Tag: personal

  • Random thought

    Reading through some of my recent posts, I realised how much I annoy myself. I hate that I constantly tend towards speaking of ‘we’ instead of ‘me’. There’s a strong undertone of arrogance in such a presumptuous position, by assuming that I am capable of speaking on behalf of others when in fact my observations are nothing but a reflection of my own life’s experiences. 

    It seems sincerity and humility are still whiling away in  the distance whilst I delude myself into believing that I’ve acquired it already. Like they say, the mere profession of humility is in itself arrogance. 　

  • Brain Dump

    My mind is a mess. Articulating even the most simple thoughts are proving to be a challenge. There’s a haziness in my thought processes that feels angst-y and unnatural. I hate almost every post I write these days and I feel like a superficial moron seeking attention more often than not. For the first time ever I had to remind myself that this is my blog and not a public bulletin board.

    This is supposed to be my space to rant and rave and ramble without apology yet recently I’ve been addicted to affirmation. As is the case with affirmation, it’s rarely there when sought after. I despise this state of mind that tends towards attention-seeking behaviour while simultaneously feeling disgusted at the thought of writing for an audience. I feel agitated and irritated and unnatural in my space. I feel like something is amiss. 

    There’s a consistent dis-ease within me that is exacerbated the moment I step into the house after a light hearted day at the office. Writing this all down has required constant conscious effort to dismiss the thoughts of who would read what into what I’m saying. I cannot afford to care. If I do, it will add to the weight of self-imposed responsibility that claws at my conscience every waking hour in my quest to constantly consider the needs of others before my own. I tire me out and from that there appears to be no…repose. 

  • Change is Imminent

    eatandbeawesome:

    Here’s some poetry I wrote, cuz I was boredddd. 

    Asalaam Alaikum wa rahmatullah

    Bismillah

    You’ll have to excuse me I developed this with a quick pace so allow me some space as I translate the case of the mistaken race and the warfare we face

    As a community wrought with disunity under constant scrutiny by our fearless enemies I feel the need to channel some energy and create some synergy

    The last time I spoke of a story, it was one of glory, about a man of authority, the goal was to shuffle your inventory, you see our lives have become oh so regulatory.

    In a constant state of reaction towards some illegal action, we’ve made ourselves a faction that serves as a distraction while the real villains roam with satisfaction

    You didn’t need to show me that Find Kony was a phony, yet society seems to own me, and my mind is so lonely without the media to control me and so,

    I resort to blogging on a social website about the battles I fight where on the same night I feel its my right to point out I’m right and the destruction I type on someone’s profile pic could make the Companions sick because im such a hypocrite.

    You ask me about change on a global range, while you hold the reigns and lead the campaign of delivering pains to those you claim to love without blame.

    You want rights brother, start respecting your mother.

    You want respect sister, stop flirting with that mister

    The key to revolution begins with evolution and dissolution of our primal confusion that requires a fusion of respect minus intrusion and a mental ablution so in CONCLUSION.

    Implement moderation with a desire for education for that is the foundation that leads to the equation for a united nation

    Change is Imminent

    I really enjoyed this on different levels and thought it worth sharing. 🙂

  • THAT awkward moment

    cynicallyjaded:

    That truly awkward moment when you look at your dashboard and realise that all the reblogs of profound messages regarding the ephemeral nature of life is all just nice ideas and hardly a soul that reblogs them even realises the true meaning behind them because they’re so busy hating and debating and arguing and fighting that even the news of death only shakes them for long enough to reblog it without actually changing their attitude or perspective because we’re still so deluded about our awesomeness that we fail to realise that that very same life that we mourn the loss of is the very same life that we’re wasting away concerning ourselves about those things that do not concern us in our effort to establish our significance in the lives of those that matter only as long as we choose to follow them after which they’re a distant memory if anything at all while we find a new audience to appease with our clever use of phrases and sharp rebuttals in our on-going efforts to ignore the huge elephant standing in the room with a tiny label attached to its tail with just one simple word. Ego.

  • I enjoy your blog a whole lot, thank you for the suggested links. My question is: do you feel like your perspective would change if you lived in another continent/country?

    I wish you’d come off anon. 🙂

    I’m glad you find some value in my ramblings. I doubt my location would have influenced me much at all. Growing up in South Africa during apartheid has given me some unique experiences and insights, but I can’t say that it actually shaped my perspectives much. As per my previous post, being the kind of kid that I was, I believe I would have been ostracised in any society regardless of community or place. The odd ones are always soft targets for the shallow ones. This is true throughout the world if some of the blogs I follow is anything to go by.

    So I guess I am me independent of location, because even when I relocated to other cities or countries for work, I didn’t find any notable change in my personality or perspective. It simply reaffirmed the universality of the inherent traits of people. Some people choose to resist the urge to be cruel, but others give in willingly.

    Unfortunately I realised at a young age that being cruel is the easiest thing to do in the world. That’s why so many people don’t put much effort into being kind.

  • There was never an absence of criticism, or name calling. I was always the butt end of taunts and mockery and isolated, not by choice. If it wasn’t my slim physique that was being ridiculed, it was my nose for being too big, or my hair for being styled strangely, or my teeth for being crooked. I maintained amicable relations with most in my family, but my elder brother despised me for as long as I can remember. So trying to find something to be positive about in life was never an easy task. If I asked for a second helping of food I would be verbally abused. If I spent time with the very few friends I had from school, I would be ostracised for not having time for the family, and therefore deliberately excluded from family activities when I got home.

    I recall times when I walked through the streets at night until very late, listening to the laughter and noises from the homes in the neighbourhood of families and friends doing what families and friends do. It was alien to me. The reason I was walking the streets at that time of the night when I was in my very early teens, if that old even, was because for reasons that I can’t recall, I did not accompany my family to a visit to some or other extended family. As a result I had to loiter outside until they returned because I was locked out of the house. One night I was literally kicked out of the house when I was barely 6 or 7 years old. He grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and sent me flying out the front door to go searching for a jacket that he had hidden away to teach me a lesson for forgetting to take it in the house when I was done playing. It worked. I never forgot that lesson.

    Excerpt from the book I never wrote

    Ramblings of a Madman

  • Reflections

    When I look at what may lie ahead for me in life, it feels like my struggles have just begun. The uncertainty and hopefulness, if left unchecked leaves me feeling ambivalent about important goals and objectives and often results in me slipping into a morbid state wondering if the future holds more promise than my past, which gets me reflecting on my past. In doing so, I realise how my life has been nothing but a blink of an eye. It feels like I was in high school just yesterday, yet when I consider the events of the many exhausting lifetimes I’ve lived since then, I realise exactly how much time has passed.

    Just yesterday I was looking up to my uncles and other elders in the family and contemplating if I would be able to achieve as much as many of them have achieved in life. Quite literally in a blur I suddenly realised that I am now the uncle and my nephews and nieces will probably start viewing me in a similar light. The secrets of the future have always been such a distraction despite being proven time and again that I have no control over the outcomes of so many incidents in my life that I exhaustingly applied myself to.

    There were times when I believed that no matter what came to pass, I would persevere and I would be successful in overcoming the obstacles I was faced with, only to realise that despite my greatest efforts, my efforts would only ever cause my own will to yield to the objective at hand, but never the will of others. That has probably been the seed of my cynicism in life, because each time I reflect on my foolhardiness to lift myself up and try again, I’ve realised that I’m not cynical about life, just people because people are most unpredictable when they’re fearful. Even the most seemingly dishonest person only acts that way out of fear for the repercussions of honesty.

    Living sincerely takes away our excuses to bow out gracefully at times, because we’re forced to deal with the raw emotions of others that have been allowed to touch us where it hurts most. Each time we’re hurt we recoil and establish a barrier to protect ourselves from such hurt again in future because we’re survivalists by nature. If we live consciously, we remind ourselves of the context of that experience, optimistically believe that not everyone is the same, and persevere sincerely into yet another skirmish with fate.

    But most times we lose consciousness to reality and instead dwell in our space of fear, resulting in those barriers being cemented rather than contextualised, which causes serenity to evade us, and beauty to be stifled. It’s this idealism that has given me much to cry about, but even more to reflect on with smiles when I sit in that swing on my porch marvelling at the obliviousness of the next generation as they go about their lives believing that they’re invincible until their first great disruption. The circle of life. Everyone quotes clever thoughts and memes about it, but so few grasp it.

  • A Strange Incident

    About a year ago, I was home one morning. It was an average morning. Normal clear blue African sky, with a scattering of clouds, and the early morning chill that usually lifts shortly after sunrise. But being South Africa, and being Johannesburg, this is all enjoyed within the confines of high walls, electric fence and burglar alarm systems. The perimeter wall around my yard is no exception.

    I have electric fence all around, coupled with palisade spikes set in panels between solid brick pillars on the front wall, and for good measure, another security gate halfway down the driveway to separate the front of the yard from the back of the yard, also with palisade spikes forming the security gate. So it was particularly surprising on this ordinary morning that I found a pristinely clean husky dog in my backyard. 

    As can be seen from my above description, the only way into this section of the yard would have been to jump over the electric fence, which would have triggered the alarm, or creep through the gap between the electric fence and the palisade spikes, which would have seriously injured the dog given the sharp metal spikes at the top of the palisade. But this dog was without injury, and without collar. I walked towards it, and instead of it reacting in a defensive or threatening manner, it simply rolled onto its side and looked at me with those piercing blue eyes. As I approached it even closer, it remained calm, tilted its head to the side and continued looking straight at me without even a hint of threatening to attack me. In return, I didn’t feel the slightest bit threatened or in danger.

    After a while I stood up and walked back into the house and continued watching him from my window. He calmly walked over to the flower bed under the tree in the backyard, went specifically to a spot where I had recently caught my maid burying some muti* from her sangoma**, urinated on that spot and then quite literally disappeared. I never saw that dog again. 

    * muti is the African word for medicine, but is often used to refer to that of the dark arts. It is a common practice amongst the black population in South Africa

    ** sangoma is the African word for witch doctor, or traditional healer. There are good ones, and there are bad ones. And the bad ones are often visited by house maids who are generally from the black communities in South Africa (legacy of apartheid). They tend to get their muti in the hope that it will help them keep their job, especially when they know they’re at risk of losing it because of poor performance. Again, a common practice in South Africa.