Tag: madman

  • To Blog or Reblog?

    I think I’ve figured it out. The reason why so many people are rebloggers more than they are bloggers. They lack inspiration, the same way I do this morning. Hence my inclination to reblog so many things, although my restraint has been keeping me in check. So, like the rebloggers, I’m tempted to borrow inspiration as if I’m licensed to be a curator of what may inspire others, all the while parading my reblogs as my inspiration to share with the world.

    I’m feeling somewhat deflated, I found myself trawling some of the tags that I follow in the hope of finding something that may be worth sharing. It was partly due to a need to want to share something meaningful, as well as wanting to fill that gaping void on my dashboard that taunts me if I don’t bleed out some thoughts at least once every other day.

    But I’m tired. Too tired to note all the beauty in the insanity around me, apart from the way the sun shone through the leafless tree this morning while the clouds literally raced across a crystal clear blue sky. The icy winds drove me to retract into a self-embrace trying to fight off the cold, while sitting at the entrance to the smoker’s balcony at work provides me with regular gusts of ice cold misery each time some nihilist steps out to rape a cigarette.

    I feel obligated to write out these rambling posts while I rarely read. That feels somewhat hypocritical. I have barely enough attention span to read through the dosage directions of aspirin these days.

    Nothing like the sound of a massive diesel generator grunting in the background to support my efforts to procrastinate on Tumblr during yet another unplanned power outage in this miserably cold part of Johannesburg today. This is the kind of post that gets deleted the morning after the night before. I keep wondering when is someone going to notice that the venom that I spit in my posts is actually a reflection of my own self-image?

  • By all accounts, I am indeed a madman. I have desires and yearnings that appear to be normal but reflect a weakness of spirit that is pitiful. I have been painfully tutored about the nature of people, yet my belief in their inherent goodness and potential wholesomeness remains strong.

    A wise physicist once said that the definition of insanity is repeating the same behaviour and expecting a different result. So by definition, I am a madman. I see and experience the hypocrisy of the closet sincerests among us, yet I continue to believe that there is an inherent goodness that lurks beneath. Not only do I believe it, I plan on it, I count on it and I expect it.

    There are exceptions of course. But here’s the coup de grace of it all. In believing in this flawed human spirit, and in living a naively misguided life, my reputation has been tainted because of good intentions associated with bad outcomes. And these exceptions that I admire and appreciate so much would rarely feel inclined to be acquainted with the likes of such a tainted soul. From afar I’ll continue to desire and yearn, but I dare not step close enough to tarnish them with the putrefaction of a decaying soul.

  • Believe in me…not!

    People don’t want to be believed in. They want to be pitied. Your pity for them reaffirms their victim state because they need to believe that they’re downtrodden because no one else would’ve dealt any better with what they’re contending with. When you believe in them, you expect them to rise up and become a master of their state rather than a victim.

    So instead, they’ll scowl at you for not understanding, for undermining their heartache or anguish, and for thinking you’re better than them or that you just don’t get it at all. All this because they need to hide behind the facade of being able to survive in spite of this massively overwhelming burden of life being placed on them. That way, they feel like they’re strong because they’re still alive and have pathetic remnants of hope for the future, when in fact they’re weak and are only existing and surrounding themselves with like-minded people that will stroke their egos and affirm their resilience because they haven’t thrown in the towel yet.

    But despite knowing this, you’ll be bold enough (read dumb enough!) to believe in them because you see through their defenses simply because you employed those very same defenses at some point, and their true strength is visible to you like the light of day but hidden from them because of the daunting decay of society. So you believe, and you invest emotionally and sometimes physically into that belief in them, and instead they rebel…they deny and despise your efforts because you’re not giving them what they want…you’re not telling them what they want to hear.

    And that sends you into a state of despair and suddenly you’re the victim of the weakness that you tried to help them to overcome. And suddenly you’re questioning your self-worth, your significance, your ability to influence…and you recede…not realising that receding is giving up and not necessarily accepting. But at some point we all give up. Sometimes on life, sometimes on living…and sometimes on existing. And then someone comes along and believes in us, and we strike back thinking what the hell do they know? Do they have any idea what I’ve just been through? How I’ve just been rejected in the harshest way? Do they know anything at all, or do they need to believe in me so that they can feel significant in their quest to touch someone else’s life in the hope that it would bring meaning to their own? How pathetic they are for thinking that they have what it takes to convince me that I am wrong about my conscious choice to recede. Do they not know how much I know about why I shouldn’t believe anymore?