And Steel Gates Shall Melt In Front Of Your Eyes

One day I was walking along Moi Avenue on a Saturday afternoon. Outside the Safaricom Customer Care Center I found this guard by the door. I was feeling good. I looked him straight in the eyes and smiled. I did not blink.

He escorted me with his eyes across the door. He seemed to wonder within himself. “Where have I seen this guy?” A few steps away from him, he called me back. I was fully aware of what I had done.

I turned back and shook his hand and you can obviously guess his first word, “Where have I seen you?” I can confess with my good memory that I had never met him. I did not even know his name and later came to learn that he came from the Western region of Kenya.

A few minute of wondering and unanswered questions and we had to part. He said that the next time I pass by he would tell me where we had met. For me I knew what I had done. Look at him straight in the eye and everything will look familiar.

This is not an isolated case. Everyday in our lives we are faced with instances that more often than not, are strange. As is common, new is challenging. We do not know what to do. It is unfamiliar to us and therefore are left to wonder our way round it. Then it is time to look it straight in the eye. Give it the concentration of your mind.

How ever strange and new it might have looked to start with, it will start to look familiar. It will start to open up. It will begin to shed the coat of strangeness and become common to your eyes. It will disintegrate in your eyes and be something ‘familiar’.

You will start tracing familiar links and connections. It will be like a crack through which you will have an opportunity to make head way. I did not know the man. He did not know me either but here we were talking. Here we were asking where you come from and where I have seen you. Here we were, making another case for the future. Though we were strangers, we had no tag of newness or strangeness around us. We had dissolved some barrier and prepared the ground for a better day in future.

Go out today and look at you life straight in the eye. Look at your new assignment in the eye. Look at your dream straight in the eye. Look at your future straight. Its about courage and a daring attitude. Do not dare to blink. Look it in the eye until it releases its guards and becomes welcoming. Disarm it.

For you there is a development in your life designed to keep you away. Look it in the eye and instead of keeping you off, it will invite you forth. Though designed to make you stop on your track or like the guard, sieve who goes through and who does not, you will be called instead of being kept away. Look straight in the eye with all the courage and the world will give way.

The interviewer will be disarmed and let you pass. They will not only want to know about your work but about your personal life. They will be asking how they can help you move further than where you are. They will gain an interest more than you ever thought about. They will relax their standards and allow you in to territories you could not have access to otherwise. But there is only one secret; Have the courage to look at the world straight in the eye and nothing will stand in your way.