Jacky's Corner

  Sometimes the best lessons arrive wearing the apron of a small kitchen mistake. One evening I decided to make mandazi. In my mind it was simple. Flour, sugar, oil, yeast. I had seen it done many times, eaten it many times, and loved it every time. For my family it is just a normal treat, something warm and comforting. So I mixed the ingredients confidently and expected magic. Instead, I created something… unforgettable for the wrong reasons.The mandazi came out extremely sour and unpleasant. One bite was enough to tell the story. I had ignored an important step in the recipe. I thought that once the yeast touched the liquid, everything would work itself out without patience. But yeast is a quiet worker. It needs time to wake up, stretch, and do its invisible work. That night the kitchen was not a place of celebration. I felt disappointed in myself. But my mother simply smiled and said, “Don’t worry. Next time we will get it right. What do you think went wrong?” That question chan...

There is a quiet moment that happens in many friendships, though we rarely talk about it. Life changes. Someone gets married. Someone moves. Someone’s responsibilities multiply. Suddenly, the rhythm of a once-easy friendship becomes… different. Recently I met a dear friend for the first time in several months. I arrived a few minutes after she did and found her already seated at the table. We hugged, ordered something small, and settled into conversation. Almost immediately she began telling me about work pressures she had been carrying, a difficult situation involving her sister, and a career decision she was wrestling with. I mostly listened. At one point, I noticed something interesting. Nearly the entire conversation had revolved around her life. My mind briefly wondered whether that meant something deeper about where we stood. Had the friendship become one-sided? But as she spoke, I also noticed something else. She was relaxed. Open. Unfiltered in the way people are when they feel...

This week, my thoughts have been circling around meditation. Not the dramatic kind. Not the perfectly consistent, incense lit, sunrise version. Just the honest, human kind. The kind you pick up, put down, and one day decide to return to with gentler hands. I first learned meditation about five years ago, when I was working remotely in a rural setting. Life then had a natural softness to it. No commute. A quiet neighborhood. Days with structure but little noise. I was new to the practice, and like a child learning how to write for the first time, I gave it my full attention. All my energy sat in that one place. It worked beautifully. Somewhere along the way, about three years later, the consistency disappeared. Not dramatically. It just… slipped. I didn’t know why, and I didn’t interrogate it. Life had changed. I had changed. Fast forward to now. A new job. An urban environment. Faster pace. More stimulation. More demands. And with that shift, I realized I had quietly lost a part ...

  The doctor’s diagnosis last year was clear: my eyes were straining, a casualty of countless hours on a laptop. His prescription was simple, drug-free, and brilliant: Every hour, look at something far away for five minutes. I heard him. I was concerned. I fully intended to follow his advice. And then… life happened. I forgot. The urgent crowded out the important. So when I sat across from him this year and he gave me the exact same speech , it wasn't just déjà vu it was a mirror held up to my own inaction. My eyes were worse. The solution had been in my hands for 365 days, and I’d done nothing with it. He smiled gently and said, “Everyone’s health is their responsibility.” That sentence stuck. It’s a pattern I see everywhere. We face a consequence, feel the sting, vow “Never again!”… and then fail to build the tiny bridge that leads away from the same outcome. We mourn the problem but skip building the solution. This time, I refused to let Year Three be a repeat. In that ...