of life, and the rise into courage and reason, where force gives way to mastery and clarity replaces confusion. This final reflection goes even further, beyond effort and mastery, into peace and enlightenment, the moment you realize you were never meant to conquer the river at all, but to see it clearly, without resistance, from a deeper and freer place within yourself. There comes a point in life when mastery no longer impresses. You’ve learned how to swim. You’ve learned how to stay afloat. You might even have learned how to move upstream against the current that once overwhelmed you. You understand the river now—its speed, its dangers, its patterns. And yet, something deeper starts to awaken. A quiet realization, almost whispered: Even mastery still assumes I am inside the river. This final reflection is not about doing better. It is about no longer needing to. It is...

In the first article (see link here ), we discussed drowning. Not the dramatic kind that could end someone’s life, but the quieter kind that occurs daily—emotionally, psychologically, spiritually. The kind where you wake up already exhausted. The kind where your thoughts feel like a crowded room. The kind where you’re functioning, smiling, even performing, but inside, you feel submerged. Shame. Fear. Anger. Desire. Pride. The survival states. Most people don’t fall short because they lack ability. They fall short because survival demands all their energy. When you’re just trying to stay afloat, you don’t have the capacity to dream, to build, to create, or to heal. You’re not lazy, you’re simply busy keeping your head above water. But something profound happens when survival is no longer the only concern, when the need for food is no longer the primary fear, when safety is no longer the obsession, when identity ceases to be a daily emergency. A new question rises quietly, almost...

 Allow me to indulge you for a moment. For a long time now, one question has quietly followed me around, like a shadow that refuses to leave. What does awareness actually mean? Not awareness as a buzzword we toss around in podcasts and workshops. Not mindfulness as a five-minute exercise squeezed between meetings. Not motivation, the kind that briefly shows up, pumps you up, and then vanishes as life pushes back. I’m referring to awareness as something deeper. Something experienced. Something that subtly, almost invisibly, shifts how a person connects with their own life. Imagine this with me. A vast, stunning landscape. A waterfall crashes into a river below. The water is loud, relentless, and alive. Rocks jut out unpredictably. The current is intense and unforgiving. Birds soar through the air above. Wind brushes the surface of the river. It’s beautiful, but also overwhelming. Now imagine that you are in that river and you cannot swim. You try. You kick. You reach fo...

  I love to dance. So, when the drum started—deep, rhythmic, spiritual—it didn’t feel strange. It felt ancient. Familiar. Almost like my body already knew it before my mind could catch up. I chose to carry her coffin and stand at her feet. Not by chance but intentionally. She was someone I deeply admired. Through her, I was born—a seed of her seed. My grandmother, Damara Vukinu, my mother’s mother, shaped my life long before I could even name it. Her nurture shapes half of who I am. The other half, perhaps, carries her discipline. As we moved, two steps forward, two to the side, swaying to the drum, memories flooded me in microseconds. A whole life compressed into a few slow meters of walking under the sun. A wise man once said the best place to be is at a funeral. I smiled, not because I wasn’t grieving, but because funerals reveal the truth. About time. About legacy. About the habits we live without thinking, and the ones that shape us, whether we like it or not. That ...

  He used to casually say, “I’m stressed out.” Then he would stretch, laugh, crack a joke, and return to work as if stress were nothing more than background noise, like traffic in Nairobi or emails piling up on a Monday morning. It was said with bravado, with the unspoken belief that stress was just the cost of progress. The price you pay when things are going well. He was in his late forties. His business was thriving, and contracts were closing. The future looked promising. To him, stress wasn't a warning sign; it was evidence that he was in demand. Until one evening, during a celebration of another high-profile win, he stood on stage, smiled, and then collapsed. At first, people laughed, thinking it was theatrical—a joke or an exaggeration. But when someone rushed forward and checked his pulse—weak and irregular—the mood changed. The laughter stopped suddenly. By the time medical help arrived, he was gone. That wasn’t a man spiraling. He wasn’t visibly broken. He wasn’t ...

Roger Federer, Noah Lyles, Tariq ibn Ziyad    Why Motivation Fails—and Identity Wins in 2026 Every January, I watch the same movie. It’s not on Netflix, but it’s a global release. It drops in every gym, every WhatsApp group, every planner, every church hallway, every boardroom, every kitchen. Episode 1: “This is my year.” Episode 2: “New habits, new me.” Episode 3: “Accountability partner, let’s go!” And by mid-February, the series gets canceled without any announcement. No closing credits. No final episode. Just silence. The gym membership remains active, but the body is no longer there. The journal becomes a museum artifact. The business idea is now “something I will revisit when things stabilize.” The relationship work is postponed until the next miracle happens. And the most painful part? We don’t even call it quitting. We call it “being busy.” So let me say something that might sting a little, but helpfully, not the “I want to ruin your day” way: Most people d...