The Light That Keeps Us Alive.

When I left my job about two years ago, I felt relieved. I felt free. It felt like the clutches that held my soul hostage had finally released themselves. But now, as the excitement of the new has died down, I am beginning to express a new grip on my soul.

How can I describe it? It feels like I lost my purpose in my life. It feels like I am running towards a phantom light that is faintly glimmering at the end of the tunnel. It feels as if I am a waste of space. But in the same breath, I don’t feel like I am dying a slow death.

I did not expect to feel this way. Indeed, leaving my job was inevitable. It was bound to happen. To this day, I recall how I was outside campus one day with my body shaking violently, which I later learnt is an anxiety attack. I can still recall moments where I’d wake up in the morning, go into the shower, and every time I closed my eyes, images of a screaming demon would appear. It felt like its venom was streaming in my blood. To extract this venom, I’d violently scratch or claw my skin, thinking perhaps the effect of the venom would not kill me.

Indeed, leaving my job was inevitable. What I did not expect, when I left my job, I also left what I thought was my purpose in life. One day, while I was sitting outside with my thoughts, I realised that for the majority of my 20s, I was a lecturer, or lecturing in some shape or form. Yes, I stopped studying engineering to pursue an B Com degree in entrepreneurship because I learnt early that entrepreneurs are people who are able to live free.

I remember a doctor I once went to when I had severe flu symptoms said to me that the entrepreneur is the one who owns the hospital, and he, the doctor, is his employee. This message from this doctor always stayed with me. It further deepened my determination to be an entrepreneur. But I somehow became a lecturer instead.

Even though I was a lecturer, my entrepreneurial ways never died. I always looked for ways to make money. I would start a business on the side. Some succeeded, some very well, and some failed, failed very well. But the moment I became a permanent lecturer (as I would get part-time gigs), everything changed.

The job of being a lecturer consumed me. Everything was now about work. And to be honest, this “work” took away the joy I experienced as a part-time lecturer. As a part-time lecturer, I would go to class, mark papers, and provide feedback. That’s it. Becoming full-time, I now got involved in office politics and all the nonsense involved with employment.

I realised that I am not built for that. One school I worked for even went a step further and wanted me to stop writing for my blog, “concerned with the stories I write.” I remember being in the academic manager’s office when she told me this. She was a kind lady. She was merely reporting what the higher-ups told her. I tried my level best to contain myself. But I cried.

I cried because I could not understand why they wanted me to stop writing on my blog. I cried because I realised that I may be a very strict person, but I am very kind. I also go the extra mile to help those around me. I do so like a soldier receiving orders from the general. The academic manager even told me who reported my blog. This person, mind you, I would go beyond my reach helping her, even when others would tell me I shouldn’t.

When I got to Gauteng, it is safe to say that it is the place where my kindness was my downfall. I have never encountered such a dog-eat-dog environment in my life. At work, I would try to befriend my fellow colleagues. It was impossible. Simply because you knew that if you were to slip up and reveal something about you to them, they would use this to get an edge over you. If not that, they were so caught up in their own world that they lacked the empathy to care for the next person. The next person for them was to serve them. The only person I called a friend at that place was a security guard on campus. He was the only genuine person I worked with.

And so, it was clear as freshly washed glass that I would not survive at this place. I’d eventually crack through the glass and land on my rock bottom dead, if I stayed there. At first, this felt like defeat. I wondered if I had the minerals in me to be successful. Because when I was younger, I believed I had the minerals. I prided myself on the ability to stay up two to three nights without sleeping, scheming and planning. I prided myself on being the hardest worker in the room. If there was someone who worked harder than I, I prided myself on the ability to add even more pressure on myself to outwork them.

Until I realised that I am a kind person, I always tried to help those around me, especially my loved ones. In the workplace, kindness is a weakness. People take advantage of it. I remember this one lady who was used to my kind self. But this one day, I had had enough of being taken for granted. I sent a very lengthy email expressing the fact that I do not appreciate how she communicates with me, and so forth. Suddenly, I was called in by my line manager and the lady. Her first remark as I sat down was, “I thought you were kind.”

Herein lies why I feel like I lost my purpose. Employment, especially the last two places I worked for, broke my kindness. It created the illusion that being a lecturer was my true purpose when, in fact, it wasn’t. The best person to explain how I was during that time is my girlfriend. She experienced an extremely unkind me while I was employed. Even now that I am back home, I am still quick to switch my kindness even to my parents.

My kindness is what led me to entrepreneurship. Believing that I can have money to change not only my life but those around me, is what truly motivated to be an entrepreneur. My mom got me involved in youth projects that dealt directly with the ills of poverty. I would hear stories of uncles molesting their nieces, child-headed homes, children abandoned because their parents still wanted to galivant the streets. These stories to me said, “Thando, go make money and make a change to those you can reach.” I was even close to adopting one child whose mother had abandoned him. But, again, stories of poverty, the home he was in, the lady who ran it made money per head living with her and of course, the mother was getting the SASSA money from the child she abandoned.

Yes, there is some vanity to it. I do want the G Wagon and beach house by Glen Ashley. But my true motive has always been to help those around me and beyond those I can reach.

Therefore, it feels like since quitting my job, I have been trying to rebuild my kindness. Yes, I have new eyes, so to speak. I thank employment for that. Because I can see far quicker when someone is taking advantage of me. I have cut plenty of people, friends and acquaintances, whom I recognised as taking my kindness as a weakness.

I guess what I thought to be the demon ravaging my soul was, in fact, myself screaming that I be kind to myself. The faintly dimmed light at the end of the tunnel, it is actually the kindness that still flicks softly, waiting to be relit with renewed energy. The sense of losing purpose is, in fact, the destruction of thinking that my purpose was to be a lecturer.

Yes, the stage I am in is not as rosy as I had imagined. But it is necessary. Plants go dormant in winter, only to be restored to their glory in spring. I am in my winter. But unlike plants, it is up to me to make it spring again. But, like every living thing governed by the laws of the universe, it will take time. Time that I now have since leaving employment. Time I am fully in control of.

Ultimately, that’s what a true entrepreneur truly has, time.