Living lives of quiet desperation.

1. Living lives of quiet desperation.

2. Who is driving your car today?

3. "Stille waters diepe grond, onder draai die duiwel rond."

What do these 3 sentences have in common?

Imagine that you are planet earth. Quietly floating in space, slowly turning around and around. At any given time there is a side of planet earth in the dark, but also a side in the light. Somewhere it will be summer, or winter, or autumn or spring. In some places, stormy winds will gust through the valleys or there will be no wind at all. There will be devastating floods and drought all at the same time. Where the people are quietly sleeping or going about their day, tectonic plates are slowly moving beneath, drops of lava are trickling down setting dry leaves alight. And while holiday makes are lolling in the salty warm waves, a faraway rumble has awakened a Tsunami. 

All of this happening all at once.

This is who you are. This is what is happening in and around you at any given time. The question is, who will be in the headlines tonight at news time? 

You have thoughts and feelings. You get hungry and sick.  You live within a paradigm.  You have memories and expectations. You have fear and resistance. You have plans and dreams. While all this is happening all at once, you have co-workers, family and loved ones, you have friends and neighbours each in some way depending on you, even if it is just to say good morning when you take the bin out. And I have not yet mentioned other constant responsibilities.

Read it, don't read it.

Read it, don’t read it, it doesn’t matter to me. I just need to say this to an invisible community out there, who might not even read it or need it. I have been not good enough since 1977 and even before. But the day in 1977 when I was in standard 2, haunts me like a nightmare. It could have been September, the classroom door was open and the sun was bright and warm outside.

I walk through the mall and I look at the people, and I wonder if we all carry the anxiety deep within us. Like a homing device, deep inside, constantly saying “not today, definitely not today, maybe tomorrow”, while time moves forward relentlessly.

Today I am experiencing this sense of urgency so clearly, I would like to cry. While lying in the bath this morning, I ran through a list of my closest friends and family in my head, and I know for sure, one after the other after the other is experiencing that unwelcome, too familiar gnawing “dear God just get me through this day”. And for them today and maybe for you, if you are still reading, it might not even be a bad day.

In this day and age, we say “I am so over myself”, meaning I am sick and tired of myself in conversational language, but what it really means in the language of the heart is “I am sick and tired of locking me away from myself”. And suddenly little bits of concrete are crumbling down from the ceiling as if the walls are starting to fall down.