If Wishes were Mules, Farmers would Ride

The democratic ideals so many pursue can not be acheived when religion continues to play such a dominant role in our public life. I have always wondered how anyone can expect me to respect what I don't know, or better yet what is unknowable. This is not disrespect. The Athenians killed Socrates on some trumped up charges but at least there was a trial and a jury of 501 men. Out of those, 221 thought that Socrates was innocent of the charges. Adam and Eve could not even dream of a trial for simply eating the wrong thing. It would be interesting if all of those captivated by religion were to be tried by similar standards. We probably wouldn't have enough room to banish all those would fall short of the standards of glory. The truth of the matter, however, is that religion has little to do with food today in our society but everything to do with power. That is where power is gained for some and where it was lost for others. Here is an institution that has deeply entrenched itself in our national psyche that it has become synonymous with who we are and so much so that many feel or are forced to feel compelled to explain themselves every time they have to state any fact that does not conform to it's superstitions. 

How did this become the case? What are the outcomes of such a mentality on the current and future state of a society ? What does history have to say about societies that have moved in the direction we are moving? Are there any colleration between our increased ostentatious public religious expressions and the decline of our politics, education, health, environment, economy, emotional well being and family/relationship well being? Who ultimately benefits when religion takes center stage in our lives and our political scene? These are some of the questions I ask myself every time I see this disclaimer. It appears respectful and I can appreciate that aspect.

But I can't help but notice the contradictions inherent in the few words. We hardly ever make similar statements meant to make some feel at ease when making factual statement  or giving our opinions about science. I wonder too how different Kenya would be if our politicians and our religious folks set apart one day of the week to get our sciences up and running one whole year as our way of worship or spiritual expression.  That would mean that all the money given for offering the whole year would go to sciences and research. The next year can be organic farming. The next can be dealing with toxic relationship. And so on... How different would our country and race be?

There is a reason why over 60% of all known stars have Arabic names. It has everything to do with the advanced scientific  research that took place among that group of people, especially in the area around Baghdad during the reign of scientific thought. But then came a religious zealot know as Al Gazari who condemned science as demonic.

He had serious issues with the conept of zero as it had no religious roots. Since then, that area saw the decline of reason and science. I wonder if can save ourselves from the reign of revelation and usher in the reign of reason? For I dare say that history has shown us that it is very difficult to serve to masters. One will have to take precedence.

Unfortunately, there is no case of president and people's president in this matter. Thomas Payne did not just wonder but fought for the age of reason. He understood that the American revolution was under threat to the age of revelation. Religion makes great claims but offers very little evidence for its claims. It also discourages the asking of questions while benefiting from science and reason.

That claim can not be made for all sects, including Wahabis and Amish. There are many Africans and Diasporians such as author Ngugi wa Thiong'o , the didactic  Hubert Harrison and Dr. John Henri Clark who have set a great example of how to advance reason among an opprressed group as a basis of freedom. Thanks to all those struggle and raising the uncomfortable issues to make society more just. My health is your busi It has everything to do with our health as a people.

Free market And The philosophy of Hunger

Over 2400 hundred years ago, Socrates, through his most famous student Plato, said that free market is a weapon of war. Napoleon Bonaparte, a leader in the field of war too, is reported to have said that his army walks on its belly. The current state of global agriculture where powerful countries subsidizes it farmers then floods the markets of less prosperous countries with cheap foods, which ultimately sabotages the local farmers is an example giving credence to the two truisms stated above.

The concept of free market is being used to wage war against Kenyans. Last year was corn, this year it was wheat and milk. What will be next? How can people act as though they are free when they are giving away everything for free? I often ask, why does the powerful cabal act like they care about the poor masses? Okay, I am just being colloquial in my thinking. The correct way to put it is why do the oppressed masses believe the lies of their oppressors and the gods of their oppressors?

Plato gives us an indication that the issue of justifying oppression to the masses is as old as dirt. In Plato's longest dialogue, The Republic, the issue of keeping the socially lower-ranked soldiers from stealing gold from the ruling class was discussed. The solution suggested was that the soldiers should be indoctrinated with the idea that the best gold anywhere was the spiritual gold. That spiritual gold is stored in heaven and it all belongs to the soldiers.

Those with the superior gold were barred from owning the inferior gold on earth. It mostly worked. There were many wars in Greece, but none against the wealthy class with a view evening things a bit. The root of the problems we are having in Kenya and the world today is one of justice, sustainability and power. Food is the best tool to conduct that tripartite war. Look for more wars while we eat ourselves into extinction.

Paulo Freire in the book The Pedagogy of the Oppressed was correct in clearing stating that to be human is to be free. These people are bent of making us inhuman. Hunger is the ultimate weapon either way you look at it.

Voting, vision & violence

As a Kenyan American, I have noticed a similar disgust between Kenyans and Americans with their political leasership. This reminds me of something I said about Obama and Uhuru when they first just about to get elected into office. I said that those who voted for the two guys voted for a candidate in their heads and not the actual person who was running for office. 

Not that those were the first two times that such a thing has happened, but it was the first time that I had seen so much excitement and exploitation that I suspected would not be delivered. I don't need to bore you with my rough experience from people of African descent while discussing that topic. But I will only mention that whenever voters go to the polls to vote for their favorite candidates, the question they must ultimately ask is what other interests have also invested in their candidates and will be looking to cash out on their investments once that candidate is in office.

Though hard to get an accurate answer, there are ways of finding out. Whenever anyone looks at what a particular candidate claimed that they would do and what they actually did, it's quite clear that those candidates had other intentions.

President, Obama, Uhuru and trump all come to mind. Instead of bashing those presidents about a job that he had no intention of doing, let me remind you of a play written almost 2500 years ago as a  consolation. 

 The playwright was Aristophanes, the Greek thinker. His play was the "Wealth". The protagonist, Chremylus, wanted to know why some unjust people were rich and many just people were poor. So he came up with a plan to use the dung Beatle to get him to heaven to meet the Goddess of wealth. Once there, he was surprised to find out that the reason behind inequality on earth was that the Goddess of wealth had her eyes plucked out by Zeus. 

Zeus, like the Jubilee leader in our heaven on on earth, was jealous of humans and did not care too much about their plight. So Chremylus defied Zeus and restored the eyesight of the Goddess of wealth. Only then did the poor and just Athenians get a chance to be wealthy.  I wonder why Aristophanes used the character of a dung Beatle as the insect that transported Chremylus to heaven? Maybe it's because the road to heaven is a stinky one.

Maybe be our problem is not Uhuru after all. We maybe be blinded by modern day gods of the empire to fly our dung Beatle to the earthly Godess in the form of corporations. Looking back to the housing crisis and the slowbolization crisis, both U.S presidents offered disproportionate financial aid to corporations compared to the assistance that the common people received.

We now know that majority of the financial assistance to corporations went stock buybacks and not hiring more people. More corporations also mechanized their operations and replaced their workers with technology like AI than any other time. That was one way that some corporations made record profits even in the middle of the crisis. Other corporations closed for ever or were bought out by the bigger ones.

The economic tide of today doesn't lift all boats, all races or income brackets. The only other way that these mega corporations can expect to grow is through capturing overseas markets. Countries like Kenya will continue to face great pressure to open up their markets to those mega corporations. Uhuru therefore does not have much of a wiggle room.

It is quite likely that the unjust will continue getting all the wealth and everybody else getting all the debts. If we continue with the current trend, we will continue voting for visions that only lead to violence in the end. Many will find themselves amongst the dung beatles in a stinky environment. Dung Beatle anyone?

Elections, Olympics & Food

Simply looking at the three words, one is unlikely to immediately see the common factor that underlie the three concepts represented by the words. Yet, I my own underhanded way, I can come up with fewer other words that so concisely represent the power show an international level, national level for the first two words. When you get food, it touches the individual, the national and the international level.

The presidential elections in the U.S will have very serious consequences for the majority of the world. It is for this reason that the elections are followed by people from around the world. There are very logical reasons for that fact as America has military bases all across the world. It is also a nuclear power and that has serious implications for the whole globe. The olympics, however take place every four years and have a different type of power dynamics but those dynamics are felt by the individual countries and not the whole world.  I am quite ambivalent about the whole concept of Olympics and other games. I wonder why it is so easy to reward the fastest athlete but yet we are always stuck with the best of two evils in the real world politics. It's like an accountant who does a great job with monopoly money but a terrible job with real money

Jamaica’s win of the gold in 100m dash, affects few globally. But it does affect the island which spends borrowed money to send it’s athletes to the international games. Many social services have to be suspended for the team to travel abroad for the games. Finally, food is both personal, national and international. Whatever choices that a country makes will affect the individual persons of those countries, weather poor or rich, then affect the international community depending of the severity of the food issues. If you take the potato famine in Ireland, few would have suspected that it would cause such a massive migration of Irish people to the United..

Wealthy and economically challenged countries will meet on uneven ground and the winners will be established an open and transparent way. What a wonderful affair? All the nations of the world come together once every four years and without much corruption, save for some doping issues, the strongest person who lifts the most weight will take home the medal for weight lifting. The person who will throw the javelin the furthest will take the gold medal home, and so on. Each country that wins a medal will fly its national flag and it’s national anthem will be played out loud and the players from each country will cheer faithfully for their respective players representing their countries. Yet when it comes to power the true players and brokers are always shrouded in mystery. The powerless get 1 medals plated with gold every 4 or 5 years. So many of those who travel overseas on money borrowed from the owners of gold go back home empty handed and are welcomed with thunderous applause.

The medal wins the champion a little money and fame but the majority of the people get nothing. The owners of power, who also own the real gold, have no use for gold-plated medals. The owners of gold will make money either way from financing all the players from poor countries which borrow money to cover their budgets. The powerful don't gamble in such cases, they get paid weather they win any medals or lose. Either way you look at it, impoverished countries loose with medals or without. The winners from those weaker countries who win certain categories later earn contract deals that pay them to help sell apparels and shoes for countries they were competing against. In other words, they advance the economic development of the same countries whose players lost in the olympics.

Since these holders of the gold plated medals are heroes in their own countries, the brands they advertise gain popularity even in their own countries. That means that for anyone of the local people trying to get in to the apparel industry, it will be significantly more difficult to navigate a market where even the locals are oriented towards outside products. It makes all the difference if used apparel are allowed in those markets from the powerful countries. The economic losses from such an arrangement can never equal to the few dollars that one champion is awarded by the international companies. That is partly how impoverished countries stay poor. I am not sure that the impoverished countries are actually getting any value for our money and time. Give me power any day and keep your cheap fake medals.

Oh, I might take the medal if it comes with a long enough rope to pull the blinds from those of us in the quagmire of thinking that politics is what happens every two and four years. We vote every day with our time, attention and especially food. Elections are like diplomas, it’s a show of what we have been doing for a particular period.

The powerless show up for graduation just to find out that their names are not list of graduates. In the end, all their hard work mostly benefits the spectators from the powerful countries, whether they won the medals or not.

If we want justice let us vote for real gold and not the lesser of two evils as we are told during every elections. If it is an injustice to issue diplomas to the spectators and not the graduating students, then voting for anything that is less than one's interest is a crime.

None, except American citizens can vote in the presidential elections, even fewer will ever make it to the olympics to compete or even to watch. But all of us eat, that is where we all have some control. The good news is that how we eat on an individual level has a lot of impact of the whole world in terms of health, justice. and the environment. Eating is the only game where all those who eat sustainably get real gold medals for themselves and for us all. The final word from the jury is that when a literate eater wins, national healthcare wins and humanity’s wellbeing wins globally.

vampires, Empires & Culture

If you are interested in protecting your health, you have to start with the environment, seeds, compost or manure and then keep toxic chemical away from your body. Most people know that, at least you would think. The reality couldn’t be more different. Amongst the Gìkùyù, whom I grew up around, everything revolved around food. In fact, there is a proverb that says that "Utonga nì matigari ma nda." That simply means that wealth is the excesses of the stomach. That is how I was raised and it is how I live to day. Another instructive proverb along the same line of thinking cautions one not to discuss important matters with a hungry person. "Ng'aragu ndìhoyagwo ùhoro", the proverb says. I extrapolate that to mean that it is not wise to teach a hungry person. Let's start by taking care of the central business before venturing out to other things. Fela Kuti used to sing that Africa is the center of the world. Your stomach is your center and right in front of your eyes. We can't pretend not to see it, at least without serious consequences. If you think choices have consequences, choose to ignore food at your own risk. My friend Andrew Nganga, recently explained the drastic changes amongst the above group that perfectly exemplies imperialism in our thinking and by extention in our plates. Nganga's observation is that nowadays food is what remains after one becomes wealthy. What else would anyone need as evidence of our food illiteracy.?

One can phrase the story differently for the interest of brevity. If Karl Marx that under capitalism wages tend towards subsistance, the food illiteracy is the culture of subsistance. Empires are truly vampires of culture.

The Food Divorce

That food and marriage are connected is not a matter of debate for most people. What is less obvious is how the same institution that is supposed to bring people together might be actually bent on separating us from our food. Here I am mostly speaking specifically about my observations of marriage amongst the Kenyan diaspora but one can certainly extrapolate the same case to the general institution of marriage under capitalism or amongst any dominated group of people.

It occured to me that our defination marriage is extrinsically defined. Which is itself not necessarily a bad thing.  Culture is one of three of the most oppressive institutions, the other partners in crime being religion and government. It behoves man to be weary of their oppressive tendencies at evey turn.

 The number one charge I would bring against them is unnecessary control against freedom of thought and the unjust enrichment which ensue. It is the unjust enrichment that causes a power imbalance. 

That is probably one of the main reasons I follow Mwende's writings. Her thinking out of the three above boxes has earned her a front seat at my imaginary gathering of a freedom lovers.

So the first thought was what marriage are you talking about?

When people are oppressed and living under the gaze of empires, there are no marriages. It's like planting off season. Nothing will grow. It's all vanity! It's like betting at the casino.  The only beneficiary is the casino. Marriage under the churches and governments benefits them, primarily. 

 Marriage is the most expensive emmotional and material investment community can expect to have. No other barometer can measure how how healthy a community is. It's also one of the best predictors of how the future will look like.

In marriage you have two major things happening in the shortest time possible with the longest impact that reaches far into the future generations. Two people assemble in front of a gullible crowd and make a promises that few will hold them accountable to, besides the issuer of the marriage certificates and the lawyers who will help both parties disolve such unions. All others are spectators and collateral damage. 

You don't have to take my word for it. History is full of people whose lives touches our lives in a big way, both positive and negative. Many of those people ideally came about as a result of a marriage. 

If I was to borrow two of the defining concepts of Western arnarchist thinker, James Prudon, marriage is theft and propaganda by the deed.

Marriage is propaganda as it's an agent that propagates certain ideologies. If you are a morman or catholic,  there are no better ways to spread your ideas than giving birth or by extension having other with your ideas give birth also. Oppressive ideas and people grow in numbers mostly through marriages. In less measure, just like progressive and enlightening ideas and people.

I am not suggesting that ideas would not thrive in the abscence of marriages but that certain ideas can be easily spread through marriages.  It's a very subtle but highly effective tool of control. By those who plan to dominate or enslave others, gaining control of what and how people marry can be a source of great power.

On a different level, marriage is a theft. There are so many levels in which it is theft. 

First, it is very difficult to discuss fairness in marriage in a capitalistic sense. There is no equality in marriage except fairness, support in the common goals and satisfaction in the fulfillment of community and biological obligation.

The community investment where those who contribute have little say in the investment. Marriages in our modern days are social. Yet, the community has little influence in what they invest in. 

In my Gìkùyù culture, for example, the extended family would invest in securing a wife for one of their sons. In return, they expected the girl to bear children for the family. I personally don't think it is the best option possible but it was clear why the community was involved and what they expected in return. 

The resources we currently  exchanged between families could be best used to surporting the struggle for a social issues that plague our society and partly the newly weds. 

Times have changed and a totally different culture has replaced our tradional way of life. Yet our marriages are still wedded, no pun intended,  to our old ways. This has caused some to take advantage of others in the most blatant ways.

 Amongst the Kenyans in the diaspora,  there have been cases where couples have been alleged to have married just for the sake of fleecing money from their fellow gullible country men. The couple would plan a wedding and raise funds in the U.S to conduct weddings in Kenya. That is illogical in many ways. How does that make sense? There again lays outright theft. How does a  people from a country living on debt, suffering from all manner of social, economic, political and environmental ills invest sums as high as 10 million in an investment that is so poorly insured?

How is it poorly insured? Because there are so many huddles for marriages amongst an oppressed group. Unemployment, poor diet, poor governments,  corruption, food insecurity, high numbers of unmarried men and women all impact existing marriages. That means a marriage that takes place during times of instability will most likely fail. 

My fears are not unfounded. The institution of marriage is in crisis. It's a confirmation that crisis in our society means crisis in marriage.  Unfortunately, many act as though marriage is an institution made in heaven or the stars and therefore immune to all the crisis we face here on earth. To think that is to be openly  perpetuating both theft and negative propaganda.

This does not however mean that marriage is inherently bad. It has the ability to provide a lot of good to both the culture and the people involved. My focus for this post was about how it is used and abused keep many powerless and working for the benefit of others. I am especially reminded of the relationship between a male Praying Mantis, where by the male offers its head in exchange to mating. Its head is then eaten and then the female allow the headless male to inject the late late males sperms into the female. Before you say that playing mantis are insects and of little consequence, let us look at the smartest animal that is also man's best friend. In the world, the world dogs have one alpha female who is the only one who can bear children. In case any other lesser female bears puppies, those puppies are killed. I know the Praying Mantis and dogs are not married but their relationship slightly mirrors human relationships in its most exploitative state. It is on those grounds that I are making a case for a justice marriage.

In the end, we cause a divorce in Sustainability and Justice. Where we see the evidence of that divorce is in food. We are ever growing apart from our food.

If you haven't eaten and loved freely, I truly say unto you, you haven't truly lived.

. 

Food and the politics of identity

Back in the early 2000, I had the honor of spending some time with Kenyan traditionalist group that espoused Gìkùyù religion. It worked perfect as I was a graduate student in Anthropology and was also in a deep journey of self discovery. My ethnicity also happens to be Gìkùyù.

After a long decade in the Diaspora, my longing for home and a clarity of who and whose I was could not be suppressed much longer. I just happened to be reading James Baldwin masterpiece The Fire Next Time. It definitely contributed to my desire to define myself to myself.

Unlike James Baldwin, my fire was unwilling to wait for next time. But in his spirit of self-defination, I was eager to strech mine a bit deeper. In his famouss words. “I am not your Niggar “, I was was attempting to answer the next natural question of to “whose” I was.

Baldwin’s book was a great backdrop to the work I was embarking on. It was my form of coming of age intellectually for a person of African descent living under a culture whole meteoric rise was predicated upon the demise of Africanity.

Baldwin did the heavey lifting for this son of the soil. He had been a preacher and experienced first hand the hypocrisy behind that industry. There was so much I appreciated about Baldwin's journey.

That did not mean that I too had my own lifting to do and there was no escaping that.

I therefore took up an internship at U.N headquarters in Nairobi for three months, with an additional 6 weeks for research. The bulk of my research was spent with adherents of a traditional group was popularly known as Thaai, which is a derivative from the Gìkùyù word thayu, which means peace.

The group would be later pressured into taking a formalized name of Tabernacle of the Living God. The spiritual system the group followed closely mirrored the traditional worship of the Gìkùyù people before the coming of the White man.

The story of the group is very instructive about how modern African governments often suppress traditional spiritual systems as they are fertile ground for fomenting resistance. The group has faced a lot of persecution in the hands of the government. The leader of the group,  Ngonya wa Gakonya was a thorn on the side of the government of the former autocratic president and the regime that followed to the last day. 

During the time period in question, I happened to be reading the Black Jacobins and a few other books about Cointelpro that was conducted by the FBI against the revolutionary groups in the U.S.

What I was not ready for is to realize that the government of Kenya had a similar program against this Gikùyù traditionalists. The group was later dividend and undermined until the leader passed away in 2006 when the group was just a shadow of its hay days. The songs below are songs captured during the funeral of leader. 

The music I heard during the groups meetings at a public roundabout at the edge of Nairobi was the closest thing to the songs and dance of the Gìkùyù before colonialism. There was a lot nuances that one can pick up from the way these people were relating to each other. It is one of the most precious and memorable example I know that demonstrates a functional people who are proud to exercise their culture as a form of  struggle.

The another observation that become quite clear was that there are very blurred lines between politics and spirituality. I have since come to realize that African spirituality is not something that you believe in but more of what you do on a daily basis. Secondly, It is extremely difficult to exercise spirituality in the face of oppression. It is no wonder that our people have fallen for foreign religions that reflect those who had usurped their power to govern themselves.

It should be the priority of Africans to be totally free first and foremost. It is difficult to conceptualize African spirituality in the global injustice we face as a people. Not too far behind in significance, you can't eat slave food and practice African spirituality. Food is the the greatest mark of our vibration and dead vibration produces slaves and so does slave food.

You can never fully colonize or enslave any group of people until you colonize and enslave their food.  Thus, the road to African Spirituality is a wonderful one to travel but it is strewn with struggles for justice, food and freedom.  We have to overcome those struggles before we can fully achieve or arrive at African Spirituality. At the heart of the above struggles is the ability to define one's identity and the food that feed that identity. On the front, the fire to win that battle is now, otherwise there might never be any fire next time. It is easier to proclaim whose were are not, but if the person we donounce continues to feed you ultimately will own you.

An African Anarchist

I have to say that I have had deep suspicion about wishing my friends a happy new year. I wished very few, if any, happy holidays or happy new year this year. Not that I wish anyone any harm, disappointment or sadness. But as I grow old, I am experiencing an overwhelming desire to live an honest life. 

Having done my fair share of living lies, travelling and reading, I have come to the conclusion that as an African man, I have about four major options I can take.

One of the most common and attractive is to be a dreamer. This option is closely related to the religious path. You believe not in the things as you wish them to be. You take the angle that even though bad things are happening all around you, those conditions are ephemeral.  You see yourself as transcending that reality and on your way to greater things. You get so sucked into the unreal that it affects everything you do. You even demand that others recognize and respect your imagined reality.  It is even possible to feel pity on others who fail to join you in your imagined reality. As more and more people join that imagined reality that benefits just a few, the force that trumps reality over imagined reality tends to be the norm.

The second option is join the dysfunctional, dehumanizing and exploitative system at a small cost of selling your soul. That means that you follow the simple goal of maximizing your profits regardless of what damage you cause to the community,  environment or political system. You attend the recommended school and engage your time in the preferred studies that an exploitative system needs to survive. You are handsomely rewarded, even as your work continues to destabilise mankind. You are now in a position to buy a lot of useless toys that soothes  your conscience for the harm you causes. 

The third option is to be addicted to the substances that the sick system produces to keep the matrix going. From fashion to alcohol , music, to drugs and sports.  All the above are distractions 

The fourth is to fight for what is our true nature: freedom. You learn that there are no  shortcuts in life. Each of the ways above comes at cost. Running away from the truth means running for life. The only sure way is fighting for what is real, whatever the cost.

Please save the praise and worship stories here. I am not looking for a blessing,  you can't write me a check if you have no money in the bank.

 It's for that reason I ask my friends not to wish blessing on me, that comes only from your parents. Any other blessing has to be something tangible. Bless me with a book, money, food or truth. But not by promising me that some higher force will act upon your command and do your bidding to solve my problems.  That higher force must be very mediocre to have allowed me to suffer just because your important self had not showed up  to put the final signature so that my blessings can be released. 

The  above scam has been played on human beings long than I care to remember. A being that loves a cheerful giver, yet that deity owns everything in this world and beyond. I am reminded here of the lord's storehouse with is overflowing with goodies. This not particularly an attractive preposition in light of all the suffering around me. But again, maybe I live in the wrong side of town where the good master just hasn't had time to attend to. 

That deal or arrangement is too one sided. Whichever jury or council that agreed to that arrangement must have been high of some holy shit. Who can sign on to warped deal like that?

I give at least ten percent for what? An SGR rail built by the Chinese is the most expensive project and even that did not cost that much. What I received during my days of tithing was, well, what I already had. I continue to receive it in abundance even after I directed that portion of my income to earthly endeavours. The tithes therefore was just like a goodwill or bribe for a nonexistent business. 

What is worth remembering is that I have to be out of my mind to think that a group of people can be dehumanised for over a thousand years from Arab slavery, to  European slavery, colonialism, neo colonialism and neoliberalism and still be normal. No apologies, no reparations and debriefing. 

If in doubt, read about the Dutch winter Hunger. It explains what starving pregnant Dutch in their third trimester by Nazi soldiers affected the rates of obesity of their children 50 years later. If three months starvation by mothers was enough to change the brains of the children fifty years later, what about Africans?

You can pay 10% of your income to run away from your  demons or you can pay yourself to learn and slay the demons.

This is my reality and yours, it know no new day or blessed day. I matter not if it's your birthday or that of anyone else. 

Accept your reality. I have accepted mine and work according to change what I can. In the meantime,  eat well, free your time and do your best to know what is in your best interest. Those interests  are the causes of war in the world. Jump off the donkey of ignorance, even if you have to fall and bruise your body. I can tell you that it's  far better to walk to Freedom than to ride a stupid donkey to mental slavery. 

And that is what I wish each and everyone not only on this day but every single day.