If I could meet my future self

Five score years ago, one of my ancestors, Albert Einstein, devised a theory that would go on to revolutionise the world of physics. He called this theory the theory of special relativity. Now, special relativity proposes that time is an illusion that moves relative to an observer.

The closer a moving object gets to attaining the speed of light, the slower the object will experience time. Relax; this cannot make much sense to you if you never saw the insides of a physics lab, so don’t beat yourself up if it sounds like Eric Omondi’s common sense. It is not your fault; it is your intellectually challenged ancestors.

What my clever ancestor was saying here is that theoretically, time travel is possible. Of course, British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking expressed his skepticism in the 1970s. But then again, the guy relied on a computer to talk, so, for all we know, he could have been hacked by the aliens.

Or maybe not.

But whatever the case, I really want time travel to be real. Alright, as a theoretical physicist, I know time travel is real. But why must it always be an 80-year-old brittle woman from Arkansas to get visits from aliens from the future? I also want a guest from the future. I want to meet my future self. To be precise, the 45-year-old me.

And the first thing I would want to know is: Did it finally happen? I mean, Hamisa Mobetto and myself, did we happen? Did we go to Maldives or Tahiti for our honeymoon? Ama we played it cool and gracious by, perhaps, taking a bunch of charity stuff to the orphaned, poor, hungry white kids in the war-torn Eastern European country of Ukraine.

When it comes to time travel, I know there is this thing they talk about in science fiction movies called the butterfly effect. It is where a time traveller’s interaction with past events is bound to change the course of time, thus altering history. If the butterfly effect is factual, then my future self might not be so keen on meeting me. But personally (as a theoretical physicist of great repute), I subscribe to the time-stream idea.

Imagine time as a stream (yaani, a small river), and you throw sticks into it. The water moves the sticks, moves around the sticks but still ends up in the same place. Catch the flow? You don’t, do you? Well, it is not my fault you haven’t seen as many books I have, but what I am saying here is that according to the time-stream idea, my future self should be able to interact with me without changing the course of history.

So the future self would have to be very candid with me. He will have to tell me if I ever got rich enough to visit government offices in rugged jeans without anyone calling security. Or jump off my personal private helicopter and have people believe I am a ‘hustler’.

Even most important, does JZ remain uncancelled in the future? Because I really want to have that fellow’s face tattooed on my arm, and I don’t want to have to book an appointment with an expensive plastic surgeon in the future just because JZ was cancelled for divorcing Beyonce.

And speaking of cancel culture, do woke people ever stop keeping us hostage to their wokeness? I mean, do we ever get to a point where you can say TikTok ‘influencers’ are just as creative as pigs are on mud, and not be called bitter, toxic and get cancelled? Will we ever be able to call out ‘big girls’ over anything without being accused of body shaming them and labelled… well, everything-phobic?

Seriously, Mahn, do we ever stop playing identity politics? Do we all wake up one morning and realise just how ridiculous it is to think that it doesn’t matter who you are as an individual, it only matters who you are in terms of your group identity?

“Oh, you are female? Well, then you are a toxic feminist.” If you are a man, you are chauvinistic patriarch. If you are straight, you are homophobic. If you have some money, you are a dynasty who should be brought down by all means necessary. If you are poor, well, you are a hustler, which makes you a criminal.  Do we ever evolve beyond all these resentments for the differences in the world, or we are doomed for all eternity?

The future Ogwa will have to tell me if Min Jii finally gave up on her mission to have me get a ‘real’ job. And when exactly did she give up? Is it when I wrote and directed my first film or when I won an Oscar for the best original screenplay? I’m thinking neither. She’ll probably never give up. Also, I will want to know when Eric Omondi stopped calling himself a youth, and instead, referred to himself as what he truly is: a crazy person. He is 40 now and still calls himself a youths’ spokesperson. I won’t be surprised if he still wears skinny pants and fancies himself a youth 20 years from now.

Does Tom Mboya Street become Tom Mboya Avenue? 'Cause, Mahn, Nairobians have lost too many phones there, that street needs an upgrade right about now. And do they ever re-colour Afia centre to yellow? You know, to represent the culture of the majority of the people around the building. Also, people need to find new ways to navigate the CBD without the help of a building. You can’t rely on an old building forever, Mary. What if it is bombed down?

And what about me, I would wonder. As a wannabe writer, did I ever stop wondering if I am just a fraud running around fooling everybody? And that perhaps one day, someone will expose me for the fraud I am? Do I keep the faith that all that is good will come to the people who deserve it? And do I finally get to believe, deep in my soul, that I have a right to be here, now, and to do what I do?

I’m in my early 20s now, and to say that my life is awful, would be choosing my words very carefully. I never get it right, I can’t seem to do anything right. I would want my future self to tell me if I will ever outgrow this or it is a problem. Like, is this a phase or a demon?