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.