While You’re Out Looking for Sugar

I haven’t always been the ‘glass half full’ type and to be honest sometimes I still find it hard to be now.

There are days when I feel like I am not doing enough, or perhaps, that I am not enough at all. Days when I feel pained by bad service delivery and incompetent individuals paid to do a job that someone else would pillage and plunder to have… annoyed by how badly people drive with no care for the lives of others… saddened by the growing masses that stand desperately pleading at every traffic light passed, which in turn, we are lucky to have working after one drop of rain grazes its waterproof enclosure…

The point that I often have to make to myself is that it is far too easy to be negative. To feel such dreadful emotions for something that unfortunately we are not always able to change. All we can hope for in life is to die knowing that we made a difference by changing the world one person at a time.

It’s funny how little we now value one rand (not too long ago, the same amount could buy ten Chappies and now you would be happy just to get three instead) when one rand given by just twenty individuals is able to feed a single starving person for a day, if not, longer.

Yes, the very same person begging for just an ounce of mercy could be one of the many frauds exposed on Carte Blanche for earning hundreds a day, but ultimately, why relinquish the opportunity to change someone’s life, even just temporarily for them? Why allow the frauds to ruin it for those remaining that really just need to find hope and have their faith in humanity restored?

I, personally, would split one hundred rand between ten beggars and know that even just two truly needed it, than do nothing at all. Of course, you could argue that you are enabling them to continue a life of begging to get by, but in a country where finding a job can prove to be as successful as drawing blood from a rock, in a country where many have been raised with very little education or none at all – is that honestly fair?

We spend a great deal of our time striving for wealth. Not wealth in knowledge, or love, or in growing the talents we have been gifted with, but in the little coloured slips of paper that dictate who we are to society…

I am by no means a preacher, doctor, lecturer, professor or president. All I ask is that you recognise that:

‘While you’re out looking for sugar, somebody’s gonna take your honey and be gone…’

Embrace more than just money. Work hard for what you have and by all means – have the car, the girl, the mansion, the yacht – just make sure that you grow as a person while you do.

A Tribute to White Wine

There comes a time in life where you need to acknowledge that you are over the loud, commercially designed and popular haunts that you once adored. That the toxic poisons Vodka/Stroh Rum/Tequila that you once swigged by the mouth full simply to ‘get your freak on’ every half an hour hoping to find a willing mate (with or without beer goggles on) – are no longer a part of your life, or perhaps, can no longer be stomached.

Suddenly memories of the golden liquid, that somehow managed to leave an unstable Aunt Ethel (more aptly nicknamed Aunt Ethanol) both happy and sad at the same time at every family function without fail, come flooding into your mind in the same way it now floods your tummy after a hard days work..

A drink once sour and vinegar-like, a drink that you once associated more with the older, distinguished lady or gentleman, a drink that once simply would not do for your forever empty wallet – has now become the reason to cuddle up on the couch with a good book, be labelled as the pretentious couple that invites friends over to try the new ‘Fat Bastard Savignon Blanc’, enjoy a night in with people that you can actually have an intellectual conversation with and be your very own confident and opinionated self with.

Three cheers to becoming an adult and embracing it with our overdue bills in one hand and a large, chilled glass of white wine in the other!!

Encouraging Your Soul

I have spent a great deal of my time wondering what it is that I am meant to do with my life but what I come to understand more and more, with each day that passes, is that time does not stop for me to wonder.

While this may seem obvious, now at age 23. I look back to the year that I matriculated and cannot believe that five years have already passed. Before they had I dreamed of travelling, of having studied, of my Dad still being here each and every step of the way to catch me if I fall. But all of this, every single facet of my life, has changed.

Now each day, after having been back handed roughly by Murphy’s Law and learning – in the most callous, heartbreaking way possible – that loss is more than handing your virginity over to your first sexual encounter or having to use a twisted coat hanger to wedge and wangle your way into your car… All I ask is that you encourage your soul.

At first, it can be hard to understand what this really means, I myself am still trying to figure it out, but while I do – I want to take the time to share it all with you.

This site is going to be about pain, happiness, health, wealth, appreciating the simplest of blessings but more than anything, about learning to become unrelentingly, unapologetically, wonderfully, perfectly…

Yourself.