Wisdom from silent corners

Life can be incredibly short so do not waste it idling on could have been dreams or should have been wishes.

Live your now as best you can. It might just be my age speaking, but it is a special kind of gift to be able to be present for the things that really matter. Being mindful of the life you have can be incredibly rewarding at the oddest of times.

You might not yet own those possessions that you think you need; like that house you want, or that car or have that job that speaks to you but there are many things you do have. You have your faith, be it a belief in God, Allah, Brahman or to attain spiritual enlightenment like Buddha. You have your health, which may not always be great but you wake up every morning.  You have family, they can be the one you are born into and the one you acquire through years of living.

I read somewhere that it takes a special kind of courage to do great things and all those great thing inevitably comes from being the best version of you possible

Race, in a fair-skinned world!

I am not one to play the race card or to let peoples ignorance and blatant stupidity get to me but today i am just angry!

I do not appreciate when the color of my skin or the color that it may not be hinders the ability of those around me to hear what i am saying. I do not appreciate being referred to as the only ''colored voice" in the room when i choose to disagree with a statement or have an opinion; the fact that i am the only one of "my color" here clearly signifies that the problem is the room and the other voices here and not me. I do not appreciate being asked excessively where i come from, as if the way i speak is all that different, I am not from Joburg and just so you know most people here aren't from here incipiently. My fair-skinned friend like you we do not all look the same, speak the same or have the same dialect.

I do not appreciate going into a store one day and because of my clothes i am either greeted with a friendly "Hello" or followed around because my skin color just happens to be different than your other clientele. I refuse to live in a society where the label of my clothes, the position i hold and the car i drive defines the service or respect i am entitled too as a human being. We should be beyond defining people by what we see, we should be over staring because someone is different, we should be over the need to pass judgement on each other.

This bigotry is overrated and it makes people like me bitter to have to encounter it daily.

So yes i am not white and i am not black, i do not need anyone to point this out for me because i know it. Though this should be irrelevant in 2015 i can acknowledge that it is not nor will it probably ever be in my time. I will however not sit by ideally to be belittled or treated differently because my race or my background is different to yours!

Ernestine Johnson - on "The average Black Girl"

She says it so well!

For those of you who do not know who Daisy Bates, Pauli Murray and those infamous women who had a voice and used it are then read The invisible women of the Civil Rights Movement

INVICTUS

For some reason i find myself thinking of the movie Invictus and found myself stumbling across the poem, if you have watched it you might remember the poem recited by Morgan Freeman close to the end and that it was a favorite of the man he portrayed so well in the movie. I think Obama also makes reference to the poem in his speech at Nelson Mandela's memorial service, especially in the lines, "I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.".

The poem was originally written by William Ernest Henley in my opinion to show might in the face of adversity, the Latin meaning for Invictus is after all "unconquerable"!

At the Gates of the Year

I have been trying to put my year in words but have failed miserably to capture it all until i found the poem below by Minnie Louise Haskins (1875-1957):

GOD KNOWS 

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”

And he replied: “Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”

So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night. And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.

So heart be still:
What need our little life
Our human life to know,
If God hath comprehension?
In all the dizzy strife
Of things both high and low,
God hideth His intention.

God knows. His will
Is best. The stretch of years
Which wind ahead, so dim
To our imperfect vision,
Are clear to God. Our fears
Are premature; In Him,
All time hath full provision.

Then rest: until
God moves to lift the veil
From our impatient eyes,
When, as the sweeter features
Of Life’s stern face we hail,
Fair beyond all surmise
God’s thought around His creatures
Our mind shall fill.

So as my journey into 2014 begins, i am humbled by the year i leave behind.  It has been a year that has seen me shed more tears than laughter, a year that has taught me great lessons on loss, life and faith. A year of revelations and one of sincere appreciation for things like life and death.

I don't know what this new year holds but God knows!

WHAT WILL MATTER

Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end.

There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days.

All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else.

Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance.

It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed.

Your grudges, resentments, frustrations and jealousies will finally disappear.

So too, your hopes, ambitions, plans and to-do lists will expire.

The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away.

It won’t matter where you came from or what side of the tracks you lived on at the end.

It won’t matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant.

Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant.

So what will matter? How will the value of your days be measured?

What will matter is not what you bought but what you built,

not what you got but what you gave.

What will matter is not your success but your significance.

What will matter is not what you learned but what you taught.

What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage or sacrifice that enriched,

empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example.

What will matter is not your competence but your character.

What will matter is not how many people you knew,

but how many will feel a lasting loss when you’re gone.

What will matter is not your memories but the memories of those who loved you.

What will matter is how long you will be remembered, by whom and for what.

Living a life that matters doesn't happen by accident.

It’s not a matter of circumstance but of choice.

Choose to live a life that matters.

WHAT WILL MATTER was written by  Michael Josephson 

Michael Josephson, is a former lawyer, law professor, and successful entrepreneur, he is one of the most respected and sought-after speakers and consultants in the field of ethics and character, with a special expertise in the area of ethics and character in schools and the workplace. 

A Man and his work

A few years ago i read an article in the Daily Mavrick where Jonathan Jansen speaks about servant leadership and his work at the University of the Free State, i have also had the privilege of meeting this giant of a man at WITS and yes he is indeed a giant in humility and spirit, i have never met a man more dedicate to the needs of his children (students) or that resonates such peace. His love for people and his mission for change literally speaks without him needing to say a word.

Recently some of his other work has been making its way into my inbox and around Facebook, the more i read the more affirmed i am that it should definitely be shared. One of my favorites is his writing on South Africa through his eyes.

My South Africa by Jonathan Jansen (Published: 9 February 2011)

My South Africa is the working-class man who called from the airport to return my wallet without a cent missing. It is the white woman who put all three of her domestic worker's children through the same school that her own child attended. It is the politician in one of our rural provinces, Mpumalanga, who returned his salary to the government as a statement that standing with the poor had to be more than just a few words. It is the teacher who worked after school hours every day during the public sector strike to ensure her children did not miss out on learning.

My South Africa is the first-year university student in Bloemfontein who took all the gifts she received for her birthday and donated them - with the permission of the givers - to a home for children in an Aids village. It is the people hurt by racist acts who find it in their hearts to publicly forgive the perpetrators. It is the group of farmers in Paarl who started a top school for the children of farm workers to ensure they got the best education possible while their parents toiled in the vineyards. It is the farmer's wife in Viljoenskroon who created an education and training centre for the wives of farm labourers so that they could gain the advanced skills required to operate accredited early-learning centers for their own and other children.

My South Africa is that little white boy at a decent school in the Eastern Cape who decided to teach the black boys in the community to play cricket, and to fit them all out with the togs required to play the gentelman's game. It is the two black street children in Durban, caught on camera, who put their spare change in the condensed milk tin of a white beggar. It is the Johannesburg pastor who opened up his church as a place of shelter for illegal immigrants. It is the Afrikaner woman from Boksburg who nailed the white guy who shot and killed one of South Africa's greatest freedom fighters outside his home.

My South Africa is the man who went to prison for 27 years and came out embracing his captors, thereby releasing them from their impending misery. It is the activist priest who dived into a crowd of angry people to rescue a woman from a sure necklacing. It is the former police chief who fell to his knees to wash the feet of Mamelodi women whose sons disappeared on his watch; it is the women who forgave him in his act of contrition. It is theCape Town university psychologist who interviewed the 'Prime Evil' in Pretoria Centre and came away with emotional attachment, even empathy, for the human being who did such terrible things under apartheid.

My South Africa is the quiet, dignified, determined township mother from Langa who straightened her back during the years of oppression and decided that her struggle was to raise decent children, insist that they learn, and ensure that they not succumb to bitterness or defeat in the face of overwhelming odds. It is the two young girls who walked 20kms to school everyday, even through their matric years, and passed well enough to be accepted into university studies. It is the student who takes on three jobs, during the evenings and on weekends, to find ways of paying for his university studies.

My South Africa is the teenager in a wheelchair who works in townships serving the poor. It is the pastor of a Kenilworth church whose parishioners were slaughtered, who visits the killers and asks them for forgiveness because he was a beneficiary of apartheid. It is the politician who resigns on conscientious grounds, giving up status and salary because of an objection in principle to a social policy of her political party. It is the young lawman who decides to dedicate his life to representing those who cannot afford to pay for legal services.

My South Africa is not the angry, corrupt, violent country those deeds fill the front pages of newspapers and the lead-in items on the seven-o'-clock news. It is the South Africa often unseen, yet powered by the remarkable lives of ordinary people. It is the citizens who keep the country together through millions of acts of daily kindness. 

* This article originally appeared in Mango's in-flight magazine.

Hall of Fame

For some reason that is beyond me i can't get this song out of my head, i rather like it!

Life...

"To this day" by Shane Koyczan

Stumbled across this video and i personally found it to be profound. So take the 12 or so minutes to really listen to what he says.

Things i wish i knew back THEN!

My niece is entering her teen phase and she asked me a very interesting question recently about things i wish i knew when i was a teen. This made me sit and ponder on lessons learnt from that very testing time when i was a little miss know it all.

I wished someone had informed me:

That i can do or be anything - That there wasn't limitations set by the world for my dreams as long as i worked hard. Oh and that 9-5 was overrated if i got stuck in something that i wasn't passionate about and that didn't get me excited.

The choice is always yours - Life doesn't randomly happen, in the end we choose what and who you keep in it.  In the end you need to take responsibility for your choices, the earlier to start the sooner you will see different perspectives.

Be different - Conforming to the norm is boring, don't try to be who you are not. Be the original you, not a carbon copy of someone else. So many young people try to be other people and in the process loose themselves to the ills of the world.

Never hand over your power or take things too personally  - If you hand it over now chances are you will go through your entire life doing it too. Walk away from the arguments that you don't see fit to be in and fight for the ones you believe passionately in.

Have faith and start believing while you young - The older you get the more you realise God is actually very real and that if you believed a little more in His plan and a little less in your wants, things may have turned out pretty different.

In the end i think life teaches you what you need to know on the journey!

OUR GRANDMOTHERS

She lay, skin down on the moist dirt,
the canebrake rustling
with the whispers of leaves, and
loud longing of hounds and
the ransack of hunters crackling the near
branches.

She muttered, lifting her head a nod toward
freedom,
I shall not, I shall not be moved.

She gathered her babies,
their tears slick as oil on black faces,
their young eyes canvassing mornings of madness.
Momma, is Master going to sell you
from us tomorrow?

Yes.
Unless you keep walking more
and talking less.
Yes.
Unless the keeper of our lives
releases me from all commandments.
Yes.
And your lives,
never mine to live,
will be executed upon the killing floor of
innocents.
Unless you match my heart and words,
saying with me,

I shall not be moved.

In Virginia tobacco fields,
leaning into the curve
of Steinway
pianos, along Arkansas roads,
in the red hills of Georgia,
into the palms of her chained hands, she
cried against calamity,
You have tried to destroy me
and though I perish daily,

I shall not be moved.

Her universe, often
summarized into one black body
falling finally from the tree to her feet,
made her cry each time in a new voice.
All my past hastens to defeat,
and strangers claim the glory of my love,
Iniquity has bound me to his bed,

yet, I must not be moved.

She heard the names,
swirling ribbons in the wind of history:
nigger, nigger bitch, heifer,
mammy, property, creature, ape, baboon,
whore, hot tail, thing, it.
She said, But my description cannot
fit your tongue, for
I have a certain way of being in this world,

and I shall not, I shall not be moved.

No angel stretched protecting wings
above the heads of her children,
fluttering and urging the winds of reason
into the confusion of their lives.
They sprouted like young weeds,
but she could not shield their growth
from the grinding blades of ignorance, nor
shape them into symbolic topiaries.
She sent them away,
underground, overland, in coaches and
shoeless.
When you learn, teach.
When you get, give.
As for me,

I shall not be moved.

She stood in midocean, seeking dry land.
She searched God's face.
Assured,
she placed her fire of service
on the altar, and though
clothed in the finery of faith,
when she appeared at the temple door,
no sign welcomed
Black Grandmother. Enter here.

Into the crashing sound,
into wickedness, she cried,
No one, no, nor no one million
ones dare deny me God. I go forth
alone, and stand as ten thousand.

The Divine upon my right
impels me to pull forever
at the latch on Freedom's gate.

The Holy Spirit upon my left leads my
feet without ceasing into the camp of the
righteous and into the tents of the free.

These momma faces, lemon-yellow, plum-purple,
honey-brown, have grimaced and twisted
down a pyramid of years.
She is Sheba and Sojourner,
Harriet and Zora,
Mary Bethune and Angela,
Annie to Zenobia.

She stands
before the abortion clinic,
confounded by the lack of choices.
In the Welfare line,
reduced to the pity of handouts.
Ordained in the pulpit, shielded
by the mysteries.
In the operating room,
husbanding life.
In the choir loft,
holding God in her throat.
On lonely street corners,
hawking her body.
In the classroom, loving the
children to understanding.

Centered on the world's stage,
she sings to her loves and beloveds,
to her foes and detractors:
However I am perceived and deceived,
however my ignorance and conceits,
lay aside your fears that I will be undone,

for I shall not be moved.

By: Maya Angelou 
(out of the book a Heart of a Woman) 

Unique WAR

“Nobody is perfect, and nobody deserves to be perfect. Nobody has it easy, everybody has issues. You never know what people are going through. So pause before you start judging, criticizing, or mocking others. Everybody is fighting their own unique war.”

Not sure who said it but i definitely like it!

Some TRUTH

"New Things"

Before i delve into this new years list of goals I'd like to reflect on the year i have left behind. It was not the easiest of years to begin with, dealing with sick parents, hospitalisation and some curve balls that in essence led to some incredible revelations.

It was a year of closing chapters, leaving things behind, finishing projects and moving on.

It was one of those years you couldn't help but grow in. One of deep thought about life, love, loss and the world (in my head i think i have probably gone over solutions on world peace more times than most).

Reflecting back 2012 i realise it was a year of finding more of myself, the stressful bits and all.

For 2013 there is NO RESOLUTION for my goals are simple:

• Good Health 
• To nurture great relationships 
• To learn and keep grounded - life would be boring if i wasn't learning a thing or two from it. 
• To love 

It will be a year of new jobs (as i take on a juggling act of 2 very different roles), new surroundings, new relationships and a whole new set of lessons.

I am looking forward to the nail biting challenge of getting through this one still intact.  

An AHA moment

I was asked out of the blue a few days ago; "How short would your life have to be before you would start living differently today?" 

Even though i know that intellectually each breath could be my last, i still find myself spending an astonishing amount of time thinking about things i cannot change - possible futures, pasts mistakes and what could have been done differently. 

The truth is; the end of our lives is always just one breath away.  I think that for me living habitually is a way of denying this truth.  A way of saying that I have all the time in the world to change, to live differently, to live joyfully, to live meaningfully, to help others, to take risks, to love unconditionally.  

How short would my life have to be?  It already is as short as it could possibly be. 

Taking time...

I have a crazy obsession with lists and getting things done on time but I have recently been feeling very disconnected to myself, impatient with the world and like my life just has an entire list of things i am not ticking off on.

I am not a depressed person and wallowing  in my self pity doesn't really get me anywhere so I have decided to take it to God.

This might sound weird but growing up my mother was religious on teaching us about "quiet time" and "meditation". Now as an adult i think i have lost some of that inner balance and my communication with God has become stifled by everything else life throws my way.

So i am literally taking a step back from myself and the world and letting my impatience go because i really can't control it all. I am also letting God knowingly lead, my plans clearly might not be His. As scary as it is to  hand over the sails of my boat (life); true patience is after all the handing over of my own self-will (that wants to control it all) into His perfect will (that already has a master plan).

 

A little perspective

There is nothing like the near death of someone that you love to give you a little perspective on life and how you live it.

For the last month and a half my mom has been in and out of the doctors office, been put on various treatments and now has a bed in a NO VISITORS ward while they try and find an antibiotic that agrees with her body and will reduce the size of her liver.

I can't imagine how scary it all must be for a women like her who has raised 3 kids, seen 4 grandchildren and a great grandchild into this world (and all the noise it brings) to be so isolated from home. My mom is a home body, give her time in her yard and the company of any one of her sisters and she is in her element.

For me its a different kind of scary because i have never been faced with the thought of loosing my mom until now, i know she won't live forever but i at least hope she will be around to spend a few Christmas's at my house and help to usher my kids into the world so they are as fortunate as my nieces and nephew to call her theirs. Its scary to think how short life is and how we take the time for granted because we think we have plenty of it left, when in essence we don't have much.

I haven't been to see her yet; if i am honest i have just not had the heart to get on a plane and be there among my siblings and to visit her in a hospital of all places. She also tells me it's not necessary that i rush home because she is fine but i know that at the moment she is not fine, so i feel a bit like a bad daughter for not being strong enough to be there alone and be faced with the reality that time might run out sooner than i thought.

So with fear and all i have booked my tickets and gotten the time off work to go home; i am unsure of what to expect, unsure of what my arrival will be greeted with but i look forward to seeing my mother and having her enlighten me with quirky stories and lectures of hospitals and faith.

My Symphony

This morning I woke up with a section of a William Ellery Channing book on repeat in my head; the specific part where he says...

"To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury; and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable; and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasion, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony."

I realize that this world is filled with people trying to live their lives according to other peoples tunes. Life does not work that way; in the long run you need to find your own melody and take the time to write, direct and produce your own symphony.

It does not need to be bold or fancy, it just needs to your own! 

Taking Time

Time i Say 

I am a big believer in reflecting on life and taking time out from the hustle and bustle of it. I must admit I don't often get the time or have the energy to sit for hours just pondering on life but this morning i woke up before the crack of dawn with some thoughts/ truths to share.

I feel like life is short for most of us and the more we put off, the more we won't be able to do. It definitely does not work like a to do list that you can tick off and move on to the next task or fork in the road. Life is unpredictable, it so not a romance novel or a TV series where the "good one" somehow always win. It has moments of heart wrenching sadness and exhilarating happiness all wrapped up in lessons that we try to learn from.

Life can get messy and sometimes lonely even when you are surrounded by hundreds of people. It can also be filled with exasperating adventures and "chapters" waiting to be explored.

I realize that in this life if you are everything to everyone, you may end up being nothing to yourself.

So take the time to find your joys and embrace it, whether its climbing a mountain or sitting on a park bench with a good book. Take time to do it, share it with someone special.

Take time to live for the moments of right now, cause tomorrow or next week might not come.