Mistakes Experience Wisdom

By Matilde Mbulo

Mistakes Experience Wisdom is a collection of inspirational articles that are true stories narrated from the author's perspective with the objective of inspiring and motivating readers to pursue their dreams regardless of the obstacles that stand in their way. The stories are personal and narrated in a way that would create vivid images in the minds of the readers to make them feel that they are actually in the scene with the people.
Written in the first person, the powerful stories in this book are meant to open the heart and rekindle the spirit. 
It is meant to pass on the understanding  that mistakes and failures are an intricate part of achieving success, inspire readers to stay on track during trials and tribulations and make the reader  feel more positive, hopeful, thankful and passionate about life. 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matilde Mbulo
• Release date: Mar 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9798215616703

Matilde Mbulo

Matilde Mbulo was born on the 12th of July 1980 at the Maputo Central Hospital, in Mozambique. She attended primary and secondary school in Mozambique, Liberia and Ghana, and high school in Kenya. She has a Bachelor's Degree in Law and a Bachelor's degree in Psychological Counselling. While in high school, in boarding school in Kenya, Matilde discovered her passion for writing. She hand wrote poems, articles and short stories during her free time as an outlet for her thoughts and feelings about personal experiences and events, usually those that she didn’t feel safe to express. Matilde describes herself as a Writer dedicated to analyzing everyday issues through her very own unique lens, which is reflected in her books. Matilde Mbulo is the author of seven books including Hiding in Plain Sight, Stories From Lucklandia, Mistakes Experience Wisdom, The Kanzas, Narrow Crook, Rubberland and Through The Dark TUNNEL.

Book preview

1 DISENTANGLE YOURSELF

My novel, The Kanzas, which I wrote in 2014 during a difficult period of unemployment was initially entitled Entangled. In the novel, Margaret tries to release herself from a conventional patriarchal society by bringing in new ideas but it backfires terribly on her. She also fails to get rid of the toxic people around her until a brutal attempt on her life serves as a wakeup call!

The process of disentanglement here is twofold: releasing oneself from a society that oppresses women in obvious (and sometimes not so obvious) ways and removing toxic people from one’s life.

I am the fruit of a patriarchal world! A girl, a woman and a female born, raised and living in a world where it is okay for a man to be full of himself, to work to advance himself and to spend all day and all night in the office to make sure he gets that promotion and/or achieves his dreams while his wife takes care of the domestic work and kids and gives him all the support that he needs but when a woman does the same, she is called selfish, self-centered and society frowns at her! When she insists on spending extended hours in the office, she is still expected to go home and do all the domestic duties and if she can’t then she better hire a maid! It may sound like an exaggeration but it isn’t. It still happens today – a lot!

I studied Psychology and one of the vital lessons that I got out of the four years of my life as a psychology student was just how important it is to disentangle myself from toxic people and surround myself with the right people. And for a long time, I tried and tried and I kept failing miserably at this seemingly easy task. I couldn’t understand why I continuously offered unconditional support to people who in return stabbed me in the back and at times right in the face. I gave unconditional love to people who in return sabotaged my plans, stole and used my ideas to benefit themselves, and used information that I had given to them in confidence to advance themselves by using me as a stepping stone. I was surrounded by people who were there for me when I had plenty to give but who were quick to turn their backs on me and abandon me when I needed them.

Now I realize that the main reason why I kept failing to disentangle myself from the toxic people around me is because I was wired to function as a ‘normal woman’ in a patriarchal world. I just couldn’t bring myself to say NO because women are expected to give, and give, and give some more until there’s nothing left in their tanks and their reserves are empty as well. Women are taught to give until they’re completely depleted and often feel guilty about saying no! Like the normal woman I was wired to please, I was plagued with a terrible illness called the disease to please others and I incurred heavy personal, financial, physical and emotional losses that landed me helplessly on my knees without anyone to turn to but GOD before I underwent the much needed paradigm shift.

Since then I have been working not just to disentangle myself from dogmas, ideas and systems of a male-centred world that have caused blockages to my advancement and stopped me from thriving, but also to disentangle myself and cut off toxic people from my life and my living environment. Trust me – it is easier said than done but this is a one way journey that I am embarking on that involves burning old bridges and building new and healthier ones.

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2 SWIM OR SINK

I received a note to write an article or rather to participate in an essay challenge under the title of Swim or Sink. I was very honoured to have been selected to participate in this challenge as it gave me the opportunity to share my experiences with others in writing, which is what I love to do. Don’t be surprised if you find my take on life a bit odd, or weird, or perhaps outdated. I’m an introvert (I'm not sure that’s a good thing), I spend more than ninety percent of my time indoors writing and writing some more, I'm socially awkward, I feel very different from other people (maybe it's all in my head) and I'm always the odd one out in a group setting! My favourite hobby is writing. That said, let's get down to writing this article...the allocated time is forty five minutes.

The truth is, I’m not quite sure if I’m swimming or sinking at the moment. I suspect that I’m walking through a dark, dark tunnel, swimming in the middle of the ocean with no visible land in sight, and all I have to do is trust in GOD, trust myself and keep swimming until I see the light at the end of the tunnel, until I reach the shore.

Some years back, I was literally sinking in all areas of my life! I was in my final year in college, struggling to pass the remaining modules of my degree in psychological counseling in order to graduate. I kept failing the same modules repeatedly to the point where I received a warning letter from the University!

I knew that I was failing because I just wasn’t studying. I had very little time to study because I had a demanding full-time job. I didn’t love or like my job: I hated all the calculations and data entries I had to do daily, the endless inquiries and emails that I had to respond to, the telephone that wouldn’t stop ringing and the unending pile of admin work on my desk! I was, and still am, terrible at providing customer services and dealing with people made me feel drained! Every time a customer walked towards my desk I wanted to scream Get the hell out of here! Get the hell out of my life! Leave me alone! Alone! Alooooone!!!

I knew that I was a misfit, I knew I was in the wrong job, I was miserable, but then my boss kept giving me fantastic reviews and it felt great to be appreciated by my line manager! She was in fact a very good person, very encouraging, kept telling me that I was doing a fantastic job and that my attention to details was a great asset! She often pointed that she loved the fact that I always entered the data correctly in the system and the way I responded to inquiries was very good! I loved my boss, but I just wasn’t the right person for the job! Plus I was a terrible team player!

I was miserable in that job. I often stayed at work until very late and almost always brought more work home, and would end up staying up all night working from home. There were times when I spent all night in the office working.

The job was demanding but on the other hand it paid quite well. My salary was raised three times within the space of a couple of months (which is very uncommon) and the company offered great benefits including medical aid. In fact, the salary was so good that I was able to pay my rent and other monthly expenses with ease, as well as my educational expenses including tuition and books, and still had a surplus left to go on a holiday! The only problem is that the hefty sums of money that I was paying for tuition was going to waste because I had no time to study and was thus failing repeatedly at school, and where was I going to get time to take a holiday with such a demanding job!

Strangely enough, I managed to write a novel titled "Simple Girl" in the midst of the chaos! Don’t ask me how, considering I had no time in my hands, but I did it mostly in the taxi on my way to and from work, in the toilet, during lunch breaks...basically I used any opportunity that I could get to write until I completed the novel. I was so happy, I sent it to hundreds of agents and publishers – all of whom rejected my book! I felt dejected: my desk at home was piled with rejection letters, and my in-box was filled with hundreds of emails from publishers and agents basically rejecting my manuscript! As I shelved it, I couldn’t help but cry! Three hundred pages of what I thought would be my break-through novel, became three hundred pages of dust on my shelf!

I didn’t know it then but I was sinking! I had no social life, I had surrounded myself with a bunch of toxic and abusive people, I had no friends, no support system because my entire life revolved around my job/work. I worked day and night, and the monetary compensation was very good but, like a purse with a very big hole at the bottom, all the money that was coming in was going out just as quickly.

I was paying for an education that I wasn’t benefiting from because I couldn’t even get around to doing my assignments leave alone studying, I  was helping people who were just taking advantage of me, I was overworked and always exhausted, my physical and mental health were quickly deteriorating, and I was in such emotional turmoil that I started seeing a counselor. The psychologist/therapist, whom I saw during night hours because I had to work during the day, charged me two hundred and fifty dollars (which I now realize was just ridiculously ridiculous considering most of what she did was listening to me venting my frustrations) for keeping her awake at odd hours of the night!

Things got so bad that I lost my voice and when that problem was sorted, I suddenly lost my vision. Becoming blind was the most terrifying experience that I have ever had. The worst part of losing my sight was the fact that the doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me and/or if I would ever be able to see again.

The truth is there was absolutely nothing physically wrong with me and after about a terrifying week of being unable to see, my sight returned. I did go back to work, to hand in my resignation letter! I quit!

I’d like to tell you that everything turned out miraculously well after that but that only happens in the novels that I’ve written so far!  I still work quite a lot, sometimes I spend the entire night just working, but now I do so because I’m just enjoying what I’m doing: writing! Most of the manuscripts that I’ve written are shelved: I feel that some of the novels need to be improved and the others, well, I’m still gathering enough courage to upload them! 

I’m finally doing something that I love and I wake up every morning eager to get to work! And I often get so lost in my work that time flies by without me noticing!

I think that I’m finally starting to swim, I’m not sure, only time will tell.

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3 OUTDATED

A few years ago, a friend of mine invited me to spend some time with her and a bunch of her girlfriends at what she described as a quiet exotic retreat, isolated from the world that was perfect for resting and restoring the mind and body. The cost would be zero dollars, she said, and all I had to do was bring myself and have fun for a full week.

I was delighted and quickly accepted the invitation! Her family owns a hideously expensive but great lodge by a lake located in a very quiet place in the outskirts of the city, surrounded by nature. The place is safe and is also a perfect stress free environment away from the hectic and noisy city. The few times that we booked rooms there as a group they gave us a very good discount.

I once spent the week leading to and including New Year there with her and a bunch of her friends and we all had a fantastic time! It’s one of the best lodges around. The food is very healthy, the air is pure and I enjoyed watching the birds and ducks swimming in the lake from the balcony of my room. But what I loved most about the place is that I literally spent all night, every night, writing. I had a very productive week because the ideas flowed freely. I would sit on the balcony of my room with my laptop at around 10 p.m. and write away. I would lose track of time, lose myself in whatever I was writing until I felt the rays of the sun against my face, and realize that I have been writing all night long, yet it felt like only a few minutes. Then I would bask in the early morning sun before retreating into my room to sleep for a few hours.

Thus when she invited me for what she described as a quiet retreat, I assumed that she was talking about the aforementioned lodge and I couldn’t believe that I would be staying there for free! I happily agreed to tag along and the following Saturday, she picked me up early in the morning (along with three of her friends) not in her usual small car, but in a Toyota four-wheel drive. I asked if she’d bought a new car to which she replied No. I borrowed it from my aunt for safety reasons.

That’s a bit odd. I thought to myself. The last time we went to the lodge we’d used her small car and it had been a very smooth ride, the roads were in pretty good condition and the entire area is generally known to be very safe.

Maybe they’re fixing the roads and she needs this car because we’re going to use an alternative route. I thought and quickly brushed my uneasy feelings away.

We were five girls in the car, and as she drove us to the location, they chatted away, while I mostly listened and frankly, enjoyed the ongoing conversation between the girls. These intelligent girls (my friend included) were literally updating me on everything that was happening around the world during that period! They chatted about everything from President Trump’s controversial government shutdown and the walls at the US borders to the Jenner-Kardashian-Wests, Bonang, the Duchesses of Cambridge and Sussex and Michelle Obama’s bestselling Becoming, among other interesting stuff, and believe it or not most of it was news to me! My only contribution was really?...I didn’t know that. and I can’t believe...

My friend, who was driving but barely kept her eyes on the road, kept shaking her head at me with incredulity and saying stuff like

I can’t believe you don’t know that Justin Timberlake wrote a book!

...No Tilly, there’s no Oprah Winfrey show anymore; now there’s OWN aka the Oprah Winfrey Network!

...Hello! President Bush Senior passed away a long, long time ago! Didn’t you see that historic moment when President Bush junior offered Michelle Obama a tiny candy at his dad’s funeral?...

Dear God! What part of planet earth do you live in Tilly? You don’t seem to know anything that’s going on in the world!...

...You’re a Writer! You’re supposed to be updating us not the other way around!

To defend myself from her unwarranted attacks, I retorted Well I can’t know everything! I don't feel the need to read all those stories in the tabloids or to leave my apartment! I like staying indoors and minding my own business! I like being by myself! Besides, did you know that... !

My friend rolled her eyes at me! OMG! That happened a billion years ago! Are you kidding? That's not news, that's history! Honey, you've got to come out of your cave every once in a while and explore!

Explore?

Yes Tilly, explore! Talk to people, make some friends, socialize...and for God's sake lose that fucking virginity! It's cute when you're a teenager and acceptable in your twenties! But you're in your thirties, it's weird to have a thirty five years old friend who's a virgin!

I’m waiting for...

No! No! No! Honey, I've told you a billion times that there's no such thing as a soulmate! Just find a guy you like and start fucking...

No!

Yes Tilly! You're a good person, you deserve some good orgasms! You're thirty five years old and are too afraid to insert a tampon in there. That place was built for pleasure. You've got to experience an orgasm before you turn thirty six. You can't be a thirty six years old virgin!

Nope! What I've got to do is become a famous best selling author...

I love you but when you become famous, I'm going to sell your virginity secret to the tabloids!

Everyone laughed!

...

Okay, maybe she's right! I’m a bit backward! Old fashioned! Outdated! I don’t watch TV (I feel like it takes up a lot of valuable time) and when I go online, it is usually to listen to a good sermon from Pastor Joel Osteen and Bishop T.D. Jakes or to do some research for my books online. One of my favourite authors is Thomas Friedman who wrote The World is Flat whom all my friends  claim not to know....come to think of it my friend and I may be about the same age but intellectually and socially perhaps there’s a generational gap there. I hope I’m making sense.

Anyway, the ongoing conversation in the car was so heated and interesting that by the time I realized that we were definitely NOT heading to where I initially thought we were going to (the aforementioned lodge), we were perhaps halfway up a very steep hill (or should I say very steep mountain) and I let out a terrifying scream!

I felt that the car, which was heading dangerously uphill, was almost in a vertical position facing upwards (even though the other ladies who were in the car disagree and claim that the hill wasn’t that steep). To our left was the pure solid rock wall of the mountain and to our right was the edge of the cliff leading to a bottomless pit. One wrong move and we would all have been free-falling many millions of miles down all the way to the rocky bottom of that dangerous cliff! (The other ladies claim that I’m exaggerating but I swear I’m telling the truth!).

At one point I was screaming at the top of my voice while trying not to look sideways towards the bottom of the cliff! My friend found it hilarious! I later discovered that she secretly recorded everything with the intention of posting it online. I was so embarrassed when I saw that video that I begged her not to upload it on YouTube! She charged me fifty bucks to delete the video!

At some point she made a turn, driving through a tiny road between bushes and when she finally stopped at our destination, I couldn’t believe my eyes! I may be old fashioned or outdated but perhaps she needed to Google the definition of the word retreat! Retreat my foot!

It was a gorgeous three-story house, I’d give her that! Like she’d promised, it was isolated from the world alright but what the heck! Was she trying to get us all killed? It was a glass house, a glass house that was literally in the middle of nowhere! There was not a single human settlement anywhere nearby! I tried to make a call and when I realized that I couldn’t get network from anywhere inside and outside the house, I alerted her to this fact to which she happily responded That’s the whole point! No calls from work or bothersome exes! Just a week of fun, calmness and relaxation. Come on Tilly, aren’t you the one who’s always bragging about the fact that you love just being away from everything and everyone? Well, this is away from everything and everyone.

I felt conned! Cheated! Deceived! She kept boasting about the view from the top floor but all I could  see was a dense forest surrounding the house, which happened to be almost at the top of the hill. And as far as I’m concerned, dense forests house the most dangerous animals, poachers and other criminals, all of whom are only too happy to prey on unsuspecting young ladies who place themselves in harm’s way by staying in glass houses in the middle of the forest. So while the girls were busy celebrating our arrival to what they termed as an exotic getaway, I was busy panicking and wondering what course of action I would take if a hungry lion showed up at the front door, or if an elephant barged in from  a side door, or if a huge snake found its way in through an air vent or some other opening somewhere, or worse still, if a bunch of armed criminals managed to shoot their way into our exotic glass house!

What a week! The girls had lots of fun, spent a lot of time swimming in the huge swimming pool on the terrace and even went out to explore the surrounding areas! They even claimed to have seen a Tiger but I know for sure that they’re lying because they lived to tell the story! I on the other hand was tense and worried all week long, especially when the girls went out of the house (which I refused to do), but I still managed to put in a few hours of work and added a few more pages to the novel that I was writing.

All I can say is that I’m glad we all made it out alive, but I will never, ever go back to that exotic place ever again!

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4 A QUIET PLACE

A dear friend of mine whom I shall call Apple (not her real name) recently gave me a wonderful gift: the movie A Quiet Place starring real life couple Emily Blunt and John Krasinski.  I don’t watch a lot of movies so I guess it’s understandable (well kind of) to say that I’m embarrassed to admit that the last time I saw Emily Blunt on screen was in early two thousand in the movie The Devil Wears Prada, a great movie which I’ve watched a couple of times, actually many times, because she’s just captivating on screen. Apple is a huge fan of EmilyB, come to think of it my friends in general love Emily, who is just super talented and has starred in many fantastic movies! A fantastic actress!

BUT this article is not about the super talented Emily Blunt,...

This article is about A Quiet Place. I found the plot of the movie very intriguing: a family which consists of a father, a pregnant mother and their three children have to survive and interact with each other in a world where they cannot interact verbally  or make any other kind of noise because there are monsters lurking around, blind monsters that are attracted to noise. In my own simple explanation, in the movie, anyone who makes noise is killed by the monster (I cried when the tiny little boy was