Oh when the defeated wail...

S/he (the gender is irrelevant really) said as s/he lay curled in a foetal position watching the assailant drift away: "I now know what it feels like to have the wind punched out of you... I imagined that after the pain there would be relief... but there isn't... there is an empty numbness... an unanswered question... a scream caught in the lungs and failing to get out.. I now know what it feels like to have the wind punched straight out of you...


I ask myself whether this feeling would be there if just seconds before the punch I had not been in debilitating mental ecstasy.. a state of self induced euphoria.. I was daydreaming.. my guard was down. Any other day that punch would not have made its way to my diaphragm, it would have died an early death in the grasp of my agile hand. Today it didn't. It couldn't. It - like the rest of me - was caught off guard.. I was happy or so I thought... I know now what I didn't know before I was awoken from my blissful slumber.. Happiness is but an illusion.. when the veil is lifted by the punch of reality, there is no sorrow... there is just an empty numbness... an unanswered question.. "Why me?" "


These are not my words... I wrote them, but it is not me speaking... they are the words of a defeated subconscious.. Whose? I do not know.. Whoever s/he may be s/he should be your exact opposite... so as you read this - again - think in reverse.. For whoever this may be failed to take heed of one of the most fundamental lessons.. that as you soar, remember that at some stage you must land. Do not let the illusion of your own "greatness" cloud your vision of reality. With clear vision and awareness that the higher you are the more painful your fall, you will find that "failure" is nothing more but a lesson of which you must take due cognisance if you are to move up. move forward. grow. excel.

On Greatness...

"If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream."
The words of Martin Luther King Jr... their echo never fades, almost as if they will haunt me forever... I keep hope alive, my dream is one of greatness... everyday, I light a candle and put it at my window so I can light the way for whatever greatness is to come... I do not want it to feel unwelcome, I do not want it to think I am not home... I want it to knock on my door, late at night as I sleep and ask me if it can come in... I wait each day as my candle burns at my window sill... for I have decided: when greatness comes, I will let it in...

Growing up, we are constantly told that “pride comes before a fall”… hardly encouraging words given that it somehow equates all our efforts at greatness to wasted breath. We find ourselves wondering whether our life really has a purpose if we cannot celebrate our successes, rung by rung as we climb up the ladder that is life. I agree that pride comes before a fall, but that doesn’t mean the fall will ever come.. it doesn't mean I WILL fall if I am proud of what I have achieved… Let’s not settle for mediocrity simply because we fear that if we do too much, strive too hard, we may just succeed and, the flying spaghetti monster forbid, that could very well mean we might just be proud… hence we might just fall… We cannot let that stop us; each of us is destined for some greatness…
From coal emerges diamonds… from the bowels of the oyster comes the pearl… so let not greatness be your fear… light that candle and grow… grow exponentially...

What Identity?

In December 2008 I closed the book on my Rhodes experience... FINALLY flown away from my little foster home, my little cocoon - an anthropologist's dream - a microcosm of predominantly middle-class B-grade students with social lives constructed mainly around a couple of pubs, sportsbars and nothing much else. The one thing I know I've definitely taken with me (except the somewhat beautiful parchments with my embossed name and my alleged academic "qualifications") is an inflated, albeit artificial sense of self-worth and no idea where I really want to be (or maybe even "do" in the short-run at least).

I've met wonderful people while at Rhodes - mixed in with all the rotten apples and faux smiles of the others... The wonderful people I've met are those I'll undoubtedly never forget, even if I wanted to! Most of whom have contributed to my sense of self-worth.. The "diversity" at Rhodes is just as artificial. While I cannot deny that there are certain "oil and water" elements amongst the jacaranda tree and tequila stained avenues of my former campus, the majority of us gravitated towards clones of ourselves or at least people we hoped to clone. In a language many of my fellow Rhodents may understand: You either went to Friar's or you didn't (read Equilibrium). Those of us who occasionally crossed the divide were branded anomalies and more often than not "judged" by our mates from the different camps... But what a wealth of knowledge I acquired while walking on that fence!

Over the past 5years (yes, I'm THAT old!) I have learnt more about people than I ever thought possible. I have shed "friends" like the seasonal skin of a snake and have at the same time managed to separate the wheat from the chaff. I can safely say that those people I call my friends today are indeed my friends and are people I will reminisce with about things other than the jacarandas and the tequila.. People I will cherish always and without whom my years at Rhodes would have been empty.

I have grown as a person... from my early Rhodes days when I wasn't quite sure in which group I fell and when in a desperate attempt to "fit the mould" I sold myself terribly short.. Over the years I have come to terms with who I am and have discovered that there is no mould into which I must force myself. That I am unique and that the things that set me apart are the things that define me... some characteristics might be endearing to some, while grating to others... but it's who I am. I might have to thank Rhodes for that.. a seed sown has been nurtured and watered and has blossomed into the person I am today....

That said: When next I am in Grahamstown... you know where to find me!