Tag: people

  • Firefighter Syndrome

    I’ve heard this term firefighter syndrome used loosely over the years, most often referring to people that have a tendency to want to rush in and fix things without thinking it through. Not suggesting that firefighters don’t think things through, but I’m sure you get the picture. You know, like the saying that if all you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail? Similarly if everything you see looks like a fire then rushing in to put it out seems like the sensible thing to do. In fact, it almost seems like an inspired calling in life. 

    My experience with this mentality has been somewhat different though. For me, the fire represents an opportunity to be significant and the firefighter represents the one that seeks significance in a crisis situation. It reminds me of an incident a good few years ago in Cape Town. The famed fynbos on Table Mountain and surrounding areas had caught alight due to the recklessness of a smoker (no pun, just the truth) during the dry season.  Their carelessly discarded stompie (a.k.a. cigarette butt) caused the fire to burn out of control for weeks, killing off acres and acres of fynbos and forests. A subsequent investigation revealed that the government agency responsible for managing forest fires in that area had routinely dowsed the flames from fires that started up over the years. Those smaller fires would have resulted in a natural culling of the density of growth,  but by preventing it from self regulating, they created a perfect setting for a perfect brush fire. As a result, when the mother of all fires started, the rate with which it spread was beyond any expectations, and it burned out of control without anyone being able to contain it.

    Too often we convince ourselves that it’s a selfless act to sacrifice our own comforts and well being to alleviate the discomfort or struggles of another. Sometimes that may be true, but most often, it’s not. Most often it is simply a form of escapism from our own lives. It’s easier to feel significant and celebrated when we contribute towards the upliftment of others, than it is to resolve some of the challenges that we are faced with. By focusing on the fires of others we achieve two key objectives. Firstly, we have a seemingly legitimate reason not to reflect on our own problems because of the constant busyness associated with being there for everyone else, and secondly, we provide a very meaningful distraction for them to avoid any opportunity to focus on us. Or more importantly, allowing them to see the mess of gaping holes in our lives. 

    Yes, there is merit in indulging in the upliftment of others, provided such indulgence is not an escape or deprivation of what we need for ourselves to be whole. Also, its merit only remains credible as long as we are convinced that the whole of us is not of more value to the world than the assistance that we offer others. This is especially true when we find that their cries for help are usually not much more than a variation of our own self defeating behaviours. While busying ourselves with helping others provides us with the distraction needed as described earlier, for some, reaching out for help to lift themselves out of their challenged state is their way of getting the affirmation needed to justify their weakness. 

    Consider it from this perspective. The one that is knocked over and finds that their dignity has taken an equal beating as their ego, will find that the shortest path back to a dignified state is found in obtaining the recognition from others that being overwhelmed under such circumstances is entirely understandable. It’s a vicious cycle of sympathy. The one recognises and relates to the weakness of the other because they would desire such sympathy and understanding if they were in a similar position, and the weakened one saves face by appearing downtrodden and therefore oppressed by the circumstances they find themselves in which appeals to our compassion for long enough to distract us from questioning the choices made by the victim that landed them in that state to begin with.  

    How does this relate to the firemen syndrome? I think it encourages a shared weakness in society that supports the abdication of responsibility for our contribution to the straitened circumstances we may find ourselves in. It also encourages the mentality of victimhood. That belief that we’re only strong if we have someone from whom to draw strength when we lack purpose or meaning in our lives. I think that is exactly what it all boils down to. When we lose sight of the value we wish to contribute to this world, or worse, when we lack such convictions to begin with, we look for opportunity to draw on the energies of others in ways to sustain our fragile ego without admitting such fragility. 

    Like the self regulating brush fire, if we constantly protect others from themselves by helping them up when they are entirely capable of standing up by themselves, eventually they will find no use for their own legs or their backbone, and we’ll find ourselves overwhelmed with the burden of having to maintain their fragility because of the unwavering support we provided that protected them from having to grow up. 

    Sometimes the greatest help we can offer is a clear view of reality, not a shelter from it. The more we invest in protecting others from reality, the more we limit our capacity to improve our own. Before you think this is a selfish way to live, consider who is more dependable in times of genuine need. The one who was protected from becoming a fully formed adult, or the one that has grown stronger and independent from the knocks that life has dealt? 

  • To Leave a Legacy

    I awoke this morning, looked at the sky, and felt the grey rain clouds descend through the skylight slowly dulling my senses. It was a good dulling. The kind that mutes out the noise and sets in the calm that prompts the mind to wander to spaces not often visited. This morning that space happened to be the contemplation of a legacy.

    As I laid in bed wondering what my legacy would be, I wondered if it was important to me. Is the desire to be remembered an indulgence of the ego, or the need for affirmation of a life well served? The cynic in me tugged at my conscience as I realised that even the need for affirmation, regardless of how well intentioned, talks to the ego more than to servitude.

    If servitude is a natural consequence, regardless of intent, is a legacy then not inevitable? As my mind spiralled down the rabbit hole I saw the patterns forming and the relationships unfolding. The distractions of how we contemplate being perceived versus how we’re perceived while contemplating it. But I avoided restraining or deliberately guiding my thoughts. Instead, I observed it as it took a shape and form of its own, similar to an out of body experience. It’s the only liberation I can afford these days.

    The questions kept tumbling out of that grey space, demanding answers, but only finding a mild curiosity in its place. I looked at the landscape before me, the beginnings of a desire to articulate a legacy, and smiled a small smile as it dawned on me. To be or not to be is not the question, instead it’s the inevitable outcome of a life lived, or not lived.

    My legacy will be my legacy regardless of how I choose to shape it, or define it. Contemplating it proves to be yet another distraction from living it. Living it, however, suggests that I have a sense of conviction in what is important to me, which if true, would mean that such contemplation would be unnecessary since my call to action rings loud and clear in my head.

    When that call is muffled or worse, silenced, I find myself contemplating more than living. At times like that I’m not failing my legacy, because my legacy cannot be betrayed. It can only be defined. Just by being, whether I choose to actively contribute or not, my legacy will be known for my contribution or my lack thereof. The fact that I am borne from a mother and not through mist means that I cannot pass through this world being unknown. Therefore, it is not possible to live a life without interruption or contribution.

    How I disrupt or contribute defines the quality of my life, and the essence of my legacy. I can go through life demanding to be known, or I can live eagerly seeking to know. Answers come to those who seek it sincerely, but I’ve rarely seen fulfilment reach those who demand it. So it makes sense to invest in curiosity as a means to inform my actions, rather than demand a reciprocation that is almost always lacking.

    Quite unexpectedly, I found myself reminded once again that this world is built for respite, not justice. My legacy therefore is not one to hold me in good stead in this world, but is intended to treat me well in the next. The paradox of life is therefore the need to serve those that directly distract us from our true purpose while maintaining a steady course to achieve it in spite of such a colourful distraction.

    Early morning thoughts can be therapeutically taxing, and what should be the calm before the day often turns out to be the storm before the distractions instead. Life is waiting to be lived. To be, that is the only sane choice for me.

  • Distracted Moments

    There are times when the idealistic bull that I see about people’s expectations from their marriages and relationships in general make me want to puke. It goes well beyond just a mild annoyance or a light giggle because it is so pervasive that it makes me wretch. The reason why it has that effect is because it is spewed by those with barely any experience in an unsupervised setting. People that have yet to experience life outside of earshot of their parent’s nurturing stares or comforts of home should really stop short of telling others what they should or shouldn’t tolerate or expect in life or their relationships.

    It’s not a romantic novel waiting to be cracked open, nor is it a fairytale waiting to be lived. Consider this…if the life you’ve been exposed to so far has already made you yearn for such idealistic outcomes, imagine how much more you’ll yearn for when you’ve had that many more experiences behind you which will open your eyes to realities you always thought belonged in someone else’s life?

    Every mistake that you thought you made just once because you’ll know better in future suddenly slaps you with a different glove concealing its cynical lesson that needs to be taught. Every foul-mouthed man or woman that you saw bitterly cursing others or their mere existence suddenly  becomes a point of anxious familiarity rather than a source of pity on a good day. Suddenly they possess the voice that is stifled within you but your cultural subscription prevents you from betraying the facade that is proper.

    Life is not a romantic notion that needs to be pursued. Every single expectation you have will be tested within breaths of you feeling that sense of accomplishment. Accomplishment and fulfilment will be ever elusive because the more you learn, the more you yearn. The greater the detail you notice, the greater the void you see between what you are and what you always wanted to be.

    Servitude, even if embraced with total abandon will not yield the fulfilment you seek. It is like filling that leaking bucket and at times you can fill slightly faster than it leaks, but it always leaks more than the sum of your efforts to fill it. That is how people are. That is how we all are. We only appreciate what is for as long as the sense of comfort it gives is felt by our fickle souls. Once that moment is passed, it quickly fades into a rose coloured yearning for moments to come that we hope will meet the exaggerated memory that we caress of lesser moments that passed.

    The longer the period between what has been and what needs to be, the more intense that slip into the slump of unfulfilled expectations. The very same expectations that we built on the exaggerated recollections of moments that we never fully appreciated while we were mentally distracted by measuring what was being presented against what we presented to others before, or what we believed we deserved in the first place. And so the beauty of the moment is lost, but whose loss is only ever truly grasped in grey moments that finally allow us to be detached from the distractions of that moment for long enough to realise the truth of what we didn’t notice.

    Regret always comes too late. Idealism just ensures that when it arrives, it is accompanied with the tunes of the ballads that stir that longing for what has been so that we are consistently distracted from what is, while stupidly yearning for what will never be.

  • They miss the point!

    I have a tendency to seek the potential in people and then proceed to encourage them towards realising that potential. I do this because I am naïve enough to believe that that is truly the aspiration of all of us. You know? That age old claim that says that we want others to believe in us because we’re so precious and we have so much to offer but we’re just waiting for the right opportunity and the right support and the right everything to come along before we can take that pathetic step forward to suggest that we actually have something to offer. It’s all bullshit.

    I’ve realised that the most gut wrenching and draining thing you could ever do is apply yourself towards the upliftment of others. Why? Simple. People are lazy by nature. They’re lazy and un apologetically uninspired because the few that pursue their passions are mocked and ridiculed for being different, while the rest are preoccupied with fitting in and being ridiculously unique just like everyone else.

    Yes, I am annoyed and disheartened. More so at the fact that there is always an overwhelming chorus of people chanting for change, but as soon as the choir breaks up, they’re the first to run home to enjoy their celebration of mediocrity while living life through the achievements of their icons that are nothing more than fictional tales they see in the gossip columns of the tabloids. The stench of puny thinking is repulsive. People look at things and immediately decide what is good enough to get past what they’re faced with, while just a small group will actually consider how can they take what they are faced with and turn it into something larger than life.

    I’ve spent the better part of my life trying to understand the human psyche because of a naïve notion that suggested that it is fear and nothing else that limits us in what we can achieve. I thought that by understanding those fears I would be able to help them see past that limitation and thereby unlock a beauty that would amaze even them. Of course understanding their fears was always only ever a result of me seeking to understand my own first. But they never get that. The default assumption is that if I am able to articulate what constricts them, then I must be free of it myself. I must have never experienced it hence my ability to seemingly trivialise what they feel.

    They just don’t get it. In all my efforts I’ve tried to demonstrate to them that they are innately capable of greater things without the need for a guide or mentor or other pillar of strength to lean on. However, I didn’t realise that in doing so, they automatically turned me into their crutch to achieve more. That is not nearly a compliment to me when considered within the context of the disappointment it spawns. Each time I believe they’ve reached a new level of confidence and capability, I’ve found that they were only acting out of compliance with what they deemed to be my expectations rather than because they had a sincere conviction in the values that I thought we shared.

    This is an unapologetically self-indulgent rant. It is a trickle of what needs to be vented in order to regain some balance in my perspective on life and people. I have trusted in the human goodness that is often celebrated, but each time it has resulted in the degradation of relations because the burden of expectation was greater than the willingness to be true. The impossibility of perfection should never be reason enough to dissuade us from its pursuit. Unfortunately, too often, we’re prone to believe that only icons or celebrated leaders are capable of such accomplishments, while conveniently forgetting that a human exists behind the façade that they have imposed on them.

  • It’s one of those evenings where the reality of mankind causes the bile to foam at the back of my throat threatening to suffocate any peace from my being.

  • The Truth About Introverts

    I get the good intention behind this poster that has been going around for a while now, but I respectfully disagree with it. It is based on the premise that being an introvert is actually a handicap of sorts and requires special attention. It also labels people, which is something that I vehemently disagree with in the strongest of terms. 

    I have seen, and continue to see many people that actually succumb to the expected behavioural patterns of the labels that they’re assigned by society to the point where they start acting the way they’re conditioned to do so rather than because it’s something they would actively or consciously do. The moment we label people’s state of mind, we set in motion many negative sequences and patterns of behaviour. 

    The point I’m trying to make is that unless there is a physical defect that causes someone to behave strangely, any awkwardness or unusual behaviour is simply a symptom of their self-esteem or present state of mind. If this label of introvert were true, you would never see an ‘introvert’ light up the moment they find they’re in their element amongst people they can trust where their contribution is appreciated and they have no need to feel incompetent or insignificant. If they were truly afflicted with a state of ‘introvertism’ then that kind of behaviour would never be possible.

    It’s not about introverts versus extroverts. It’s about confidence or a lack thereof. It’s a simple matter of someone feeling significant and appreciated, or not. And don’t confuse it with someone that is naturally introspective versus someone that has no time for the detail that begs to be observed. It’s simply about focus, personal preferences, and the like. 

    Some colleagues of mine once played a trick on one of their co-workers. Despite the guy being perfectly healthy, they all conspired to make comments about how he wasn’t looking very well at all, and that he really should take time to rest. They repeated this cycle for a few hours in the morning with various people making comments about the way he looked, his demeanour, his eyes looking tired, etc. By lunchtime, he felt physically ill and asked for time off work. And he looked ill as well. 

    Another experiment carried out on kids in the first or second grade showed how negative associations play out in actual academic performance. Half the kids in the class were given blue ribbons to tie around their heads with the other half given red ribbons. The one group was told that they got the blue ribbons because they weren’t so smart, and the other group was told that they were smarter than the blue team. That resulted in the normally smart kids with blue ribbons suddenly doubting themselves and slipping back when asked questions in class, while kids that were normally slackers wearing red ribbons were suddenly enthusiastic and engaged. 

    We often respond to the labels and stereotypes that society places on us without realising it. It starts out innocently because it just makes it easier to put people into boxes the moment they act against the norm, but this convenience for the ‘normal’ people has massively detrimental effects on those being boxed in this way. This instant gratification culture that we have going suggests that anything out of the norm should be fixed with a pill. It’s made us lazy to apply our minds and to engage meaningfully. Anything outside the norm is inconvenient and shunned unless it has a sensational or fashionable quality about it. 

    Sorry for the word spam, but there’s so much more that can be said about this. The bottom line is:

    Please don’t label people’s state of mind just because they appear to be different. It’s the ones that sit back and observe that see things with a fresh perspective, rather than the ones that fit in and do nothing but perpetuate the norms, that actually add to the wholesomeness and progress of society. The rest just maintain the status quo.

  • Random thoughts about people and me

    I’ve often felt like life was a losing battle. No matter how often I would extend myself to those that I accepted as significant in my life, I found myself grovelling rather than being appreciated. Grovelling for attention or reciprocation that is. The more I extended myself, the less I was appreciated, which in some twisted way actually makes sense.

    We take for granted that which is most readily available. We only appreciate and nurture things that we realise are precious and hard to come by. Otherwise we kick into consumerism mode and forget about the blessings at hand (I hate the fact that I can’t even use the word ‘blessings’ and similar words without feeling like I’m being a religious zealot simply because of all the scripture-thumpers out there).

    Anyway, at the risk of sounding cryptic, I think that focusing on the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of ourselves is more important than focusing on external factors that we cannot control. What I mean is the ‘what’ should be our decision about what is or isn’t truly important in the bigger scheme of our own lives, right? While the ‘how’ is our decision regarding how we choose to accept or achieve how the ‘what’ plays out in our lives.

    I guess what I’m trying to say is that if the focus is on making conscious decisions regarding what affects us, and learning to accept the things we cannot influence about the behaviours and decisions of others, we’ll find ourselves less often in a position to be trampled upon or taken for granted. This approach, whilst it took forever to realise, has worked well for me. At times it threatened to isolate me from people that I wasn’t willing to let go of, but it also made me realise that if I was significant at all to them, they would realise the potential loss and do something about it to avoid the rift from happening.

    But the devil in all this is our often low self-esteem. When we assume that we’re not worth the effort, we become victims and martyrs to situations and desires that we believe we will never acquire for ourselves unless we sacrifice ourselves in the process. It’s a self-fulfilled unfulfilling prophecy. And if this is still sounding cryptic, it’s because that’s how life is. It’s the biggest puzzle we’ll ever try to assemble, which reminds me that the best way to build one of those massive 5000 piece puzzles is to start from the outside and work your way in. I think the same is true with life. We need to start by determining what our boundaries are, what we’re willing to compromise and what is non-negotiable. Once we have that nailed, we need to decide how we’re going to go about filling in the pieces that will complete us.

    This all reminds me of a simple thought process I often share in my workshops with others regarding brainstorming. It comprises of three simple components, and talks directly to the puzzle analogy. Output, Method, Resource. If we start by defining what the objective (output) is that we desire, we can then understand what methods or actions would be needed to achieve it. And once we know that, it will be that much easier to determine the resources required to make it all happen. That’s the easy part. Once we have that plan drawn up, it takes courage and determination to act on it and make it happen. That’s usually where most of us suck because of that same demon called self-esteem. A healthy self-esteem really is the best gift any parent can give their child, ever!

  • Bad Investment

    Investing in people when they’re down and out is one of the most painful things I do in my life, because when they’re over their trough of depression, they rarely want to know me. I think my presence in their lives beyond that point reminds them of their weakened state, and so to spare their ego, they’d rather block out the unpleasant phase and focus on being their new idea of awesome. 

    In the meantime, I recede and watch from afar how they blossom now that they’re emerging from their darkness into a state of self-enlightenment, with a million questions forming in my mind about their present state, sometimes venturing as far as asking them a few, but receding again when my approach is ignored. And so the circle of life continues. For some, we’re here only to nourish them when all else fails, and for others, we’re only here to be nourished by them when all else fails. 

    We can’t afford to be weak for a single moment longer than the time it takes to feel overwhelmed. The vulnerability is too scary, that’s why we have to detach ourselves from those that know of our weakness the moment we regain our strength, because we’re afraid that the reminder will hold us back, when in fact it only grounds us, and keeps us humble. But humility is not in vogue.