Category: Random Thoughts

  • Prayer vs Life

    I’ve often thought of the difference between salaah and life as being similar to our experiences in the school assembly. When we were in school standing in the assembly area waiting for the principal to address us, I used to take comfort in the fact that I was among a crowd and therefore not the centre of attention. I didn’t really worry about the principal seeing my shirt hanging out of my pants, or my hair being dishevelled, or perhaps that I was chewing gum. But if for some reason the principal called out my name and asked me to go to the front and meet him at the podium, I would suddenly find myself in a panic stricken state straightening my shirt, neatening my hair and trying to get rid of the gum I was chewing. Suddenly, the need to comply with the behaviour and standards that he set for us became important, but only because I knew he was now looking directly at me, which meant I was no longer hidden by the crowd.

    That, to me, is the equivalent of our daily lives relative to the moments we take for salaah. While we’re going about our daily business, we’re among the crowd, distracted by the activities we’re chewing on and forgetting that our actions are still as visible as always to Allah, unlike the principal that could only ever focus on a single student at a time. But when we make salaah, if we do it consciously and not out of habit or ritual, we immediately become aware of the fact that we’re now specifically presenting ourselves to Allah and not just existing in Allah’s general presence (so to speak). But if we don’t see this difference in purpose and focus, it becomes difficult to feel different towards our connection with Allah in salaah compared to out of salaah. In other words, the chances of us contaminating our salaah with thoughts of the daily grind are that much higher.

    I think if we are able to hone our focus during salaah, we’ll find that your focus on the detail of life outside of salaah will also improve. I think such a shift in focus will lead to an overall improved disposition resulting in a more mindful existence where every action and every deed becomes an act of worship, not because we do it in Allah’s name, but because we will then be able to go beyond that simple realisation and in fact link our actions with our desired state in the hereafter.

    There is nothing that we do that doesn’t either bring us closer to Allah, or take us further away from Him. When we assume that there are some actions that are neutral in all this, that’s when we’ll find ourselves drifting away without realising it, until we’re jolted out of our complacency (usually because of a trial or tribulation that interrupts our daydream) before we realise that that supposedly harmless action or endeavour was in fact detrimental to our faith.

  • A Time Not So Long Ago

    There was a time when I considered engagement with others as being tantamount to the meaning and purpose of my life. I don’t any more, which is unsettling because as much as I don’t seem to yearn for it, I miss it as well. Ambivalence has never enjoyed my patronage because the indecision and discomfort it brings is repulsive.

    I always pride myself on being decisive, yet with age often comes many life experiences that either spawn wisdom or regret, and often both. In acquiring these assets, I often find that knowing more than before only highlights the abyss of ignorance that stares at me while I indulge in the seemingly noble endeavour of engaging with the hope of understanding.

    Understanding is an outcome that seldom accompanies debate these days. Perhaps my pointless circular debates with atheists have eroded my jadedness to the point of disillusion or perhaps even despair. Despair at the realisation that despite my greatest aspirations, or my most sincere efforts or intentions, arrogance will always triumph over knowledge. Arrogance breeds ignorance, and therefore it stands to reason that by extension, ignorance, in the end, will also obliterate knowledge.

    Another pointless post contemplating the purpose of life, the meaning of engaging with others, the goals of existence, and the irony of life. I feel clichéd. I feel as if my ability to contribute, to fight, to persuade, or even to influence, has been almost entirely expensed. That old familiar forgotten feeling of mental and emotional exhaustion lends its stench to my being again tonight.

    It appears I am becoming a bitter old soul after all. The brittleness of my being is all I  am able to share.

     

  • I Don’t Belong Here

    I don’t belong here. I belong in another place from another time. A time when struggles were filled with purpose, and a place where life was lived. My struggles these days seem hinged on survival, existence, garnished with a side portion of indulgence to keep the angst at bay. The fulfilment of purpose escapes me. I don’t see new opportunities any longer, I only see patterns and statistics. Everything has become painfully predictable taunting me with the doubts of what may have been inevitable, or what may have been a self-fulfilled prophecy.

    I look at the future and it appears to be a fractured reflection of the past. I see the faces around me that look to me for support and assurance, but all I can provide is dependability in its place. Optimism is tainted with reality. Hearing of the news of a fellow blogger (potentially) having committed suicide this week further deflated me. Seeing someone struggle with the same questions of purpose and sincerity, action and desire, life and death, suddenly succumbing to the despair of it all emphasises the gravity of what it is that I contemplate even when I’m dreaming.

    Everything is ephemeral, except reality. There is little that can bring comfort to a jaded soul. No, not jaded, tarnished and tainted. A soul that has found itself in the throes of realising that its life’s struggles have amounted to nought, and then some. This world was made for respite. I need to remind myself that this world was made for respite, not justice. I forget that at the times I need to remember it most. Respite, not justice.

    I need to trust in order to find reason to persevere, all the while knowing that such trust harbours nothing but betrayal. The cycles are almost perfectly formed. It’s only the players that keep changing. We embellish the distractions with superficial meaning trying to convince ourselves that it’s not the same routine. It always is.

     

  • South Africa, A Nation Under Siege

    We had a security incident at our home tonight. It was literally a minute before midnight when I was prodded out of bed by the sound of the siren for the electric fencing screaming. In typical fashion, I loitered, somewhat from being disorientated because I was in a deep sleep, and partially because it takes me some time to completely snap into crisis mode. I slowly worked through the process of switching on the outside lights, then getting my firearm out of the safe, and then making my way to the security gate that separates our bedrooms from the main living area of the house. In between I vaguely recall going to the bathroom first before finally making my way over to the back of the house to see what was happening.

    When I pushed my curtains back, I saw an owl that could easily have been almost two feet tall standing on the parapet of the outside room. I shone the torch straight at it, and it looked at me as if I was wrong for having electric fence. I suspected that the owl had tried to sit on the top strand of the fence but caused the two strands to short circuit because of its weight, resulting in the screeching siren in the middle of the night. But this is South Africa, so you’re an idiot that’s just asking for it if you don’t make sure that all is relatively safe before you step into your own back yard at that time of the night. So I waited patiently for the security company to send out a response vehicle before venturing outside. Unfortunately, due to a poor installation by a fly-by-night contractor who was an ex-cop, my control unit for the electric fence is located in the outside room with no direct access from inside the house. It’s also not wired up to the main alarm system, which means it gets armed and disarmed independently.

    A long 20 minutes later the security company arrived by which time the alarm had been screeching for almost half an hour. I expected to receive a call from the neighbours, but no such thing happened. Not even a light was switched on. But, this is South Africa, so we’re either immune to the sound of house alarms in the middle of the night, or we’re too afraid to get involved for fear of our lives.

    I did the walkabout around the house with the armed response guy and confirmed that the top strands had shorted. We sorted it out, I reset the electric fence, and it was back to being armed and ready to irritate again. Throughout this ordeal, my mother paced restlessly in her room in the cottage in my back yard, while my wife who is an American ex-pat got her first taste of the anxiety that South Africans have grown accustomed to. If it wasn’t for the two of them, I would not have given a second thought to the incident, but realising how it affected them reminded me of exactly what hell South Africans deal with on a daily basis. However, because there’s a constant threat to our safety, we’ve grown accustomed to living at a heightened level of stress and fear.

    At that moment, when the vulnerability showed on my wife’s face, something inside me cursed deeply. It cursed the corrupt government, the inept officials that lead the police force, and it cursed the arrogance of the likes of Nathi Mthetwa and his fallen comrades who were unceremoniously dismissed from their posts after finally being exposed as the corrupt thieves that they are. The average South African burns a significant portion of their monthly income on security related services and equipment just to feel ok, not safe. High walls, electric fence, armed response, firearms (if you’re fortunate enough to have been granted a license), satellite tracking, anti smash and grab window tinting, security spikes, security gates, and the list goes on. Until recently, even those inept police officers were getting their police stations guarded by private security companies, yet we have an arrogant minister and president that believes that South Africa is safe!

    I don’t quite care about the political correctness of this article, but under apartheid, at least we knew what we were dealing with. There was a sense of community and a sense of real safety in our neighbourhoods. The most drastic measures we ever had to take was to setup neighbourhood watch groups, and then also, it was manned by the teenage boys of the area because the threat was mainly to property and not to persons. The crime associated with property theft has grown increasingly violent and sadistic since 1994, and news reports on a daily basis proves that criminals are not only getting more creative in their efforts to terrorise people, but are also getting more brazen in their attacks on both private individuals and police officers alike. And all the while our incompetent minister continues wreaking of arrogance and incompetence, while proclaiming that the police are winning the fight against crime.

    Too many South Africans have grown complacent, and are still so stuck in the past that they fail to see the country rolling downhill as a dung ball gathering mass until it settles as a heap of manure at the bottom of the hill of progress, with a finely inscribed label made of the most extravagant materials saying ‘Failed State’. I hate what the ANC has done to this country, and every person that heaps unrestrained praise on the ANC-led government for how they’ve pulverised this country into a stink-hole of morbidity needs to have their IQ retested so that we can find a spot for them in a suitable institution. Hopefully for them funding for that institution won’t be cut because of yet another scandal of untold billions of rands having been squandered or simply unaccounted for.

    This is not what we protested for in 1976, nor what we protested for in 1984. This is not what I aspired to have as my quality of life in this country when I got my first job and started paying my taxes. We give idiots a soap box to spew racial filth disguised as affirmative action and then cry when we see senseless crimes being perpetrated. We’re focusing on rewriting history by spending billions on establishing monuments and renaming roads, highways and cities while law and order is having to be upheld by the citizens and private security industries of this country at the expense of the ordinary South African who still gets taxed on those security measures that are needed because government is not doing its job to protect its citizens. It’s ludicrous!

    There are exceptions to every rule, and that is what is shameful about South Africa. The exceptions are all that’s left in the offices of public service while the norm is to deploy overpaid fat cat cadres to do the jobs of real public servants. While I’m fully aware and I acknowledge the presence of some level of competence in the public offices of this country, without which we would have arrived at the bottom of that proverbial hill already, but just because we have a semblance of competence in isolated areas of government in no way provides justification for the continued presence in office of a largely corrupt and incompetent government. We need change and we need it soon, and waiting for people with weak zips and dripping shower heads to provide that change is tantamount to signing your own death warrant. They’re too incompetent to even run their personal affairs with dignity, so how on earth are they ever going to be capable of maintaining the dignity of the ordinary South African?

  • Incoherent Ramblings

    For the last few days I’ve  been typing out posts and deleting them. I question the value of what I share these days and wonder how much of it really matters, or am I just adding to the clutter? I scroll through my dashboards and feel guilty for not having the presence of mind nor the attention span to read through anything that is longer than just a few lines. So I wonder how many others feel the same way when they see my ramblings appear on their dash.

    Most of life is just drivel anyway. All the distractions that I keep trying to unravel mostly ends up being inconsequential but because I applied so much effort in the process, I feel compelled, if not obliged to give it significance. I’ve been unusually productive, yet somewhat sullen at work recently, but my sarcasm is usually enough to distract anyone from noticing the mind-space I’m in. People have grown to expect nothing less from me, except when they’re in need of advice, at which point I’m expected to assume the role of Yoda.

    My rambles are growing increasingly incoherent. My mind is foggy and words…well, words seem to be just words these days. They no longer give life to thoughts, or conjure images of amazement or beauty. They’re just words that share a thought but fail to connect. Connect.

    The landscape of my mind is somewhat desolate right now. Affirmation lacks any comfort when I feel undeserving of it. The energy required to share my thoughts this morning is more than I can muster right now. This effort is draining me instead of providing release. It only re-emphasises the space where passion once resided.

    Perhaps tomorrow will hold more promise.

  • Is this the real life…

    I’ve been faced with a daunting realisation these last few days. Perhaps I’m not so average after all. I’m not better, nor am I worse, but I’m starting to realise that I’m probably just fundamentally different. This may sound like a romantic notion to some, but to me this is potentially life altering. The reason it has such an impact on me is because it calls to question every observation or piece of advice that I ever offered anyone. If my disposition and point of departure is so significantly different from most others, it means that my criticisms and insights are distinctly biased and potentially useless for most of the people that I ever engage with.

    These are troubling thoughts for someone that has found much comfort in being able to offer advice to others so that they may avoid the mistakes that I’ve made. But this realisation now suggests that my mistakes are not likely to be repeated by others because I am not part of the normal crowd. I guess in many ways I’ve been resisting this realisation all my life. I’ve thought of myself as normal but different. Now I just think I’m different, and I’m not sure I grasp the concept of normal at all. I doubt I ever did.

    My ability to detach my emotions from reason is a quirk not appreciated by most. It helps in times of crisis, but it causes me to look distinctly uninterested and often annoyed when others are freaking out while I fail to see a reason to freak out just yet. Given that most people don’t live in true crisis mode all the time, it makes this skill of mine somewhat tedious to deal with. And surrounding myself with people that are in fact living in crisis mode continually will just drain the last drop of optimism from my gut. So I guess I’m in limbo.

    Silence is the only comfort I seem to enjoy these days. Everything else demands a presence of mind and a demand of my attention that has become quite an effort. I’m distracted most of the time with thoughts of…everything. What was, what is, what might be, what might not be, what could have been, what should have been, what I’m glad hasn’t been, and it goes on. It goes on painfully and tediously. But through it all I’ve managed to remain somewhat functional and able to offer some purpose in my presence. The more I experience, the more jaded is my response to life.

    Is this what a mid-life crisis feels like? No, it can’t be. If it were, it would negate the realisation that prompted this post to begin with. I look at others my age and I struggle to relate to their frame of mind. In some ways I relate to the mind set of those 15 years my junior, but I find myself at odds with how they approach their sense of purpose in  life. I’m disjointed from society, from the community, and often from my family. But I’ve been revelling in that disjointedness until now under the misconception of it having been a valuable skill that allowed me to view the world with a fresh perspective.

    Who was I fooling all this time? I’m cynically jaded. There is no fresh perspectives for a jaded one. Suddenly Bohemian Rhapsody is mocking me.

  • Compassion Fatigue

    Hearing the news about a mosque burning down in the US doesn’t evoke as strong a response as it should. Muslims around the world have become so accustomed to hearing news of such atrocities being carried out against their fellow brethren that even a drone strike on innocent civilians prompts nothing more than a woeful sigh, a shake of the head, sometimes accompanied by a muttered prayer, and often a curse for the aggressors.

    It’s the downside of being human. Our ability to adapt and cope dictates that our tolerance levels will rise each time we experience something despicable. This implies that we’ll shrug our shoulders to heinous crimes that we’ve accepted we cannot prevent or avenge in any way, and so we distract ourselves with much more menial issues to compensate for the helplessness that we feel in other areas of grave concern. But this never lasts forever. At some point we realise that what doesn’t kill us doesn’t make us stronger, but in fact, it only makes us more tolerant, to a point.

    There’s another effect that is often overlooked when people so dreamily proclaim that same cliche. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. No it doesn’t. It starts something in you that grows as long as your capacity and tolerance for it can harbour it until eventually you reach breaking point and suddenly realise that it never made you stronger to begin with. It only made you brittle. With each incident that wears away at your dignity and security, you practice tolerance and patience, but until the underlying tension is addressed, you become more brittle each day until eventually you lose any flexibilty and give way to the extremist that lurks in everyone. But at that point, no one is able to witness the horrors and taunts that preceded that final straw, so instead of understanding that the victim has finally lashed out, they become the victims and accuse you of unwarranted aggression instead.

    Perspective. Context. Understanding. It’s been a while since I witnessed their inclusion in any rational debate about being human, or about human rights and dignity.

  • You and your wife seem like wonderful people. My questions are: have you lived in South Africa your whole life? What's it like? Which important life experiences shaped you into person you are today?

    Thank you…I’ll definitely pass on the compliment. 🙂

    I’ve lived in SA my entire life, with two short stints living abroad as well. I spent a year in Saudi and 6 months in Tunisia. South Africa is often under estimated, over simplified, and grossly misunderstood. It’s beautiful and horrible at the same time. We spend an insane amount of money on personal safety, but still have a generally good quality of life. Personal freedoms are usually respected, including religious, political and philosophical differences.

    I guess the most prominent life experiences that come to mind would include my extremely dysfunctional relationship with my father. It forced me to be independently minded, and made me realise that horrible labels and condescending names didn’t define who I am. So I was forced to realise at an early age that my life was up to me to shape, because I never received any hand-ups or hand outs from him or anyone else. 

    The death of my first wife was a turning point for me as well. It forced me to look at life differently, and for the first time, despite my isolated childhood, I realised exactly how alone we are in this world, and how temporary everything is. 

    There’s a number of other incidents that have left some beautiful scars in my life, but they’re too numerous to mention here. I generally shy away from talking too much about the challenges I’ve faced because it generally solicits the same response from people which is this glazed disbelieving look of ‘yeah right’. But I’m not one to overly embellish a life experience in search of sympathy, so that’s why I prefer to share just selected details about my life experiences because most people think I’ve just got an over active imagination in my search for attention.