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  • Don’t dance with the devil

    Don’t dance with the devil

    The devil lives in our doubts, and our demons thrive in our fears.

    What we take from life leaves us filled with hope, or ridden with fear.

    But because it’s what we take from it that matters, we can always revisit a memory or an experience and find something more wholesome to take from it.

    While we cannot change the past, we most certainly can change how it shapes us, and our relationships with those around us.

    The most common reason for not wanting to explore a fresh perspective of our past is because we need those doubts and fears to convince us never to expose ourselves to such experiences again.

    It’s got nothing to do with questioning our abilities, and everything to do with avoiding disappointment or pain. Because while we may know without a doubt that we’re capable of achieving something great, we’ll avoid even attempting it because of the possibility of the devastation of it being rejected or taken for granted by others.

    Don’t entertain the devil, and don’t surrender to your demons.

    Life awaits.

    Photo credit :Adobe Stock


  • Master patience

    Master patience

    Remembering to hold on to hope, and to abandon my expectations of others has always been my saving grace for my sanity and my dignity.

    Expectations, whether legitimate or not, are rooted in a sense of entitlement to receive what we need from others.

    Expectations are key to a healthy relationship, because when we can trust another to fulfil our expectations from them, it nurtures the bond that exists between us. Provided, of course, that such trust is mutual.

    However, if we’re not aware of our level of expectation and why we want it to be fulfilled by that specific other, we’ll become distracted by the feelings of betrayal should they fall short of our expectations.

    Worse still, when we’re unaware of the level of expectations that we have from those who are not in our circle of significant others, every acquaintance and every stranger is given power over our emotional state.

    Their failure to live up to our expectations feels like betrayal because entitlement is that unwritten social contract that convinces us that we deserve something from another, even if they may not be aware of it.

    If the relationship is important, switch to hope and continue to contribute as best as you can. Hope is grounded in the belief that they are capable of being better than who they are in that moment, but understanding that whatever is troubling or distracting them is what they need to first rise above before they can show up the way that we want them to.

    Expectations, and entitlement, is reflective of our needs, which when fulfilled, convinces us that we’re significant. Hence the anger or bitterness, or depression that sets in when our expectations are frequently taken for granted, making patience difficult to muster.

    Hope is the nourishment of patience, while expectation is the enemy of patience. So when you find yourself being impatient, check your expectations and consider embracing hope instead.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock



  • A brain dump

    A brain dump

    Some find solace as the years progress. Some find love. Some find an emptiness where space was once held in hope for a significant other. My contemplations of which applies to me hold no sway any longer.

    Writing this post creates a delusion of its own. Although it could be interpreted as gratitude or reflection instead. Its true purpose and intent will always be hidden by the need of the moment. The need is seldom true to the act. Or is that the other way around?

    A brain dump is supposed to offload that which is clutter and of little value to hold on to. It’s supposed to create space for peace and calm, while ridding me of the noise of busyness and inconsequence. It does neither tonight.

    Tonight it serves as a search for truth. A search for discerning between illusions, delusions, and reality. It’s a tiresome search. To know sincerity from pretence, value from utility, acceptance from tolerance, or love from contempt. The guarded are always the most painful to navigate, and the most expensive to maintain.

    In contemplating all of this, I find the fight slowly leaving my soul. This time, seeking to know the difference between wisdom and surrender threatens to disembowel a fragile peace that has accompanied my soul through the storms, until now. But its fragility grows meek and is left wanting in the face of fresh onslaughts.

    The battle for sanity, or for space grows tedious. That it is a battle at all is telling in itself. What should be a natural state of calm, accentuated on occasion by disruption, is reversed. The calm only visits in isolation, and isolation leaves a disruption in my soul. Peace finding no place in either, isolation or association.

    At times, it feels like life has been a perpetual midlife crisis. That constant search for purpose, or to reconnect with moments past. The questioning of direction, and the conundrum of what action would be most beneficial towards the fluid goals that suggest an abatement in the storm. Drop the mid from midlife and suddenly the scene is much more accurately described.

    Are lighthouses ever decommissioned – wilfully decommissioned to allow it a period of graceful rest before its ultimate fall? Or is it expected to serve until it finally succumbs to the erosion of the lifelong yelping of the waves at its feet? No one tries to calm the waves, or to cause the shore to recede. But those who notice share a passing politeness as a token gesture of appreciation for the guiding beacon that is offered.

    In many ways, I’ve often felt like a road sign. That critical point at which informed decisions are made by those who encounter it, but whose decisions always lead them away from it. Beyond the lighthouse, I think this is a metaphor that most accurately resonates with the life crisis that I’ve endured. But like lighthouses, road signs are also never willingly decommissioned, except when they become redundant. Otherwise, they’re left to their own devices for as long as they serve a purpose until eventually being replaced with a more purposeful one.

    There’s a haunting irony in awakening the soul to the reality that surrounds. While it raises attention to the ephemeral nature of life and love, prompting one to appreciate with intensity its beauty before it passes, it also awakens one to the cold faces of the oblivious. The empty hugs, and empty stares. The vacuous efforts at validation and the consumerist indulgences of privilege. Leaving no human contact behind. Only human consumption.

    Some exhaust themselves in wishing for times passed. Others deplete their resources in trying to capture the present moment. But many, like me, are in search of the fast-forward button to bring this charade to a final and quiet end.

    No more chasing.

    No more hoping.

    No more wanting.

    No more needing.

    The end of expectation and the arrival of certainty.

    It seems I have yet to earn the acquisition of such mercy. To know with certainty that you are seen. That you are heard. That you are loved. Not because of what they can get from you, but because of who you are beyond social standing, or relative placement in their lives. Expecting this from the oblivious is nothing more than self-harm. But trying to subdue such expectations is nothing more than an effort at being inhuman.

    Perhaps in that lies the ultimate conundrum. Seeking to connect with your humanness so that once you do, you are left with the desolate scape of solitude as you realise that there are no humans looking to connect with your humanness. It’s like flipping the big switch that turns on every fascination of a world harbouring untold beauty, but being rooted to the spot perfectly positioned to only see but not touch such beauty.

    The fight is slowly leaving my soul. And with each passing moment, the reality that it doesn’t matter, not now, never before, nor ever, is destroying every romantic notion I’ve ever embraced. The tree that falls silently in the forest disrupts no lives.

  • Destroying the one we love

    Destroying the one we love

    When we look at ourselves with harshness or pity, we find reason to protect ourselves and others from what we see.

    We convince ourselves that we are a burden or a curse to those who deserve better than what we have to offer.

    Or, we convince ourselves that we won’t be able to bear them leaving, so we prevent them from getting close.

    But in so doing, we prevent ourselves from seeing in us what they may love about us.

    That’s when we reject them while believing that we’re only protecting them.

    It’s this self-loathing, or even this need to protect ourselves from being hurt by avoiding attachment that we cause the greatest hurt.

    The most troubled souls that I’ve encountered have been ones who yearned for emotional attachment with significant others that were emotionally inaccessible.

    When we protect others from ourselves, or we protect ourselves from others getting too close, we deny them access to our emotional space that may complete them, and vice versa.

    It is our entrusting to another the fragile parts of our soul that makes us feel human, or appreciated, or significant when they honour that trust in return.

    We only feel like we matter when we are not only loved by those we love, but by being allowed to love them in a way that is uniquely our expression of love for them.

    Anything less feels incomplete at best, and a betrayal at worst. Thus, some of the best intentions have resulted in the deepest cuts.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock

  • Claim your humanness

    Claim your humanness

    My daughter looked quite distressed when she asked me this question over the weekend.

    “What drives people to be so cruel to animals, like skinning them alive, or abusing them for profits?”

    The first thought that came to mind was this. We only lose our humanity when we feel less than human.

    The truth is, we only lose our humanity when we believe that we are defined by what happened to us, rather than what our choices were in response to those trials of life.

    Watching her grappling with the reality of who she is versus how others have treated her and betrayed her trust in her short life is grounding me in ways that I never thought possible.

    I swayed from anger at not knowing how to be there for her, to self-pity for not being a good enough parent, to a quiet albeit sad patience, knowing that all I can do is allow her the space to come to terms with the harshness of life in a way that makes sense to her.

    As her father, I fear that she may outgrow me in the process, which stirs up the self-pity and anger, but just as soon, I regain my composure knowing that by giving in to either, I will only create a self-fulfilling prophecy if I insist on inserting myself into this precarious space in which she finds herself.

    So my test in her test is to be consistent and available while she finds her way through it.

    The struggle of single parenting is grossly underrated.

    And the struggle of a single father raising a daughter even more so underrated.

    Through it all, there was another battle just beneath the surface of the ones that I thought were important. That is, the battle to claim my humanness in the face of exactly the same kinds of betrayals and cruelty that I had faced, which are echoed in the struggles that taunt her.

    And it’s through recognising this deeper battle within that I realised the root of my anger and self-pity. It is the need to have my sincerity and effort accepted by one I hold dear, so that the lessons learnt at the hands of brutes and hypocrites will allow me to give that which I did not receive.

    Also, it is my need to protect her from the demons that have so often derailed my efforts in life. I want to protect her from that which ravaged me when I was her age.

    But I can’t. No one can save us from the journey that we must take to discover the beauty of who we are.

    The only thing we can do is remind them that giving up midway through that journey is never worth it. Because once you emerge from the other side, there is a depth and breadth to your humanness that would otherwise have escaped you, and would have left you empty and wanting in your efforts to connect with the beauty around you.

    The irony being that the depth and breadth that is discovered further isolates you from those who distracted themselves through that journey, rather than embraced the pain and the education that it offered.

    A beautiful patience and a courageous perseverance is needed to hold on to your humanness in an inhumane world.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock

  • Pause…

    Pause…

    Sometimes, when the cacophony of crap crowds your head, you need to remember to pause for long enough to give it a chance to find the door.

    I often have to remind myself about what I need to stop doing, rather than what I need to actively resolve.

    Some things increase in intensity and complexity the more we try to fix it.

    It’s those moments where we let go and trust that each person involved in our lives have their own will to find peace.

    By constantly trying to lead them to that peace, we redirect attention to our efforts rather than that goal, and that is how we cause them to be defensive or obstinate, rather than creating space for them to apply themselves without the pressure of expectations.

    Some say live and let live. I prefer to say live and let die…that which is not capable of sustaining its own toxic influence.

  • Be purposeful

    Be purposeful

    Be the one who acts with purpose and conviction, and leave greatness to take care of itself.

    The moment you’re focused on who you’re attracting, or how you appear to others, you’re distracted from your purpose.

    Be purposeful. And connect with the value of who you are and what you wish to create in the lives of those around you.

    The rest will find its own balance.

    And the need for control will disappear as you learn to trust in the benefit of living purposefully and with conviction.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock

  • Perspective rules

    Perspective rules

    Perspective defines our reality.

    Taking the worst from an experience doesn’t diminish the good that it contains. It simply denies us the benefit that is waiting to be experienced.

    The opposite being true too. Focusing on the benefit reduces the impact of the bad that we experienced.

    Maintaining a healthy balance between the two keeps us grounded. Going to either extreme leaves us flighty and whimsical, or burdened and morbid about the future.

    Moderation is key, and maintaining a practical perspective rather than one influenced by fear significantly reduces the stress that we experience in life.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock