Tag: society

  • A Brain Dump

    We buried my aunt last night. We weren’t very close, but she was a nice lady. She passed on in the afternoon, and we buried her by 22h00 the same evening in line with Muslim rites and customs. But like every funeral, I embraced the scent of camphor, probably more so than most would. We use camphor as an embalming agent to prepare the corpse for burial. So it’s always been a sobering reminder of the inevitable outcome of everything.

    Sobering! That was the lingering feeling that stayed with me throughout last night, and today. And it lingers still. At times in my life I often visited the cemetery alone on cold nights. Sometimes, if not always, I felt a sense of belonging, probably from the knowledge that that will be the final abode despite our best efforts to prolong our avoidance of it. Last night was different.

    Last night I made a feeble attempt to reflect on the sight of thousands of graves with their flaking lime-washed surrounds and the lives that were distilled into that piece of earth that didn’t care about their riches, their comforts, their legacies or their significance amongst men. It was cold to the touch, and lifeless. And the sense of belonging, or even yearning, escaped me. I felt dejected, not just in my own life any longer, but last night I felt dejected from the after life. Nothing offered me comfort or certainty, let alone peace. I had always felt some morbid sense of belonging to the dwellers of the graves.

    The above unfinished post has been laying in my drafts since August 2011. I never completed it, and I don’t think I can do so now either. But recent events in my life, mostly at the office, serves as a stark reminder of the purpose of my time on this earth. Betrayal is like pain, no matter how it is experienced, how long it persists, or how familiar it may become, it will never be a joy, nor a welcomed guest. I often have to remind myself of the advice I so readily dispense. Live with hope, not expectations.

    It’s been a while since I indulged myself in a brain dump. One is definitely called for, although the audience that I have solicited for my blog makes me hesitant to be as brutally honest about my thoughts as I used to be. The problem with trying to be yourself irrespective of those around you is that a large part of being yourself is in fact shaped by those around you. Thoughts spilt recklessly under the pretence of spilled ink, or freedom of expression, only adds to the already burdensome load of callousness in this world.

    Despite the incessant betrayals that I experience in my life, which incidentally becomes much easier to rack up if you’re naive like I choose to be, I still find it impossible, or at the least distasteful to treat others with suspicion simply because I was betrayed under similar circumstances before. I believe betrayal is the root to all evil, not money. We first have to betray ourselves, our deepest held convictions, before we can muster up the cowardice to betray others. Money is simply a distraction, like almost everything else that we surround ourselves with in life. Reflection is called for if we hope to know what it is that we stand for. With all the distractions there is little time for reflection, so it stands to reason that we’re more inclined towards acting in a way that contradicts our dreams and aspirations without realising it, while speaking wistfully of missed opportunities and bad decisions, because each time those opportunities visited us, or those decisions were made, we could barely discern the bullshit from the burden of reality.

  • Is that good I see?

    Acknowledging or praising the virtues of others when they’re around seems to carry a self-imposed burden of expectation that most of us resist. It’s easier for me to talk about this as a generalisation than to refer directly to my personal shortcomings, because in this vagueness lies some comfort as well. I’ve lost many people in my life that were significant others with whom I enjoyed a close and intimate personal relationship, or they were extended family, or even friends. Each time, I found myself trying to find comfort in the fact that my sincere inner prayers for their peace and comfort after death including privately acknowledging the good that they had in them is sufficient for not having acknowledged them while they were alive.

    But it’s never that easy. Acknowledging people when they’re alive, or at least present, does carry a burden of accountability that is not always self-imposed. I’ve often found myself on the receiving end of criticism when I acknowledged someone’s good, and they automatically assumed that I lost my right to criticise something else about them. I tend to be guilty of the same response at times as well. I guess we’re all defensive in that way, and I’m not sure if we start that vicious cycle ourselves in each relationship, or is it a perpetual cycle that was started long before we were even conceived.

    We live in a world of extremes. Digital thinking of zeros and ones, leading us to believe that it’s always all or nothing, but rarely any healthy balance in between. Recognising good in something, or someone, is often met with fierce criticism if we suddenly acknowledge something not-so-good in  them, as if it’s not possible for both good and bad to co-exist in a single person. I’ve been accused of being hypocritical before because I may have enjoyed a good relationship with someone while also taking exception to something that they may have been doing. Perhaps it’s not a vicious cycle, but instead an impossible standard that we hold others to, always forgetting that we’re also that ‘other’ to someone else that applies that same standard to us.

    We look at others and demand consistency and predictability, but we crumble under the pressure of the same consistency and predictability being demanded of us. It’s easy to expect, but not always easy to deliver. However, most often our attention is drawn to the rights that we have over others, rather than the rights that they have over us. No wonder then that we have such dysfunction in society. We tend to wait to have our rights and expectations fulfilled before we’re willing to return the favour. Everyone is waiting for that change that we all wish to see in the world, but no one is willing to offer it without an expectation of reciprocation.

    I doubt this will change my inclination to openly acknowledge all the good that people do for me when they’re doing it for me. But I also don’t think that this is entirely a bad thing, because the acknowledgement I offer may not always be verbal, but is almost always demonstrated in my sacrifices of personal comforts and time which is much more meaningful than a few spoken words, the sincerity of which can never be known. When someone does something good for us, we’re faced with a few possible reasons why they’re doing it. Either they want something in return, they have a vested interest, or perhaps they’re doing it to subtly acknowledge our worth in their life. I suspect that we rarely consider the third option, quite possibly because the superficial nature of this world has most of us inclined towards the first two as motivators for action.

  • Finding My Way

    I have a lot that I want to pursue, explore, or share in my efforts to unravel or unpack the unanswered questions around me. I think sometimes that I should in fact write that book that many friends, colleagues, and some professional acquaintances often nagged me about, but then I wonder if there is anything new that I can add to the already burgeoning stores of narratives that someone thought was special enough to share. One of the problems with this ease of accessibility to sharing your thoughts is that everything fast becomes clichéd because everyone has a pearl of wisdom to drop all over the place. I wonder then if the new challenge is not to string together meaningful fresh insights, but rather to collate the clichés in a way that brings sanity to the noise, or beauty to the jagged edges of everyone’s desire to be noticed?

    My life is less than ordinary. It always has been. I always imagined ordinary to be a normal home, with a normal family, normal parents, with general growing pains and the usual social circles to round it all up. Children that have a healthy dose of sibling rivalry, but a healthier dose of family unity. Parents that each play their own parts equitably so that a vague sense of order and balance resonates through the home. Overall, there’s a general sense of wholesomeness accompanied by an unashamed sense of mediocrity in celebrating the little life stages that each of the kids make it through, while the parents grow content with having put their kids through school, and then maybe college or university, followed by marrying them off into good families to start that entire cycle again.

    That’s not my life. Never has been. Improving on that would be extraordinary, but less than that must then be less than ordinary. That would be my life. Less ordinary, and somewhat weird. Part of the weirdness was instilled at an early age when I realised that I was not like my siblings, so seeking affirmation from them for what interested me was never an option. My parents had their own distractions, so seeking out fatherly guidance was not an option either. And so started the troubled journey of finding my own way in life.

    There’s a boon that accompanies such a journey, and that is the ability to forge new paths and take the less travelled roads (oh, those damned clichés ). The opportunity to make your own mistakes without having someone around to tell you ‘I told you so’, nor having someone around to constrain your thinking or creativity in line with their fears, or failures. But there’s a burden that accompanies every boon. That burden is the anguish you feel when you’re embarking on something really important, or at least want to, and there’s a room full of no one that you’re able to use as a sounding board. No one that you feel comfortable enough to share that passion with because you know that your reality is very different from theirs. Your frame of reference is different from theirs. Your self-imposed limitations, your fears, your desires, your perspective, is all different. So seeking sanity in their reflections is a futile exercise.

    At points like these I wonder if this is what it may feel like, in some small way, to be an orphan. To be without guides, or mentors, or pillars of strength. To instead find yourself to be that pillar of strength, that guide, and that mentor for others, with the means to guide you being not much more than a quirky ability to reflect while indulging, or to observe while acting, coupled with a resilience that can’t be explained. There’s a stubborn obstinacy within me that refuses to give way to convention. When I do fight that stubbornness in an attempt to ‘get along’, I find my health suffering because of the unnatural tension that it causes within me.

    The likely delusion in all this is that I seem to think that my circumstance is special. This world appears to be more dysfunctional than wholesome. Our drive for individual instant gratification has already eroded the sense of community that we all long for, but towards which most are not willing to contribute. This is sounding more like a brain dump than a post. Perhaps in that lies the secret of finding my way. Rather than internalising, perhaps there is much to be gained from verbalising my clutter, because once it’s out there in plain language, the sense or stupidity of it all becomes blatantly obvious, making it possible to sift through the muck so that I can find the gems that would lead me on to the next leg of my journey.

  • Letting Go

    Most people automatically associate the phrase ‘letting go’ with love and romance. The angsty teenager with the broken heart, or the distraught divorcee, or the one who lost a loved one. It’s so easy to allow the requisite time for mourning to pass before feeling comfortable enough to boldly tell someone to let go and move on. But let go of what? Move on to where?

    Sometimes I find it akin to hanging off the edge of a cliff holding on to a rope in the hope that something will change at some point which will make my hanging from that cliff meaningful or significant. I hold on to that rope for dear life’s sake, more in fear of what will happen if I let go, rather than because I want to hold on. Perhaps my holding on is inspired by the hope that someone may find me worthy enough to want to save me from the fall? I find the same to be true in life outside of romance or human relationships. So many erroneously assume that the act of letting go is what is important, when in fact the need to not want to hold on is really what matters.

    When we focus on letting go, we end up seeking out replacements or alternatives to make up for what we’re supposedly giving up, when in fact we’re not giving up anything, but instead only filling the same gaping hole with a different object. With this realisation I find myself back on that cliff holding on to that rope for dear life, not for a second realising that life hanging off the edge of a cliff is really not much of a life at all.

    Perhaps the cliff analogy is somewhat extreme, but the principles of dealing with reality in the face of inevitability remain the same. We’d much rather hold on to what is familiar than let go in the belief that something better may be acquired. Sometimes we dismiss this insecurity and neediness as pragmatism, or reality, when in fact it’s simply fear. Crippling fear that if we got it wrong once, or if we lost once, we cannot afford to allow ourselves into a situation that would hold the potential of such fear or loss again. And there begins the cycle of self defeat where we assure ourselves of our limitations and pretend to accept it graciously when in fact we’re really just protecting ourselves from the unknown.

    Sometimes we deny this fear and camouflage it with misplaced courage sub-consciously trying to prove that we’re not damaged or dependent on those that betrayed us, and so we pretend to boldly pursue new challenges or opportunities, when in fact all we’re doing is trying to pacify ourselves, and dissuade others from seeing the weakness and the wounds that fester beneath the surface. One scarce talent, it seems, is our ability to accept our true worth before we embrace our limitations. We’re prone to believing that we’re flawed before we believe in our ability to succeed.

    It seems we live in a time when society thrives on the insecurities of others. Our self worth is determined by how much we’re able to fill in those gaps for others, so much so that we are in tune with what others need more than we have any inkling about what we need for ourselves. The trick, I believe, is not to know how to please someone else, but rather how to find someone that is pleased by similar values and virtues as yourself. There is much truth in the saying that love is not two people looking at each other, but rather two people looking in the same direction. It’s just a pity that most people are aimless in their wanderings to find a life worth living.

    Too much emphasis is placed on the contribution of others towards determining the happiness we experience. We’re prone to waiting for life to happen while finding distractions to fill in the gaps of loneliness and purpose, instead of embracing life while being entertained by the distractions. And the same is true for bad habits, social failures, or career bumps. We look at the failure or the setback as a defining experience of who we are, rather than a defining experience of the bad choices we made. Rather than kicking ourselves when we get something wrong, we should remind ourselves that there is much dignity and reward in reflection on the reasons for the bad choices we made, acceptance of the fact that each experience affords us an opportunity to make more informed choices in the future, and the ultimate goal of evolving beyond being a creature of habit, and instead becoming a creature of choice.

    The only thing worth letting go of (it seems) is letting go. Instead, we should embrace, reflect, inform, and persevere. Otherwise we may as well just hold on to that rope for dear life’s sake, hoping that someone will come along at some point and feel sorry enough to want to help us out of our stupor, so that we can start yet another cycle of neediness that ends in pain when the one we need cannot bear the burden of being needed so desperately.

  • I Hate Skinny Jeans

    It’s been a while since I felt an inclination to post any reflective thoughts about my current state. I’m 100% primed for a mid-life crisis right now, but it seems like the only crisis I’m managing to acquire quite successfully is a mid-drift one. My chest is still pretty much where it used to be for the most of my life, so I’m quite comfortable that this is not a case of having a drop-chest. I’ve accepted that I am firmly part of the horizontally challenged brigade that still struggle to squeeze into their jeans of yesteryear. However, the situation is not as dire, nor as disgusting as it may sound.

    I have a very simple philosophy when it comes to maintaining my weight over the years. I’ve reached a point where my pants’ size is as big as I would ever want it to go, and I’ve been convinced of this for many years now. So each time when I feel it getting really uncomfortably tight around my waist, I know that’s a sure sign that I need to shed some baby fat. Incidentally, it turns out that baby fat is not as cute on a grown man. So the simple philosophy really just says that when my pants get too tight, instead of buying a bigger size and giving in to the bulge, I make a concerted effort to lose weight instead. My tolerance level to put up with that discomfort has obviously grown, and I’m starting to wonder if I’m only maintaining my pants size because of my anatomy extending over the belt line, rather than being constrained by it?

    Ok, enough of the disturbing mental imagery and on to the real point of this post. Going shopping for new jeans (of the same size I might add), has turned into quite a frustrating chore because of the insistence by retailers to shove all men (including us real ones) into that girlish designs that suggest that skinny jeans look good on real men. It doesn’t. It never did, and it never will. A man that wears a skinny jeans is probably a man that is either still living with his mother (for her to take care of him and not the other way around), or a man that gets his nails polished and has facial products to keep his skin looking soft and youthful. I hate skinny jeans. Especially for men. And I hate men that pamper themselves as if they’re women. We have more women than men in this world, literally and figuratively, so give it a rest already. Try being a man for a change. You’ll be surprised at how refreshing that can be. And no, being a slob doesn’t mean you’re a man, it just means you’re a slob. Usually a blob of a slob, now that I think of it.

    Shopping at several local retailers has proven that there is a pervasive assumption that men want to wear what women wear. I’m old school and proud of it. I yearn for a time when men were men and women were women, and each had equitable roles, and chivalry was still admired. But the feminists and the apologists will not allow such wholesomeness to survive, so they decided to force men into bootlegged jeans, skinny fit everything, straight leg jeans, low rise jeans, and everything but REGULAR FIT jeans! What happened to the good old regular fit? I don’t want some fanboy designer look. I simply want a comfortable pair of jeans that will allow me to do the chores around the house without having to shift my jewels back in place after each movement because of the feminine crotch that someone thought would be a good idea on a man’s jeans. It disgusts me to say the least, and physically pains me at best.

    No wonder we have such a dysfunctional society. Men are trying to prove that they’re as sassy and polished as women, and women are trying to prove that they’re equal to men. Neither are comfortable being their natural selves any longer except when they’re alone in their homes without any social stigmas to comply with or judging eyes to appease. All this is blatantly reflected in our children when they develop that vacuous mentality that allows only for self-promotion and a desperation for affirmation, while believing that any challenge is a reason to be diagnosed with a mental illness because the support structure that should be there to guide them through the insanity of adolescence is suddenly replaced with self-centred adults trying to compete with their children in appearance and social status resulting in social ills that leave even anarchists cringing with fear.

    Seriously. Can someone simply point me to a retailer that stocks men’s clothes for men in the men’s section, so that I don’t have to constantly look around me to reassure myself that I am actually shopping in the men’s section of the store?

  • Born Restless

    The only constant emotion that I can recall in my life is restlessness. Perhaps it’s a state more than it is an emotion. I don’t care. The net effect remains the same. There is little that I can leave untouched. I have an incessant need to unravel issues that plague myself or others. I can’t let sleeping dogs lie (all puns intended). There are too many dogs that pretend to be asleep and in so doing they lie through their fangs in their efforts to garner social acceptance or admiration. They’re dogs, regardless of their pretenses.

    The heart of mental illnesses lies in society, and not in the brain. There is no chemical imbalance that can be righted in order for it to right the betrayals of society at large, and significant others at the least. So instead of contending with the elephant in the room, we’d much rather pretend that we have a mental illness to deal with. At times like this I feel mentally ill. The same restlessness creeps into every thought pattern and disrupts my focus leading to angsty drivel that aspires to become a meaningful post. But I know that this restlessness is not an illness. It’s simply the reality of my attempts to live consciously.

    We’re all alone. No matter how big our social circles may appear, deep down inside only we understand the gravity of being who we are, and what we fear. The social circles are just a distraction from this reality, but in no way erases that loneliness. It’s all just a distraction, but it’s a very effective distraction which is why we’re amusing ourselves to death, only to realise too late that we were in fact distracting ourselves from life. It’s therefore no surprise that avenues like social networking and technical gadgetry are increasingly popular to all generations and not just the young ‘uns any longer. We all need the distractions equally.

    The problem is not in the distractions, or how they’re being abused. Those are just symptoms. The true problem is in a society that sees the need for escape as being a mental illness. The problem lies in academics that lack any real life experiences but feel accomplished enough because of a piece of paper to pronounce their judgement on the mental state of others without even considering the reality of life. That’s why we have the ridiculously high levels of bipolar disorder that is diagnosed in all spectrums of society, let alone depression and so many other abused terms of mental illness.

    In a dysfunctional society it’s next to impossible to find a healthy support structure to avoid the temptation of labelling our mental states. Support structures are not synonymous with support groups, but are in fact the family structures and community networks that talk to the village raising a kid, rather than the village raising an idiot. The collective responsibility of society has long been abandoned in favour of individual appeasement and selfish goals.

    The restlessness I feel is born out of this same dysfunction. But according to many, I could successfully be diagnosed with a mental illness because I have an insatiable desire to see wholesome values and communal living that is morally grounded realised in my lifetime. Perhaps I am mad. Perhaps my restlessness is in fact insanity. Perhaps my desire for old school values is merely my distraction from a society that has evolved beyond such wholesomeness. Perhaps I am that sane man that is compared to an insane society, and because the mirror with which I reflect on my life is that insane society, it is entirely possible that I may appear insane. Worse than this is the innocent soul that lacks such a realisation and still seeks affirmation from that same insane society.

  • Cyclic Sanity

    I’ve often contemplated, like many others, the reasons for time going so much faster as I get older. Many of my conclusions are no different to those considered by most others as well, yet I feel compelled to write them down after a few weeks of being particularly preoccupied with these thoughts. The obvious conclusion is that I have more that I’m responsible for doing now than I did when I was younger, so it stands to reason that I have less time available in between all the things I have to do. But that seems to only answer part of the question.

    It seems that life has become a ritual that operates in cycles. I often find myself fixated on observing, measuring, reminiscing, contemplating and doing everything within the context of new years, another month, the next week, or tomorrow to the point where I find that I convince myself that the cycles of these years, let alone the days, or even the hours, is what determines the activities that I should be planning for. Most of us, well at least the 99%, work from pay cheque to pay cheque. If we have disposable income after redistribution day, we consider ourselves fortunate, if not entirely blessed. The more disposable income we have, the more blessed we feel, the more we indulge, the more we need to focus on getting that next pay cheque to feel blessed again. This might sound like a cynic’s view of life, but there’s much truth in it.

    I forget so easily how to fill the gaps in between all the responsibilities that I have. Worse yet, I forget that many of those responsibilities can be fulfilling and rewarding rather than a duty, but the ever present demon of expectations dissuades me from raising too many expectations beyond what my duty is. And so the cycles of sanity are spawned and nurtured all at once. There is much merit in being spontaneous as opposed to measured and deliberate. I used to embrace spontaneity, but due to the prejudices of society, I feel like I’m sub-consciously suppressing my spontaneity from fear of being seen as one having a mid-life crisis.

    The staid, predictable, frightfully responsible, and entirely dependable family man is what is expected of me. It’s what a dysfunctional and disillusioned society expects of me. It’s what I demand of myself, despite it going against my own nature. I embrace responsibility willingly, because there is too much recklessness around me. But the cycles drive me insane. The painful predictability of life, of each month, of each day. It all stifles me. It smothers me. So I rebel. I say the things that are improper, and I challenge those views held sacred, not because I want to, but because I feel extremely restless and uncomfortable when I see others behave out of ritual or habit without appreciating the gaps they have at their disposal.

    I would rather have responsibilities between the gaps, rather than gaps between the responsibilities. The proverbial glass is half empty for me not because I don’t see it as half full, but simply because I know I’ve drunk more than most from it. I don’t want my glass to be half full. In fact, I don’t want a glass. I don’t want convention. Nor do I want routine or safe choices. I want to know that I am living and not just going through the motions pretending that doing something better today than I did it yesterday, which was better than I did it the day before, is sufficient fulfilment for my life. I need more than that. I need to look in someone’s eyes and see it confused and restless because I challenged them to think. Because I challenged them to work those gaps and move beyond the routine.

    Those gaps. They’re so damn elusive because when I get them, I’m usually taking a breather to recover from the demands of the routine. I must break the cycle. This cycle of seeming sanity has robbed me of the essence of what it pretends to be. Sanity is not the prevalence of order, nor is it the prevalence of function. It’s simply, by society’s standards, the presence of conformance. Conformance has killed many a creative soul, and destroyed many a great idea. More than this, conformance has destroyed the me I used to smile at. It’s time to break the cycle of sanity. For verily, as has been said already, a sane man, when compared to an insane society, must appear insane. But I think JG Ballard said it best when he said, “In a totally sane society, madness is the only freedom.”

  • The Oppression of Victim-hood

    Being oppressed does not necessarily result in victims, but sitting and waiting for someone else to lift you out of your oppressive state does. Immediately images of Palestine, Burma, Iraq, Syria and other downtrodden communities come to mind, for most anyway. However, this state of victim-hood happens on a daily basis in the most arrogant and privileged among us.

    We often look for signs of being victims in people that appear helpless and incapable of fending for or defending themselves. Perhaps this is part of the psyche that drives us to denounce our own state of victim-hood. I’ve often suggested that anger is driven by fear, and fear is in turn driven by insecurity. Given that victims are generally insecure, either physically or emotionally, it stands to reason then that those that are angry more often than not are most probably the biggest victims among us. However, given that anger is often used to subdue others, it’s easy to see the target of such aggression as being the weak, and the aggressors as being the strong. This is very far from the truth of it all.

    I’m not suggesting that the aggressors should earn our sympathy, because that would be further adding to the imbalance in society that aggressors create. Rather, what I am suggesting is that if we recognise the victim-hood in the aggressors, we’ll recognise their weakness. If we recognise their weakness, we stand a chance of rising above their oppression and finding ways to undo that which gives them power over others. Stop thinking about this in the context of war and crime. It’s easy to be distracted by those because of the unfortunate prevalence of it all. Instead, think about in the context of an ordinary life.

    There is always someone looking to assert their superiority over others. But there’s rarely enough to recognise that such an effort results from an insecurity that drives us to seek such significance because we don’t believe we’re significant by default. It’s easy to succumb to oppression because we have a world celebrating the victim-hood of all with the aggressor being life. Just yesterday I heard that a child that throws tantrums at least three times a month for the period of a year is deemed to have a psychological disorder. Where I come from, it’s a parenting disorder, not a psychological one. The fact that the parents are inept primarily because of their own insecurities further cements the views I’ve shared about the oppression that results from victim-hood. But we’re unfortunately conditioned to believe that victims should be meek creatures waiting for a hand up, while forgetting that in waiting for a hand up we give up our right to take a stand for ourselves.

    Standing up should not be the act of a hero, or a brave soul. Like Stefan Molyneux said, “Anytime you create a hero, you diminish your own capacity for greatness.” Similarly, each time you wait for a hand up, you reduce your own capacity to be you. To be independent. To be a master of your life, rather than a victim.