Category: Life

  • Faithfully hopeful

    Faithfully hopeful

    Abandoning hope in something good means that we are investing hope in the relief of not trying any longer.

    It means that we hope for ease after having struggled through the anguish and pain of trying to achieve something important, but failed.

    Sometimes we hope that abandoning hope might give others reason to care or to notice, or perhaps even to appreciate what we abandoned when we felt like our efforts towards them was being taken for granted.

    Perhaps it will give them reason to appreciate or care about what we’ve tried in vain to convince them is important.

    That’s why, when we lose hope in achieving something, we experience a double blow when we realise that no one cared anyway. Or that they didn’t even notice.

    Faith and hope are inseparable.

    Where we focus our hope, we focus our faith.

    Faith is what inspires us to want to change the world, while hope is grounded in our belief in our ability to change it.

    Our faith is shaken and our hopes are dashed when our expectation of what we wish to influence exceeds our ability to influence it.

    Being torn between having faith that things can be amazing, while feeling powerless to make it happen, is at the heart of all anguish in life.

    Perhaps it’s best demonstrated by the act of planting a tree in your old age, having full faith in the comfort and benefit it will offer those who are alive to experience its growth, despite knowing that you won’t live long enough to share it with them.

    Your conviction in what is good will ensure that you never lose hope in creating good for others.

    And your faith in the good that results from your efforts in life will offer you peace despite not always being able to witness the value of your contribution.

    Be mindful of where you’re investing your faith, and hope will follow faithfully.


  • What bores you?

    Writing Prompt

    prompted by WordPress

    Petty social banter about people’s lives. Discussions about status and status symbols, and influencers and social trends.

    We’ve lost the art of being interesting, and mastered the art of how to make boring look appealing!

    We’re so desperate for familiarity because of our isolated lifestyles, that we feel a need to find resonance on social media with others who share similar habits, or preferences, or flaws, or annoyances. And while we’re doing that, we look for more distractions from our boredom because we realise how much time we have for social media while not having any clue about how to have a life.

    Yeah, I’m a cynic and this is a cynical rant, but prove me wrong?
    Prove to me that there more people in real life who are interesting and deep without needing to share their depth or fascination on social media?

    So, what bores me? People who are obsessed with other people’s social advancement is exceptionally, tediously, nauseatingly, mind-numbingly, and cringe-worthy boring to the nth degree.

    That’s what bores me.

  • With whom are you competing?

    With whom are you competing?

    Who are you really competing with in life?

    The only person you should be competing with is the one you were yesterday!

    The most common limiting belief that I encounter in others is the belief that they’re not as good as others.

    The way I encounter this within myself is when I question whether I’m good enough to achieve something, or when I think I’m fooling myself into believing that I’m capable of influencing the change that I am passionate about seeing in this world.

    If we stop and pay attention for a brief moment, we’ll realise that it’s not about better or worse, it’s about competing with what we believe to be true about ourselves.

    The day I began trying to prove myself wrong about all the things that I thought were just dreams or whimsical wishes is the day that I broke away from the expectations of others.

    Better or worse is only important if you’re competing to be just like everyone else.

    If everyone else had things figured out, the world wouldn’t be in the state in which we find it.

    We’re all struggling with our own demons on the inside, while presenting a confident and bold facade on the outside.

    That’s not necessarily being fake.

    Sometimes it’s just how we preserve our dignity.

    The moment you believe the facade, you judge yourself against a standard that doesn’t exist.

    The fact that you find reason to judge yourself at all is problematic.

    Your only focus should be in determining if you’re moving closer to, or further away from, the goals that you set for yourself.

    Remaining connected with purpose and conviction to those goals is the only challenge you have.

    Be you. Life is so much more rewarding when you are, and love becomes that much more attainable.

  • Losing out on life

    How does death change your perspective?

    Death doesn’t change it. Death defines it.

    In the absence of finality, we take things for granted. The moment there is no risk of loss or of an ending, we have no need for urgency or gravity in the present moment. If there is always going to be more, we have no reason to rush to make the most of what we have.

    The only guarantee in life is that it will end. Unfortunately, because we survive more moments than we succumb to, meaning that death only happens once while life happens every day, we take life for granted and assume that death will happen at some point in the future.

    Life should not be about what we wish to accomplish before we die. That’s a transactional, fear-based approach to life that cheats us out of life itself. Instead, it should be celebrated in the moment because of what we are capable of celebrating, and not because we need to celebrate it before it is lost. That’s how moments of joy are created that make life worth living, and death a warm end to a beautiful life.

    Death-bed regrets only take hold if we didn’t live life meaningfully. And we fail to live life meaningfully if we’re fearing what the future holds, or holding on to the pain or memories of the past. Those memories were created by what happened in those moments, not by preoccupying ourselves with what was to come.

    So, if you contemplate death, or you contemplate the impact of the past on who you are now, you’re missing out on life. Because life is what is happening right now. Everything else is either a memory, a dream, or a preemptive nightmare. It’s not life.

  • Expect to expect more

    Expect to expect more

    There’s a fallacy out there that it’s possible to live without expectation.

    Yeah, it’s a fallacy, cos it’s impossible.

    When you try to live without expectation, you’re defending yourself against being hurt.

    When you defend yourself preemptively, it means that you believe that you’re weak enough not to be able to deal with disappointment.

    More than this, it means that you’re judging others because of their human failings, and you’re convinced that you’re incapable of failing others.

    Just because you may not be aware of it doesn’t mean that you haven’t hurt or betrayed someone by not living up to their expectations.

    We all do it.

    When we judge others for being human, we lose the right to ask for understanding or empathy when we fall short because of our humanness.

    Rather than not expecting, we should focus on whether our expectations were based on what we thought we deserved, or what the other person was capable of.

    Before you look at capability from the perspective of what they’re physically capable of, remind yourself that your expectations are based on your emotional needs, not your physical needs.

    So when you consider what someone is emotionally capable of rather than what they are physically capable of, you’ll find understanding about why them letting you down is not because of who you are, it’s because of what they’re struggling with within themselves.

    You can’t wish that away.

    You can either create space for them to grow, or exit their space because what you represent is what they’re grappling with.

    When you believe someone is capable of something but they don’t believe it themselves, change your expectations to hope that they will see what you see, rather than writing them off because they disappointed or betrayed you.

    It always starts with you.

  • The right to demand your rights…

    The right to demand your rights…

    The more we emphasise our rights, the less time we spend understanding our responsibilities.

    The rights that others have over us is the responsibilities that we have towards them, and vice versa.

    The moment we focus on only one side of that equation, we become oppressors.

    If we focus on our rights but neglect our responsibilities, we oppress others.

    When we focus on our responsibilities without calling to account those who do not fulfil our rights, we not only oppress ourselves, but we enable the oppression against us.

    The moment we remain silent to keep the peace, we destroy the peace for the next generation.

    Understanding the boundaries of supporting each other in fulfilling our rights and responsibilities is an important step in ensuring that you don’t lose yourself and your peace to your fight for justice with someone who is not invested in justice.

    How we conduct ourselves will benefit or harm our bodies, which in turn enables oppression by ourselves against ourselves.

    Therefore, the balance to be struck is not only in what we do or what we demand from others, it is most critically in how we establish balance within ourselves.

    Approaching rights and responsibilities from a social justice perspective only, or from a perspective of what you should be able to demand from your partner is not about rights at all.

    It’s about demanding significance when you feel insignificant.

    That’s how our opinion of ourselves results either in our fair and kind treatment of others, or it results in oppression and abuse while we blame them for how we feel about ourselves.

    Focus on what you need to do, and most importantly, on who you want to be.

    As long as that is your focus, establishing healthy boundaries will come naturally because you’ll be mindful about what is within your control or influence to change, versus what is beyond your ability to change.

    It always starts with you.

  • Conveniently judgemental

    Conveniently judgemental

    Judgement is only ever supposed to be the first step in correcting what’s wrong.

    Sadly, it’s most often the only step that we take when faced with unbecoming behaviour from others.

    Worse still, judgement is easy to dish out about issues and incidents that are none of our business because having an opinion on something topical is the easiest way to feel relevant.

    Judgement is easy.

    All it requires is the ability to compare what we see to a rule or a law that we believe is revered by others.

    Such comparison requires zero understanding behind the behaviour, nor does it demand any action on our part to improve the situation.

    All it requires is an opinion without empathy or compassion.

    When passing judgement establishes our relevance in social circles, we grow emboldened by the attention we receive from those who agree with us, eventually assuming ourselves to be a moral authority that can speak on behalf of the Almighty.

    That’s when we find justification to pass judgement about the faith and beliefs of others, and we become argumentative about religion and philosophy, and the personal matters of those we have no intention of assisting.

    Passing judgement without understanding or accountability for the impact of such judgement is an indulgence of the ego and serves no good whatsoever.

    Unless you are duly appointed to judge between two parties, restrain yourself from having an opinion on every person or issue that crosses your timeline.

    Peace is found in leaving alone that which does not concern us.

    And harm is caused by involving ourselves insincerely in that which does not concern us.

    Check yourself before you feel a need to share your opinion on someone else’s life.

    Or else you may be tested with that which you judge others about.

  • Who cares?

    Who cares?

    How often do you indulge in self-care because you truly value yourself, versus doing it because you have no reason to believe that anyone else cares enough to do it for you?

    Just because we believe we’re worth it, doesn’t mean that we treat ourselves kindly out of gratitude for who we are.

    Self-care that is driven by true gratitude for the self will result in emotional tranquility despite the trying circumstances of our lives, or the lacking substance in our relationships with others.

    It will result in moments of pause that happen spontaneously because we connect with the value of that moment, rather than because we have to pace ourselves in the hope of remaining functional in our duties towards others.

    Self-pity subtly transforms into self-loathing when it grows to define how we see our place in this world relative to what we need or want from others.

    When our internal conversation shifts towards convincing ourselves that who we are is why we’re not getting what we need, or why we’re not being treated the way we’d like to be treated, that’s when our thinking is driven by the belief that we’re not enough.

    True gratitude for the self is not driven by how others react to you.

    Their reaction is only ever an indication of two things.

    Firstly, the effectiveness of your efforts to communicate what is important to you relative to where they’re at.

    Secondly, a reflection of their ability to receive what you’re offering because of where they’re at.

    Figuring out the difference between the two demands mindfulness and the absence of self-loathing.

    Judging yourself based on your ability to get through to others is nothing more than a distraction from what you should be improving in your efforts to be more effective at achieving what you believe is important,

    Judgement is always only ever the first step in growth.

    It is driven by self-loathing when it becomes the final step.

    What truly drives your reasons for self-care?