Educated Guessing: Focus on your own puzzle
Will truth rock the relationship? Yes, but it will also show you the truth of the relationship.
During the 2019 Global Leadership Summit in Richards Bay, an industrial town with the largest natural harbor in KwaZuluNatal, South Africa, I was overcome with the start of a consistent nagging in my Spirit to write this book. It may be the culmination of all the research on ‘Self’ that I have spent over two decades working through. It may be because of my role as a teacher; connected to what I believe children are not being taught with regards to personal survival and coping in a challenging world. It may be from my role as a Dramatic Arts teacher and seeing the parallels and repetitions of stories, themes and the brokenness of humans, which playwrights have been trying to show the world for over 2000 years. It may have been a result of my interest in mentoring after completing my Honours in teacher development studies. It may have sprung from my role as a facilitator of the “Leadership” and “Personal and Social Mastery” courses offered by PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2005. Possibly my role as a trustee for my block of flats, and observing first-hand how people’s unrecognized and unexplored latent fears, insecurities, pride and ego which can cause irreparable damage to relationships and the functionality of an organization, spurred on my subconscious to try and ‘do something’. Alternatively, when the same scenarios as the Body Corporate ones presented themselves in some of the many staff groups I have worked with across seven careers in three decades; my Soul may have just wanted me to reach ‘enough’. The patterns are the same. People cannot seem to face themselves, or deal with themselves, but maybe they aren’t even aware that they desperately need to. When I ask them what their love language is, they have no idea what a ‘love language’ even is. Their temperament, which of the four? Not a clue. Their core motivator? Core what? Their life goals, what they what said in their epitaphs at their funerals? No, they just want to get through today. But, unfortunately, all those todays, make up a life story, an epitaph, and we are in the process of creating our own. Ignoring our own story/’puzzle’ makes no sense, especially as our story is the middle part of someone else’s story. So why aren’t people paying attention and purposefully working on it? Fear, exhaustion, bad company, ignorance, time-wasting activities, all of the above?
It has presented itself to me that the general human trend seems to be: Instead of focusing on myself (not the ‘Selfie’ outside, but the everything inside) and the intricacies of my personality (how I ended up becoming the me I am, why I say what I say in the way I say it, why I do what I do and believe what I believe as I do, and the like), it has been my observation that people point fingers at others instead. They blame, they gossip, they fight, they become indignant, they cut off ties with good people because of one conflict or misunderstanding. They judge, criticize and break others down too, which has all culminated in a mess of insecurities, brokenness and hurting. I encounter so much hurting, mixed with so much pride, ego and insufficient courage, support, motivation, love and awareness to face the hurt and rise above it. Something in us as humans has to heal, has to be something better if all our interconnected moments and relationships are ever going to be more than circles in themselves that create self-destruction as they implode, avoiding all the goodness that is waiting right there to save them.
When people judge, backstab, cut me off, and/or gossip about me. When I hear things from one source about what another source said, it is hard. It is hard to know that that is happening around me and to me. It used to break me badly when I was much younger, and I have fought suicidal thoughts and near-attempts on a couple of dark occasions. Being human and living in humanity has been hell for me on many levels. Thankfully, intrinsically, and I can only write about me, I don’t believe that violence, anger, hate and negativity are the answer to anything. I never have. It’s something in my heart that says, ‘there must be something better than this pain, there must be’. No, I am not delusional, I was barely a teenager when the ‘real world’ of nastiness changed my innocence forever. I look around and it seems that the world, and some of the people I interact with, are addicted to drama, pain and suffering. They are addicted to creating reasons not to sleep at night and hanging on to them, myself not excluded. I don’t understand why we do it. For me, it is lists, lists, lists of what I need to do and get done, but for others… it is different. I don’t understand why they choose to be miserable, hating, complaining, moaning and gossiping, but they do. When I ask my classes about their locus of control, they are like, ‘loca what’? Locus of Control, there are only two options: An internal locus of control, where you do not let others tell you who you are or make you who you are, OR an external locus of control, where you blame others and let them control you and the life you have. You let other people control your emotions. Choice, absolutely EVERYTHING in my small life has come down to choice – do I choose to let the gossipers and backstabbers control my life, or not? I chose not. I chose to think how sad it was that they had so little life of their own to talk about that they had to use mine. I decided to think that it was quite an honour and a privilege that in this fast paced, busy, crazy, hard and full life that we all have that they had time to put me into their thoughts and conversations. That’s what I chose to think, and in thinking that I became a little jealous, I guess, because I don’t have time. How do they have the time? It did anger me to discover that it is a trend to talk about other people in a negative light. I don’t have the time, patience or energy to spread rumours or break people down, life is super hard enough, getting out of bed is super hard enough, why would I bring some else down to make a difficult life harder? That’s just sick. So I realised I don’t have the time or patience to be angry either, my energy needs to go into who I would like to be, not who I would never like to be.
Overall, the negativity towards others, I decided was nasty, twisted and unkind and I cannot and will not have such horrible behaviour on my conscience or part of my life story. When I ask classes what they want their life story to be, they look at me in complete confusion, and that worries me. I ask teeneagers what they want; and I get shoulder shrugs. Why are there no more dreams? Why don’t the children know they have a choice? Why don’t they know that they can live an amazing life, no matter how large or small they may be seen to be on the ‘earthly’ scale of ‘measuring’ success (such illusions we create for ourselves). They simply need to choose what is good, create good and do good every day. As the principal of Durban High School speaks of: ‘look after the little things and the big things will take care of themselves’. It’s definite food for thought and when choosing a little bit of good each day, then the big picture of that whole life story will hold a whole lot of good, a good epitaph.
Still, it is not easy, living in a broken world, and I am no idealist. Living on this earth – with its pushes and pulls; with our bodies that degenerate, and a society that does not promote spirit over body, love over fear, or relationships over materialism, or peace over power – is hard. People would rather poison themselves with alcohol, or nicotine (and other such ‘poisons’), than have ‘that’ conversation, or face their truth in the mirror, or be honest about how broken they are. This has been my observation with regards to many around me. As a person with stomach ulcers, a faulty reflux valve, gluten intolerance, dairy intolerance, minor scoliosis, messed up bowels, anxiety, depression and other ‘flaws’, choosing the poisons over the conversations has not been an option for me. Yet, the thing is I have been blessed in these weaknesses and the brokenness of my life and my body, as it forced me to have ‘those’ conversations because there was no other way out of the internal trauma caused by the dissonance around me.
The thing that I have realised though, is that both ways are hard. Back at university, the dronk verdriet, the hangovers, the waste of time and money on the poisons, and the after effects and consequences of those choices were very hard to deal with; AND the not drinking and ‘not fitting in’ was also just as hard. Life was going to be difficult and challenging whichever direction I chose. But here’s the truth, after that moment of choice, when I chose to not drink, there was no mess to clean up – literally and figuratively – there was more money in my bank account, there was less to stress about and I got on and had a great day the next day… I decided avoiding ‘poisons’ was better than serious literal and figurative messes, an empty bank account and a hurting body. Choosing not to ‘poison’ myself became a no brainer. Spend hundreds and vomit it up into a porcelain telephone? Seriously? Why would anyone CHOOSE that? Spend hundreds and create stories that make you walk in shame and embarrassment? Why CHOOSE that? It simply made no sense to me to choose to be less and have less. Then my life unfolded and the choice was no longer mine. So it was a relief that I had made the choice before it was compulsory. I had no regrets and I wasn’t losing anything as I was forced to change diet, change routines and adjust my life through pain.
In-note – because I can’t be bothered to figure out footnotes – Tim Keller said that the thing we are most defensive about protecting is often our biggest sin… or something like that… but it creates a deeper level of thought on why one couldn’t let go of something.
Overall, I’m not sure which part of all the above has led me to write this book, but my introspection on it all, and my gut feel that I ‘am not qualified’ to write it, has been deeply and intensely opposed by The Spirit, and so, here I am, writing a letter to you I guess. Choosing not to go out to the beach, like I could. Choosing not to go to the cinema, even though that would be way easier and cause far less problems and conflicts from whoever may read this. Choosing not to go shopping, even though there is a specific food I am craving right now. Choosing to write, choosing to share, and choosing to take on the consequences and effects of my choice. Choosing to add this book to the puzzle of my life as a piece that may just help someone, just ONE, in the 8 billion people the virus of humanity is covering this earth with (Matrix idea right there).
I write this book in prayer and hope. In love and faith. In trust and with care, that the one who reads it will not take offense, but will observe their own reactions to the words. That they will sit back and be absolutely honest with themselves. As Andy Stanley put it: ask yourself why you reacted like you did: “Really?”, no not the first excuse, not the second reason: “Really” why did you respond like you did, really… I pray that what this writing provokes, the in depth questioning of the thoughts and the responses created, will offer a new perspective, a new understanding, a greater peace and a move to creating a wonderfully completed puzzle when your story is done.
I write and hope these things, giving God the glory, because He is Awesome enough for all of that and more.
novel1eishlondon 