Tag: peace

  • Sheltered

    The analytical mind is quite curious. It sets aside emotion and observes objectively that which presents itself before us. The keener the observation, the less emotional it is. The more emotional, the less accurate the assessment. Yet both these dispositions, emotional and analytical, are needed for a wholesome life.

    From personal experience, and my observations of those that I’ve engaged with over the years, it seems that the most analytical are the ones that had the least wholesome upbringing. They were typically the ones that were misunderstood, emotionally isolated, or worse. They generally have unpleasant stories to tell, usually with a snigger and a laugh, as they recount their days of strife at the hands of family members or neighbourhood bullies with a strong cynical undertone. They’re the scarred beauties that have become detached, because attachment is either unfamiliar or holds no appeal.

    In contemplating this scenario, I was initially inclined to believe that the opposing tale must be one of emotional cocooning. To be smothered with love and understanding, while nurturing a healthy, if not over indulgent self-esteem, they’re raised by parents who always made time for their quirks and pains, while leading a moderately successful life of measured luxury and homely warmth. Sounds almost idyllic, if not fairy tale-like. But it does happen, so I know it’s a reality, even though it may not be a reality that I, or others like me, can relate to.

    As my mind wandered through this meandering path the one word that kept whispering in the back of my cynical mind was ‘sheltered’. The more I considered their good fortune, the more I found myself ambivalently envious of their blessings, while equally spurning their sense of entitled protection. It’s a reality that they depend on because it is the frame of reference within which they were raised. My frame of reference is very different though, and if it weren’t for the sobering moments of my life, I would have been hell bent on believing that they were the enemy. The ones that had it easy while judging the rest of us, while we made it through life the hard way, only to be placed second best to their privileged upbringing.

    But the reality is very different from such a jaundiced view of the differences we share. The shelter they find in the emotional wholesomeness with which they were raised contributes to the compassion that we desperately need in this world. The rest of us, the analytical ones, use that emotional deficit to clearly articulate the problem statements that are so elusive when looking at the world through rose-coloured spectacles. However, if my personal experiences are anything to go by, compassion fatigue sets in easily with those that see the painful cycles repeating themselves, and having the analytical wit to most often accurately pre-empt a distasteful outcome. At times like those, it’s the emotionally grounded beings that see reason to drag us out of despair and continue to fight the good fight.

    But the truth is closer to the reality that both are equally sheltered. Both enjoy the familiarity of their frame of reference that shelters them from the reality of the other. To the emotionally obese, living a cold and detached existence is impossible to contemplate, while the analytical sees the pointless emotional indulgences and sneers at the waste of productive time spent molly-coddling (I hate that phrase!) those that appear too fragile to function without a hug. It’s a despicable envy on both parts that adds beautifully intricate, yet entertaining hues to the panorama of life.

    Unfortunately, there are too many that fail to see what shelters them, and in so doing, find sufficient reason to despise the rest that appear to be unfairly privileged relative to their sombre upbringing. At some point, the choice to accept or deny our own privilege becomes ours, and ours alone. Life is cliched like that. But we’re often so intent on proving that we’re not as common as everyone else, that we exclude ourselves from the very same collective that we belong to, while yearning for acceptance.

  • Models of Harm

    The formative years. It sounds like such an innocent time in our lives when we’re absorbing all these great life experiences that will one day shape our characters as adults. We unwittingly adopt the behavioural tendencies of those around us, including those we later despise and those we hold dear. Sometimes specific moments become etched as defining moments that we never fully understand but can always recall with vivid detail even though it seemed like just a fleeting moment of no consequence at the time. However, most of the time the less pleasant experiences are not etched as memories, but instead as fuel for our defenses that are formed without specific choice on our part.

    As a child, I think it’s perfectly normal to block things out in order to remain resilient. In the absence of any mature coping mechanisms at that early age, forgetfulness and forgiveness, although not conscious choices, serves us well. However, in the process, it shapes our perspectives of the world that either manifests itself as healthy or destructive later on. This, more than the memories that are etched in our minds that we recall with vivid detail, is the real threat to our sanity as adults. The themes that carry through those periods of ‘forgive and forget’ defines our sense of self-worth, but more importantly I believe it defines our belief in what our contribution towards society can be (not will be).

    If we constantly forgave the spiteful, selfish, or abrasive acts of others towards us, we’re inclined to grow up believing that we should expect nothing less, and therefore slip into a victim state of mind. We become subservient and enslaved to the point where the absence of an opportunity to be subservient may result in us growing excessively despondent in the belief that we are not worthy enough for anyone to seek our subservience. In other words, if I don’t find a setting in which I can be of service to a higher authority that I recognise as such (not necessarily a religious or spiritual one), I will most likely feel incomplete, unfulfilled, or even worthless to those around me. Alternately, if those themes are ones of acceptance, praise, and condoning of my actions no matter what, I would be likely to grow up feeling entitled, arrogant, and generally more deserving of attention and affirmation than others. In fact, not just deserving, but needy of it. Of course, these are just two polar opposites of the spectrum. Sometimes, those that are compelled to believe they are victims fiercely resist the thought and grow aggressive or destructive (or both) in their efforts to demand significance while not having the presence of mind to understand why their approach serves as nothing more than a further erosion of their significance to those around them.

    Such inclinations are easily excusable up to a point. That point arrives when we acquire the capacity and skills to reflect on our behaviour consciously, rather than continuing to live spontaneously without thought or consideration for the impact of our actions on others. I believe this to be true for both the subservient and the arrogant. Those that persist with the patterns of behaviour into their adult years under the pretense that that is simply their nature have in fact not progressed much beyond their formative years. They may have acquired new skills and defined more effective strategies in the years that followed, but the underlying motivation and purpose that drives their behaviour remains unconsciously informed. No different to a child throwing a tantrum for something that they want because they have no better judgement to understand why it may be bad for them or those around them.

    There is a point in all this rambling even though it may not seem so yet. What I’m struggling to articulate is really the crux of why we feel dis-ease in our lives as we find ourselves struggling to achieve things that come naturally to others. We sometimes struggle in our roles in society, or family, often caught between knowing that what we’re doing is wrong, but also not knowing why we are not inclined to do it right. It’s this angst that is often masqueraded as anger or arrogance accompanied by a healthy dose of obstinacy, but sometimes is also manifested in behavioural patterns that go against our nature. It’s a struggle that every one of us lives with to varying degrees of intensity, and I’ve found that those that are most mindful of those early influences in their lives are the ones that are most at peace with these struggles. That doesn’t mean that the struggle ever abates, but simply that it occupies less space in their sub-conscious mind than most of us.

    But there is another important side to this state of reflection and conscious choice. What we often fail to do is separate the role models from the destructive actions. We fail to see their demons and therefore feel trapped in knowing that we disapprove of their actions but feel that such disapproval may be a rejection of them. When they are parents or siblings, or other loved ones in our lives, that tension becomes extremely disruptive to our state of mind. So perhaps the most important part of forgiving and forgetting is not necessarily looking beyond the actions only, but also being able to recognise the role that someone played in our lives while discounting the behavioural associations with them?

    In order to discount those associations I would need to have a frame of reference against which to validate my choice instead. Right there is the origin of such angst. Too many insist on an absolutist approach to all this. We either accept the role of our parents as being definitive, or as being irrelevant. Very few make a healthy choice of determining which were their parents’ demons versus their deliberate efforts. We inadvertently create a model around which to shape our lives without realising its significant parts that in fact operate independent of each other, and in doing so, we adopt the same flawed frame of reference that drove them to unsuccessfully struggle with their demons as they tried to lay the foundations for our lives.

    These models of harm were not imposed on us. We created it from the assumptions we continued to make as we grew older. Chances are, when we lack the ability to look critically but compassionately at those around us, we probably lack the ability to reflect critically but compassionately about ourselves. When that happens, we are likely to subscribe to labels and norms that we don’t fully understand but nonetheless do so because it offers affirmation, validation, or at the least, an excuse as to why we may not be able to fulfill the ideals of the roles that we would want to fulfill instead. It gives us that excuse to say that we can’t control our choices because there is proof that there are others that are similarly afflicted, and therefore it can’t be an affliction, but instead it must simply be a norm that goes against the norm.

    There is strength in numbers. And it’s the strength in the numbers of those we polarise towards that will determine which themes we adopt for our lives. If I surround myself with successful but unethical sales people in my quest to become a successful salesman, I will quickly find reason to justify the unethical behaviour that feeds my success. But in order to do this, I would need to completely discount the ethical points of reference that may have informed my ethics up to that point. If I cannot successfully demonise those points of reference, I will forever be conflicted and will experience dis-ease throughout my career’s successes, even though that may not be visible to those around me.

    We’re all sales people. We’re all offering a product of ourselves to those around us, and depending on how desperately we want to make that sale, we’ll compromise our core values in order to receive the acceptance we desire. How readily we compromise, including what we choose as being our core values, is directly influenced by the models of harm that we formulated as we worked our way through life. Again, a moment of reflection therefore becomes more beneficial than 80 years of prayer.

     

  • Cyclic Sanity (Take II)

    Once we obtain a level of realisation regarding the finite nature of life, or rather, knowing without doubt that death is approaching, we will realise the time that is passing without us exploiting its opportunities sufficiently. When we consider that against the knowledge and skills we may have acquired up to that point, we realise how fickle our focus on life may be.

    If we truly believe in the ephemeral nature of life, and we claim to serve a higher purpose, then it dictates that we should endeavour to ensure that every skill or resource that we have that can benefit others must be brought to bear in their benefit. If we don’t, we’re insincere in our conviction of purpose, selfish in our endeavors, and undeserving of investment from others.

    Why then are we so easily distracted from this purpose? I believe it lies in the continued cycles of sanity that we subscribe to. We have developed an unhealthy fixation on time. Everything we do is measured in hours, minutes, or seconds. We see our lives through the cycles of birthdays that pass, and relationships in the context of anniversaries to determine its success. More recently we’ve been distracted by the annual commemorations of days earmarked to recognise the value of significant others in our lives. Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and the insanity continues. But none of this would be an issue if it wasn’t for the distraction it instills in us.

    I’ve always believed that if it was not for entropy, time would be irrelevant. Yet we’re still more focused on time spent, than the progression of entropy in everything inside and around us. Coupled with this distraction is the conditioning that leads us to believe that there is age appropriate behaviour that is expected of us. Those that wish to be accepted by society willingly subscribe to these stereotypes, while those that don’t are often shunned or inadvertently isolated, or at the least, become entertainers.

    The combination of such conditioning and the distraction of time robs us of the very essence of life. Imagine a world where time was in fact irrelevant? Entropy would still exist, but then our measure of the quality of our lives will not be in how much quality time is spent with our family, but rather how much of our health and wellbeing did we expend in their benefit or enjoyment. Yet, we are caught in a cycle that insists that the best years of our health must be expended in amassing enough wealth so that our twilight years which are most often accompanied by ill health and fatigue is available for our indulgences in life. The logic is simply illogical.

    The reality is, we do live in a world where time is irrelevant, except when we give it significance. It’s yet another distraction that we use to ensure that we’re apparently not distracted from the task at hand. And that’s part of the problem. We’re so task focused, and time aware, that most of what we do eventually becomes a chore, the cycles bed down deeper, and freedom of expression and indulgence is considered within the norms that we subscribe to in order to be accepted, validated, affirmed, or all of the above all the while bemoaning the constraints that society places on us.

    When will we realise that we are society. We defined the rules that burdens our souls. The same rules weaken our resolve and discourage individual accountability so that we constantly shift the blame to the collective, while denying that we form part of it.

    I do not subscribe to age appropriate behaviour, nor do I believe in a work life balance the way it is traditionally perceived. But that is a topic for another day. Right now, it feels like I’m wasting too much time bleeding my thoughts into a post that will largely go unnoticed leaving me lacking in affirmation or validation, resulting in the stress of unfulfilment building in the bile that slowly erodes the lining of my stomach leaving me aching for acceptance so that I won’t have a need to feed on myself while denouncing my significance in a world that doesn’t care. Because I don’t care. And that is exactly the point we miss. Each day, every day, as we continue on that treadmill now fitted with an interactive LED display to feign the experience of movement while running like a hamster in our efforts to be at the top of the pile (pun intended).

    Life awaits.

  • Mental Masturbation

    Walking through the city of London (while attending a conference recently) and observing the locals and tourists alike, I found myself contemplating a lot of truths we take for granted back home. I use the word ‘truth’ lightly in this case because much of how we perceive the world is based on conditioning and indoctrination rather than inherent truths. If we are to assume that the perception of our reality remains to be true for us at least, then let us accept that that is the truth that we all hold ourselves to serve.

    This would beg the question as to how those truths are informed. Hence conditioning and indoctrination. The reason these two points are so important is because very few of us are products of our traditional upbringing these days. Even those traditional upbringings are questionable because of influences that they inherited in centuries or eons passed. And so the waters that provide bouyancy to the truth become muddied even further. But back to London.

    I stood in awe, quite literally, at how many tourists were smitten by the old buildings that hold absolutely no significance in their lives. More than this, I was also flummoxed by the crudity that I saw around me that was being celebrated as dignity. Before you accuse me of elitism, or being judgemental, please refer to the previous paragraph. Growing up as an Indian in South Africa and therefore having been conditioned by the simultaneous brainwashing of an educational system with roots in English colonialism, and the cultural force of apartheid, I was also raised to believe in the superiority of the white race and the radiant historical significance of monuments like the Voortrekker Monument and Big Ben, or the nobility of purpose in the founding occupational forces that landed in the Cape of Good Hope so many centuries ago, or the present occupational force of reverse racism that lands it butt in the butter each day that it takes its seat in parliament. And that’s when it struck me, not for the first time though, that the significance attached to these icons are simply notions that we subscribe to.

    A flag is only a piece of cloth that has a pretty design on it until the ones in power imbue it with a symbolism beyond its innate nature. Those that are subservient will therefore defend this symbolism to the death and lose sight of the truth behind it. And so my mind wandered as I wandered while I noticed the conflicts welling up inside of me. As I walked through St James’ Park I kept thinking ‘Zoo Lake’ in my mind. (The Zoo Lake is the equivalent destination in Johannesburg). Then I walked down the streets of perfectly manicured trees that lined both sides with a beautiful shade of green and I was reminded of the northern suburbs of Johannesburg. And as I continued my travels through the city I kept finding myself drawing parallels between what I experienced in this foreign land and what I have available to me in my own homeland. With one key difference. Access to resources.

    That realisation was accompanied by its own conflicts. On the one hand, we couldn’t compete with the global investors that pump wealth into this region in order to gain more wealth out of it, but on the other, we probably have proportionally equal amounts of wealth being squandered through corruption and incompetence. The difference? While walking through London I got a distinct sense of a collective pride that everyone had in what their country offered. It was in fact nauseating to flip through channel after channel in the hotel room only to see some or other aspect of the English lifestyle being celebrated as superior to anything else. That’s what we lack. Collective pride.

    And so, in the absence of such pride, we turn on each other. We become opportunists looking to get what we can from what is available, with very little focus on giving back. We tolerate corruption by contributing to it, and we condone poor service delivery by squeezing the blood out of our labourers. There is no nation, let alone nation building. We bicker, we complain, we criticise, and we loathe, and the contradiction in this statement does not escape me, which brings me to the title of this post.

    We’re a nation of mental masturbators. Extremely eloquent in defining responses or solutions, but lethargically poor at building unity and serving each other. And I noticed this same tendency building up inside of me as I walked through the streets of London, forming essay after essay in my mind about how we could be even greater if we had access to the same kind of resources, etc. all the while knowing that that is not true. If we had access to more resources than we already have, we’d just take corruption to a greater level, and dish out incompetence in greater portion sizes.

    Watching the madness around Nkhandla and seeing the president laugh mockingly at the same nation he is supposed to be serving, and juxtaposing that against the American president that was dragged through the coals simply for getting a blow job, and it becomes plainly clear that we view illicit sex that others envy as infinitely more detrimental to society than showing the middle finger to the poor and downtrodden, and then speaking of it as if you are above it. That, in my mind, is the worst form of mental masturbation. The ability to speak authoritatively of morals and values when you’re the same scum that sets the standard and consistently raises the bar for such despicable norms, and then still insisting on dignity while robbing the very same people that put you in power of the dignity that they actually pay for.

    Sitting back and decrying our state because of the legacy of apartheid is again, mental masturbation. 21 years. That’s enough time to raise a child, put them through school, followed by university and pretty much obtain a degree, yet we have adults (read ‘idiots’) in power who are supposed to be educated while surrounded by the best advisers of their choice that still think that their downright incompetence and moral corruption is a result of apartheid. No, it’s simply self-loathing greed. Self-loathing because no one with an ounce of self-respect will conduct themselves as despicably as our leaders do. Unfortunately they are the icons that the masses subscribe to. But I recall my initial reaction to Big Ben when I first saw it. I also flipped out my cell phone to take that first pic, with the realisation of its impotence only dawning on me later.

    So I find it difficult, as frustrating as it is, to judge harshly those that continue to vote for the cancer that is eroding the fabric of our nation. It leaves me with one defining realisation. While the non-white in South Africa may not have enjoyed much dignity in the eyes of the ruling elite at the time, we had dignity among ourselves. Now that apartheid is gone, it seems we gave up that dignity in our pursuit of the trinkets that propped up our apartheid masters but sinking one level lower. That lower level that we’ve succumbed to is because at least during apartheid we all took care of our own kind, both the whites and non-whites alike. Now, we’re too selfish and morally depraved to do even that.

    So any criticism of the moral decay that we see around us is nothing more than mental masturbation from a nation that has sold its soul in favour of the aspirations of its apartheid masters. Ubuntu? Did I hear someone mention Ubuntu? Don’t make me laugh. We’ve lost even that simple truth and traded it in for individual enrichment.

  • Still Searching

    The search for serenity continues. It’s a search that will always be futile, like the pursuit of perfection, but its pursuit promises peace. The kind of peace that is forever elusive yet holds enough promise to keep us committed to its pursuit. Passing my fingertips over the keyboard without crafting any thoughts holds a similar promise. It’s as if I’m hoping that through some stroke of genius the clutter in my head and the weight on my shoulders will suddenly unpack itself beautifully in prose that will give it meaning and purpose. The stroke is there, but the genius is not.

    There was a time when a slow deep breath with my eyes closed would cause the substance of my thoughts to surface while subduing the noise. Now, such a breath only reminds me of the shallowness of my breathing. It’s the shallowness that echoes the distractions of my life. Discarding the essentials while focusing on the embellishments. I see it around me all the time. I’ve spent fortune after fortune of hard-earned bonuses in the renovation of this piece of land each time hoping to create a comfortable space that will remove the clutter and allow for repose, yet so many iterations later I have yet to place even a basic bench in the backyard so that I may be able to enjoy the peaceful surrounds of a garden that is admired but rarely enjoyed.

    My breath is like that bench. In misplaced moments I find myself inhaling deeply, feeling the release it offers, but losing focus on exhaling because the next breath is prompted again. Completing a thought, or a chore, or even a breath, have all become synonymous with restlessness. The chest tightens, the shoulders spasm, the neck stiffens, and the head pounds. But these are not my emotions being expressed through an unwilling body. It is echoes of the strife that exists around me. Strife that is disguised well. An unhealthy focus on needing to prevail leaves an underlying torrent of debris that threatens our composure the moment the crack in our armour reveals the wounds beneath.

    Too often I notice too many with an outstretched hand to seemingly want to lift me out of the abyss of reality. I smile a silent smile at their obliviousness. They’re oblivious to the fact that I stepped into the abyss to cup my hands beneath their feet so that they may be lifted high enough to see what life is like beyond the surrender of their hope to the expectations that they have grown to embrace as reality. It’s the same distracted-ness that convinces us that the more effective our defenses the more wholesome our perspective, until we reach a point where we’re ready to offer those defenses to others before we even understand their reality.

    It’s the tokens that count. The tokens that resonate with us in our search for familiarity of purpose. We see a struggle that, on the surface, resonates with a defining moment of our own and before even looking closer, let alone trying to understand, we present a promise of salvation not realising that such an uncalculated gesture in fact reveals our desperation for serenity more than it offers peace. I believe that life will only ever offer a psychosomatic relief from the trials of this world. As we prioritise our efforts on those things that provide relief or comfort, the impact of their poor cousins is deferred for only as long as we’re able to keep them away from the feast we hope to indulge in.

    Life presents us with a spread of delicacies and trinkets, carefully concealing the sweat shops that operate behind the veil of obliviousness. Those that are restless through conviction peer behind that veil in their attempts to see the delicacies and trinkets for what they are, slowly finding themselves repulsed by it. Most prefer to indulge instead, believing that what lies behind the veil is unimportant, because it is only in the appreciation of the indulgence that gratitude is reflected. Gratitude is hollow when it appreciates the outcome without an understanding of the toil that made it possible.

    Perhaps in that there is some truth. Perhaps it is the hollowness of the appreciation expressed by others towards our achievements in life that never fully heal the wounds that created the present moment. It’s a fleeting consolation that recedes when the darkness descends. The night is only as peaceful as the day’s indulgence, and the day’s indulgence is only as focused as the reflections of the night. Perhaps we should stop seeking fulfillment in the expression of gratitude from others. When we use that hollowness as a yardstick against which to measure our success, we subscribe to the insanity that dictates that the oblivious will define our peace. I just realised why the search continues.

  • Out of Touch

    I sat up in bed this morning, looked at myself in the mirror, and asked myself a simple question. What are you losing sight of? I’ve been significantly distracted for some time now.

    The truth is, by most standards, I’ve been sad most of my life. It’s a natural disposition. Always aware of what is not. Any humour spawned by such a life must be dark by nature. So I hate that people can relate to my ramblings. I hate when anyone else can relate to my life experiences, because for the most part, it was not pleasant, and so I’m painfully aware of how unpleasant it must have been for them as well. As comforting as it may be for us to find those that share our afflictions, it’s sad that there is so much affliction to share.

    Contemplating this leaves me distracted yet again. The challenge of my life has mostly been to determine when that threshold is breached when giving others the benefit of the doubt translates into ignorance as opposed to kindness or understanding. Not that it matters. Considering whether I appear as kind or ignorant erodes the sincerity of the act of giving and in turn distracts me from the purpose of that interaction.
    A distraction a day seems to keep the devil by my side. Between the devil and my demons, much of the present moment is lost. Quiet contemplation is not quiet anymore. It’s rowdy and cluttered. The more we connect, the greater the noise and the clutter. The less we connect, the greater the void and the emptiness. Striking a balance is impossible unless you indulge sufficiently in the distractions to ignore the tipping of the scale in either direction.

    I need to renew my subscription to life. Confliction and ambivalence are cold companions, but in the absence of more, we should not spurn the companionship we have. Damn, that sounds so complacent. And the stirring of the spirit starts again, in search of the answers that every moment seems to cloud. If the questions are endless, so too must be the search for answers. Contentment and peace therefore must lie somewhere between seeking the truth, and knowing which truths are not worth seeking.

  • Remnant of a Raging Fire

    The world was my oyster. I set out oblivious to the confines of its shell. All I saw was the beautiful lustre and the wild ocean that surrounded it. I set out to tame it. To leave my mark. I remember once witnessing a repeated bickering session between my uncle and his wife when I turned to my cousin and said, “We should show them how it should be done.” I was referring to marriage. We were cocky. He is in his second marriage, and me in my fourth.

    Life is easier as an observer. We have all the technology to be professional voyeurs pretending to be philosophers and activists, denying the fact that all we’ve become are armchair critics. But all is not lost. If anything, many surrender to their armchairs because of the heightened sense of self. If nothing else, the social web that we surround ourselves with has provided affirmations of our condition that was impossible just a generation or two ago. My observation of my weaknesses being expressed with passion by faceless bloggers gives me the comfort of knowing that it’s not only me. And if it’s not only me, then it can’t be my fault. There must be something bigger than us that is doing this to us, right?

    My perspective is sometimes tainted by this reality of virtual life. It’s that much easier to get drawn into the cycle of complacency and distractions, because losing sight of my drive to overcome my obstacles is easy when faced with the validation of my weaknesses. I see too many that are fearless and fierce in their defence of the under dog but struggle to hide the hints of their own sense of worthlessness in real life. The connectedness makes it so much easier to fill the gaps of life with the artificial reality of the other life. We now have three domains of life it seems. The real life, the other life, and the afterlife. Depending on your spiritual persuasion of course. It’s the other life that seems to dominate our attention span which leave the real life and afterlife quite neglected.

    Purpose and grounding cannot be found in a distraction. The shameful truth is that the more connected we are, the less humane we’ve grown. Real tragedies that we witness are easily transformed into notes or likes in the other life. Our desire to be the one to start the trend that others will follow for a few brief moments is that moment in the limelight that we have little hope of achieving in real life. The contamination got worse when those notes and likes started being celebrated in real life. Suddenly my other life gained the validation it needed to be perceived as real rather than as a distraction. So it must be true that my vents, my rants, my passion, and my fearlessness online makes a real difference. It can’t just be a distraction. I am making a difference in real lives. But why then am I still conflicted?

    I think the conflict arises when I leave my other world to dash out for a moment of necessity. There, despite my distraction, is a world over which I yield little influence. There before me is my insignificance staring right back at me. That’s when it occurs to me. In real life I am but a remnant of the fire that rages within. I am misunderstood, and often dismissed as a dreamer, despite those dreams gaining so much subscription in my other life. There is a danger in surrounding ourselves with kindred spirits, and that danger is escalated when the ability to connect with them improves in probability due to the technology that we have to facilitate such polarisation. It polarises us further. Not just socially, but we find ever widening gaps between our sense of self-worth and significance in our other life compared to real life. This shapes our behaviour in ways that will cause much destruction in our lives if we fail to notice the chasm that is forming.

    Living holistically has just become more difficult, despite the additional comfort that we obtain from those that see us without the social stigmas that we can so easily hide in our other life. Living online while existing in real life is a statement of hypocrisy that will leave us uneasy in both. The moment the distractions subside, the realities of each life appear larger than life, and in that, also more daunting. We’ve added a dimension to life that has enriched it, while creating an even greater challenge to be human. Suddenly we’re mostly able to help only those that are reachable online, while those that threaten our personal physical space are denied our indulgence or compassion from fear of them seeing us too clearly.

    Living mindfully is demanded more than ever. Finding congruence between each of my lives has become my new greatest challenge in my efforts to be grounded. My grounding will only ever be manifested in the realisation of being able to apply myself consistently, not just in principle, but in deed, in both my domains of my life, so that my afterlife will not be left wanting. The acid test for me is found in that moment of silence, when I have no technology to distract me, or people to cajole me, and the feeling of consistency or inconsistency descends. When I feel a yearning for one space more than the other, I know that I am a raging fire in one, and merely a remnant in the other. I need to rage in both, or divorce myself from the one that counts less towards my afterlife. But the investment in both is such that I am unwilling to forsake either, and therefore the only option is to ensure that I rage fearlessly in both.

    I often wonder how much more wholesome society would be if we were able to express ourselves in person with the same strength and security that we enjoy through anonymity online. I think it’s possible to achieve this. The equivalent of such anonymity would be the rejection of the opinion of others towards shaping your person. Leave behind the need to feel accepted, but instead nurture the desire to express, and it will result in you attracting those that are similarly impassioned in real life as well. The principles are the same, it’s only the courage that differs.

    (This is an incomplete thought process)

  • Peace

    Belying my exterior,
    That serene scene saunters into view of my mind’s eye.
    Driving to a destination that isn’t,
    Until my fuel is spent,
    Effortlessly emerge from the vehicle,
    And continue on foot,
    Until I am spent.
    Finally melding into the sand,
    Without a trace,
    I become one with time.
    Passing you by,
    Unnoticed.
    Finally at peace.