Thought Picnic: In the climes of resentment

The crimes of association

Too many times, the thought of bitter indignation at having been treated unfairly does present itself for self-pitying analysis and a decline into anger. For me, the greatest feeling of being treated unfairly, unjustly, or irritably for all sorts of reasons appear to go back to my parents than anyone else.

For the many times I have bitten my tongue, held my peace or disconnected from that lifetime umbilical cord of familial association, I have tried to convince myself that I have moved beyond it all. There is however a trigger somewhere that brings it all bubbling to the top, a memory too keen as to be a danger to my wellbeing, then with the means to reflect there are avenues of venting one’s spleen by offering what almost ends up a shared experience with strangers.

Control the seethe

Much as I hold few or no grudges; between emotional blackmail and an apparent lack of consideration as others begin to exhibit traits of self-centeredness, you are on the verge of blurting it out, the baggage and burdens that have weighed you down and malformed your outlook in ways that if you’re not careful things become irreparable.

How do you deal with resentment? Resentment borne from childhood abuse in many characteristics from the sexual through the emotional to the physical. In striving is isolate and insulate myself, I need to extricate myself from the need to feel that I can only be approved or validated through someone else.

Much as there is an age-old desire to please one’s forebears and community, it should not become a life suffocating ambition where the failure to meet some objective can lead to and exacerbate depression.

Keeping it measured

Anger also needs to be managed, in finding the measured tone to speak one’s mind and having what you have to say heard, even if it is not accepted. My perspective of things might be myopic, but I cannot ignore what is offered to my sight and the broader experience that gives me the view I have. If that view cannot be ameliorated, it should not be compounded with indifference.

The resent is usually not recent, but so many stories brought into focus at a time when a different focus is required, one with the clarity of purpose, ease of mind and absence of stress. Most particularly, we must appreciate that if we give others the keys to what triggers resentment, we can easily be manipulated to ends and purposes that take away our initiative, independence, purpose, vision, self-assuredness, and self-esteem.

A medium that works

To confront the causes of the different elements of resentment, there would have to be the decision to let bygones be bygones which is one easy exit for my father, but hardly a resolution of the issues we need to talk about. It is usually better to put my forthright views in writing and address the responses or consequences at my convenience. English also reduces the power-distance index allowing for the difficult elements to be suffused in accessible language without the tensions that culture and traditions demand.

It would always be a work in progress, as I learn better ways to control the intricacies of resentfulness when I just want to be at peace with myself.

Why Resentment Lasts—and How to Defeat It [Psychology Today]

South Africa: Is this a black empowerment timebomb?

Conversations, many

South Africa offered me a variety of opportunities for meeting people, making conversation, but mostly, there was much to observe and from that as an outsider draw some conclusions about the society the country projects.

The most engagement was on my Uber cab rides to and from work, from the Gautrain station or out for social engagements. Of the probably 40 or so Uber trips I had, there was probably one uninteresting and disinterested driver, I should have sat in the back and occupied myself with a more interactive reading material, my eyes darting from left to right as I read.

Where our journeys were short, it was quite honorific to have the Uber cab drivers express the desire to meet me again so we could have a longer chat. By osmosis and general interest, I seemed to know a lot about South Africa and its current affairs, along with seemingly alternative viewpoints to the events that occupied the newswires in the time I was there.

Signs and realities

However, it appeared I was only getting one perspective of things until last Saturday I witnessed both an interesting and an alarming incident on the concourse of the Johannesburg Park Gautrain station.

I had just missed the opportunity to go on the Soweto tour and so returned to the station to take the train back to Sandton Gautrain station. At the entrance, I had already seen that the next train was in 29 minutes time, it meant I had just missed a train.

I could have loitered around the station, but there is a sense of safety once you are beyond the ticket barriers. The seating on the concourse is really a design malfunction, aesthetically pleasing to the eye but uncomfortable to sit on, the two metal slats are angled for slouching for the able-bodied and literally unusable for those with assisted mobility or any other kind of impairment or strength, age or nature.

Malfunction feeding resentment

What transpired was the electronic signals on the concourse were not updating to tell exactly when the next train would arrive. What I saw as 29 minutes at the entrance was reading a minute on the concourse and it did not change for minutes.

A white lady then made to ask one of the guards on the concourse when the next train would arrive, the guard indicated it would be about 26 minutes. She then when on to ask why the electronic sign was reading different from the expected time. The guard had no answers, but she suggested the lady check the timetable, a cleaner who was chatting to the guard before the white lady interrupted buttressed the point of the view of the guard.

At that moment, the white lady flared up and rudely told that cleaner that she was not invited into the conversation, and so she should mind her own business. At which point everyone else on the concourse waiting for the next train was alerted to the fact that this might degenerate into an unholy fracas.

This must be one of many

The guard trying to reason with this gradually obstreperous lady, tried to aver that the timetable took precedent if there were problems with the electronic indicators, somehow, the context of the problem took a strange twist when the white lady said, “No problem? We don’t run the country anymore and the very simple things you people cannot make work, everything is a mess.”

Now, that caught my attention as the white lady walked away in apparent irritation at not being taken more seriously and began talking across to the other platform in mock rage and annoyance as if there as someone else listening to her grievance. Well, there was no one there, it was a loud soliloquy looking like the onset of some mental disorder.

At which point, I surmised that this was pent-up Afrikaner resentment being let out, apparently triggered by the frustration of not being in control or being able to control, situation, event or direction.

This in my view could not be the only place where resentment was festering and ready to be blurted out at any sign of ineptitude, incompetence, misdeed or malfunction. In my over three weeks in South Africa I had seen much of this with the impunity, the contempt of institutions and the cack-handedness of the President in replacing the Finance Minister in the middle economic turmoil with a complete tyro, all for political expediency.

Distrust in the rainbow nation

The week before, a survey had suggested that South Africans of different races distrusted each other, there was very little social interaction between the races except in the workplace, in schools or in the shops. It goes without saying, that if there were people of the stature of Nelson Mandela in power with the requisite competence to run the government for the good of all South Africans, there would be little room for resentment.

Then, on my way back from South Africa, as we waited for the embarkation of our delayed flight, I got to talking with a couple that were off to Italy via Paris. They were travelling with three generations of the family, 11 in total, but grandpa and grandma were travelling business class and the others elsewhere.

They expressed frustration at the seeming rudderless direction of the government, the rapid decline in the value of the South African Rand and it was precipitous in the last week besides the fact that the Rand had lost 30% in value against the Dollar in the year 2015 alone.

Bantu education all over again?

However, what concerned him most was the affirmation action that was to encourage black empowerment and emancipation in South Africa. Now, the Bantu Education Act was a rotten Apartheid policy that provided not useful education to the black population as means of lifelong subjugation with no prospect of elevation in life.

“There is no place for [the Bantu] in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour ... What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice?” Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd, the Dutch-born architect of Apartheid.

Yet, according to grandpa, during the struggle against Apartheid, the kids of the chief activists went to the best schools elsewhere, whilst the activists instigated the students left behind to burn their schools in protest and insurrection, leaving the students in the midst of the struggle bereft of education and consequently subjugated to the children of the activists who have returned to rule over the masses.

Marking up failures to pass through

He continued by saying, the affirmation system, whilst apparently giving opportunity to blacks to access education and qualifications, none of it appeared to test their aptitude, challenge their mental capacity or equalise their achievement with mainstream standards of education expected of anyone who has passed through an educational system from primary school through to the end of tertiary education.

He said many black South Africans in affirmation schemes were being given a full pass at 33% and conveyor belted through university to have a degree in three years whether they made the grade or not. Whilst I have no proof of this, on an anecdotal basis, I had seen many instances of people being trained and failing to perform when without direct supervision at hotels, in shops and elsewhere, it is concerning.

Dishonesty in presented qualifications

In my time in South Africa, after the scandal that broke in May when I was there that trains ordered from Spain for South African railways were not of the right specification, the speculation about the qualifications of the head of engineering of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) was confirmed.

Dr Daniel Mtimkulu had not studied at the university he said he attended and was not registered with the engineering body that was supposed to validate the qualifications that made him eligible for the role he was in. There no asking how he scaled through the due diligence processes of the people who interviewed him and promoted him to the role he assumed until he was found out when a procurement process was bungled creating serious embarrassment for all concerned.

Likewise, at the South African Broadcasting Corporation, the COO was found to have misrepresented his qualifications by a public prosecutor whose institutional responsibility of oversight and regulation was ignored that other parties had to seek orders from the courts that enshrined and supported the authority of the public prosecutor.

Yet, integrity and honour were left by the wayside as the system appeared to give support and succour to dishonesty and fraud in the face of incontrovertible facts.

It does not augur well, at all

All of this will give cause for resentment amongst South Africans, especially when those in power seem to forget the great responsibility of nation-building and unifying a nation bequeathed them by the likes of Nelson Mandela for the politics of expediency and a descent to hedonism and opulence at the expense of the majority of South Africans that placed confidence in their government bringing lasting prosperous change into their lives.

One is appalled to say the least and it simply corroborates what I wrote in another blog titled, South Africa: Rubbish!

There are many stories in South Africa, but if the decline by indifference and indolence of government egged on by comfort oblivious of duty and attention to the purpose for which they were called to serve continues, Zimbabwe will be nothing compared to the disaster that is looking like the charted future of South Africa on this avoidable trajectory.

To hear the voice of motherhood

Feelings of utter discomfiture

Caught between the vagaries of life and unhealthy resentment, I watched this day approach with some foreboding and trepidation.

It felt like that uncomfortable feeling that greeted my emotions as I returned home from any outing, the long walk to the end of the street that represented the house that did not feel like home.

The building was comfortable, my room self-contained and private, but the atmosphere laid heavy like a cloud of despair, I rarely felt happy returning there.

Just over 28 years ago, that place became a closed chapter, a place I only visited because I had a duty to, but I avoided because I did not need to return for anything.

Reflect and review

Therefore, as my mother’s 71^st birthday approached, I found myself writing, Thought Picnic: To wilfully forget a parent's birthday – it was something I had the capacity to do and I had worked myself up for it – I could be that detached.

However, when I looked on Facebook to see a picture of my mother and a celebratory message from my sister, and the night before chatted to my sister-in-law about my misgivings, it became something I had to face, I must do the needful.

The first call did not get through, but a few hours after, I got through, and she was quite pleased to hear my voice just as I was to hear hers.

Soothed by motherliness

All the knottiness and tension dissolved and the soothing and comforting voice of motherhood in a mood of celebration and happiness became the balm to aches and pains of pent up uneasiness and angst.

We talked for longer than we usually do; mostly in English as we always did, exchanging pleasantries and making each other laugh with incredulity at the things we say and recollect of times past.

Then I wondered why things just soured, it is because there are still many things I have not shared for her to understand some of the tough journeys I have been through.

The little I shared brought prayerful encouragement and empathy. For all our differences and conflicts, she is quite capable of deep understanding and appreciation to show affection and compassion.

Of why and where

Why do we end up in conflict with our parents?

Where is the balance between the familiarity and the distance to make relationships work?

This is difficult to gauge, but it is something we on both sides have to work on, for to cherish and honour for as long as we have them and to forestall the deeper wounds of regret if we do not strive to make amends and make things right.

Even I realise how parent-child dissonance can reflect spiritual apoplexy meaning a lack of fulfilment in many areas of significance to a person’s sense of wellbeing.

I am glad I had the opportunity to reconnect, and I hope I can make more of this as time goes by.

Thought Picnic: To wilfully forget a parent's birthday

An unfortunate breakdown

It probably signifies a breakdown in relationship building when parents and children grow considerably distant that the only connection between them becomes that of grudging filial duty rather than longing friendship.

Association challenges some children and at times blackmail spurs action through comparison and embarrassment; caught between comparison and envy of others who have cultivated better of parent-child interaction.

These things do not happen in a vacuum, opportunity and choice over the years left untapped and unexploited defines what becomes of how parent and child respect, acknowledge and support each other in whatever paths they all choose and thrive in.

Emotions in turmoil

This might catch a child between resentfulness and gratitude; the former borne of unfortunate inadequacies on both sides and the latter recognising that as age diminishes the influence of parentage, their being around still offers some slight opportunity at reconciliation and renewed friendship.

Resentfulness however is a consuming fire that leaves a person in danger of being past caring, indifferent, unconcerned, disinterested and unaffected.

Exasperated kids

Children are not perfect, and parents do strive to do their best within the spectrum of the knowledge and experience they have from handling the responsibility of making basic provision of shelter, protection, education and material needs, but these are no substitutes for the intangibles of love and affection borne out of proper emotional engagement.

Children do get exasperated starting with parents demanding respect through to parents being overly controlling that the child never gets to live their own life. Crudely, you find instances where the father expects to be feared, and the mother will not countenance the idea of joking or laughing with the children in idle banter.

A lack of adaptation

Independence cannot then come too quickly for the child to break free. The nature of the break if not properly recognised by the parent such that they adapt will lead to unavoidable disengagement as each party goes their different ways, decades separating them until it appears they do not matter to each other anymore than through the intrusion of emotion brought on by nostalgic impudence.

That things could have been better is no more the discussion or argument, whether the time can be redeemed is another issue, but worse still is the possible regret that might follow never having done something when things could be done on the side of both the parent and the child.

Whatever!

You then ask; can a child wilfully forget a parent’s birthday? At which point your realise that things have really gotten that bad and rather than face the trepidation that infuses each conversation when they talk, the greater peace though without comfort is best served by just getting on with your life and the sadness of the story being told.

Providence and consequence draws on a long history of experiences, we are young, we cultivate relationships and grow old living the knowledge of our lived out truths. For those whose memory is the keenest, the hope is that the good remembered outnumbers the ready reckoner of the bad and the ugly when it is all put in the balance.

C’est la vie will say the French, but just west of France, in Spain, one might hear, Que sera, sera.

Thought Picnic: No Parable of the Prodigal Friend

The Prodigal Friend

I wondered why Jesus never told a parable of the prodigal friend, He did tell one of a prodigal son and the redeeming power of fatherly love despite the failings of that son who justifiably should have been consigned to the scrapheap.

The story of realisation and reconciliation is both profound and deep; it is however amazing how that could easily be seen in real life.

As I thought on this, I realised there was no need for a parable of the prodigal friend because friends have a particularly practical significance that is either of clear dedication or sad betrayal.

The involved friends

The practical example of this friendship was demonstrated at a meeting Jesus had in a house where he was teaching, the house was so crowded full of the Pharisees and scribes that no one else could have access.

A lame man had four of his friends help him to that venue, no doubt with the view to having the miraculous power of Jesus heal him. When they could not get into the house, they climbed on the roof, removed the roofing tiles and let their friend down into the midst of the crowd in the presence of Jesus.

As the story goes, Jesus saw their faith and with that he told the lame man his sins were forgiven and he should pick up his bed and walk, which he promptly did to the marvel all present to see the miracle and the consternation of those who debated the issue of forgiveness of sins.

What was clear was what the friends did to contribute to the lame man’s access to healing, most importantly, they wanted him fit and able as themselves than for him to be limited in his interaction with them – a prodigal friend of sorts.

The Prodigal Brother

Conversely, what is said of the brother of the prodigal son is interesting that I am inclined to call him the prodigal brother by reason of the fact that he had status, opportunity and privilege but failed to realise any of that until when he noticed the merciful and loving expression of his father to his brother.

What he always had with his father but never deigned to live in the fullness of, led to his nursing resentment, anger and offence at what was so avoidable if he had availed himself of the standing and the reality of who he was.

Friends can stick closer than a brother, a friend showed such great love that he laid down his life for his friends. It is a matter of character and personality to find friends who are ready to bear you down in your bed into the presence of the biggest miracle of your life – friends are experience and much more but we need discernment to determine true friends from fair-weather friends or just mere acquaintances.

For those who have felt betrayed by those they call friends, have mercy and keep the ones that do really care. For there comes a time when friends do matter, because then, we are totally helpless and needful of them.

Note: The first publication of this blog was full of errors, I probably should have left writing it until the morrow, but I was determined to get it out. In any case, my friend @zebbook on Twitter noticed the poor editing and discreetly informed me of the poor copy. I hope I have repaired the damage; else, I’ll have another look when the daze of my pills wears off. Thanks Bukola.