It was an interesting epiphany that hit me this weekend. But, it is ideal to give context first.
This year did not start on a good note for me. For some reason, I find this year to be extremely challenging and it has just begun. Perhaps it is the unnecessary pressure to succeed that one places on himself. The relentless drive to become someone in the world of anyone.
And so, in this pursuit of becoming somebody, one takes risks. The old adage that no risk, no reward. What they forget to mention is that you need to be ready for the realities of that risk. You see, it is like someone telling you to take a leap of faith. They say this with the positive outlook that you will survive the leap and land safely on the opposite end. What they don’t tell you is that in taking the leap, you might fail. And if that leap was over a valley of fire, failure to land would lead to an early roasting.
And so, naively, I took my leap of faith. Unfortunately, I failed. Yes, age and experience have taught me to be more calculated with the risks I take. But the pain of failure still hurts.
It hurts because you could see the finish line. It’s like the marathon runner who ran the race but only to fall inches from the finishing line. They can try to get up and force themselves through. Some will manage to pass the finish line, others simply cannot. Their bodies have reached the very limits of their being.
That failure is the one that hurts the most. It hurts the most because it is a failure whereby you see the finish line. It hurts because you see the end. You see your goal. Like Michaelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam”, the gap between you and your immortality is merely a fingertip away.
So the failure lingers. It lingers longer than it should. You see, using the marathon runner as a metaphor, failing halfway into the race, does not hurt. At that point, you realise that you have overstretched yourself. You realise that maybe you were not ready for the marathon. The pain of defeat still hurts but it is manageable. It is a pain that you can take home and work on healing. This will allow you to prepare again for the marathon the next year.
However, failing at the finish line hits differently. And the reason that it does hit differently is because you gave it your all. You gave it your very best. You tried your level best to cross the finish line. And you still failed.
Yes, if you see the world as a half-full glass, you will take the defeat with grace and try again the following year. Perhaps you will realise that you need to walk on nutrition. Or perhaps, you need to work better on energy conservation. Perhaps, you need a different training method. Being positive will help you find the wind to try again.
But even with this positivity, having failed after doing your very best, the glass might be half full but the glass will crack. Sometimes, the glass will break completely. The optimism that you had you might try again will spill over, leaving you empty.
That is what happened to me.
You know I am fortunate that I am surrounded by positive male role models. I learn from my brother who exercised god-like discipline to realise his dream of being a man of law. I learn from my dad who would go through some of the toughest life challenges and yet find a way to be optimistic about the future. Yes, in my late teens and early twenties, I invested loads of time watching motivational videos on YouTube. I still remember when E.T “How bad do you want it?” was first released and how we (my friends and I) would watch it almost every day.
This provides one with the fortunate position to have a positive attitude, even when life seems to be in the pits. But this year, I experienced what happens when even with all this positivity, even when you still see the glass half full, I experienced what happens when the glass breaks.
When this happens, you get thrown into a world of pure darkness. All that positive energy suddenly becomes pure vapour and vanishes into nothing. The world becomes cold and all the negative energy that you have managed all the years rises to the surface. All the psychological battles you thought you won find a wind to lift them to the surface.
I found myself feeling great levels of loneliness. A feeling I haven’t felt in years. I found myself feeling a sense (a strong sense) of hopelessness. A feeling I haven’t felt in years. I found myself questioning my worth, a feeling I had not felt in more than a decade.
These feelings all wore state-of-the-art armour tech and were ready for battle. They were ready to kill and destroy any remaining positive vibe that might have remained.
Going to work felt like a chore. Sadly, most South African workplaces have not made provision for leave solely for mental relief. The absolute dread of fake smiling and having to perform tasks that bore me continued to drain my soul. But luckily, I enjoy being a lecturer. Moments of being in class, providing student consultations and being with the soccer team gave me “the fix” I needed to endure each passing day.
But those long drives still hit me. Those cold nights still hurt me. At the height of this emotional pain and mental torture, for the first time in over a decade, the idea of ending it all roamed my mind.
I felt that it was all pointless. Having tried my best and still failed, it made me feel absolutely worthless. It made me lose touch with reality. The dark figures I see randomly started to look like invitations into the other world. What is interesting is that people around me did not see that I was a soul in ICU. My colleagues, some friends and those individuals who hover in the social realm of one’s life, simply thought I’m okay, just going through a spell of “life stress”. But those really close to me, my family, could see that my soul was on life-support.
And what happened next is one of the reasons I believe in a higher force, a higher being.
I was really ready to end it all. I figured I would run away and never come back. Run and run and run until I can run no more. I had even identified an area where I would disappear and maybe (or maybe not) be found. But as this thought started to gather strength and find life, the very morning I was about to execute this plan, my sister stopped me.
She did not really say much, She just wanted to say that she loves me and she’ll always be there for me. As she said those words, the glass that had been shattered magically repaired itself. The positive energy that vanished into nothing, became something once more and this time filled the glass to the brim.
You see, I didn’t tell my sister anything. One of the demons that was wrestling my mind was that I hate how my family will forever see me as the last born. Thus, they can never see me as a full-blown adult capable of making his own decisions. So I kept my thoughts to myself. But she managed to see through the silence and see that something was wrong.
I remembered how the last time I felt this way I did run away. Until I met a friendly old Tannie on the highway. I remember how that Tannie simply rolled down her window and asked me if I was okay. That simple question brought me a sea of tears that I eventually walked my way back to a garage station. And guess who I called. That’s right: my sister.
And there is the epiphany that hit me.
While we try to be a somebody in a world of anybodies, we can easily forget that we are already a somebody to not just anybodies in the world, but to people who actually are somebodies to us as well. It hit me that indeed one wants a particular life of freedom, pleasure and enjoyment but it should not come at the expense of losing oneself to pursue it.
This is a cold world we live in. The people who love you provide you with the warmth and energy to keep on living. Thus, in living, life should be lived in living with those people. As cliché as it sounds, if I had run away, the workplace was going to replace me in a week. There would be people who would be sad for a few weeks (maybe months) but continue living with my existence being an “oh him” memory.
But there will be other people, like my sister, who might find it hard to accept a reality without her “Basnana”. My mother and father might feel they failed as parents and being at the age they are in, I don’t think their hearts would handle the pain. My brother, who has been my protector for all my life, might feel he failed to be there for me when I needed him more most. For those that matter, my existence will not become a fading memory. But instead, it will alter their own reality and not in a positive way.
It made me realise that in trying to become a somebody who can live their dreams confidently and live life the way they envision it, it is also important to take into account how your decisions will affect the people who love you unconditionally. We can get so caught in the sauce that we won’t see it when we begin to drown in it. We will only realise once we cannot breathe.
It was my sister’s hand that pulled me out of the sauce. It made me realise that indeed what matters most in life is not that which glitters. Muhammed Ali said best that a good friend is better than gold as gold is cold and has no heart.
Inasmuch as we desire the gold to buy us freedom, we should never forget the unconditional love that sustains our lives. That is and will forever be more important than anything else in this world. I understand why the scriptures say God is love.
Love is what gives life meaning. Love is what gives life purpose. Love, especially unconditional love that comes from loved ones as family is what will make you immortal. It is this love that we should live for. For it is this love that gives us life.
When life becomes difficult, it is this love that gives us strength to try again. When life knocks the last breath out of your lungs, it is this love that brings that breath back. When life becomes a dark pit of hell, it is this love that quenches the ravaging flames and fills it with blinding light.
It is love that makes life worthwhile. It is this love that we can still talk about our grandparents, some having never met them. It is this love that truly gives life a joy to live. Without this love, life loses its spark and we feel like there’s no reason to live.
And it is easy to forget this love. This love is not like the gold that glitters. You did not have to fight for this love. Indeed this love was given to you for free and so, it is easy for a person not to value it.
This weekend I truly learnt that if one has this love, one should cherish it and protect it far more than they would a bar of gold. Gold can buy all the pleasures of the flesh but unconditional love can buy the pleasures of the soul. Christ said best that rather store your treasures in Heaven where no thief can steal them. I believe He was also alluding to rather investing your time into that which feeds your soul for no man can steal them. And one of those elements that feed the soul is your family.
Now, you might have noticed I have not mentioned friends or a romantic partner. Yes, there are partners (and friends) that give you a similar love. And if you have such a partner, do everything you can to protect them and keep them.
But most people do not have this luxury. Most people have an emotional (and sometimes financial) transactional relationship. A girl (or even a guy) will cheat on you because you not giving them time or attention. A girl will cheat on a man because he is not spending his money on her. A man will cheat on a girl because she does not conform to the stereotypes he has of women.
Lucky are you if you have a partner who loves you unconditionally. But the truth of the matter is that most women (and men) in the modern world, do not know this unconditional love. Their love comes with “standards”. Yes, to some extent I believe one should have standards. But if those standards are transactional, like a girl saying she expects roses every month or a guy saying he expects his woman to have nails done, that relationship is rotten. It will not survive and it will not nourish you when you need it most.
Most men have experienced how it feels to have a woman they love leave them or betray them when he going through a trough when they face challenges that weaken them as a man. This is something I can vouch for as I have been one of these men. So with this unconditional love that I’m talking about, one gets to experience it with family more than with anyone or anything else.
Your mom might complain and be “a mom” but if she loves you, she will be there for you, no matter what. The same with your father, the same with your siblings. It is with your family that you will experience true unconditional love.
A loved one can easily leave you. They can easily replace you. It might hurt. They might even cry and enter a deep depression. But you are replaceable to them. They will find someone to replace you with. Hence divorcees can re-marry and re-marry and re-marry. Just check Steve Harvey. True love in our modern times is like the rhinos in the Kruger, it is slowly becoming extinct.
But the flipside to the coin; if you have a loved one, one day that person will be family too. Which will be a beautiful thing. But do not allow that person or the gold of this Earth ever rob you of what makes life beautiful:
True, unconditional love.
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