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  • The Lonely Path

    The Lonely Path

    There is comfort in being in a space unoccupied by others. The plague of clichés and the clutter of egos take up residence in crowded spaces. Blending into the crowd always threatened my sanity. Living up to an expectation set against a standard that I don’t subscribe to will always result in disappointment for the one that holds such expectation. Sadly, the fulfilment of our expectations defines the sense of significance for too many.

    A simple but defining realisation dawned on me in recent months. There is a conflict of sentiment in encouraging others to own their life. To pursue a path that is unique to what they yearn to see realised in this world places a burden on their shoulders that most are unwilling to bear. It’s much easier to talk about the change that is needed but to recede from the battlefield when the time to act arrives is even easier. Leading the charge against complacency is never a popular role to take.

    Spectators are the armchair critics of life. The back seat drivers, or the wall flowers. They observe the most, analyse the most, criticise the most, and do the least. But their time spent gathering information about everything that is wrong positions them well to be the first to point out the shortcomings of those that choose to go to battle. Through nothing more than the momentum contained in their numbers, they become the opinion makers and the advisors, much like the politicians that send everyone else’s children to fight wars that are created around boardroom tables.

    The odds are stacked against the ones that set out to make things better. Gaining critical mass for positive change amongst a mass of critics is beyond daunting. It requires a healthy dose of tenacity, resilience, and a dollop of manipulation. The populist leader however chooses to have a healthy dose of manipulation and nothing more. Offer incremental change and deliver only a fraction of it, and the history books will celebrate you for generations to come. All you need to do is give people reason to believe that they were part of a movement that made them feel better about not making progress in life, and then release them to go back into the dreary cycle of their lives.

    It’s easy to see why the path of leadership, authentic leadership is a lonely one, especially when you consider that leading does not require a vocal following. It doesn’t even require a conscious one. I once heard that the definition of leadership is to do more than is expected of you. This makes so many sincere contributors leaders despite them feeling like nothing more than burden-bearers.

    Step up to take up the slack of the slackers and automatically you take a lead role. Fill the parenting void of absent parents and you become a role model. Assume responsibility for an outcome that everyone needs but no one wishes to own, and you become a rebel. Speak out loud what you know everyone else is thinking but would never utter from fear of inheriting responsibility, and you become the abrasive protestor. The fly in the ointment, or the pain in the butt. Good intention makes no difference. The moment you choose to improve the quality of your life or the life of those around you, prepare to be judged because in stepping up, we automatically make visible those that are sitting down.

    It’s that easy to start out on the lonely path of leadership. Not pseudo-leadership that needs a title or a declaration to be established. True leadership. The one inspired by the struggle of the common man, or the aspiration of the unknown dreamer. That is the lonely path, because if everyone recognised the importance of the change that is needed, change would not be needed. Natural progression would happen without disruption. The human condition would improve as a natural consequence of commonly-held values that are actually valued. But they don’t value the values that they profess to uphold. Unless they are the designated leader, it’s not their job to care.

    So it rests on the shoulders of the restless ones among us. The ones that see the value of progress and can’t rest until it is realised. The ones that see the gaps and fill it with contributions that uplift the weary souls, or the under resourced. The ones who act, in spite of the critics and the knowledge that they will likely be damned before they are appreciated, let alone celebrated. They are the ones on that lonely path. Despite this, they are also the ones that are most likely to stop and offer a hand to the one whose lethargy finally saw them fall foul of the same system that they once coveted.

    Companionship is rare on this path. By implication of their nature, compensating for the selfish embrace of the other is simply a matter of course. Realising that your restlessness is likely to threaten rather than attract the ones that it is intended to uplift, living a life of restrained expression becomes second nature. The smile that never reaches the eyes, or the embrace that feels comforting but is rarely reciprocated are easily overlooked in the haste that accompanies the indulgence of the distracted.

    [This is an incomplete thought process…]

  • When an act of charity becomes business

    When an act of charity becomes business

    If I do good, it will come back to me in unexpected ways. No. It won’t. The streets are full of homeless bodies and souls that have done good, but it wasn’t returned. Or are we suggesting that those that are in a bad state have done no good? This transactional view of life is becoming more popular each day, and it does nothing good for the one that holds this view.

    We do good because we want others to experience less hardship than we did, not because we want to be repaid in some way with another good. Well, at least that is why we should be doing good. Not to earn a reward, but to reduce someone else’s pain or suffering, or simply to enrich their life. If enough people do this, inevitably it will lead to someone doing good for you as they seek to enrich your life out of sincerity, or they may wish to alleviate your burden because they know what it is like to be in a similar position when they may have had less. But that is something that we have no control over. The way that cycle of paying it forward plays out is entirely dependent on the generosity of every soul involved in that cycle. It is not business. It is not a tit-for-tat exchange of deeds. The moment it becomes an expectation of receiving something in return for what you do, you are transacting for gain. That is not charity, nor is it generosity. It is self-serving.

    The selfish motivations that prompts us to give charity so that we can be seen as charitable, or doing good so that we can be seen as benevolent is nothing more than food for the ego, not for the soul. And it’s a poisonous meal as well. Eventually we will find ourselves measuring the value of people in our lives based on what they do for us, rather than how they enrich our lives. The sad part is that most don’t know the difference.

    When someone enriches your life, they don’t necessarily contribute directly to your personal needs, but they make a meaningful contribution to how you experience your world. A simple example would be a spouse or family member that expresses love and appreciation for your children. That is not something that replaces your contribution to your children, but it is something that improves your child’s self-worth. That in turn improves the quality of life that you have with them. Although their act of kindness was not directed at you, it enriched your life, so you should not have reason to withhold kindness from them.

    The irony is that the ones that perpetuate this myth about the universe returning the good that you do are the same ones that would typically believe that integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is looking. While that may be true about the definition of integrity, it loses its authenticity when we find reason to shout out to the world how much integrity we have.

    One lesson that has served me well in life is that you should always be weary of someone that finds every gap to mention their own virtues. They are looking for validation, and people that require validation that badly almost always compromise principles and values to get it. Such people will not think twice about betraying your trust or confidence if it means getting that validation from others. Choose your company carefully.

  • Celebrate Life

    Celebrate Life

    It’s that time of the year when everyone is talking about resolutions for change in their lives, and many are judging me for not giving a damn about the fuss. Don’t click away yet. This is not a rant or a pity party. It’s a genuine attempt to offer you an alternate perspective on all of this.

    It’s easy to assume that I’m jaded for not feeling festive in the festive season, or for not counting down the seconds to the new year. But I’m not jaded. In fact, I’d like to argue that people who do celebrate such token events are in fact the jaded ones. No, really, read on before dismissing this.

    There are two ways of considering what it means to be jaded. The first and more common view is someone that finds little reason to celebrate life. The other view suggests that it is someone that sticks to routine from fear of facing the unknown. I’m neither. But most of you are either one or both. Here’s why.

    Routine is not only a daily thing. It’s any cycle that is fixed. So when you plan your life around these fixed cycles, you lose spontaneity, and you lose creativity, both of which are core to living with passion. So when you wait for an occasion to present itself before you celebrate life, you’re in a routine. You wait for birthdays before making someone feel special, or you wait for new year’s day before declaring your desire to improve your life.

    What if you didn’t wait. What if you didn’t live long enough for the next occasion that you were planning to celebrate? What then? The unexpected gift, to others or to yourself, is far more intriguing and appreciated than the gift planned for a year in advance. The sense of entitlement and the sense of disappointment that goes with a specific occasion when it is celebrated or forgotten respectively, undermines good relationships, and wastes a good life.

    The fact that the majority of celebrated occasions are simply token dates marked on a calendar without any substance further confirms its superficial nature. Go out of your way to break the routine and show your sincerity in a deliberate act of appreciation or gratitude, and not one prompted by a calendar reminder, and see how much deeper your connection with people will be.

    Celebrate because you have privileges and options that you take for granted every other day. Celebrate because you felt heartened by an unexpected gesture or a sense of good fortune. Celebrate because you have excess that you can share with others. If you’re reading this, then celebrate because you have more than probably 60% of the world’s population.

    Waiting for someone to give you permission to celebrate the good in your life is no different to waiting for a specific date before acknowledging the gift of someone in your life. Be spontaneous. Be sincere. Just don’t be shallow and follow the herd.

    Who’s jaded now?

  • The Arrogance of Forgiveness

    The Arrogance of Forgiveness

    My naivety has often led to prickly situations that didn’t end well. Sometimes the prickiness of the situation resulted in the loss of what I assumed to be a heartwarming friendship. But the thing about conviction is that it makes it impossible to withdraw an unpopular sentiment in order to preserve the illusion of friendship, or any relationship for that matter. I refer to it as an illusion because once its true nature is revealed, we discover that what we held dear was simply a perception that we courted, and not a substance shared by another.

    Naivety in this case is the belief that if we saw value in our relationship with someone, then they surely must appreciate the same value in return. This is seldom true because it dictates that the experience and the benefit derived from that relationship is equal for both parties. The reality is closer to the fact that one party is more invested in the relationship than the other. While one is anticipating an enduring endearment, the other may be considering a quick exit. One is naively trusting while the other is naively suspicious. And that’s how relationships break down.

    The trusting think nothing of testing sincerity because they do not want to be treated with such suspicion in return, and the suspicious look for evidence of sincerity because their trusting nature was once the cause of their fall from grace. Unfortunately, we are more likely to project on future relationships the lessons learnt from failures than we are to anticipate the beauty that we may have once experienced.

    The frailty of human nature is such that we see fit to defend ourselves from potential harm before we are inclined to embrace potential benefit. Some assume this to be our instinct for self-preservation, but I disagree. I think it’s simply the result of insecurity grounded in the belief that we are only capable of being broken so many times before it will be impossible to put us back together again. Resilience is a choice, not a limited resource, and therefore we choose to protect ourselves from a self-imposed limitation rather than a real threat.

    We reduce our capacity to deal with adversity when we live in fear of the future. When we eventually realise that we are gripped by fear more than we are optimistic about the future, it inevitably leads us down a path of introspection in our efforts to determine where we gave up the desire to live joyfully.

    Such introspection inevitably leads to recollections of failed relationships and our expectations that were betrayed in the process. The bitterness or disappointment that ensued became the burden that we nurtured to dress our wounds as we focused on our failed expectations rather than the personal demons that led others to betray the trust that we so willingly gave them.

    When we reach that point, there is no shortage of people who will advise us to forgive the betrayer, or to forgive ourselves so that we can move on. And because that sounds like great advice, we take it. Along with taking the advice, we also take the assumption of innocence and benevolence that we are gracious enough to forgive which implicitly implies that we are better than them. We are the aggrieved and they were the aggressors. While that may hold true in a court of law, it is far from true in the reality that presented itself.

    The arrogance of forgiveness lies in the assumption that we are morally superior and therefore bestow our forgiveness on those that have wronged us. Were we as repentant to those that we may have wronged in the past, or were we also then focused on justifying our suspicion or anger to explain why we behaved in ways that warranted the forgiveness of others?

    While the act of forgiveness itself has merit in our efforts to redress the past, we cannot afford to lose sight of the entitlement to moral superiority that it endows on those that are more inclined to justify their own behaviour in the face of someone else’s failure. Acceptance and a desire to understand is infinitely more grounding than forgiveness ever will be. Acceptance and understanding do not imply condoning the offensive or hurtful behaviour, but it allows us to see the human behind the weakness, or the pain behind the anger.

    Forgiveness shifts our focus to our sense of benevolence and risks replacing the humility we experienced in betrayal with the arrogance of assuming that we are better than those who betrayed us. As the old adage goes, to err is human, to forgive, divine. When you assume the station of divinity, you automatically assume that you are above being human. If you must forgive, then be sure to recount all the times that you did not go in search of the forgiveness of those whom you have wronged through the years.

  • Public Service Announcement

    Public Service Announcement

    After the successful release of my first book, I realised that I need to consolidate my online presence. But first, I’d like to express my sincere appreciation for your support and feedback on my blog over the last ten plus years.

    I have recently upgraded to the premium services of WordPress and will be merging all my content from my blog (cynicaljaded.wordpress.com) and my author website (zaidismail.com). My new official domain will be https://zaidismail.com hosted on the WordPress core infrastructure, and all traffic from my old blog address will be redirected to this in future.

    If all goes according to plan, the changes should have no impact on your links to my site, or you ability to access all the old content as well. If you do run into any problems, please drop me a note at info@zaidismail.com and I’ll check it out a.s.a.p.

    I’m already working hard on getting my next book out and look forward to sharing that with you in the new year.

    Have a fantastic holiday and please be safe. The world has gone crazy!

    With gratitude,

    Zaid.

  • Fleeting Thoughts VIII

    Fleeting Thoughts VIII

    When loyalty triumphs over justice, chaos triumphs over peace.

    Peace is elusive when love for the self is preferred over love for others.

    Love for others reflects a generous spirit, while hatred for others reflects an insecure soul.

    Insecurity is founded in ingratitude.

    Ingratitude breeds insincerity in the same way that stagnant water breeds mosquitoes.

    Stagnation spawns insecurity in the same way that success spawns envy.

    Envy is an attribute of an ungrateful heart, while appreciation is its opposing truth.

    The heart left unrestrained knows no ethics, while the mind disconnected from the heart knows no compassion.

    Compassion is practiced more by the broken than it is by the celebrated.

    Being broken is celebrated by those that lack the courage for accountability.

    Accountability is celebrated in others but spurned by the weak.

    Weakness is only so if after exhausting all avenues and resources, we still cannot prevail.

    The will to prevail is inspired by conviction in the value of the outcome.

    Conviction is impossible without purpose, and purpose is impossible to achieve without taking responsibility for its outcome.

    Responsibility is a burden only for those that don’t recognise the blessing of the capacity to give.

    Giving with the expectation of receiving is not benevolent, it is business.

    The business of transacting with emotional investments rarely yields sustainable returns.

    The best currency for emotional investments is the act of paying it forward.

    Paying it forward yields no personal returns if you are at the origin of that payment cycle.

    Emotional investment cycles are self sustaining only if everyone involved subscribes to the same values.

    Value is found in gratitude more than it is found in wallets.

    Wealth holds no peace or comfort if not spent in the upliftment of others.

    Upliftment of others is only possible by one who appreciates their blessings.

    Appreciation for what you have offers more contentment than meditation or solitude ever will.

    Solitude is sought by those disillusioned with the world.

    Disillusionment dictates that all hope must be subdued.

    Hope is fleeting when futility is courted.

    Courting futility is a safe way to avoid ambition.

    Ambition is lacking in one who sees no future.

    Giving up on the future is only possible when we focus on disappointments and dismiss any reality that opposes it.

    Dismissing the good because of the absence of a desired outcome reveals ingratitude more than it does disappointment.

    Disappointment is tempered by gratitude, and gratitude is sustained by hope.

    Expectations is the nemesis of hope because hope disarms entitlement.

    Entitlement is the currency of an ungrateful soul.

  • Build, Maintain, or Destroy

    Build, Maintain, or Destroy

    The choice to improve our state has always appeared to be a default setting for human nature. Just like the baby that learns to crawl before learning to walk and then run, adults also seek constant progress with the aim to achieve more comfort or fulfilment in their lives. The nature of this world is such that everything, including the human body with all its marvelous designs is in a constant state of entropy. In the absence of entropy, no effort would be needed to maintain or to build on what we hold dear or true. 

    The desire to build on what we have reflects an appreciation for it, as well as an appreciation for our ability to create more with the skills and resources to which we have access. If we don’t appreciate it, we undermine its value, and in turn allow it to stagnate or deteriorate. Given the constant state of entropy, such stagnation while coupled with an expectation for things to stay the same reflects an entitlement mindset. A mindset that suggests that we did our part, and it is now someone or everyone else’s turn to do their part. Or we live with the expectation that once something is achieved, it will always be there and we end up taking it for granted. 

    When we take things for granted, it usually deteriorates or disappears completely from our lives. Take people for granted and they’ll find someone else to make them feel appreciated. Take things for granted and we’ll fail to maintain it until it eventually achieves a state of disrepair.  Remember entropy? Inaction on our part allows the destruction to gather pace because anything good requires maintenance. Anything bad can simply be left alone to continue its state of natural degradation. That is why when we want something to fail, we simply withhold our contribution towards its success, or maintenance. 

    But why allow something to deliberately fail if we previously saw value in creating  or maintaining it? I think the answer to that question is simple. We start to see the value of our contribution being more than the value of what we experience or receive in return. Sometimes this results in us abandoning this drain on our life, and at other times we keep holding on because we grow to believe that our contribution may not be as valuable as we thought it was.

    The moment we start doubting the value of our contribution, or in turn our worthiness of receiving such appreciation for it, the self-doubt starts creeping in and we start edging towards destruction. Destruction of the self before we destroy something external to us is usually the sequence in which it plays out. A healthy self-esteem never wants to be associated with destruction unless such destruction is believed to be necessary to destroy something that we believe is bad for us. 

    By the same token, an unhealthy self-esteem  will result in us wanting to destroy even valuable things because the destruction of good reflects the self-deprecation that we feel in that moment. When we grow to take for granted our value and abilities to contribute towards wholesome outcomes, we are more inclined to destroy than to build.

    And that is how we sway from building, to maintaining, to destroying, without stopping to realise that each state simply reflects our level of gratitude for who we are, and what we have. Instead, we find it easier to be distracted by the actions or behaviours of others in using their negative responses to justify our choice to give up on creating something good, so that we don’t have to look within and realise that we gave up on ourselves in the process. 

    Therefore, gratitude is expressed in a growth mindset, entitlement is reflected in a fixed mindset, and destruction is reflected in a toxic mindset. Each of which is a choice that we make based on what we choose to believe is true about who we are, and what we are capable of. 

  • Depression is not…

    Depression is not…

    I saw an illustration this morning that showed a man walking with a heavy shadow weighing him down. From one tile to the next the shadow grew bigger and more daunting until eventually it got inside him turning the inside of his body into a dark cave, with a little figure of him sitting helplessly in a corner inside his body. When asked by someone else how he was doing, he simply replied that he was fine, while apparently hiding the darkness inside of him. Many who have experienced, or are experiencing depression can relate to this illustration, but not enough take the more important lesson from it. Park that thought for now.

    The good thing about the recent focus on Mental Health is that they are not calling it Mental Disorders as often as they used to. I take hope wherever I can find it because this is one topic that if ever there was profiteering from the misery of others, this would be it. When trying to sell a product we generally appeal to one of three things. We appeal to vanity, we appeal to convenience, or we play on fears. Mental health is very much in the last category and is currently a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide.

    The first point therefore is that depression is definitely good for business. Turning every supposedly imperfect emotional state into a disorder was the goal of the American Psychiatric Association as far back as the early 1970’s. It is for this reason that we now even have a pill to deal with shyness or modesty because we have been led to believe that it is a social anxiety disorder. As dreadful as that seems, it is hardly the worst thing about the depression industry.

    Buying into this mentality provides the convenience of abdicating accountability for the uninformed or downright poor choices that we make in life. Take that accountability away and replace it with a pill, and you have a patient for life. Worse than this, you give others an excuse to claim that they are victims of an external force and can therefore not overcome this state by making better choices. Instead, medication and psychotherapy is needed. Good parenting and healthy friendships have nothing to do with it, or at least that is what they would have you believe.

    We then refocus our goals on individual needs and blame society for stifling us, and in the process once again abdicate responsibility for the contribution to those around us that would build the healthy society that we all yearn for, while complaining about the cruel world that we live in. Cruel world dynamics then create more opportunity for new pills and lifestyle diseases, and suddenly the overwhelming number of health problems related to depression adds weight to the farce that depression is something we suffer from as an illness.

    Back to that illustration, what we fail to realise is that the more we nurture the depressive state (that overbearing shadow of darkness) the more it will grow. Again, a choice that we make to either deal with the source of our dissatisfaction, or accept it for what it is if we are unable to change it. Unfortunately, most wait for it to miraculously change without any effort on their part, and in the process convince themselves that the universe hates them which is why they are not getting what they need to be happy.

    That was deliberately flippant because if reading that angers you, then you are more likely to be predisposed to depression or feelings of oppression because you see weakness of resolve as being imposed on the individual by society, rather than seeing that the weak resolve of individuals is what allows society to define the self worth of the individual. By showing sympathy and compassion for unhealthy behaviour, we teach people that such behaviour is not their fault.

    We teach them that poor choices are not because they were naive, but rather because someone else was manipulative or dishonest. As much as that is true, the resultant impact on us is directly related to what we continue to expect from them, and not what they continue to do to us. Waiting for an abusive parent or partner to be wholesome before we believe we are worthy is like putting a loaded gun in the hands of a psychopath and asking them to have mercy on us.

    Our lack of conviction in what is acceptable versus what is intolerable for society to thrive as a collective and not as individual indulgences is exactly what enables the bullies, the manipulators, the deceitful, and the immoral among us. Deferring our accountability for the consequences of the choices that we’ve made in life simply emboldens the toxic ones and vilifies the victims into a state of shame or…depression.

    Everyone gets it wrong. Often! But our insistence on viewing the success of others through idealistic lenses because we need to believe that we are unworthy simply provides us with comfort when we fail, because persisting in the face of adversity is only possible with the heroes among us. Like one philosopher so eloquently stated, each time we create a hero, we diminish our own capacity for greatness. Be careful who you create as a hero in your mind.

    P. S. If you know which philosopher it was that said that, please let me know because I can’t seem to find the source to give due credit for it. I suspect it was Henry Thoreau but I could be mistaken.