When Love Never Gets the Chance to Give

Among my people, there is a proverb that has stayed with me for years:

"Utana wa ngía ŭragíra ngoro."

Roughly translated, it means, "The generosity of a poor person remains imprisoned in the heart."

At first glance, it sounds like a commentary on poverty. But with age and experience, I have come to understand that it is really about love.

We often think poverty is the absence of money. It is much more than that. Poverty can deny a parent the chance to educate a child, a student the opportunity to pursue a dream, or a family the dignity of a comfortable life. But perhaps its cruelest consequence is that it can prevent us from expressing our love in the way we long to.

For many years, I carried a quiet promise in my heart.

My mother never asked me for a refrigerator. She never complained. She never demanded anything from me. But I saw the need, and I silently promised myself that one day, when life smiled upon me, I would buy her one.

That promise became one of my greatest motivations. I believed there would always be more time.

There wasn't.

She passed away before I could fulfill the one gift I had imagined giving her.

Today, life has been kinder to me. I own several refrigerators and coolers. Years ago, that would have seemed impossible.

Yet every time I see them, I am reminded of a painful truth: not one of them is useful to the promise I made to my mother.

They arrived too late.

That is why this old Kikuyu proverb resonates so deeply with me. My generosity was never absent. It simply had nowhere to go. It remained locked inside my heart until the one person I wanted to bless was no longer here to receive it.

That experience changed me forever.

It taught me that poverty is not only about what it takes from us. It is also about what it prevents us from giving. Sometimes the greatest loss is not the things we never owned, but the acts of love we never got to perform.

Today, whenever I have the opportunity to help someone, I try not to postpone it. I have learned that tomorrow is a promise none of us possesses. Love is meant to be expressed while the people we cherish are still here to feel it.

If there is someone you've been meaning to bless, encourage, visit, forgive, or help, don't wait for the "perfect" time. The perfect time has a way of disappearing.

Perhaps that is the timeless wisdom hidden in this beautiful Kikuyu proverb.

The generosity of a poor person may remain trapped in the heart—but if life has given us the means today, let us not imprison our generosity any longer.

Because one day, like me, you may discover that the greatest regret is not that you couldn't afford the gift.

It is that the person you bought it for never got the chance to receive it.