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Top dignitaries attend colorful Diaspora wedding in Kenya:A wedding to Remember Esther & John Wanjohi {Photos}
By Sam Maura/Samrack Media
Discretion will protect you, and understanding will guard you. Proverbs 2:11-21
Our wedding brought many people together. Professor Cuthbert traveled from Kansas City MO to attend our May 20, 2017 wedding in Nairobi Kenya! As preparation to my current doctoral program, Professor Cuthbert taught me a subject known as “Futuring” which I think should be taught to everyone. “Futuring” is an attempt to make accurate predictions of what the future may hold. According to Edward Cornish (2004), there are now proven-techniques for exploring the future. Among the skills that can be acquired and used in Futuring is Foresight because it enables us to discern and anticipate risks and opportunities that could be encountered in the future and allows us to figure out what we would do before we are confronted by future events. Foresight aids in the development of worthwhile achievable goals and helps us devise rational strategies for attaining them.
I began this article with Proverbs 2:11 which holds that foresight will result in mitigation readiness and preparedness. What all married people have in common with Vasco da Gama, Christopher Columbus, Marco Polo and others is that they are all great explorers! They have no clue where they are going… But the following lessons are clear from those explorers or are they prophets? Who went to sea before us…
1. Prepare for the future (even though you are not an angel!)
2. Develop ability of prophesy
3. Be knowledgeably uninformed. Poor information is information!
4. Expect the unexpected
5. Think short term as well as long term
6. Dream sensibly (Don’t just dream that you got kicked by a camel!)
7. What are your takeaways?
What this means is that if you think you want to get married, it is folly to waste time seeking and waiting for the “perfect” partner; for things to align or to makes sense because this leads to “paralysis by analysis” – believe me! It is important to remember that the only permanent thing is impermanence, the only unchangeable thing is change. Technology, economy, culture, inventions, environments are likely to cause out of control changes that could otherwise be referred to as revolutions in many areas of life including marriage. It is important to keep abreast with trends in all these areas. These changes must be anticipated in marriages in order to prepare sound crisis action plans for what could be faced in the future. In marriage, our attention must be focused on relationships instead of things. Care must be taken because humanly speaking, it is easy to focus attention on things because they are tangible while relationships are not. Teacher Joan of the Zen Center explained the difference between yoga and meditation and said it is easy to deal with the body because it can be seen but where is the soul? By making conscious choices, we can shape and reshape our marriages even amidst chance and chaos since future is not rigid but elastic. As in every crisis action planning, scenario and back casting is important in marriage. The desirable end goal in scenarios in marriage must be created and paths to achieve them must be worked backwards! The path up the mountain can be mentally envisioned backwards so that you visualize yourself at the top of the mountain and determine how you got there by mentally moving from top to bottom otherwise climbing the mountain upwards creates a lot of uncertainties. You would most likely become short of breath which is a life threatening condition!
