Finding Dignity at Zeitz MOCAA

Finding Kindness

Having done some shopping at Woolworths in the V&A Waterfront, I walked to Silo District past the Nelson Mandela Gateway to Robben Island to hail an Uber back home. The Friday evening rush hour, combined with the impending weekend, meant it was quite busy. However, leaving from this end of the V&A Waterfront cuts out a good deal of the traffic involved in exiting Cape Town.

I did not get an Uber for eight minutes, and when a driver was found, he was ten minutes away. Then he cancelled three minutes into my waiting time. Uber began looking for another driver, just as I realised, I had chosen this location to get me home on time, before getting caught in the traffic I might encounter if I had hailed a cab from the Breakwater end of the V&A Waterfront.

A Pressing Dilemma

It became a battle in my mind: should I wait for a cab or seek the use of facilities? The nearest one was about 250 metres away, up flights of steps that I am usually supported in navigating. But I was alone in town with two heavy bags of shopping and a walking cane I could not use if I needed to balance the load.

My better judgement intervened. I cancelled the Uber and decided to try my luck at the Zeitz MOCAA, the Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, which was behind me. As a total stranger, I would not have been able to just walk into any establishment to ask to use their toilets. Or maybe I have never really had the courage to. Besides the museum, there were two hotels nearby, but we had been fully paid-up members of the museum before COVID-19 struck, and I knew where the entrance was.

Navigating the Process

The first thing was to get my Just Can't Wait card up on my mobile phone, which was running out of battery. I had to put it on Power Saving mode to ensure I could at least call an Uber before it died. I showed the card to security at the door, requesting to use the toilets, and she directed me to reception.

At the reception desk, one of the staff took a picture of my Just Can't Wait card on the phone and then gave me directions to the toilets, which were in the basement. My explanation that I needed urgent use of a toilet because of a medical condition was sufficient.

As I walked to the lifts, another security guard stopped me. I believe he checks for entry tickets, and I did not have one. I explained my situation, and he even offered to have my shopping bags deposited at the check-in desk. But I did not have the time; I needed to be at the toilets immediately. Even the lifts were slow in arriving, but I was soon where I needed to be, as relief and gratitude welled up in me.

People Over Things

My experience with this organisation reminded me of the spirit of their Executive Director and Chief Curator, Madame Koyo Kouoh, who passed away last year after a recent cancer diagnosis, even as she was about to serve as the artistic director of the 2026 Venice Biennale. In the museum's tribute to her, she was remembered for her belief: "People are more important than things," and for quoting the African proverb, "If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together."

We live in communities shaped by experiences and circumstances. Some are so fleeting and yet significant in simply having empathy and understanding for invisible yet critical human vulnerabilities and responding to such encounters without question or judgement. People do not even have to have walked a long, hard mile in another's shoes. Even in South Africa, where basically no one knows of the Just Can't Wait card, a human story becomes the willingness to help rather than the fear of losing one's job.

Not that I want to remember what happened barely a month before, when I was refused the use of facilities with all the desperation written across my face, in my own Manchester, of all places. Thank you, Zeitz MOCAA, for simply being human. It meant a lot to me.

Blog - The Just Can't Wait Card Test

Zeitz MOCAA Staff Tribute to Koyo Kouoh

A Google NotebookLM AI Audio Overview Discussion of this blog

Thought Picnic: When Support Becomes Self-Insertion

A Childhood Memory

It was July 1977. My father had lost his great-aunt, the wife of my great-grandmother's younger brother. From letters he and his great-uncle exchanged in the 1960s, I could see this man had been a highly respected mentor and confidante. The funeral would take place in our hometown, and we would all attend.

At the graveside, as the priest finished the oblations of dust to dust and ashes to ashes, we all proceeded to sprinkle earth on her coffin. At that moment, I became inconsolably distraught. I began bawling and weeping, overcome with grief. I literally became a distraction. Even as we left the graveside, people continued to console me.

One thing I noted about that day was that no one else, not even the grandchildren, put up such a performance. I was genuinely affected, but others might have wondered why I was weeping more than the directly bereaved.

Learning to Respond

Understanding how to respond to human misery is essential in ways that may not be easily understood. We often mistake our kind of engagement as sharing in the burden of others' misery when it is not.

This became quite apparent to me after my first encounter with cancer. Before that, I had neither the understanding nor the frame of reference to appreciate what people were going through. I could offer a sense of concern, perhaps a lot of sympathy, and possibly some empathy.

On occasion, I have inserted myself into another's misery by narrating my own tale of woe instead of listening to them and offering both comfort and succour.

Nowadays, my experience of cancer, its mental toll, pain, and other life issues makes me knowledgeable enough. Yet I would never suggest to someone in that situation that I know what they are going through, even when I understand their predicament based on what I have experienced.

Finding the Balance

Fundamentally, what is important is not being more affected than those who are truly affected, more distressed than those genuinely distressed, or becoming too ingrained in a situation to which we have no direct connection or relationship. We need to be aware of the degree of affinity, determined from intimate to acquaintance, and further to belonging, whether in a community or through some other sense of identification.

Then again, there is a place for activism on behalf of others. Causes with which we identify can benefit ourselves and others, addressing issues like disengaged officialdom, injustices, advocacy, and knowledge sharing, as I do when informing others about prostate cancer.

However, my prostate cancer awareness activity does not become one where I begin to bear the prostate cancer risk of others. That is not helpful to anyone, and that is the broader lesson: be conversant without becoming absorbed, be understanding without becoming overbearing, and beware of inserting yourself into an issue so completely that you become the issue through how you express yourself about matters for which you have deep feelings.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Thought Picnic: Is blood really thicker than water?

Does blood matter?

“Blood is thicker than water.” Said a close relation of mine after I informed them of the visit of a couple, I knew from being related to them. I responded, “Communication is thicker than blood which is evidently thicker than water.”

Communication, engagement, and interest matter, it does not have to be through being able to communicate in material things, but the just checking on people, their welfare and wellbeing is of great consequence. It suggests you see more in them than the perfunctory.

Do I matter at all?

I recall one Sunday afternoon about thirty years ago when I met an old secondary school classmate on the train. As I acknowledged him, I did not get a greeting or any engagement, his first comment was, “Where do you church?” I cannot remember if I responded in any way, but I never wanted anything to do with him anymore.

Years after, he was picking up his daughter from school when I saw him outside a train station, I made my excuses about rushing off somewhere else and that kind of indifference has been such that when he was promoting an album in a later blooming of a music career, I observed the development alone and nothing else.

Do they care a hoot?

Further to this are those who make assumptions when they call you out of the blue. That was last week, nothing was asked of things they might have known before about me or my current situation. They just assumed and were expecting a confirmation of their beliefs that were much further from reality than could be imagined.

Obviously, I was remembered and contacted because they were interested in involving me in a family celebration, and if conversation and communication had been cultivated and maintained, I would have found it difficult not to attend, grace the occasion, and honour the celebrant. You cannot reap benefits or rewards from indifference.

Does anyone want to know?

Indeed, I have kept to myself because at times you do not want everyone in your business including those who believe they should be in your business or have some knowledge of what you are experiencing at any point in time. What I choose to volunteer here is probably available to a global audience, but the deeper elements of things would require someone to make the effort to communicate.

I am very grateful to those who have genuinely reached out to me to ask about my welfare, not because it is transactional, even if at one point there was means and opportunity to attend to many needs along with helping them out. In adversity, you know those who are your friends and well, the fair-weather ones too.

Do they see you?

One does not need to keep a journal of these things, the memory rarely suffers the amnesia of an absence of mind, Maya Angelou said it best, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Just think of the situation where they said little, did nothing, and made you feel disconsolate and rueful of your circumstances.

Know who to keep in mind, who to keep in prayers, who to keep in contact with and who to appreciate does not have a part in your life, not because you mean nothing to them, you are just not on either their short-range or long-range radar, your invisibility to them is why you think they are indifferent. It is not a bad thing to move on, if you’re out of sight, set your sight on other things.

God bless Aretha Franklin

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All respect

As the world bids farewell to the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, the tributes are many from far and wide for the sensational person, artist and figure she was.

Yet, for most that mourn and also celebrate her wonderful life, she will be remembered mostly in her many songs. What is so amazing is the number of songs that she covered that she brought a life and an interpretation to that went well beyond the original.

Respect was written and first recorded by Otis Redding, with the man, the husband, pleading for respect when he gets home, Aretha Franklin took it and sang it from the perspective from the woman, the wife and the rest is history. Two Grammy awards and the induction of her version into Grammy Hall of Fame.

The salvation of talent

There are many other songs that people have come out to sing in charted a literally 7-decade-long career.

A difficult childhood, she had, parents divorcing when she was 6, her mother died of a heart attack just before she was 10, having 2 children at the ages of 12 and 14 respectively, she was a preacher’s daughter, but it did not save her from a cruel world out there. Her talent did, and it did greatly.

However, the song that registers the most to me as delivered by Aretha Franklin was written by the Beatles, she again took it and rendered it in both a haunting and a somewhat uplift tempo, the words of the song, full of meaning that made you think. It isn’t Think. She wrote that with her then husband, Ted White.

Eleanor Rigby was written in 1966, first by Paul McCartney and completed by the Beatles, but credited to Paul McCartney and John Lennon.

Remembering the lonely

Between the version written by the Beatles and the version that Aretha Franklin performed, she basically took a fictional person with a life story of a nobody, about whom nobody cared except for what needed to be done in burying her after she died.

The Beatles – 1^st verse.

Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice
In the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window
Wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?

Aretha Franklin – 1^st verse.

I'm Eleanor Rigby
I picked up the rice in the church where the weddings have been
Yeah I'm Eleanor Rigby
I'm keeping my face in a jar by the door
If you want to know what is it for, Well

The juxtapositioning of being unknown as a nobody and the reality of being a lonely person is a haunting and fearful thing to think about. Yet, there are many, unknown, unsung, unseen, unheard, untouched, unloved, and more that have a life and then a death that would speak like that of Eleanor Rigby.

When Eleanor Rigby died, she died in the church, Father McKenzie whose frugal life is noted in darning his socks, having written an eulogy, a tribute to Eleanor Rigby, to the hearing nobody to the fact that in the Beatles version, nobody was saved by what may have been a moving tribute, but who can tell?

Making a person real

Aretha Franklin takes the abstraction to the involved, creates a person and speaks in the voice of that person. This is deep empathy rather than plain sympathy.

This is where Aretha Franklin made Eleanor Rigby somebody, a person, a story that began in the first person and then it became a story told to many. Eleanor Rigby took a place in our minds, the minds of many of us seemingly lonely people in many ways social, emotional and much else, with the promise that we would be left unsung.

When I first heard Aretha Franklin’s version, I thought Eleanor Rigby was someone who lived at a certain time and after her death was recognised for something. I had not heard the Beatles version before that.

Eleanor Rigby is almost a premonition, a niggling anxiety, yet, whatever happens when one is dead is really for the living to take care of, and that is a hope of sorts.

Aretha Franklin herself is definitely no Eleanor Rigby, she did not have to pick up the rice where the weddings have been. She died surrounded by family and will be eulogised by the high and mighty, along with millions paying tribute. She, however, has given a voice and life to the lonely people and at the end, she said, ‘God bless, yeah gotta love some lonely people.’

God bless you, Aretha, you made more than a difference.

Cancer: You can’t keep winning this game at life.

Strumming the pain

It is heart-breaking and humbling to watch and he is strumming the ebbing signs of life in the departure lounge from a body wrecked even with a mind so lively and writing full of poetic movement.

I discovered on my Twitter timeline only a few days ago that a friend who had never met but was much an acquaintance was dying from terminal cancer. As I went through his timeline, he had cancelled a wish list, married his partner, signed over his house, began to receive visitors who had ignored him for years but were now seeking to see him for the last time.

The cancer commons

Cancer creates some sort of kindred spirit, in my case, I have been fortunate, I survived, but I never cease to feel as vulnerable when I learn of anyone being visited by this rotten scourge.

I immediately wrote a direct message to him expressing my deepest sympathies of learning of his situation. He had written in detail about all his feelings physical, mental and emotional, all of which I would well relate to. However, I have learnt that just because I have once had cancer does not mean I can say I know what you’re going through.

At best, I understand, maybe I can quite relate, but beyond that, each cancer experience is unique and different, from the diagnosis through the prognosis and the options you have to tackle the disease. In my case, I was given some hope, responding to treatment meant I would survive that episode else, I had just five weeks to live. In his case, it was an aggressive leukaemia or which all options had been exhausted.

He responded so graciously to my message wishing me a long healthy and happy life.

The slow goodbyes

I am the going through lots of emotions, a man so young watching his life ebb away because there is nothing he or medicine could do about it. Miracles we were taught to believe in seem to be in such short supply, they have become the substance of fable or fairy tales even if we are literally commanded to have faith.

Online, I am almost encamped in a vigil on his timeline at the sadness of this because this was one who brought love, joy, happiness and laughter to others in his prime and his strength.

His condition is at a point where what can be done is palliative, h has moved into hospice care and though he went in with his dog, he has sent his dog home with his husband because the dog can sense that things are not so good with his master and is taking on that strain too.

Reading through his blogs, I have not seen resignation or regret, but an acceptance of the inevitable and a desire to breathe his last in the arms of his beloved husband. Cancer, you can’t keep winning this game at life.

Thought Picnic: I remain a friend

Understanding self-absorption

There are times in life where one can become quite self-absorbed and oblivious of the world around. Forgetting all the various things that make for life and living from within oneself and from around in places where we might have literally no influence.

Self-absorption can so easily create blindness, blindness to reality, blindness to facility, blindness to opportunity and a decline into seething resentment and a sense of apathy.

Yet, self-absorption should not be discounted, it is being caught in the maelstrom of experience, the howling winds, the battering of the storm, the foreboding and present scent of danger in reaction to infirmity, incapability, adversity, grief, or other kinds of human experience.

Thank you for being a friend

What matters most is to find some respite, some insight, maybe some therapy in talk or the turn that gives a person the opportunity to reassess a situation and hopefully find a new purpose. It takes longer to get to a smile, but a seed of hope is being sown.

Nothing helps you out of self-absorption better than a friend, a friend who can feel your pain, a friend that can hear that soundless cry of questions you have never given voice to, neither would they put you in an uncomfortable place, they ease you through to a better place.

That help I found when many things came together in a perfect storm presaging an almost compulsion to act. Over a number of conversations, we walked through stages of anger, resentment, depression, bargaining and acceptance, like the Kubler-Ross model for addressing grief had come to the matter of self-absorption brought on by extenuating circumstances.

Don’t underestimate past relationships

What I learnt the most at the end of the last conversation was the tendency to feel powerless because of inactivity and by that underestimate ourselves where a reputation that had been formed in a setting spoke enough about a person without the need to force issues.

If you have taken the time to foster relationships and friendships, believe in the ability of those to work without agency. Impressions are made on people you know, and despite what their self-interest might dictate, with the passage of time, good impressions last and with that eventually you will win through.

I remain a friend

In another setting, having to accommodate the irritable and uncouth drew on the deepest reserves of patience and tolerance. You refrain from the bitter riposte and eliminate the tendency to use an engagement to foment the irrational like you might excuse the occasional rant of a drunk who says the most untoward things just because you see a bigger person unfortunately overtaken by drink.

The drink, in this case, was some physical pain, some stress and exasperation, and though I am sad that such behaviour was exhibited, I know in my heart of hearts that I like the person a lot more than that. Maybe in due course, something positive will come of it, friendships established on a firm ground would weather the storms of self-absorption.

It is the deed that matters rather than the words, in whatever we do with the relationships we cultivate, may we always find every way to foster then best in ourselves and in others that speaks to the heart, saying, “I remain a friend,” if you still want to be a friend.

Hospital: Doctor's orders: Have a big 50th birthday celebration

Uber to the zoom

For all the early planning I had done to get to the hospital on time, I barely had 20 minutes to hail a Uber taxi and make it out there. After exchanging pleasantries, I told the driver where I was going and he had the presence of mind to ask when my appointment was, we only had 15 minutes to make my appointment.

We made it in 17 minutes through no prompting of mine to take alternative routes or avoid traffic jams, for which I was quite grateful. Incidentally, patients can be sanctioned for missing appointments but medical establishments are rarely under obligation to meet the scheduled appointment time.

Mangled tardily

In most cases of my attending hospital appointments, I have rarely had the occasion of seeing my doctor or consultant on time and we all just accept that as the norm.

I registered and went to sit in the waiting room where there are five others in waiting, some 10 minutes later, I was called by an unforgivable mangling of my name, I swore under my breath at the lack of an attempt to do it well. Besides, my file already shows I prefer to be called by the shortened version of my first name than with that longish one that in the mouth of my mother spelt I was in deep trouble.

My weight as usual threw up numbers I could not bear to countenance whilst my blood pressure read the kind of figures that put me in my second youth. Three is work to be done about my gravitational displacement.

Called up

Returning to my seat, I chomped through my magazine waiting to be called in and at the 65^th minute, I finally had my chance. Having seen many doctors in this unit, this was the first time I was meeting the main consultant. We had chatted before on my first visit, but only to hand me over to another to review my medical history and then when he provided a basic assessment of my situation.

Being in clinic today, he recalled that I was the very well-dressed man the first time that put all the other ward staff to shame and then ushered me into his office where he gave me a warm handshake and motioned to me to sit down.

Poring over my notes, we went over histories, analyses, results and prognosis within which I expressed my concerns about getting treated for a chronic condition that had not been addressed for over two years. He then suggested that I should consider the tough drug regime which would last 3 months instead of the original 12-month regime and that it is rather better tolerated now than it was in the early days.

All matters considered

I had my mind set on the alternative therapy and was really not prepared for this new piece of device that I felt I could not make a clear decision at this meeting. We then set a prospective time for 6 months hence whilst a new prescription note was filled in for the intervening period.

The bloods had their own story to tell, all reading good, a minor indication of my not fighting my condition as well as I used to and a slight inflammation without attendant discomfort. Not as good as I will have like things to be, but all within the limits of tolerance and expected responses medical opinion entertains.

Besides the essentials of this consultation, the meeting was warm-hearted with probably the most compassionate and empathetic concerns I have had from a doctor in a very long time.

Caring and nice

He asked at the beginning if I had found the love of my life, understood the angst and struggles in finding a suitable partner and was quite involved and personal when I asked about the consequences of the options I had before me in terms of treatment.

However, the deepest affection was shown to me when realising I will soon be 50 and I said I was unsure of what to do for my birthday; he said, having seen 50 and 60, the best thing to do is to go out and celebrate it well, have a party and be thankful for the joys of life. He also hoped by then I would have found the love of my life and be much fulfilled and happier when next meet in February.

On that note, we parted ways with a warm handshake and I feeling good at his wonderfully relaxing bedside manner despite the issues we needed to chat about.

Thought Picnic: Your virtuality may not be my reality

Distance acting

We all enjoy to some extent, the comfort of abstraction, a little distance from the reality of things, colouring our perspective and affecting a deeper expression of empathy.

Information Technology does not make it any better by offering virtual proximity without the experience, we are deluded into thinking the keyboard and screen is the new reality and hence we are fully engaged with the situation.

None of this offers the truth of walking a long hard mile in the shoes of another which might be ill-fitting, uncomfortable and not suited to our uniquely shaped feet. Reality is always a different world.

Try a little understanding

We cannot always find the means to sympathise or empathise, but we should at the very least be willing to learn and understand so that we do not fall into hubristic omniscience thinking we have full knowledge, second-guessing the circumstances and thereby acting foolishly where our senses or our limbs have had no tangible interaction.

Be it drawings that would never get off the board, road signs crafted light-years away from the traffic, advice given to a circumstance we are completely oblivious of or projecting unto ourselves experiences we have never lived, we slowly lose the integrity of our humanity when we deign to extend beyond ourselves and extrapolate imponderables.

Learn first

That way, we open the door to the unreasonable, the consequences of which might be quite dire for others affected by what we do.

If you have never lived it, learn first before you command or commend and do not let your virtual insight rob others of their stark reality.

Thought Picnic: How experience humbles our generosity of spirit

Peeling away at the sores

Experience seems to bring us into close encounter with the core of our humanity. It is in experience that we begin to discover who we really are, if what we can do in comfort can be reflected similarly in the presence of discomfort.

We may deign to understand, dare to sympathise or attain the supreme expression of empathy, but when we are touched, how would our minds change, and how would our concern for others dissolve for the ascendancy of the trumpeting of our self-pity?

How would we attempt to magnify our circumstances almost to the level that suggests we have been ravaged by the greatest disaster ever to overwhelm humanity?

They are questions we must ask ourselves always.

Beyond belief

Yesterday, I heard a sermon where the preacher told a story of a tightrope walker who did his act over the Niagara Falls many times with greater daring-do each new time he attempted the feat.

Charles Blondin did many feats, blindfolded, on stilts, trundling a wheelbarrow and even carrying his manager on his back as well as frying an omelette midway. It got to a point that people believed he could do anything, however, the same people when asked to sit in the wheelbarrow for a tightrope walk balked at the idea.

Experience takes issues to another level just as having to place one’s trust in the death defying feats of Charles Blondin to be a participant called on a new level of trust, a trust in circumstances one would have no control over until the feat is completed, the risk of it going wrong coming to the fore, in their minds.

Disaster comes here

There are many natural disasters around the world, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, typhoons, tsunamis, droughts, floods, fires and much else. Most of them we would only see on television and are moved to contribute to charity drives to help the victims of those disasters.

It is probably our nature to give as an expression of our innate humanity, and that is a really good thing. However, the natural disasters have come to our land, storms raging, winds so boisterous bringing down heretofore stable things, rains coming down in incessant deluge causing floods and a few sink holes, this is serious and grave.

We are affected, some of us have to stay put, and others can apparently temporarily escape those conditions until things improve. Our attachment to our things might well determine how affected we are about possible loss as a result of a natural disaster.

The aid matters even more now

The UK has a large foreign aid budget, and it goes a long way to improving the lives of the people at the receiving end of our aid in fighting poverty, disease, disenfranchisement and inequality whilst sponsoring health, education, democratic and human rights programs.

We cannot in essence, in principle or in understanding our role in society and the world at large withdraw aid for the expediency of our little local difficulty.

That is why I am saddened that personal disaster has a tendency to expose the deeper selfish human nature where our temporary pain gains ascendancy and greater importance over recognising the broader context of the bigger, deeper and more serious sufferings of others.

It would pass

Indeed, we should help ourselves and find the means to tackle the big natural disaster issues that ravage our lands, but for that to be at the expense of the foreign aid that brings quality to lives, yet nowhere near the comforts we have enjoyed before disaster struck is unacceptable.

The power cuts here would soon be restored, many of those we give foreign aid to do not have that luxury, the flood waters would soon recede, many of those we give foreign aid as a consequence of natural disaster may not have resource or hope for the change that would make our bad experiences become history.

A selfish humanity

When I hear people on television go on about the government addressing our problems first before thinking of foreign aid, or by inference these first world victims of mishap comparing themselves to the poor and destitute of much less fortunate countries and circumstances, you begin to appreciate the shallowness of our humanity and its absurdity.

We are mostly good when things are good, but when things go bad we subconsciously reveal the worst of who we are. Much as man’s capacity for good is well regarded, our capacity for selfish malevolence when we are most affected is unspeakably unprintable and with that our humanity as a whole suffers the more.

Such is life.

Thought Picnic: Free Your Mind

Opening the mind

It goes without saying with each interaction and posting I see on Social Media it is interesting to read views, opinions, entrenchments and prejudices along with the less bigoted, tolerant, open-minded and pragmatic accommodating stances of others.

I am more attracted to the accommodating types, people who despite who they are, are willing to understand and appreciate that there are others very different, very diverse, very separate, very distant from themselves, but still have a right to not only exist, but should be allowed the pursuit of happiness like any other.

Feeding our ability to sympathise

Our shared humanity when allowed to walk free beyond the little confines of our own experiences opens us up to realities we may never fully understand but still can embrace.

This is what feeds our ability to sympathise, probably empathise or even dare to be compassionate, when we extricate ourselves from the moralistic impositions that give us the licence for unfeeling indifference, judgemental apathy, disinterest, and incitement to hate.

We all are guilty of it one way or the other when we think little of others in comparison to ourselves or the people we hold in high esteem that we are ready to sacrifice them on any altar be it of religion, of belief, of creed, of custom, of tradition, of principle or of the law without any inkling or sense of tender-heartedness or mercy - we find basis and justification for where we stand and with that feel comfortable.

Free your mind

We have the capacity for more if we allow ourselves the frequent opportunities to extend ourselves.

It brings to mind the lines in the lyrics of Free Your Mind by En Vogue which go thus:

Free your mind and the rest will follow
Be color blind, don't be so shallow.

Freeing one’s mind is a journey in our recognition of the global village of great diversity we reside in, a world of over 7 billion people of whom we would find relationships of love and hate, friendship and enmity, fun and boredom, joy and sadness, acceptance and rejection with the challenge to treat others as we would love to be treated.

If we were to walk a mile in another man’s shoes, would we think differently about them and accept them in the brotherhood of our existence?

The beauty of blindness

Be colour blind, be gender blind, be sexuality blind, be religiously blind, be personality blind, be status blind, be blind to every difference that you don’t yet fully understand but exists around you by situation and by circumstance but still harbour a searching, curious, yearning spirit to find unity, affinity, amity and the best of the next and the next and the next until a bridge of humanity is built towards our togetherness and harmony. Free your mind.

"Free Your Mind"

Prejudice, wrote a song about it.
Like to hear it? Here it go.

I wear tight clothing, high heeled shoes
It doesn't mean that I'm a prostitute, no no
I like rap music, wear hip hop clothes
That doesn't mean that I'm out sellin' dope no no
Oh my forgive me for having straight hair, no
It doesn't mean there's another blood in my heir yeah yeah
I might date another race or color
It doesn't mean I don't like my strong black brothers.

Why oh why must it be this way
Before you can read me you gotta learn how to see me, I said
Free your mind and the rest will follow
Be color blind, don't be so shallow.
Free your mind and the rest will follow
Be color blind, don't be so shallow

So I'm a sistah
Buy things with cash
That really doesn't mean that all my credit's bad, oooh
So why dispute me and waste my time
Because you really think the price is high for me
I can't look without being watched, and oh
You rang my buy before I made up my mind, OW!
Oh now attitude, why even bother
I can't change your mind, you can't change my color

Why oh why must it be this way?
Before you can read me you gotta learn how to see me, I said
Free your mind and the rest will follow
Be color blind, don't be so shallow…

Why oh why must it be this way?
Before you can read me you gotta learn how to see me, I said
Free your mind and the rest will follow
Be color blind, don't be so shallow... FREE YOUR MIND!

Denzil Foster, Thomas McElroy

Thought Picnic: Traversing a wilderness to wonder

Estranged in stranger places

As the morrow comes, I will be seeing two strangers, people who I have never met before but will have enough knowledge about me to hopefully help and care, even though that appears to be what they get paid to do.

However, there is more to it than getting paid to do a job, the sense of sympathy, probably empathy and dare I say compassion comes from the inner recesses of our humanity, it is not what determines remuneration but it can endear the person to whoever they interact with and that is a good thing.

A difference in manner

Even though I did receive a very professional service when I sought help in Wales, there was something quite impersonal about our engagements, the meetings were not properly broken up and even though I received all I asked for, I was left with a sense of uneasiness that I just determined to endure because I could not change the circumstances.

Compared to when I used services in the Netherlands, my consultant who basically is a world-renowned authority in his field, exuded a very comforting bedside manner that always left you at ease, the decisions completely involved me to the extent that I was given choices, information and references.

It’s my body, first

Beyond that, where I was uncomfortable with a course of action, the situation was reviewed for the most convenient accommodation on my side; it determined the number of chemotherapy sessions I eventually had and it countermanded the demand for a neurosurgeon to perform a lumbar puncture I was not convinced was necessary.

I am no medical expert, but there is one inalienable truth, it is my body first before it is a specimen for medical analysis and that was quite well understood, appreciated and respected by everyone I dealt with in the Netherlands.

Let’s see what’s up

Now in the UK, upon meeting these strangers, I will have to determine what comfort levels I will have in allowing these experts to take over my medical care to the extent that they can provide medical, emotional, psychological and sociological succour in the ordinary times and at the less than salubrious times.

I am open-minded though a bit apprehensive going into these meetings, my bloods have told stories, my notes have painted a situation and all need urgent attention.

For the day after looms with wonder and wondering, where will I find to lay my head in peace? And after all that, will I be happy or will I be sad?

Thought Picnic: Finding significance in our shared humanity

A multi-cultural person

I always find myself at the point where cultures conflict though it is not as obvious as it is for those of mixed race ethnicity.

However, I am grateful that the conflict is externalised rather than internalised but difference is accentuated in voice and reasoning, I will not give up either to conform because the wonder of being a product of the influence of many cultures is that rather than get pigeon-holed, you don't get placed, categorised or judged too harshly if you refuse to be subsumed into a dominant cultural experience.

The inspiration of circumstance

Why have I started this blog in this way? I just read of a second suicide of a university student in Nigeria that no one could attribute to anything – the stories concerning the two young men who took their lives are sketchy and peripheral and knowing how the dominant cultural expression thinks, it is unlikely that anyone will get to the bottom of why presumably promising, quiet and academically able young men will take their lives.

Now, this is where my difference is, I was born an Englishman, it has a strong imprint, part of my formative years were spent in Nigeria amongst people who were not on my tribe and culture and then my late teens were spent in the potpourri of diversity that you will find in post-secondary education.

Proud of all influences

I only had to speak and my accent betrayed a difference but when my dad said, I have always thought like a Westerner and my brother suggested I was not really one of the rest, though my sense of belonging was challenged the innate ability to adapt and thrive wherever I have lived has stood me in really good stead, I belong where I choose to belong.

Roughly, I have spent a third of my life in England, Nigeria and the Netherlands respectively, all with much that has influenced my outlook to life and the most important one for me is to be more understanding of people, their circumstances, their decisions, their persuasions and their sometimes unfortunate judgements that fuel moralising, sententiousness and intemperate attitudes.

Understanding matters

Again, we may never understand why those young men took their lives but knowing what I know now about many things that I have experienced and observed of our societies, we will need to tackle some taboo subjects to appreciate these issues better.

I remember too many instances where what I needed was just some care and understanding when I faced some psychologically threatening issues but the circumstances real as they were to me were dismissed with frivolity that you internalised turmoil and found some sort of attitude adjustment – solutions are not easy to come by.

Have I ever contemplated suicide? I have and many times, times when you hoped the ground will open up and swallow you than face a situation, the wrath or live through a circumstance because you were badly behaved, you had been violated, you were threatened or you were not performing as expected of you – I read a comment accompanying the news of the suicide – “Everything will fail you, but Jesus never fails. Try him today.”

Walk a yard in my shoes

Such hit-and-run philosophical musings are hardly helpful, as we approach the Christian Easter, we should remember that the Apostle Peter in the most trying times of his followership of Jesus Christ denied his master thrice and his master was not even dead yet, nor must we forget that Judas Iscariot was as much an apostle chosen amongst men who saw all that deeds and heard all the words and still he committed suicide.

We sometimes believe we know all things though many have hardly walked a yard in the shoes of another nor are we the embodiment of the total experiences of the many that we see around us. If we all told our stories to the detail necessary to sympathise or maybe even dare to empathise if we could, we would realise that the second, third or fourth man from us has probably seen more of life than we could ever have the capacity to face that we would faint at a fraction of what they have faced.

Good Samaritan aspiration

I wrote yesterday that I do not want to be a better Christian, I would rather be just a good Samaritan, there is much to that realisation. It is commonly said that we judge others by their actions and ourselves by our good intentions.

The Good Samaritan matched his good intentions with his actions, he dug deep into his humanity putting himself in the state of the wounded stranger and doing all he could do to help that stranger than the more religious people who left the stranger for dead.

I dare say that the more religion we profess, the more likely we would leave people for dead, judge their actions, find reason to castigate them, give foundation to our prejudices and boldly expound on our bigotries.

Let your humanity show through

The core of humanity is a different thing, it is not subject to any belief system it is just the heart connecting to that of another thinking this simple thing – If I were met with the circumstances the other person is in, what will I do and what will I hope others will do for me?

Our society suffering the turmoil of negativity of abuse, expectations, criticism, dangers, threats, mistakes and much else piles on pressures that the simplicity of words will not assuage, it is  involvement, engagement, listening, touching, hugging, understanding that some people need to see beyond their clouds – before you so readily judge and condemn, be aware that that invincible and inviolable man within you might just in the right theatre be like the person we have suddenly rubbished, excoriated and condemned with disinterest and indifference thinking we are being helpful.

In all that I have written here, I have not even begun to tackle the issues that I had to mind when I started this blog, let us read this as an introduction, there is much to talk about on these suicides – if anything, just say a prayer for anyone you have until now been unable to bless for reasons of your religious beliefs without which you might have been more understanding.

Give Your Voice To Rights That Don't Matter To You In 2013

Harmony from afar

The old song goes, “I’ll like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony …” We all know that the world is singing many songs and mostly never the same words, or the same tempo and harmony is so distant that we hold hands and sway our heads into a dreamland of Utopia hoping it signifies peace and harmony.

To sing we need a voice and to that voice we need the words, lyrics that represent our humanity, our struggles, our victories, our losses, our pains, the quest for justice, the call for war, the identities we have or the differences we want to project – there is much for song and much to do.

A world riven

The voice is important, it is critical to producing the sound we need all to hear to bring people to listen so that they can reason and then hopefully they can agree.

We live in an unequal world riven with great injustices, wars, disease, poverty, dispute and much else with people populating the broadest spectrum of extremes between palatial comfort and atrocious discomfort – we cannot stand still and watch the world go by.

Lend your voice

I challenge you to lend your voices this year to that which is just, that which is fair, that which lifts and confers rights on the least amongst us and the most different from us.

We should extricate ourselves from rules, creeds, customs, beliefs, traditions and cultures that bind us to age-old systems that persecute and prosecute others needlessly and become the Good Samaritan of humanity setting people free to be the best they can be because of the brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity we all belong to.

Stand!

Let colour, tribe, language, region become insignificant and enter the global village of what allows us to laugh together rather than cry in anguish, what makes us shout in unison than shoot at each other and what lets us embrace those we once saw as lepers rather than ostracise them.

There is much to stand up and be counted for in the quest for human rights and the protection of the same, the campaigning against abuse; the abuse of children, of women, of the vulnerable and of the powerless, rolling back the cloudy pall of sententiousness for the fresh air of acceptance and the fight against institutionalised corruption, racism, rape, victimisation and oppression.

Your voice, the seed

This is not a call to forsake your values but to use your values better to give value to others that you might once have been tempted if only in the slightest to deem worthless.

The voice amongst our friends, in our communities, in our societies, in our countries and well beyond that into the world is what will make the difference to both your lives and those of others around you.

Appeal to reason and reasonableness, persuade but do not dismiss, disagree but refuse to be disagreeable, you are allowed to be irreverent without being disrespectful – call out the hypocrites and expose falsehood – stand with the honest, just and true always because they will always matter.

Know yourself, know others

There is no shelter in excuses and using moral equivalences to justify your position stop you having the essentially critical self-examination and self-scrutiny you need to adapt and change for the better.

There is a voice in you that needs to be heard, in your experiences, your intellect, your unique thinking unclouded by indoctrination, and the better world you want to see – Speak up, stand out, make waves – for when your voice is heard for the least amongst you, you protect both yourselves and others from future oppression that could be overwhelming and unassailable if in your silence you lost those who would have done everything to stand with you and for you.

Make it a year where you fight for rights that mean nothing to you but mean the most to those whose lives and the pursuit of happiness depend on it.

Happy New Year!