“To create is to live twice.”
Albert Camus
“Only the shallow know themselves.”
Oscar Wilde
“The desire to be loved is the last illusion
Give it up and you will be free.”
Margaret Atwood
“I used to think the goal was to be loved. Now I know it’s to be understood.”
Emma Thompson
“It is a fault to wish to be understood before we have made ourselves clear to ourselves.”
Simone Weil
I wonder sometimes to myself about the status of luminaries and if they feel the kind of exquisite loneliness I sometimes feel.
Those past and present, those Greats that have summoned spirit and source to them, those that have gathered unbeknownst to the majority the traits of the planets, the moon, the sun, the characteristics of the universal. Virginia Woolf, Leonard Woolf, her husband, Monk House features in my writing, ghostlike, haunting, penetrative, the tension and spark caught in between the pages of her books palpable, and very much alive.
Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Robert Lowell, Charles Bukowski and Anne Sexton features in my poetry (I live vicariously through them all on the page), Bessie Head hovers, she lingers as does Petya Dubarova, Karin Boye, Marina Tsetaeva and Anna Akhmatova, Rupert Brooke
Sometimes I am tired of the masks I wear. Sometimes. Just sometimes. The masks keep me hidden from the world. They keep me safe. I like wearing Tragedy but then I like Innermost Joy too. I look forward to the days, I have to admit, when Summertime calls to me and I am reminded of Albert Camus. He lives within my thoughts and imagination for the entire day.
When I am forced to turn to religion, I am exhausted. When I turn to prayer, I need to be heard in a sacred space.
What is the purpose of life? It is to journey, to find yourself, to create and to be creative, to be an activist and to start a movement, to find a belief, to find all the daily rituals that come with it. The purpose of life is to dance, to find strangeness in movement but to dance anyway. It is to find meaningful activities that make you fulfill your vision. Your purpose is meant to enlighten you and to make you tell yourself that now is the time to contribute positively to the betterment of society.
When I think of just how tough your pain has made you, all the pain you have carried for what seems like an eternity, I want to tell you that it has made you wise. Wiser beyond your years. Your pain has delivered you to this present moment, each past action, every past event, every regret is now a gift. It has built the legacy you will give your children one day. The painful mistake was not for nothing. Now go out into the world and recognise your calling, understand that this is your ministry. To write your truth into existence. It is every individual’s calling to tell their story. Not every individual is called to become a writer or an intellectual or a doctor or a lawyer or an actor. But everyone is a born storyteller. Everyone has a story to tell.
A father is a hero to his son and daughter. A mother is the overcomer in the home who must endure in silence. It is the mother who understands sacrifice, it is that maternal figure who tolerates sickness, who tolerates her frustration and anger quietly. It is the mother who understands and forgives those who do not listen to her, who hides the agonies of not being listened to, who hides the agonies of being misunderstood without understanding when the world mistreats her, when her family does not acknowledge her. Yes, it is the mother who forgives, and in that forgiving understands the role that she has to play on the face of this planet, that it is twofold. It is that of both nurturer and protector.
After the wound disappears, it is a subtle love that makes its appearance that reminds us to keep on living even though we are afraid to live, even though we are fearful and anxious of our inner child, and the damage that has been done. It is the remainder of the tension and the spark of life, a remainder of all that came before. You think your pain makes you unique, you are wrong. The only thing that makes you unique is your voice, and the story your wound tells you in the darkest night.
Loneliness is not the entrance to the wound. It just forces you to look at the bigger picture. Loneliness is an instruction. Loneliness is a map that guides you to the dimensions of a realm that makes you see memory as something that exists both internally and externally. It is a realm that speaks the language of faith, religion and God. It is a realm that speaks the language of the hour, the language of silence. It is a realm that holds up the mirror to our soul.
The wound is very interesting to me. Held up to the light, studied, observed, kept under a microscope for observation in a petri dish, its substance can neither be diminished, or erased. The wound itself takes on another life in the psyche and mind’s eye of a poet. It can be intellectual, but only if it wants to be. As in life, it is up to the individual to decide whether or not they want to be a poet or an intellectual. It is fortune that favours the brave.
My loneliness has become a kind of school of thought to me with its own kind of philosophy. I sit alone in the library/study working. It is a solitary occupation but just around me is Virginia Woolf sitting across from me in a chair. She is smoking. She looks sad. Like her, I don’t have children but I have books and music. It has always been Woolf and me and now Albert Camus, Frantz Fanon, Bessie Head, Chimamanda Adichie, Brian Walter, Kevin Goddard, Robert Berold, Mangaliso Welcome Buzani, Ayanda Billie, Joan Metelerkamp, Mxolisi Nyezwa, Amirah Al Wassif and Aakriti Kuntal.
My mentor, Mzi Mahola, has passed on. I have his greatness within me because he passed that onto me, the baton, so to speak but it was God who placed increase and favour upon his life and his poetic outpourings and fervour, and now it is God who places increase and favour upon my own life.
Friend, the storm will pass and so will the season. Be grateful for all that you have. Ryan Holiday said that externals can’t fix internals. Be aware of people, be aware of your surroundings, remain vigilant. People aren’t always what your first impression or perception tells you they are. Adversity will make you and shape you into a better writer.
Always do everything that you do for the betterment of society and let that not escape you. So many people try to find the exit out via their addictions. Let words be your exit out, your escape route. Let words, let the writing of poetry or the writing of your thoughts, feelings and emotions be your reward at the end of the day, let words be your destination at the end of a long day. Let words be your addiction.
You will master yourself when you realise that you can’t change people. I can’t change my mother. I am sensitive to her energy now. Her moods fluctuate and so do mine. If she offends me I might say something inappropriate. She makes me angry and pushes all my buttons but I also know when she is gentle, when she needs to be loved and when she needs me to be there for her, when she needs kindness.
I find myself alone a lot and I also know that’s ok. My life is not the kind of life for everyone. You will learn to read people’s moods. This will take years. You are extraordinary. You are exceptional. You are special. You have the ability and the competency to see things in people’s language and personality that no one else can.
There is nobody like you that exists in this world and I want you to remember that.
There’s going to be sadness but also remember that that sadness can motivate and encourage you and it can also define you. Sadness is also just a season. It doesn’t mean that you are going to be planted there forever. It’s going to help you to develop patience and understanding and tolerance. Sometimes we just have to embrace the emotional pain. It will speak to us. It will speak to our memory.
It’s how we take care of the vulnerable, but it is also how we take care of ourselves and to take care of ourselves is the greatest gift we can bestow upon humanity and ourselves.
Negativity harms. That is why we need to be kind and decent in pockets of ugliness. You can’t write without reading, without feeding yourself the nourishing words of other writers and poets and artists. This year is your year of achievement and breakthrough and writing. Whatever is past, what came through trial and error is over, is past. It is a form of insanity to live in the past.
When you live in the past, constantly thinking about past choices and mistakes, what you did and didn’t do gives rise to mental illness. Your brain becomes dis-eased and dis-comforted and dis-ordered. Wisdom and emotional maturity comes with age and textbook knowledge and experience. We learn from our personal mistakes and our decision-making. We take it day by night.
Listen to people. They will tell you what they want you to say back to them, they will teach you how to treat them, they will give you permission to care for them, to show concern.
To things that are hard. Life will wound you but that comes with the territory. Don’t forget at the end of the day to take accountability for everything. Do hard things. In the words of Ryan Holiday. Read. Don’t forget to read. Life is about questions. It’s more about the questions. It is up to us, the journey, the reward is to search for solutions and not to persecute ourselves. Develop a mindset that will challenge you and keep you curious.
