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Before I go any further, a special note. Today isn’t just my birthday. It’s also my elder brother Wilkins’. We were born on the same day of the month, separated by three years courtesy of my parents’ impeccable family planning skills. On that note, happy birthday to us. Brotherly, I love you Wilkins and wish you nothing short of a long, prosperous life.

Hindsight and Horizon

I’m writing this in two directions.

Fourteen years back takes me to seventeen. The age where you’re old enough to be trusted with responsibility, but young enough to underestimate the weight of your decisions. The brink of manhood, as people like to call it, even though you don’t yet understand what that really demands. At 17, I was in my last year of high school.

Fourteen years forward lands me at forty five. This is an age that carries gravitas whether you ask for it or not. By then, life has usually collected receipts. Patterns are established. Excuses have expired.

Today at thirty one, I sit right in between the two versions of myself. Old enough to reap the benefits of hindsight. Young enough to still course-correct by looking towards the horizon. That’s why this letter exists.

To the Seventeen-Year-Old Me

Right now, your biggest worry is not scoring an A in your KCSE exams and that makes sense. You’ve always believed you’re the brightest kid in the village, the one who made it to the best school, the one for whom success feels almost contractual. Why wouldn’t you expect it to go your way? Hold onto that confidence.

I know, hockey comes second in your life. First term means interschool games, early mornings, bruised shins, and the quiet obsession with making it to nationals. The Alliance class of 2011 made it to the finals, why should your 2012 class not make it? You don’t know it yet, but this love for sport, for structure, for showing up consistently, will follow you long after hockey does.

But here is the curveball. You will pass your KCSE exams, but you will fall short at hockey. The team won’t make it to nationals. For the first time, your best effort won’t guarantee the outcome. It will sting, and it will break your illusion of total control. But it will be your first necessary lesson in resilience.

You’ll study electrical engineering next. Welcome to your first foreign land: a place of rare As and abundant Cs and even Ds. Because the leash is off, lectures will feel optional, assignments a chore and engineering lab works will feel like suggestions. You will be too busy enjoying the freedom to notice the academic shift.

What you won’t realise yet is that many of these moments will circle back to you years later. The engineering concepts you skim over will return with sharper edges. Basics you assume you understand will ask to be relearned properly. Not as punishment. Just as life revealing where things actually fit.

At the same time, you’ll live. Loudly. Campus will give you friendships, arguments, late nights, shared meals, missed mornings, and stories that will follow you far beyond the university gates. You won’t know it then, but these moments will quietly shape how you move through the world, how you read people, how you adapt when everything familiar disappears.

None of this is wasted. It’s all raw material. You’re not meant to optimise yet. You’re meant to experience enough life to know what needs refining later.

But the lessons won’t just be social. Life will teach you that it doesn’t just add to your table. It also takes from it. You will experience the sharp sting of loss. From close relatives, friends to classmates whose time will run out far too soon. These moments will hurt, but they will also force you to grow up. They will teach you that because time is finite, it is precious.

However, for every hollow space loss leaves behind, life will offer a profound gain. And the greatest of these will be a gorgeous german girl who walks into your life with her dog. Marry her! Don’t overthink it. Don’t hesitate. It is the one decision that requires absolutely no revision. You will not regret it. That decision will eventually lead you to board a plane to Germany where you will experience a life totally different to what you know now.

That brings us up to date. The past is accounted for. Now, I turn the page to address the version of me I haven't met yet.

To the Forty-Five-Year-Old Me

We haven’t met yet. Unlike the 17 year-old, I can’t write to you with the confidence of hindsight. I can only write to you with the hope of intention. You are fourteen years away, and if the last fourteen years are any indicator, you will be a completely different man again.

I hope we are all healthy. By now, the girls will be teenagers, navigating their own versions of seventeen. That thought fills me with equal parts excitement and terror. I hope you are guiding them with the same patience and love as before. More than anything, I hope life has been kind to our little family unit. I know loss is inevitable, but my prayer is that the last fourteen years were merciful, that the empty chairs at our table are few, and that the house is still loud with life.

I am working hard now to build a financial fortress for us. I’m learning to invest, not just earn, so that you have the luxury of time. Please tell me you are using that time correctly. That you're not just a provider for the family but a permanent presence. I hope you are watching what your children stare at, fostering their fascinations rather than just managing their schedules. I hope you are still the guy who plays football on weekends, not the guy who watches it from the couch because he’s too tired from work.

On the geopolitical front, I wonder if the world ever stepped back from the edge. At the time of this writing, the headlines are surreal. The United States just captured the Venezuelan president in his own country and there is a looming threat of forceful annexing of Greenland by the USA. It feels like we are constantly teetering on the brink. Tell me, did we actually stumble into a Third World War, or did cooler heads eventually prevail?

Did the AI bubble burst? Did the machines make us obsolete? Did I finally land my dream job at Microsoft? Is there any need for Java or Rust Developers anymore? I wonder if you were wise enough to read the room and pivot in time. Did we fall back to the world electronics and hardware? Did we leverage the growing world of content creation? Or did we perhaps pack it all up and take our skills back home to Kenya? Did I finally buy and drive my dream BMW X4?

I’ll do the heavy lifting now. I’ll make the mistakes, I’ll take the risks, and I’ll endure the learning curve in this foreign land. I won’t try to live a perfect life, but I promise to keep my attention on what actually matters. All I ask of you is that when you get there, you don’t waste the platform I built.

Happy birthday to Tom and Peninah’s sons. Reflection aside, there are birthday blueberry pancakes to be eaten and I’m counting on my lovely wife Vreni to deliver them to mark the occasion properly.