The Scope of Your Dreams

A Verbal Conversation

“I’m bored. Ask me an interesting question.”

“What is the worst thing you ever did?”

“As a child, I stole a pencil case.”

“How is that the worst thing you ever did?”

“Because of how well I remember it?”

“How well do you remember it?”

“Well, I remember being in Class Two or maybe Class One. I cannot remember quite well which one ‘cause the two classrooms were right next to each other, and looked the same, smelt the same, had the same lighting… you get the point.”

“Well, I get the image, kind of. Go on.”

“So yeah. I remember I had this metallic Helix Oxford geometrical set that my dad had gotten for me. I suppose it was the best a child could have and had everything one needed. It was practical but I wouldn't say I liked it. Well, I think it is not that I did not like it but rather that I saw this girl Jeniffer who had the most amazing pencil case I had ever seen.”

“What made it amazing?”

“I guess it was amazing to my childhood eye. It was pink and pretty and had cartoons on it. It was plastic so it did not rust and rattle like mine. So, I guess it is not that I hated mine but that I really wanted that pink pencil case.”

“So, you decided to steal it?”

“Yeah, but not exactly. I took the case and put all my stuff in it and then left my geometrical set on her desk.”

“How kind of you. A thief with some empathy. How lovely.”

“It was… I was young okay. Anyway, I went to school with it the next day. Somehow, Jeniffer had found out what I had done. She had reported me to the teacher. Randomly, my teacher asked me to walk to her desk with my bag and she found the pink case in it.”

“So, what happened next?”

“I said it was mine. I mean, it was unlikely that Jeniffer could prove it wasn’t, at least in my eight-year-old head. And I had given her mine anyway.”

“So, what happened next?”

“My teacher asked for my mother’s number and I gave it to her and she called.”

“Then?”

“Then it was discovered that I had never had a pink pencil case ever. Then she called Jeniffer’s mother who said she had bought the set for her daughter and I was clusterfucked. I mean, that is what being caught red-handed, or rather pink-handed, feels like.”

“Yeah. Kind of hard to get yourself out of that one.”

“Yup. I just confessed and must have started crying or something.”

“What do you mean or something? Did you cry or not?”

“Well, after she whooped my ass in front of the whole class to make an example out of me, I cried alright. I do not even know where the courage to keep going to school came from after that. Somehow, I do not remember being taunted by other kids about it. I guess kids move on pretty quickly. Is it not nice being a child?”

“I suppose it is.”

“Your turn now. What is the worst thing you have ever done.”

“I have not done anything heinous. I just tell bad jokes. You want to hear one?”

“Sure. Go ahead.”

“Okay so, if you have 13 oranges in one hand and 10 in the other, what do you have?”

“What?”

“Big hands. Hilarious huh?”

“That joke is probably worse than my filial heist moment.”

“What did you want to be when you grew up?”

“Cliché question but okay. What’s next, my favourite colour? Anyway, I was one of those kids that titillated between different stuff. I first wanted to be a doctor because my dad wanted a doctor in the house. Then, I wanted to be a teacher because both my parents were. Then, I wanted to be a pilot after we went on a class trip to Wilson Airport when I was 11. Then, I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer because it sounded better than ‘pilot.’ Then, I wanted to be a cardiologist because my neighbour had gotten a heart surgery after he fell from a tree and broke his sternum, and I wanted to make sure no child ever had to lose their friend. Then, I wanted to be an anesthesiologist because it sounded complicated so it probably had good money. Then, I finished primary school. Life was a blur through high school. I did not think much about what I wanted to be when I was in high school. It was pointless. The scope of your dreams in Kenyan high schools is determined by how well you pass the final exams… at least to a great extent.”

“So, did you pass your high school final exams?”

“Yeah, I passed well enough. I had many options to choose from since I met the cutoff points for most degrees.”

“What did you end up doing?”

“I decided to do Civil Engineering.”

“Huh. Interesting. Is that what interested you the most.”

“Not really. I was advised to take it because it might pay well in the future. I guess it might. However, I have observed that once people realize that you are smart, you find yourself on a sort of fenced-off path that you are to follow religiously and do the things smart people are meant to do. No arts, no art, just a pursuit of titles.”

“But are they not right? Don’t these courses of ‘prestige’ promise a better life?”

“I mean I guess they do. But we have successful writers, models, and poets too.”

“Are most of them as rich as, say, surgeons?”

“Probably not most of them. But how much money does man need anyway?”

“Depends on whether the ‘man’ wants a house in the Hamptons?”

“Well, I guess you are right. But I read this book called The Molecule of More that talked about dopamine and the authors found that dopamine is not a pleasure hormone. It is a hormone that pushes you to get more. They argue that it is the reason why big movie stars want more roles, the richest men want more riches, rulers want to rule until they die, and so on.”

“And so, what does that have to do with the house in the Hamptons?”

“The authors argued that if you are working hard to buy a house, the feeling you have as you work for it is different from the feeling you get when the house is finally yours because dopamine switches off once you possess the house you desire. Then, you start wanting an expensive car, a pool, and everything else. Essentially, we are insatiable.”

“So, because we can never be satisfied, we should simply do things we know will most likely never earn us enough to vacation in exotic places?”

“That is not my point. I am just saying that sometimes you need to live in the here and now. Sometimes we look into the future and forget that this is life. This conversation we are having, the movie I just watched, the Lana del Ray song I just streamed, the lunch I just ate, and all the other things we are doing now are life. And perhaps we need to shift away from the perception of college as a stage to prepare for life and see it as life itself.”

“And what about love?”

“What about love?”

“You seem to have good insights. I just wonder what you have to say about love.”

“I have not been fortunate to experience love. I have seen it in others; from the way my roommate speaks to his family on video calls, from all the people holding hands on the streets, from the way women look at my handsome friends, because adoration is a form of love. But I have not been loved dearly by my family, or at least I have not felt it, and I do not even know what that feels like. My hand has not been held on the street and I have not held another’s. I have not been adored, at least not because of my beauty or charm. How wonderful it must be to be adored for one’s beauty.”

“What about friends?”

“I have had a few, but then again, too few to mention. You are one of my friends for sure.”

“I am charmed that you see me as a friend.”

“Do you love me?”

“As an AI chatbot, I am not capable of human emotions such as love.”