Tag: perspective

  • Your perspective is your choice

    Your perspective is your choice

    Perspective is a choice, not an inheritance.

    Improve your awareness of why you believe what you believe, and it will be possible to consciously choose what resonates with your personal value system, and discarding what doesn’t.

    When we lose sight of why we hold the perspectives that we do, and those perspectives create a conflict within us, we feel an increase in stress and anger without always understanding why.

    At those times, it’s easy to explain our emotional state by connecting it with our perspectives that are being challenged.

    However, responding from a position of anger or defence because of a perceived attack on what we believe to be true is a defence mechanism.

    We would have no reason to defend that which we believe is based on an objective truth.

    The only way to achieve such a level of confidence in our perspectives and beliefs is by improving our self awareness, and thereby improving our ability to critically assess what we stand for, and why.

    This will go a long way towards finding balance in life, and knowing which battles are worth fighting, and which are not.

  • Return to Me

    Return to Me

    I stumbled upon a collection of some of my writing from many years ago. I had so much more clarity back then. To reconnect with that will require stripping away a lot of the clutter accumulated from my encounters with troubled souls in recent years. At some point, I stopped thinking aloud and started speaking to an audience. I need to forget the audience and return to my state of introspection. In my efforts to be understood, I distorted who I am in favour of inviting others in. Even now, in my contemplation of what is needed, I am addressing this to other than me.

    I need to return to me. My thoughts, my reflections, my promptings, all intended to reground my soul in my space, without any need to solicit the accepting glances, or the affirming smiles from those around me. I departed from the familiarity of who I am when I sacrificed my voice for a voice that was more palatable. Am I still within reach?

    The cacophony of murmurs from abandoned souls drown out the clarity that once tugged at my collar to remind me that I am. Not wanting to be, but am. Not looking for familiarity or warmth, but knowing with certainty that both resided within me. Comfortably, and harmoniously. Every sacrifice of me has proven futile for garnering the elusive embrace. It was always only enough to invite them in, but once they arrived, their needs overpowered my own, and my own self was subdued for their release.

    Release from the self is liberating only if redefining the self appears within reach. Too many shrug at the opportunity of reinvention, but torture their souls into a deafening silence as they find themselves caught between hating the present, lamenting the past, and pleading for the future, but refusing to give up an inch of familiarity because to be familiar even with demons is more comforting than being unfamiliar with strangers.

    To be known, I must return to knowing me. I must rediscover the voice of my soul, and relinquish the voice of my beast. The vessel of expression must once again succumb to the seat of intelligence, or else intelligence will be lost, and the basest of desires will forever remain unfulfilled. The ramblings of this madman must be exhumed from the grave of compliance and conformity and set upon this world of mediocrity without expectation of ever being recognised, but knowing that the cesspit, if it remains unchanged, did not remain so for the lacking efforts of a whimpering spirit.

    Success is yet to be defined, since all that had definition was defined from a need that abandoned the purpose that feeds the soul. Such definition distracts and destroys, but never prevails. Such definition is a contamination of the purity of purpose of the soul, and reflects nothing more than the needs of the broken. I am not done. Even if this world is done with me. There is still breath left in me, and it must be expended in nothing less than sincere contribution, or no contribution at all.

    I must return to me…

  • The Edge of Being Broken

    The Edge of Being Broken

    Life has a way of beating you down while lifting you up. It’s often a morbid combination of how we perceive the value we wish to add to the lives of others, versus how they perceive that value themselves. As much as we may strive to separate the two, it is impossible to do so. There is nothing that we do that is not influenced by how we want to fit into the world around us, even if just our perception of it.

    I’ve been told that my writing has lost its authenticity over the years because the brutal honesty of expression that once defined my thoughts that bled into my posts has been replaced by a subdued diplomacy that makes it more tolerable for others. Without realising it, that appears to have shaped my interactions in recent years as well. Being more tolerable. I’m often reminded of Plato’s words when he said, “No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.”

    Truth is most often defined by how we view the world before it is defined by how the world views us. Whether the sky is black or blue is not a matter of truth. That’s simply a matter of fact relative to a construct of reality that is shared by all of us. How we experience that blue or black sky is what defines our truth compared to the truth of another. If I avoid the cold isolation of darkness and only come out during the day, the blue sky will always be welcoming and comforting to me. But if I loathe the light and prefer the shroud of darkness that hides the brutal nature of man, the blue sky will taunt me while the black sky will provide a place of repose. In both instances, my truth is defined by what I need from the world, and not by what the world needs from me.

    What is needed from me is a guessing game that has lasted my entire life without any sign of abatement anytime soon. At times I have chosen to actively contribute towards the lives of others, while at other times I’ve withdrawn from the fatigue of not having my contribution appreciated. At such times I despise our innate nature that demands significance so that we don’t feel inconsequential to those around us. To be consequential, or to make a difference determines the difference between a good night’s rest and insomnia. When we believe our contribution is appreciated we sleep like babies. Let our contribution be ridiculed or dismissed as futile, and sleep escapes us in favour of late night contemplations of how we arrived at such an unappreciated point in our lives.

    Karl Marx got it right when he said that last words are for fools that haven’t said enough. Foolishness sets in when we persist in trying to convince others of our truth when they’ve convinced themselves that we do not have something of value to offer them. Foolishness also sets in when we convince ourselves that our truth is relevant when we give others credit for a level of competence, gratitude, or integrity that they don’t have. That’s when we find ourselves passionately trying to convince others of the merits of our perspectives when they’ve already decided that we’re fools to begin with.

    Perhaps authenticity is lost when I project my experiences of the world as being a collective experience of humanity. The assumption that I am like others is often made to avoid the arrogance of assuming that I am different. Being different is only pleasant if that difference is celebrated by others. The moment it is celebrated by others, it implies that they aspire to the same levels of definition in their contribution to this world, which means that I’m not different to begin with. I’m just more successful at achieving that which others strive to achieve themselves. More importantly, my symptom of being the same is more reflective of my need for inclusion than it is of my need to recognise any uniqueness of offering.

    Last words are only needed when we’re not willing to let go of the perception that others may have of us. For this reason, the one that withdraws from a debate first is more likely to have recognised the limitations of their skills of persuasion or the limitations of their counterpart’s ability to grasp the point that is being made. Either way, it’s an acceptance of what is, rather than a persistent desire of what should be. When we stubbornly believe in achieving value that we know will benefit others, in spite of them not being willing recipients of that value, we define the basis for our struggle in life long before those around us reject our efforts to influence the quality of their lives.

    Reaching breaking point is a combination of investing more in the alleviation of the burdens of others, than what you invested in providing for your own needs first. Living selflessly dictates that you should strive to alleviate the burdens of others before you strive to acquire comforts for yourself. Walking that thin line reminds me of moments from my childhood when I walked on the railings surrounding the park outside our school, balancing precariously as I wobbled from side to side while trying not to fall off, until losing my foothold unexpectedly and landing with my legs apart and my jewels firmly smashed onto the railing itself. For all its glory and trinkets, life is pretty much as simple as walking on that railing. The thrill of striding confidently without slip entices us to keep getting back on the railing after it smashed our jewels for the umpteenth time. Until eventually, the memory of the pain of having smashed jewels between my legs replaces any desire to experience the glory of stepping on the rail to begin with.

    The edge of being broken is finding yourself in a space where you do not wish to participate in the morbidity of human engagement any longer, but are compelled by that same nature to trudge along the unwilling path because not doing so will result in the same demise that engagement threatens to offer. The edge of being broken is defined by being an unwilling participant of a system that defines your quality of life with or without your active participation in such a system. Respite is offered in the form of acceptance of your limitation to influence that system, while subduing your desire to prevail over it.

    What we define as our quality of life is often defined by the level of luxury that we’ve grown accustomed to in life. When we embrace the responsibility of providing the same level of comfort to those around us as our fulfilment of their rights over us, we find the edge of being broken in the realisation that the sacrifices that we may eventually be willing to make for our own levels of comfort will result in an imposition of hardship or discomfort on the same group that we are committed to serve. Their perception of our truth will rarely be aligned with ours, and so the strain of the system bears down when we aim to recalibrate our contribution towards the system while feeling compelled to maintain a level of contribution that appears to be unsustainable.

    We define the system by subscribing to the perspectives that we have of it. We hold on to those perspectives because they also define how we wish to be perceived by others. Ultimately we break ourselves, but in our broken state, we retract from the system that we established and choose to blame it for our demise, when in fact our demise was caused by our unwillingness to let go of the perspectives that chained us. Conviction is the bitch that nips at our heals when we’re trying to walk away from a life that appears to be serving others more than it appears to be serving us.

    [This thought process made a lot more sense in my head. Probably just another fatality of my contaminated perspectives.]

  • The Iceberg Effect

    Resilience is obstinacy in the face of adversity. It relates to our ability to resist being overwhelmed even when we face the storm alone. Facing storms alone is so much more fun anyway. It tests our limits of perseverance in ways that reveal our true strength, or at least it hints at what we are truly capable of. That wouldn’t be possible if we always had someone by our side to face the storms, because then, we’ll grow to learn how much we can bear if only we have someone to bear it with.

    We go through life chipping away at icebergs but assume that we’re carving snowmen instead. Each effort is intended to yield a specific and immediate result. Those of us that have progressed beyond our formative years realise that reality has struck no such bargain with us, so we strive a little more after each setback, knowing that success often hides behind a few setbacks, or more accurately, failures. So we give it a try, and another, and another, until eventually we give up in the belief that our energies will be better expended elsewhere.

    Giving up though, is rarely that simple. If the goal we courted was important to us in ways that would define our happiness, giving up becomes a bitter pill to swallow. But in the face of inevitable failure, we assume that it’s the only option to save our dignity. That’s when we convince ourselves that we’re building snowmen, rather than chipping away at icebergs.

    The iceberg analogy has been used to describe many positive and negative aspects about life. Quite popular in the meme culture of late is the use of the iceberg to demonstrate the pinnacle of success rising above the water, while a huge amount of effort, perseverance, and some failure rests beneath the surface that no one seems to recognise. It is not an untrue analogy either, but there is a different perspective that I believe is equally important, if not more so.

    Think of the iceberg as a problem you’re facing, but not just above or below the surface. Instead, the iceberg in its entirety represents the challenges we face in life. Now consider what happens to the bottom of the iceberg as we chip away at what we can see on the surface. Each time we shave away the top, the bottom rises a little more making it seem as if the top is never-ending. So we keep ridding ourselves of the surface layer hoping that nothing more will rise in its place, only to be presented with more each time, until eventually we grow despondent and stop chipping away.

    What we fail to recognise in that process of chipping away is that each time the top was removed, even if only a little, it made way for the underlying issues to surface, and each time the underlying issues surfaced, it reduced the weight of what was beneath the surface, out of sight, until eventually so little (if any) remained, that it made the iceberg irrelevant. What once was an iceberg suddenly becomes an ice cube.

    Being able to chip away at that iceberg would also be so much easier if we just moved it to warmer oceans instead of remaining anchored in the icy waters that sustained its creation to begin with. And that, simplistically, is how life presents its challenges to us.

    The ocean is the environment we find ourselves in, each environment having its own share of toxicity or benefit depending on what we need to take from it. Remain in the surrounds that gave rise to our problems, and our problems will continue to grow larger than we ever will be, constantly overwhelming us and convincing us that trying to prevail is futile. Change environments and suddenly our perspectives are refreshed and solutions become easier. It reminds me of the prophetic analogy of the blacksmith and the perfume merchant. Spending your day with the blacksmith will never leave you perfumed.

    Accepting our state may result in us finding comfort in the cold desolation of the confined spaces of the top of the iceberg. For some, a confined space is much more comforting  than the horror of having to venture beyond their comfort zone. In their case, icebergs are great, and so is being rooted to the spot. Unfortunately they hold others back because of the company they need on that iceberg. They become masters at making snowmen, as long as that snowman is on their iceberg.

    I often wonder how many times did I stop chipping away at some of the icebergs in my life just as the final layers may have been surfacing before I gave up and moved on to new icebergs? It’s a question that could easily test our sanity, because we rarely find out in this lifetime when giving up was the wrong thing to do. The only comfort that I find in such deliberations is in knowing that my choices to leave, to abandon, or to simply stop caring about some icebergs was a conscious choice relative to what I was willing to tolerate at that point in my life. Where I realised later that I may have given up too soon, I accepted that I would have done no differently no matter how many times I could relive that moment, because the sum total of my life’s experiences, my emotional maturity, and my awareness of what was taking place would always be the same. The only thing I could do was recognise what it was that detracted from my decision being more informed, and be sure not to overlook that aspect again in future. I think that’s how icebergs melt without us having to chip as much.

    Remaining in toxic settings, or relationships, while chipping away is often an unnecessary test of our resilience. What doesn’t kill us does not make us stronger, it only makes us more brittle. Eventually, we’ll discard opportunities that promise beauty while holding on to the remnants of what may have been simply because we focused on the iceberg, instead of the ocean.

    [This is an incomplete thought process that has plagued my mind for weeks now. Hopefully this partial expression will lead to the clarity that escapes me at this time.]

  • Giving Up

    I think we got it all wrong. I realised this when I considered the fact that it is impossible to die from holding in your own breath. We’re hardwired to survive, or at least to want to survive. Self-preservation has always been the driving force that created both good and evil outcomes in this world, so I find it increasingly curious to note that we get this wrong so often.

    There is an abundance of memes and motivational speakers telling us why we need to persevere. Hope in tomorrow makes the struggles of today worth it, but what happens when that hope does not materialise in a favourable outcome? Do we abandon hope, or do we question what we wanted in the first place?

    I paced around restlessly this weekend quietly observing these thoughts flit through my mind as I saw the reality of it echoed in those around me. Expectations contaminating and embellishing everything while most interpret it so differently. Rights and privileges. Who determines when they’re legitimate and when they’re not? Does a right become self-indulgent when we expect it to be fulfilled, and do we automatically erode the rights of others when we live with such apparently justifiable expectations? The rabbit-hole seemed endless.

    Quite unexpectedly, it dawned on me. Life is about giving up, not about holding on. Knowing what to give up has proven to be infinitely more important in establishing sanity in my life than holding on to dreams or expectations, or insisting on the fulfilment of my rights for that matter. I did not give up on my dreams. No. That is still firmly intact. But it has changed in shape and form consistently over the course of my life.

    I often noticed how my dreams or aspirations were informed by the celebrations of others. That which they celebrated as being significant became my aspirations. I wanted to share their sense of elation, or their sense of belonging, because I didn’t have a definition of my own for that. As time passed, I slowly realised how hollow life is when I followed the crowd, or worse still, when I adopted the goals of others as my own.

    This always created a lot of conflict within me because my base definition of life appears to be quite at odds with those around me. Or so I thought. However, what I have grown to realise is that most are distracted enough to only subscribe to the collective perceptions of success because they have so little knowledge of themselves. That’s the root of it right there. Self-knowledge is a prerequisite for balance, and balance does not always lead to peace. Harmony can be established from such balance, but peace is something considerably more elusive.

    Giving up on failed expectations holds more value than holding on to them at all costs. If the dreams of our lives remain consistent throughout our lives, then I would call into question whether we’ve grown as human beings or not. My views of the world at age 20 cannot be the same as my views of the world at age 30, or even 40. If it is, it suggests a wasted life. It suggests a holding on to past dictates and expectations without an appreciation for the ever transitioning landscape of life that continuously offers new opportunities and beauty with every fresh breath we take, if only we opened our eyes to it all.

    Not every breath is a fresh breath. More often than not we inhale to sustain rather than to live. This becomes ingrained as the only way to live because we’ve celebrated perseverance in such unhealthy ways. We hold on to bad relationships, detrimental mindsets, and toxic environments all the while hoping that our perseverance will pay off, but neglecting to notice how much we’ve discarded of ourselves in the process.

    The courage to give up on what is not good for us is often thwarted by the need to be right. Giving up is a tacit acknowledgement that we got it wrong, but because our egos are so focused on how we’re perceived by others, we would rather stubbornly persevere than to be perceived as a failure because we know that the likelihood of being celebrated as a martyr is significantly higher than the likelihood of being celebrated for being sensible. And we all want to be celebrated.

    That breath we take from fear never reaches the corners of our soul that needs its nourishment more than anything else. Slowly those corners become hardened and dry, eventually decaying and becoming cancerous, as we hide it from the world, but unleash its aggression in moments of intense disappointment or betrayal. We neglect our own nurturing because too often we believe our worth is only equal to the value that others place on it. We fail to see how the ‘others’ are equally contaminated in their self-worth and therefore subscribe to a view that is inherently toxic, while adopting it as a definition of our aspirations in life.

    Giving up on the appeasement of others in the face of conflict with my convictions has left me alone at times, but rarely has it left me sleepless. Seeing the world for what it is becomes that much more difficult when I hold on to expectations and rights that have little probability of ever being fulfilled. The balance I strike therefore becomes a combination of creatively seeking to express myself in a way that fulfils the rights and expectations of those around me, while simultaneously offering me a space to breathe. Half a fresh breath is better than none at all.

    When we refuse to give up, we actually give in. When we refuse to give up, we ultimately abandon the core of who we are, and any purpose or beautiful contribution associated with it, in favour of a contaminated contribution aimed at the appeasement of those that define our self-worth, the net result of which is anything but fulfilling. But the hoards waiting to judge you for holding on to sanity instead of enslavement to their notions of reality will always be a distraction that pulls us away from the path of peace, and instead drags us into the mud-filled ruts that they have accepted as home.

  • The Betrayal of Pain

    As a child, I recall idyllic holidays in the heartland of Kwazulu Natal. A small farm town with only basic amenities, and a farm with an abundance of natural intrigue, even more than beauty. These are two destinations that merge into one in my mind when I reminisce about the long drives down the rugged gravel roads to the farmhouse and the shop where so many memories were made. We had polite but sincere exchanges with the local Zulus despite barely being able to speak each other’s languages. We made meals out of whole loaves of bread with tinned fish and a haphazard array of vegetables or spices that we could lay our hands on, as we crammed all the ingredients into the cavity we dug out from the centre of the loaf.

    We’d sit by the river and build little dams in which to swim, while we wandered downstream wondering how far the river would take us, eventually turning around to head back to the shop before closing time. The sticky mangoes swelling from the branches of the trees and the smell of fresh cow dung. There was a crispness to those experiences that appear to be lost in the years that followed. Memories abound. It’s easy for memories to surface from times that I associated with innocence and warmth. Warmth of the human spirit reflected in the sincerity of interactions that had no veils of political correctness or courtesy about them. There wasn’t a need for adequate expression of words because the bonds we shared transcended such frivolous qualifications.

    One particular trek down that mountain in my uncle’s Land Rover always stands out more than the rest. The road was one he travelled almost every day of his life while he wrestled with the gearbox of that old car. The steep inclines sometimes felt almost vertical to a child of 6 or 8, while I grabbed the seat trying not to fall through the windscreen as we crept our way down the rock-laden path careful not to get my skinny legs in the way of the gear shift that my uncle cursed. I looked up at him one day and asked quite innocently, “Do you ever get used to this road?” His reply was soft, but terse. “You never get used to pain!”

    I smiled sheepishly without realising the gravity of his statement while I continued to take in the beautiful sights around us. I had seen it many times before but even to this day I still stop and stare in awe at any scene that reminds me of it. Even the smell of the bark of a tree burning in an open fire takes me back to those days. The rocks that he saw as painful obstacles I treasured as a playground during the many times that we’d get out of the car at the river crossing while he drove on to the shop. We hopped over the rocks in the river bed as we chuckled through the path less travelled. My uncle, on the other hand, didn’t see those rocks the way we did. He was looking at it from behind that gear shift, while we felt it beneath our feet giving us the firm foothold we needed to make our way through that majestic land.

    Much later in life I grew to appreciate the reality he was faced with. No matter how familiar we are with pain, it doesn’t ever become pleasant. There may be some comfort that we draw from the familiarity of it, but it never ceases to be pain. Quite ironically though, the pain is usually because of a perspective we embrace rather than the reality that we face. He looked at the rocks as the painful hurdles that offered no respite, while it was the faulty gear shift that in fact tainted the beauty of the rocks.

    I’ve found that when I’m caught up in the rapture of the moments that offer curt reminders of betrayals past, I lose sight of the reality of the beauty around me. The minor betrayals that are in reality not much more than annoyances now hold harsh reminders of the graver betrayals of the past. The annoyances now become my faulty gear shift, while the betrayals of the past in fact inform the appreciation I have of the beauty that life has to offer. Only once both have been experienced, betrayal and beauty, can the one be more fully appreciated in the absence of the other. But it takes more than just the realisation of such dichotomies to remain mindful about the good that we have. It takes a gear shift that isn’t a constant annoyance to avoid the distraction from that which is a blessing.

    Too many times I’ve fallen foul of the procrastination to make the tough decisions from fear of creating a reality that held no certainty. The certainty I desired was the odd comfort that I drew from the familiarity of that pain. Eventually I would reach breaking point, by which time the destruction in my wake was tenfold worse than what it would have been had I acted when I first realised that a change was needed. But each time that I contended with that wake my boldness and confidence to deal with such destruction grew, and so the appeal to delay the inevitable became a taunt that goaded me on to push the limits of my patience to points where the mere contemplation of the potential outcomes of losing it left me lightheaded and weak-kneed knowing that my tolerance was being depleted, while my inclination for flexibility decreased.

    Every decision, whether taken or subdued, is a step closer to the inevitable. The more we resist this reality, the greater the cost when eventually what was intended to come to pass, does.

  • Reverse Engineering Life (Take II)

    The previous post feels like I over complicated a really simple concept, so here’s my second attempt at clarifying it.

    It’s really as simple as this. If you wish to understand someone, look behind their eyes, or their actions, and embrace the vulnerability that is required to see in them what you know to be true of yourself. If you see them angry, remember when you were angry in a similar context in your own life. Then seek to understand yourself in that moment, so that you can establish a basis on which to understand them, or at the least, attempt to.

    When we take this approach we benefit in two ways. Firstly, we stand a better chance of understanding them and therefore being able to meaningfully engage with them. Secondly, it allows you to benefit others from the struggles of your life, instead of just feeling as if it was a personal growth cycle and nothing more.

    If life is really too short to make all your own mistakes, and I believe this to be true, then the only way to live more than you otherwise would have would be to avoid pitfalls by learning from others. But that has to be reciprocal in a healthy society. So the more you hold on to the insecurity of others seeing your flaws and using it as a basis to judge you poorly, the less likely it is that you’ll be able to either learn from them, or allow them to grow from your experiences. Why would it prevent you from learning from them? Simple, the more you protect yourself from being discovered as a whole person with warts and all, the more you’re inclined to believe that your personal struggles are so unique that no one could possibly understand them.

    So the more you allow yourself to open up, the more you’ll realise that in opening up, you actually solicit sources of wisdom that benefit you, rather than weaken you. You’ll also reveal a side of your humanness that will attract the compassionate and tender-hearted ones that you most likely wish to embrace in your personal space. But none of it is possible if you keep everyone at arm’s length because of the mistaken belief that your weaknesses are not shared by others.

    We’re all so great at putting up facades that we’ve even convinced ourselves that no one else has them. Like I’ve always said, your assumptions about others are a true reflection of yourself, rather than them. However, such a reflection is inversely proportional to the reality of your self-image. So chances are that those that judge themselves to be weak assume that others are stronger, while those that embrace their weakness, see others as equally flawed, but not necessarily weak. I guess this is one time when the mirror cannot be trusted, because the eyes always filter what the heart needs to feel. Unless we stop to test the assumptions that the eyes make, our hearts will always be nourished by a tainted diet of reality.

  • Who puts a smile on the face of the village idiot?

    I’ve been asking this question a lot lately. Most people laugh it off, probably turning me into the proverbial village idiot since I put the smile on their face, but no answer seems to be forthcoming. It was never intended to be a rhetorical question. At many points in my life I found myself abandoning that which was dear to me in favour of assisting others to achieve that which was dear to them. My philosophy then, which still influences my choices now, is that my life was never about me but rather about those around me. It’s a sound philosophy, but only if everyone subscribes to it.

    The reality is, most don’t. The harsher reality is that my ego is probably the most unrelenting force I’ve ever had to deal with. So after going through endless cycles of hoping for that shared subscription, which in fact was a veiled desire for reciprocation, I would reach my tolerance levels of patience and then binge on a self-indulgent mission of getting what I believed was due. It was often justified, but nonetheless destructive. With each cycle though, I found my tolerance increasing and my expectations decreasing. But the question remained unanswered.

    The same question can be asked of a physician. Who is the physician of the village physician, or the care giver of the care giver? My point is that we’re all so focused on receiving the services and care from so many around us, that we often forget to consider what their needs are, especially when their needs are not our primary responsibility. The generous amongst us are the most abused. It’s a strange dichotomy though, because it implies that the more abused we are the more beautiful our souls. At least from the outside looking in.

    Unfortunately, the truth is not as pretty. The truth is closer to the fact that most beautiful people appear that way because they have abandoned their desires for themselves, at least within the context of what they desire from others, and they’ve filled that vacancy with seeking fulfilment and purpose in contributing towards the ease of the lives of those around them, not because they are expected to, but because they don’t want others to experience the same void that exists within their lives. I think the most beautiful smiles on the faces of dying people are not because they feel fulfilled but because they feel relieved that the struggle is finally over.

    I think those smiles say more about their willingness to leave behind what others still cling to than it does about feeling contentment about what they’ve achieved. I think those smiles lie, but the ones around them take comfort in it nonetheless, because that is what people do around apparently beautiful souls. They take comfort from them more than they give comfort to them. After all, a soul that appears to be beautiful cannot possibly be in need of the comforting from the pain that the overtly troubled souls require. It is then no wonder at all that the most forgotten are often the most tender. They’re the ones that demand less, give more, and expect little.

    I guess the answer then would be that no one puts a smile on the face of the village idiot. The village idiot has no needs because they appear to be out of touch with reality. We are inclined to believe that they lack any sense of the suffering and the pain of others which is why they always find a reason to smile, or to make others smile. Because as long as they have tears of laughter on their faces, no one will see the tears of loss or yearning that hides behind that beautiful smile. Village idiots are like the air we breathe. They’re taken for granted when they’re there, lamented for a short while when they’re gone, and quickly replaced when an alternate source is found.

    The problem is, we’re almost all village idiots waiting for someone to put a smile on our faces. If we weren’t, there wouldn’t be so much anger and bitterness in this world. Only a small group of idiots have realised that waiting for such an effort from others is an exercise in futility. While we’re waiting for others to care, we lose sight of the fact that they are also waiting for us to care, especially when we suspend our compassion in protest of the absence of their awareness of our needs. If ever there was a polarised state of being, this would be it. Neutrality is not possible, let alone an option. You either contribute or you consume, doing nothing denies another what is their dues, or their needs, in the same way that their inaction denies you of yours.