Rise with your hopes or fall with your fears

Guard your ears, till your heart

Our fears can so limit our ability to thrive, some fears fed by a passing comment in our past that takes root and grows into a humongous impediment to progress and success. The caution we must exercise in who we lend our ears to is one of eternal vigilance, for the grounds in which seeds can grow in our lives, are more fertile than we ever realise.

Words from the mouths of our parents triggering involuntary responses that determine the course of our lives and can make a difference in a lifetime, you wonder, how do you escape the clutches of what you have taken to heart? There are damaging consequences, from people of considerable influence that you can still hear their voices decades long after you have forgotten who or what they look like.

We can be different

We should not however concentrate on the negative, there are other inputs that engender the amazingly productive, that word of kindness, of encouragement, of hope, of prayer, of beauty, of praise and the good of our humanity, lighting up a path for us to travel, rescuing us from danger, infirmity, or calamity, bringing a sense of determination that girds us and strengthens us that we have no choice but to win. Those voices are begging to be heard but we are too attuned to the contrary.

As individuals, we fight our uniquely arranged battles, but when we enter into partnerships where our fortunes are pooled, we can rise with our partners or sink with them because of the baggage that burdens our inability to either live beyond our fears or the grip of the impending defeat sowed by experiences or words we have heard before.

Imagine where you can be

The greater disaster is not to see the newness in life that gives you hope against all situations to write a better story and create a worthy narrative of your life beyond the fears and low expectations of others who stole our power to thrive with their selfish perspective of what your life might be if it turned out different and successful.

If I am saddened, it is with those who never tried to dream of the extraordinary and when given the opportunity take off from the ground, rise to have the wind beneath their wings to soar with the eagles. It is possible, only if we uproot the forests of fruitless trees that took hold clouding the warmth of the sun with the fear of a future we do not know. Fears based on broad stereotypes when they should have based on the uniqueness of the individual.

Even more, the pity is you and your partner are left down in the dumps in an unproductive life just because fear robbed you of the spirit of hope and the experience of better things that you could ever have imagined in your wildest dreams.

We are chameleons of nature

Opening to the strange

I have sometimes wondered about the kind of comfort we find with strangers such that intimate details are shared in ways that we would never consider with those we know.

We engage and unburden freely maybe unconsciously that there will never be another encounter so that the familiar does not visit us again and with it bring some embarrassment. Just as the tongue might be loosened by drink in the midst of friends, the elixir of strange meetings gives an inebriating fillip to unbridled liberties.

The anonymous becomes a comfortable channel for things closed off, a place where there is an expression for which we do not want to be known to others. It is like our secret selves still needs a place to be not so secret, yet not public with a face or some recognition.

Natural inhibitions of nature

Maybe in the embrace of the strange, we find a new range for our passions and our fears, even hopes and desires get to travel in paths we never dared to let them get out to experience. We have a tendency to compartmentalise, manage the facets of who we are to different levels of acquaintance, we are being completely who we are and yet never the complete picture to those who think they know everything about us.

It is probably healthy to be apparently extroverted to the unfamiliar whilst being introverted to the too familiar, whether vice versa is a good thing, I am not too sure. We are chameleons taking on strange and familiar colours depending on the environment; that is in truth not quite unnatural, is it?

A workshop of manufacturing I do not need

The making of obscure goods

I need to step out of this factory manufacturing goods of no description and without any purpose, yet the machines churn, the conveyor belts are in motion, with an end-to-end process fully engaged, the inputs nebulous and the outputs vacuous, what a quandary of automation on my hands, for I am the factory manager.

To unravel this conundrum, I cannot shut down that factory, for there are orders that could be placed for which the tooling can be recalibrated to make something not just of value, but of significance beyond what I might use to share with others.

The same plant has served markets proximate and distant, but a moment of distraction has set in place some disorder, the cost of realignment needs minimising and then time to readjust should by all means to shortened.

A malcontent of discontent

What ails us is simple, external factors that impose limitations that we can either absorb and bear to much operational disruption, ignore and face the consequences further down the line, or take into consideration, making allowances for some drift, but not letting it impact the schedule of activities for which other orders have been properly processed.

The factory is my mind and the manufacturing is the array of thought processes that course through my thoughts and thinking especially around this pandemic and the mishandling of it by my government. The lockdown affects me, but I can get on with my life in general, shopping, exercise and work continue in earnest.

There is no social activity, I cannot meet friends, and travel is prohibited if I was not in South Africa with my partner a month ago, I will not have met any of my friends for literally a year, apart from one who is in my social bubble because he lives in my city.

Briskly manufacturing no consent

I watch the frenetic activity to contain the virus, having lost the trust of the public and the ability to persuade us of a greater cause, they impose hefty fines on a whim and we roll over allowing this travesty as if they are testing how far we can be squeezed by their egregious abuse of power.

We do need to get a hold of this pandemic, but I am governed by consent, that consent is wearing thin as the rank incompetence of this government looms so large that it is impossible not to see where the problem is. Like I said before, the issue is not the South Africa strain of the virus, especially after the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine was found not to be as effective against that strain.

Blog - The CoVID-19 mutations are not the problem

Testing our docility

The South African strain has been the bogeyman and rationale for the imposition of a more stringent lockdown, but the prevalent and dominant strain in the UK is homegrown from Kent. All the restrictions and quarantine measures being put into play now, if they had been imposed 3 months ago when South Africa did, or 6 months ago when rather we were enticed to Eat Out to Help Out, we would not have suffered the death toll of over 110,000 of which half happened in the last quarter of a year and we probably would have eased many of the lockdown measures and be on the path to a semblance of normalcy.

Dare I suggest we tried for this a year ago before it took any hold and we would be filling stadiums attending concerts like they are now in New Zealand, but we played with lives to save the economy and now, both lives and the economy are in peril, compounded by Brexit. It is not a matter of hindsight, time and again, the signs of what to do were there, but the government prevaricated, and procrastinated wishing bluster and bombast will save the day. It did not.

I guess my question is, what will it take for the people to say enough because it seems they will get away with anything and everything if at one point we cannot hold anyone or someone responsible and accountable for the negligence of leadership and the unprecedented trammelling of our liberties by reason of the ineptitude and infirmity of leadership. Closing the strange goods line for the day.

Zakhele Popo of V&A Waterfront

Our regular haunt

One place we always loved visiting when in Cape Town is the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront which is a beehive of activity. From the Foreshore, part of it is linked by a drawbridge and swing bridge that is fun to watch in operation as boats and yachts left or returned to the marina.

Apart from the shopping mall close to the breakwater and the restaurants that line the jetties and wharves, there are luxury hotels and the famous Nobel Square where statues of the 4 South African Nobel Peace Prize laureates stand of Chief Albert Luthuli (1960), Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1984), President F. W. de Klerk (1993), and Nelson Mandela (1993).

Many afternoons, busker musicians gather in front of the platform of statues to play music and perform dances, there are more troupes than solo performers, though you cannot miss the gospel singer-guitarist belting out old and familiar songs, we are taken to open-air church spirituality.

Ease yourself with ease

One thing I am grateful for around this venue is the conveniences, soon after a few kilometres you cannot ignore the call of nature that you have to dash plotting the shortest route to sought for relief, it is a moment to give thanks for more than the birds and the trees.

As Brian waited for me outside the yellow shed one afternoon, he was close to a performer taking a cigarette break, returning, I was looking around for him when the performer all bronze in a general’s attire with a peaked cap and staff called out to me, ‘We are here.’

There began a conversation, we had observed him over many visits to Cape Town as a living statue, still at most times and startling the unwary at other times. From then, we usually arrive at the V&A Waterfront when he is taking a break before he takes another position garnering the attention of the footfall of patrons that out of interest or curiosity approach him and usually leave a tip in his collection box.

Zakhele, our friend

I had wanted to write about him and realised that we had never taken a picture together, searching the web for Sakhele that we knew him as, and I found out I had spelt it wrong along with discovering his surname, he is Zakhele Popo and has been a performing living statue in the V&A Waterfront area since 2005. He is also studying to be an actor, to which the V&A have been sponsors.

There was one day he approached us outside the V&A mall, he was completely unrecognisable out of costume and makeup, a very friendly and lovely chap, one of us as we learnt before. We look forward to seeing him soon again and not forget to take a picture with him.

You can see a short interview with Zakhele on the V&A Waterfront Facebook page here.

President Trump and the post-Christian Evangelicals

A religious accident reported

When I first heard it, it felt like a topic for a school debate contest, but the facts that in certain circles the votes will come out in the affirmation validating it as the truth definitely means it needs to come up for some discussion, I know many will have angles on this matter, I am sharing my perspective.

“President Trump was the best thing to happen to the Christian church in America since maybe Jesus.” A guest on the Newsmax network in America.

Now, I have been trying to understand the encouragement of and bonding with Donald Trump of the grouping and cohort labelled as Evangelical Christians in America, because their apparent affinities from my appreciation of that strand of Christianity does escape me completely. Not too long ago, I had to wade through the incredulity of no seeing the fruit of the Holy Spirit in Donald Trump, addressed in the referenced blog.

Blog - And they see the fruit of the Holy Spirit in Donald Trump

God is not a voter

She was responding to the content of an article that covered an interview on the Donald Trump influence on the Evangelical movement. [Vox.com: The Trump presidency was a catastrophe for American Christianity] It puts a lot of things into context especially the desperate desire to alter the reality of the elections he handily lost. Some, even people I know thought it had been prophesied he will remain president and they held onto that belief until it became obvious someone had been blowing air in their ears.

For me, I had always been sceptical of the idea that in a democracy someone is chosen or elected by God, it is people who voted not a deity, now, someone might suggest the people were influenced by whatever means to vote a certain way by divine persuasion, that would be interesting if people equally believed the same things and were fully persuadable that way, but I am not convinced.

Man must be accountable to man

What concerns me more is the moment we attribute the election of a person to divine provenance to inadvertently take accountability out of the hands of both the electorate and man, the elected are then answerable to no one and depending on their personality and temperament, as power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

“The law of a theocracy is dictated without option to the people, not made by their judges and governments. The individual conscience is free to accept such dictated law, but the state, if its people are to be free, has the burdensome duty of thinking for itself.” Lord Justice Laws

Blog - The case for State law over religious guidance

It is my view that the presidency of Donald Trump tested the underpinnings of every institution of checks and balances literally to their limits, thankfully, they were robust, but no doubt, vigorously shaken.

I cut loose from them

For the many of us who took liberating Christian tutelage from some leading American Christian teachers in the Evangelical movement up to the recent past, who have now passed on, are wizened with age waiting for the Lord, or whose sons, daughters, and proteges have taken the reins of ministries they founded, Donald Trump exposed to almost unbelievable clarity the viscerally human flaws of these iron champions with clay legs and feet. All flesh and no spirit.

The church became political and sought power to protect its interests and base, they had become a tangent away and completely unrepresentative of the persecuted church of the Acts of Apostles to grew by travail and dispersal as Jesus Christ had predicted in his human walk on earth, nor did they represent the pioneering spirit of the Pilgrim fathers that landed America centuries, they looked more like the religious powerbase that John the Baptist first and then Jesus Christ railed against.

A Church not Christlike

They had unwittingly whilst forcefully become plotters against the person and gospel of Jesus Christ, whilst they paid lip service to a semblance of Christianity which was crudely Churchianity expressed in the words of Sanhedrin of chief priests and Pharisees that met to plan and instigate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, “What are we accomplishing? Here is this man performing many signs. If we let Him go on like this, everyone will believe in Him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” [Bible Gateway – John 11:47-48 (NIV)]

Basically, The evangelical movement is in a post-Christian phase of being unable to suffer for either Christ or the gospel, they would rather take political power, install judges, implement their fundamentalist policies to bring forward a kind of government or society, maybe kingdom itself that is a flawed, tarnished, corrupt, pastiche of the promised kingdom of God on earth. The church had become comfortably powerful and powerfully comfortable.

The cohort is lost and for a while, I have practised with deliberation one of the best lessons from those teachers of old, don’t attach yourself too close to a person or a cause that you can’t cut loose long before danger looms. I cut loose from following many of these leaders and their teachings, in the main, the movement simply followed Donald Trump all the way into the ditch, there will be casualties and fatalities, but it is my hope that all is not lost and there is much to recover of life and souls from this completely avoidable and sadly delusional catastrophe.

The atrocity of bloviation in futility

They lower your horizon

I learnt to be wary of people limiting your horizon by their vision of you or your circumstances. They speak with a sense of concern, but it is more for their own benefit than it is for yours. If your fortunes are elsewhere, pursue it with vigour. The apparent patriotism of one even more successful than you at home that does not facilitate the achievement of yours is detrimental to you whichever way you look at it.

My experience with this was on an encounter over 30 years ago with an old schoolmate who had done quite well academically just when I was nursing ambitions of going abroad. He, without hesitation challenged the premise then posited that there was much more in Nigeria for me to exploit and achieve than to apparently escape to The United Kingdom to waste my time.

Let the wind blow through

I did not challenge any of his assertions because it was not necessary, this was someone I had not seen in years who suddenly arrogated to himself a knowledge of my situation and circumstances with the view from his apparently more settled and successful status he could dictate and design my trajectory for life and purpose.

Fleeting moments at times should be fleeting rather than life-changing, the power to make it so remains primarily yours and you should refuse to cede it without a bruising fight where you should emerge to the victor. You are in the market of persuasion, but also, the kind of persuasion that should come with commensurate and effective action.

It is comment without commitment

My friend was not offering to take on any responsibility for facilitation in any direction he was projecting, rather, the inadvertent dampening of my vision which effectively was at play if I allowed it was a vain effort to maintain hierarchies where good advice and mentoring would have given me wings to fly and the wind beneath those wings to soar. You come to realise that just because a path has served someone well, it is not the universal roadmap to success.

Invariably, there will always be people who will thrive and prosper in Nigeria just as there are others who need to exit the country to other lands to find their own path and opportunities that seemed to elude them in Nigeria. Ultimately, neither the stayer nor the leaver is more patriotic, we all have an affinity for Nigeria regardless of how long we have been away and our passion for its peace and prosperity is rarely diminished because whether at home or abroad, we are affected.

Chart your own course and except if the alternate view is ready to invest fully in time and resources to alter that course, it is at best the atrocity of bloviation in futility, do not give it or the person any heed and move on. 

With A Little Help From My Friends

We are rarely alone

We sometimes forget that we could do with a little help, some advice, direction, or guidance. Having found a sense of independence with the resolution that we can have made it on our own, we face problems and issues alone, taking on the world with muscle, exerting strength we never knew we had with capacity that has never been used before.

Again, we should be careful that we have come to believe that we can tackle similar problems we have solved before presented in another setting, at another time, involving other people. We fall into the crude situation of taking a hammer to every problem that appears to be a nail, when the circumstance requires another tool like a screwdriver for a screw, a scalpel to remove a split, a spoon for soup that will not do for a steak.

Understand your situation

Consequentially, we must recognise the situation and the approach, significantly, we fail ourselves when we reject good offers to fight for us, especially from those who can represent interests so unconditionally with passion, sentiment, love, and devotion. Friends and parents along with stranger angels fall into that category, you never know, but it is wise to be open to the possibility.

They can plead your cause in ways you can never do yourself, especially where you are in trouble, have a knotty situation dealing with impossible or difficult people, they can do mitigation to ameliorate amazingly, and they could easily forfeit for shutting them out. If you share a problem, at least, make allowances for more engagement and input that sympathy and platitudes.

Bring on the guns

Let them, especially when your parents or friends are involved put the fear of God in your apparent nemesis, intractable people, or hindrances to your purpose that whoever or whatever gives you grief will not want to revisit another conversation with them. It also presents an escalation opportunity because you do not know what other strings they can pull beyond the constraints of your situation.

If their intervention does not yield the required result, often, you get a better reason for why things are stuck. Avoid as much as you can the incipient infirmity, ignorance, arrogance, or pride of fight alone when there is a cavalry mounted to charge for your cause.