Life. Seasoned with perspective.
“Sometimes life flips the script in a single moment—an unexpected twist that leaves you changed forever. At first, it feels messy, scary, even unfair. But looking back, those very moments often carry the lessons, clarity, and strength that shape who we become. This week, I share one such moment from my own journey.”
What was the defining moment in your life?
That moment when everything shifted. When the path you thought you were on suddenly bent in another direction.
Some people call it luck. I don’t think it feels like luck at the time. These moments often come wrapped in chaos—confusing, heavy, painful. They shake your ground. They make you doubt yourself. Some people never make it through. But those who do? They emerge differently. Changed.
I count myself one of the lucky ones.
For a long time, I thought my defining moment was losing my mum in 2001. I was fresh out of high school, still trying to figure myself out, when suddenly life demanded more of me than I thought I had. One day I was a teenager worrying about the future; the next, I was staring at a world without my mother. That loss shaped me, no doubt. It forced me to grow up fast. But nothing—nothing—prepared me for what came two decades later.
Fast forward twenty years.
On the very first day of 2022, a few minutes past midnight in India, I thought I had lost someone very dear to me. We had been in Delhi for weeks, waiting for a surgery that carried risks we didn’t want to think about. The hospital corridors had become our second home. We knew the nurses by name. We knew the smell of disinfectant better than the air outside. And finally, we had just returned to our small apartment, ready to exhale, when the phone rang.
“She’s had a very bad reaction. Her lungs are collapsing. She’s on a ventilator. Her oxygen intake is not stable. I don’t know how long she can hold. Her chances are 60:40.”
My heart sank. Our hearts sank. The words didn’t make sense, and yet they did. This was real. This was happening. The new year had barely begun, and already it threatened to end in tragedy.
I can still remember that night. The silence after the call. The fear wrapped itself around me like a vice. The desperate prayers whispered into the early morning. The slow, endless wait for updates. And the heavy thought that pressed against my chest: What if this is it? What if this is the end?
But it wasn’t the end.
Today, more than four years after that surgery, things are okay. We laugh again. We make plans again. Life has returned to something close to normal. But that night changed me forever. It scarred me, yes, but it also reshaped me. I don’t see the world the same way anymore. I live with more gratitude. More urgency. More awareness of just how fragile everything is.
And I know I’m not alone.
A friend of mine, a big name in Kenyan TV, has built entire shows around these stories. Guests sit on his set and talk about moments that nearly destroyed them—but ended up transforming them. Their “Damascus moments.” Different people, different stories, same truth: those moments change everything.
I’ve seen this pattern closer to home, too. Early in my career, I had a supervisor—brilliant but fiery. People warned me: Don’t cross his path. He was tough, and being young and headstrong, I clashed with him more than once. But one day, I paused and asked myself: Why is he like that?
I dug into his story. He had lost his parents young. He had raised his siblings. Suddenly, the fire made sense. It wasn’t just temper—it was survival. It was the weight of a life that had demanded too much, too soon. And in that moment, my perspective shifted. What had been conflict turned into understanding. And understanding grew into friendship. We’re still friends today.
So I’ll ask again: what’s your defining moment?
If you’re in it right now—if it feels unbearable, confusing, even crushing—hold on. These moments rarely feel like gifts when you’re inside them. But they carry lessons. Sometimes they even carry transformation.
I won’t promise that everything will work out neatly. Life isn’t neat. But I will say this: if you let it, that moment can shape you. It can deepen you. It can change not just how you see the world, but how the world sees you.
Because defining moments rarely arrive with fanfare. They show up uninvited, disguised as storms. But sometimes, when the storm clears, you realise you’ve been handed a new horizon.
About the author: Kibisu Mulanda is a media executive and strategic communicator with over 20 years of experience in television, NGO storytelling, and youth-focused content. He is the Acting Head of Switch Media Ltd and teaches media at the Kenya Institute of Mass Communication (KIMC). A Certified SIYB Trainer, he blends storytelling with strategy to drive social impact.
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