Category: Life

  • Self-imposed prisons of our mind

    Self-imposed prisons of our mind

    We imprison ourselves each time we restrain our natural expression because we’re afraid that it won’t be appreciated, or celebrated.

    Our need for approval or validation soon becomes our greatest crutch in life, until eventually it becomes our prison.

    We decorate its walls with images and scraps that honour the past, sometimes recalling moments of joy, but often also anchoring us in moments of pain.

    We hold those mementoes up as trophies and garlands that need to be revered by others before we’re willing to set them back down, believing that unless someone else knows our pain, we cannot let it go.

    Our need to be comforted about the aches and losses of the past is not because we need to be comforted, but because we need to feel as if someone cares for us…for what we’re hurting about.

    It’s not always the hurt that’s important. Often, knowing that someone cares that we’re hurting, and that they care enough to want us to stop hurting, is what shackles us to our past, because letting it go also means that we have no way to test if we’re significant to those around us.

    The prisons that protect us from experiencing a beautiful life are often just a single moment away.

    Sadly, we most often wait for someone else to create that moment of release for us before we’re willing to love ourselves enough to create it for ourselves.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock

  • Waiting to live…

    Waiting to live…

    When we are raised in an environment focused on discipline before purpose, or compliance before understanding, we develop the belief that fitting in is more important than who we are.

    This same mindset leads us to be bullish in our efforts to uphold the status quo because of the inclusion that it offers, while violently rejecting any opinions that challenge our cultural heritage or traditions.

    The need to belong, to be validated by that social structure smothers any passion to contribute towards improving anything, because we’re led to believe that our traditions have already perfected everything.

    Thus, the unique expression of the individual is snuffed out, only to be replaced by a militancy of spirit that is celebrated as devout submission.

    Critical thinking is abandoned in favour of academic prowess, and without realising it, indoctrination is readily believed to be higher education.

    All this leads to the subservient mindset that needs permission before choosing consciously, or seeks permission before thinking independently.

    That’s how cycles of abuse are maintained, and the unique contribution of the individual is seen as an offence against the collective.

    Everyone must know their place to uphold a power structure that reveres the powerful, while enslaving the minds of the masses.

    And that is how the masses, the average soul, grows to believe that unless they have permission to break the bleak and toxic cycles of their lives, they have no choice but to comply quietly for the greater good of society.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock

  • Live, and let die…

    Live, and let die…

    Sometimes, our setbacks in life can feel as if our world is coming to an end.

    In many ways, it does spell the end of a lifetime for us because we reach points where everything that we know to be true comes under question.

    Major life events like health issues that compromise our quality of life, divorce, death, or even losing a job all carry with it an impact that could easily derail all our hopes and dreams for the future.

    Choosing to hold on to the hurt, or the pain, or the sense of loss from such experiences doesn’t change the reality that it brought with it.

    Instead, holding on denies us the opportunity to grow from such experiences, and to continue to build that life that we set out to achieve.

    But what is there to learn from bad experiences?

    More than the lessons that it taught us about the shortcomings in decisions that we may have made, it is only in the presence of pain that the depth of joy can be appreciated.

    It is only through loss that we learn to appreciate what can be lost when we have it.

    When we experience loss or tragedy, or even disappointment and betrayal at the hands of others where we have no control over the outcomes despite our best efforts, we must recognise that it is a moment of grounding that will reshape what we take from life from that moment forward.

    If we’re not aware of the good that we can take, we will remain invested in the bitterness of the experience as we convince ourselves that remembering is the only way to protect ourselves from feeling such pain ever again.

    No. Remembering beyond the lesson learnt doesn’t protect us from such pain in future, it simply holds on to the pain of the past and denies us a future without it.

    Embrace the good, learn from the bad, and appreciate the present.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock

  • What is forgiveness about anyway?

    What is forgiveness about anyway?

    If there is one piece of advice that will help you through the worst of times, this is it.

    Internalise this, connect with it, make it your mantra if you must, but understand that forgiveness on its own, without acceptance, will leave you yearning for retribution or justice.

    Acceptance is more important than forgiveness, because once we’ve accepted the reality of what is, forgiveness loses relevance.

    Accepting things becomes easier when we seek to understand rather than to judge why someone may have treated us badly, or betrayed our trust.

    Immediately, the focus is about their weakness and not our significance.

    When we learn to accept that people’s actions are a reflection of who they are more than it is about what we mean to them, we’ll have less of a need for forgiveness.

    Peace is not possible without acceptance, and acceptance completes the act of forgiving.

    Don’t only focus on forgiveness, because our need to forgive is driven by a belief that we were the deliberate target of the demons of others.

    Understanding their reasons for behaving the way that they did will confirm if forgiveness is warranted, or if understanding is what holds the secret to the peace that we seek.

  • Two rules for life

    Two rules for life

    There are two rules that I wish more people would apply in their lives.

    Rules that will result in more sincerity and less hypocrisy.

    More trust, less betrayal.

    More wholesome relationships, less infidelity and betrayal.

    The two rules are simple.

    Firstly, don’t exhaust yourself explaining your behaviour to people who don’t matter. This not only gives you a false sense of your significance when they pretend to listen, it also gives them a false sense of significance in your life when they believe that you’re explaiming yourself because they matter to you.

    Secondly, when choosing who matters, be sure that you’re doing it based on who really matters to you. They must be consequential to your happiness and sense of belonging in this world. If not, you’ll surround yourself with anyone and everyone that you want must care, because you need to fill the void of human connection in your life.

    Sometimes we think that by being polite we’re treating others with respect. However, when that polite attitude leads people to believe that they’re significant when they’re not, it causes more hurt and betrayal when they realise that you were just being polite, rather than sincere.

    That’s how being insincere to avoid hurting someone’s feelings causes more hurt than you would’ve caused had you been honest and sincere in the first place. .

    Be sincere, always. Even if it means that you will be unpopular for that moment.

    That moment of unpopularity could save you and others from a lifetime of disappointment and pain.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock

  • Take stock, and reconnect

    Take stock, and reconnect

    Stepping back and taking stock requires more than just an arrest of the ego.

    It requires a desire to return to a point of sincerity and authenticity in our lives when we were filled with hope about the future, after finding ourselves filled with a longing for the past instead.

    Arresting the ego becomes easier if we believe that what we stand to gain is more valuable than having to swallow our pride.

    But sometimes, pride is all that defines us.

    If you find yourself in that space, know that you’ve abandoned your true self in favour of how you wish to be perceived by others.

    Sometimes, pride pushes us to follow through on a bad decision because it sucks to give our enemies something to mock us about.

    You know what sucks more?

    Living a crappy life because you didn’t want to give your enemies a single moment to mock a bad decision.

    Own Your Shit. Own Your Life.

  • The hypocrisy of self-loathing

    The hypocrisy of self-loathing

    The most toxic plague in the human condition is that of demanding kindness while withholding it.

    I watch with morbid curiosity the volumes of memes and quotes shared by many in which we are reminded to treat everyone with kindness because we never know what struggles they are enduring. Yet, those same people are waiting for such kindness to be shown to them before they are willing to share the same with those around them.

    It’s not as complicated as it sounds. Everyone wants to claim victim-hood, but no one wants to accept that they’re oppressors. We all believe that we’re justified in our harsh treatment of others, or in withholding our gentleness from fear of being taken for granted. It’s that same sense of justification that leads us to experience cruelty or callousness at the hands of those we wish would treat us with significance.

    But we don’t want to see in ourselves what we despise in others, because we can’t be held responsible for the vile behaviour that we display, because you know, we’re too angelic for that. So it must be because someone else made us that way.

    This life is replete with people demanding justice but denying the rights of those around them. People crying for compassion while treating with contempt those who hold them to a higher standard. People who remind others of what kindness looks like, while treating harshly anyone who disagrees with them or calls them out for their double standards.

    Life takes on burdensome tones and vapid outcomes when we try to live by a code that is not shared by those we hold dear. My idealism dictates that we must remain true to ourselves or else we risk becoming the very contaminant that leaves us feeling used and discarded. But idealism has exhausted my soul more than any other investment of myself in the lives of others.

    Idealism is what courts with madness when my ideals are seen as naive or foolish in the face of the disappearing humanness around me. My madness, however, has never been a cause for the concern of another. When it rears its head, I am quickly discarded. When it is tamed, I am superficially celebrated.

    It’s that superficiality that grates away at my reserves. The very fragile reserves that I have to pull me through another tiresome day lacking in warmth, understanding, or even a mildly sincere embrace.

    Window shopping rarely reveals the reality of the purchase. We dress ourselves up to appear as wholesome or as nonchalant as we’d have others believe we are, until they reach in to touch the essence that lies beneath that window dressing, not realising that what they caress beneath that facade is in fact the rawness of our self-loathing.

    It’s that self-loathing that is revealed in our harsh treatment of others. Our cold, callous ways towards those who would draw us closer out of love, not realising the we don’t know how to return such love. Rather than appear incompetent or lacking, we strike at them with feigned confidence and a dispassionate smile, subtly telling them to get lost while smiling sweetly as if to promise them a beautiful trip when they decide to undertake that journey. That journey of leaving us alone.

    What self-loathing doesn’t do is it doesn’t allow us the space to realise that when we despise in ourselves what others admire, we don’t only reject ourselves, we invalidate their love for us as well. And that invalidation leaves them questioning their worth, spawning within them the same self-loathing that we hold within. Thus, paying forward a harshness while reminding the world to treat us with kindness.

    The hypocrisy of self-loathing is a source of destruction that will forever be ignored, because our pity for our pathetic condition will forever convince us that the courage it took for another to see in us what no one saw in them is merely their misplaced investment in something that doesn’t exist. Perhaps it’s just their need to convince someone to see in them what they need to have seen.

    It’s a circle-jerk of epic proportions. And those who break that circle are ridiculed in moments of ease, but desperately sought out in moments of pain. And as soon as the pain passes, that misplaced confidence once more convinces us that they’re just reading too much into everything, or that they just don’t know how to have fun. Or they’re among those who take life too seriously.

    At least that’s what the delusional tell themselves in their efforts to justify their abdication of the responsibility that they have in destroying the self-esteem of those who once loved them. The world is lacking in compassion and understanding because of our self-loathing, not because of the cruelty of a few.

    As I’ve said before, the less human we feel, the more inhumane we behave. Those who view themselves with contempt have caused more pain than any other I’ve ever observed.

  • A healthy self esteem is the greatest gift

    A healthy self esteem is the greatest gift

    I believe that the greatest gift we can give our children is a healthy self-esteem.

    Without it, they’ll seek affirmation from the worst sources in their quest to feel appreciated.

    The greatest skill they can acquire is that of observation, which in turn, develops their critical thinking skills.

    Without it, they’ll struggle to tell truth from falsehood, sincerity from insincerity, and reality from deception.

    The greatest characteristic would be modesty. Because when modesty is gone, we can do as we please because the consequences have no bearing on our conscience and renders dignity and self respect irrelevant.

    This is important…especially in light of the masses of failed adults that have abandoned their responsibilities towards their children and their families.

    We have failed humanity, which is why this world is in the disastrous state that it’s in.

    The only way to change it is to make sure that we don’t pass the failings of our generation onto the next generation.

    If you’re reading this, I hope you’re doing right by your family first, and then your extended family, and then society.

    If not, today is a good day to start.

    #mentoring