Science, Life & Lessons with Eddy

24/09/2026

24/09/2026

24/09/2026

WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO LOSE TO REACH THE SUMMIT?

Day 266 of 365

I have been reading about Mount Everest—not only because it is the highest mountain on Earth, but because of what some climbers leave behind. Hundreds have died there, and as ice and snow melt, their bodies are reappearing. Most disturbing is that later climbers have used them as landmarks along the route. Imagine spending your final moments reaching for the summit, only for your body to become a reference point in someone else’s journey.

That image made me think about life. We all have an Everest: a career, degree, business, position, financial goal, recognition, or long-held dream. There is nothing wrong with ambition. But somewhere along the climb, we must ask: What am I willing to lose to get there?

We can become so focused on achievement that we stop counting the cost. We sacrifice our health, relationships, peace, children, values, faith, and the people who would still matter if the achievement disappeared tomorrow. Then we reach the summit and realize we have lost what made the climb worthwhile.

Your life should not become a warning sign on someone else’s journey.

Pursue your summit. Work hard. Dream boldly. Keep climbing. But do not confuse arrival with success. The goal is to reach the summit without becoming a stranger to the person you were meant to be. When the journey ends, the most important question may not be, “Did you reach the summit?” but “Was the life you lived on the way there worth it?”

© Keneke Thoughts

23/09/2026

YOU WERE DESIGNED FOR THIS
Day 266 of 365
Sometimes, it takes something small and unexpected to remind you of something profound about yourself. A day ago, I was conducting an experiment for a group of undergraduate students, comparing glass, aluminium, steel and copper to see how they conducted heat. I had warned the students about the importance of allowing the materials to cool before handling them. Then, somehow, I failed to follow the very precaution I had just taught them. I convinced myself that the glass had cooled enough. It hadn't. I touched it and burned my thumb. The injury was minor, but what happened afterwards stayed with me. I normally use that thumb to unlock my phone through biometric identification, and suddenly my phone could no longer recognise me. The thumb was still mine, but one small injury had changed something I had always taken for granted.

And that made me think about how deeply unique we are. That tiny pattern on your thumb is yours. Your phone can recognise you because no one else carries exactly the same fingerprint. But our uniqueness goes far beyond the lines on our fingers. There has never been, and will never be, another person with your exact combination of experiences, disappointments, opportunities, abilities, weaknesses, memories, lessons and dreams. No one has lived your life exactly as you have. So when life places something difficult in front of you, it is natural to ask, "Why me?" I have asked that question myself. But perhaps sometimes we need to ask a different question: "Why not me?" Not because the pain is insignificant, or because we are somehow too strong to break, but because there may be something within us that the difficulty is about to reveal.

I have come to realise that some parts of us remain hidden until life demands them. You may not know how resilient you are until something forces you to keep going. You may not know how patient you are until you have no choice but to wait. You may not know how courageous you are until fear gives you every reason to turn back. And you may not know how much you can carry until life places something heavy on your shoulders. This does not mean we should romanticise suffering or pretend that every struggle has an easy explanation. Sometimes we need other people. Sometimes we need rest. Sometimes we cry, we struggle and we admit that we don't know what to do next. But struggling does not mean you were not made for the journey. Sometimes it is through the struggle that you discover the parts of yourself you had never met before.

So the next time life gives you something you never asked for, don't immediately conclude that you are not equipped for it. Pause. Look inward. Remember that you are not a copy of somebody else, and you were never meant to navigate life with somebody else's strength. The Creator who made you unique knows the person He made you to become. You may not feel ready. You may not feel strong enough. You may even feel completely unprepared. But there are capacities within you that you may only discover when you are forced to reach for them. You are not here by accident. You are not a duplicate. You are uniquely you. And perhaps the very thing making you question whether you can continue is about to show you that you can. You are unique. You were designed for this.


© Keneke Thoughts

22/09/2026

WHEN EVERYONE IS RESPONSIBLE, WHO IS REALLY RESPONSIBLE?

Day 265 of 365

There is a psychological phenomenon called the Ringelmann effect. It describes how individual effort can decrease as the number of people working on a shared task increases. You might think that if one person can produce 100 units of effort, ten people should produce 1,000. In reality, the combined output can fall short because coordination becomes more difficult and individual responsibility becomes less visible.

I have seen a version of this in everyday life. Give one person a task and they know the responsibility belongs to them. Give the same task to ten people and something strange can happen. Everyone assumes someone else will notice, respond, organise, remind, or finish it. The group becomes larger, but the sense of personal responsibility becomes smaller.

This is why being part of a team should never mean surrendering personal responsibility. Do not hide behind "we" when there is something you could have done yourself. If you see the problem, take ownership. If you make the commitment, follow through. If everyone waits for everyone else, nothing moves.

A productive group is not simply a group with many people. It is a group of people who remain individually responsible while working collectively. Sometimes the question is not, "Who is responsible for this?" The better question is, "What part of this is mine to do?"

© Keneke Thoughts

21/09/2026

ARE YOU PREPARED FOR THE LIFE YOU ARE PRAYING FOR?
Day 264 of 365
One of the strangest things about human beings is that we can spend years praying for a life we have never learned how to live. We ask for more money, greater opportunities, recognition, influence, freedom, or a position we believe will finally make things better. But we rarely stop to consider what happens when the answer arrives. What if the circumstances of your life change faster than your capacity to handle them? What if you receive the thing you have been asking for, but you are still operating with the habits, assumptions and emotional responses of the person who did not have it?

Think about sudden wealth. Someone can spend most of their life learning how to survive on a modest income and then, almost overnight, find themselves with more money than they have ever had to manage. The money is real, but the experience of managing it is completely unfamiliar. They may not understand investing, taxation, financial boundaries, risk, generosity, relationships or even how other people's behaviour may change towards them. This is one reason sudden wealth can be psychologically and practically difficult. The problem is not necessarily that the person is irresponsible. They have simply been given a situation for which life never required them to develop the necessary capacity. The circumstances changed overnight; the person did not.

And perhaps this happens in less obvious ways in our own lives. You pray for promotion, but have never learned how to handle authority without becoming controlling. You pray for financial increase, but have never learned how to manage the little you already have. You pray for recognition, but have not developed the emotional stability to survive criticism. You pray for influence, but have never considered what happens when people begin watching your decisions. You pray for a relationship, but have not confronted the habits that could damage one. Sometimes we are asking for an expanded life while still carrying the operating system of our old one.

So perhaps the prayer should not only be, "God, give me this." Perhaps sometimes it should also be, "God, make me capable of carrying this." Because getting what you prayed for is not necessarily the end of the struggle. It can introduce an entirely different set of problems. The promotion brings responsibility. The money brings decisions. The influence brings scrutiny. The opportunity brings pressure. The freedom brings accountability. A bigger life does not automatically produce a bigger capacity. That capacity has to be developed.

Before you become obsessed with reaching the life you keep imagining, ask yourself a more uncomfortable question: If everything I am praying for arrived tomorrow, would the person I have become know what to do with it?
© Keneke Thoughts

20/09/2026

WE ARE ALL FLAWED
Day 263 of 365

There was a time in my life when I looked at someone and genuinely believed he could do no wrong. I admired him deeply. The way he carried himself, handled situations and interacted with people made me feel like he had somehow figured life out. Then, as I got closer to him, I began to notice things I had never seen before. He had weaknesses, made mistakes and struggled with certain things. I remember wondering, “Is this really the person I have admired for so long?” Eventually, I realised that nothing had changed about him. What changed was my perspective. From a distance, I had only seen the parts of his life that impressed me. Getting closer simply revealed the parts that made him human.

There is a saying, “Never meet your heroes.” Perhaps the lesson is not that our heroes are bad people, but that we sometimes create perfect versions of people in our minds because we only see them from afar. We do the same thing with people around us. Someone may appear confident, successful, emotionally controlled, or exceptionally good at what they do. They seem to handle everything with such ease that we begin asking ourselves, “What am I doing wrong?” But we rarely see the complete picture. We see their results, their confidence and their successes, but we do not always see the uncertainty, mistakes and difficult moments behind them.

I experienced something similar with a colleague. I watched him walk into a classroom and seemingly perform wonders. His experience made teaching look effortless. But with time, I discovered that even he had lessons that did not go as planned. He too sometimes struggled to figure out how best to deliver something. That reminded me that experience does not eliminate struggle. It simply gives you more tools for dealing with it. Sometimes the person you think has mastered everything is simply someone who has learned how to navigate certain difficulties better than you have.

So before you beat yourself up because someone else seems to be doing better than you, remember that you are comparing your entire journey with the part of someone else's journey that you can see. The person you admire may be better than you at something. They may have more experience. They may even make difficult things look easy. But they are still human. They have weaknesses, uncertainties and struggles of their own. We are all flawed. We are all learning. We are all still becoming. Give yourself some grace. You do not have to become flawless before you can become better.

© Keneke Thoughts