What 23rd October 2015 Taught me about: Humanity & Empathy

There comes a time, in every classical plot development, where once the Shire is out of sight, the character learns something. A profound revelation of sorts. This learning can be a steady process, with an eventual ‘aha’ moment; or it could be a flurry of thoughts and ideas flung at said character’s brain until it was battered , bruised – and wiser.

These past few days have rapidly expanded the landscape of my thoughts and ideals, tearing at my tunnel vision and helping me see beyond the dogmatic cycle of highlight, flag, do tutorials, revise notes that has underpinned 2015 for me.

It began for me on Wednesday, 21^st October, when despite multiple e-mails against this decision, we sat to write an exam ‘in a secret venue’. I was angered that this department thought itself above the proceedings of the Fees Must Fall movement; outraged that despite the police beginning their oppression through arrests and rubber bullets less than 24 hours ago, I was supposed to write an exam. Write an exam and pretend my brothers and sisters were not arrested or feeling the sting of rubber bullets. Pretend I am in a bubble and beyond all of this.

So when our exam was disrupted and we were forced to leave the venue, I almost sighed in relief that I was standing in solidarity with a cause I believed in – without being prejudiced in missing an exam. My year group was forced to listen as gate cutters were used and the exam called to a halt.

I didn’t bat an eyelid at the tense, nervous looks of the lecturers as they watched EFF shirts dance and flail sticks in the air. They knew this would possibly happen. What were they afraid of? Boards? Not getting results in time? Salient. But only large to eyes without the glasses of perspective.

This was beyond us. Beyond an exam. Beyond this year. This was about students everywhere that felt the brut of financial exclusion and inaccessibility to financial aid. But, I’m not here to sell you the cause. You believe what you will.

Moving on, I found myself often in a catatonic state of distress as I glued my eyes to eNCA live streams and the horrifying tweets of being shot at. Of the deafening stun grenades. Of the sheer risk students faced – putting their bodies on the line for a movement. Kids younger than me. Babies. Out there against police on the streets of Cape Town. Their crime was singing and asking for a basic human right. This is where I say: some of us lost our humanity along the way.

It is baffling to me how people can look at this situation and not feel their heart being ripped apart. Those people who felt the tear gas and stun grenades are humans. They are our brothers and sisters. They are someone’s daughters or sons. They could be younger than you yet they are fighting to change a broken system, shouldering the pain and responsibility for an outcome that would possibly benefit everybody : even the student that was not at parliament, but in his porcelain parlour at home. How could we not feel for them? Why did our country not come to a standstill? Where was our humanity?

And this is the crux of my struggle. I felt that, when I was made to write that exam, those students who could physically remove themselves from protest environments, emotionally detach themselves from the pain of those who felt police brutality, and focus unrelentingly on their books would prosper. And those who let themselves feel humanity, empathy, sadness, a distress proportional to the magnitude of the events for the week… would lose out. And I felt trapped in a society that clearly rewarded robots. I always knew it existed, but I had never come across an example so concrete of the ‘good robot, you will win in your clinical coolness’ approach.

It flabbergasted me. This is what corporate seems to want from me. Nobody cares if the world is burning or your personal life is in tatters. As long as you continue to bear the burden and turn the cogs of this dysfunctional society, there will be money in your pocket to shop at Woolworths.

Then yesterday, 23^rd October, when the 0% increase was announced by our President, I was overjoyed at the small victory, but aware that it just was not enough. The yield was not proportionate to the hurt and the pain that was caused along the way. It just was not enough. And what further had me glued to my screen all damn afternoon were horrifying live updates of continued violence outside the union buildings. TUT students burning things, police chasing students and shooting at them, tear gas being dropped by helicopters. WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT.

I was defeated. Paralyzed. What made it all the more ethereal was that people were carrying on with their lives in an eerie contrast. Someone I know got engaged, while outside the union buildings students were bleeding. This is the insanity of life. Our world. How was our nation not at a standstill. How did we go out for coffee that evening and talk about our feelings. How did we go to Woolworths and buy our roast chickens. How did we drink our tea, eat our toast? Are we perhaps already the robots they’ve always wanted us to be?

At a simpler level, this is exemplified by the desensitization of doctors and their dealings. Victims of abuse, gunshots, near-death patients must be treated at an arm’s-length. You cannot take that pain home with you, lest you have a nervous breakdown from a heart so heavy with other’s pain. It is a built in mechanism of the human soul. To pull away from disaster and turmoil around us – to be that rock that stands firm despite the crashes of the ocean. 

I feel guilty, though. I feel guilty for consciously compartmentalizing my empathy and humanity so that I may move forward. So, that evening, as I had a cathartic chat over coffee with an empathetic friend, I knew I couldn’t trap myself in my empathy. I could no longer grasp at my humanity and cry over what had happened to my brothers and sisters, lest the world trap me in a hurricane of bad-tidings and horrors.

So, I woke up today, made my breakfast, and carried on with my life. Just like millions of people do each day in this mad, mad world.

On Decisions: Indecision, Outdecision & Terrible Metaphors

“Free yourself from this insufferable, self-indulgent self-doubt! Wake up and see that you already have the answers you need. We like to dwell in our choice and make no decision, sometimes. We take a twisted pleasure in going back and forth between our choices purely because we’re afraid to pick one. Why are you so insecure? I should just give you a whack!” – said a Holy Man to me, this weekend.

The above is actually a censored version of the sage-wisdom I received about my inability to make an important decision. I poured over mentors and books and people - asking for advice and perspective; and subsequently accumulating a wealth of wise opinions. But, perhaps, I forgot to ask the most important person for an opinion – I forgot to really bear down on my own mind and squeeze out an answer to the age old question: “What do you want?”

If we all had the answer to this question, life would be a simpler way to pass the time before we die. But it isn’t. Our insecure human nature sometimes drives us to oscillate between our choices, hankering after and fermenting our insecurities in the sordid pleasure of ‘option value’.  We use phrases like, “Oh, I don’t know, but it will be nice to have the option.”

Indecisive folks alike will sometimes accumulate these options like the tazos of long ago, and pour over the 150 ‘options’ in front of them with a gluttonous glimmer in their eyes. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, though, when you want to knock down a tazo tower – you can only hit with one shooter at a time.

I think it takes a lot to make a decision truly for yourself; it takes a lot to pull away from the crossroads and say ‘no’ to something and ‘yes’ to something else – especially when neither choice is inherently ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Not everything is a dichotomous angel on the right shoulder situation; indeed, morally questionable choices could perhaps be interpreted as easier to make because we inherently have a distinction between good and bad, and right and wrong – and if you don’t there are multiple religious texts set to guide us along the spectrum of absolutely abhorrent and sinful versus righteous and ideal.  

Perhaps the only consolation to making a decision is that it allows you to actually walk the path. It allows you to move beyond the intersection and into the next phase of growth – to be confronted again with more choices! I hope it becomes easier. I hope I become braver in my decision making. I believe resilience and strength of character will readily follow, regardless of the decisions we make: because it is left to the individual to bear the consequences and to feel time press slowly on her shoulder muscles as she is touched by the ever-winking tick of the clock. Metaphors aren’t always as simple as the life they seek to mirror.

I am Fine, Indeed

This process of self-love is not mechanized. The cogs do not dance at the click of a button. Results don’t appear from the chanting of a special “I love myself” mantra. In the short term, indeed, it is comparatively easier to construct a self-image within the bounds of your brick-walled apartment, signing along to feel-good pop music and chatting to yourself in the mirror each morning.

However, I feel, the real test begins when we step outside our door.

And it isn’t necessarily our fault.

It is hard, I have found, to hold your own when you are faced with the personification of everything that you are not. When you meet women who effortlessly personify the stock-standard image of beauty (you know, the standard that has continuously been fed to you via an IV-drip for your whole life) do you use your fight or your flight instincts?

To some extent, I believe, women have been taught to see each other as competitors. This is further affirmed by feminist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who describes this phenomenon as ‘women are taught to see each other as competitors, but not for jobs, but for the attention of men.’ Is this the problem? When we are confronted with what we perceive to be the perfect woman, do we self-deprecate over the fact that this woman might be a better mate than us?

Self-love can fly out the window very quickly, unless it has actually taken root within you.

See, what I have learnt, is that it is far too easy to love yourself in isolation. In a context away from society and their need to pick apart every fragment of a woman’s body and rip her self-esteem to shreds for entertainment, you can feel safe and confident.

What we must learn as women, is to love ourselves in the context of this dark and confusing world, where it may not necessarily be ‘the system’ that is our enemy, but the innate jealousy and unworthiness we may feel when faced with the inevitable reality of ‘there are girls out there much better than me – what right do I have to feel good about myself?’

And that is where you remember that you are more than this conditioning mind-set of comparatives. You are more than what the world thinks a woman ‘should’ look like. We will only truly be able to experience ourselves and to grow once we place ourselves in this larger context. It is trial and error, and the sooner we push ourselves into the world beyond our bedroom door, the sooner we can change that world.

There is nothing wrong with other women being perfect. There is nothing wrong with naturally typifying what you have been taught to be the ‘best’ qualities within a woman. The issue herein lies in that there is something wrong if you feel utterly inadequate when placed next to this kind of woman.

You are more than your inadequacies.
You are enough.

And the more you are meant to face up to these battles, and the more you come up short, one day you would have gone through the motions so many times that you’ll be able to look at yourself – not just in the mirror – but in the reflection of all that you ‘want ‘ to be, and say to yourself: I am fine, right now. I am fine, indeed. 

Rise

I get into my head a lot, over the tiniest details. I can ponder for ages over whether coffee tastes better when I drink it with the lid on the takeout cup or without; I can contemplate outfits days ahead of going out and I probably spend immeasurable hours thinking about how I feel.

How do I feel about this? This person? This object? This situation?

The unfortunate coupling of self-awareness and introspection often leads me to judge myself for my emotions; and for the conscious effort I make to keep them in check. It’s tedious to not accept yourself for who you really are. Why do I do this? 

Note the use of the word ‘I’: once upon a time, when I did a creative writing piece in high school, I used to generalize my personal opinions behind the veil of ‘we’. It would be ironic to try to hide myself, now.

Would the world, I wonder, be a brighter place if we all wore our hearts on our sleeves? Would my, tiny, world be a little bit nicer if I chose to let myself live without fear? I know other people are scared, just like me. Scared to let themselves love in the way they want to. Scared to reach out a little bit more. Scared to let themselves free fall through the infinite skies – to feel their hair burn around their face and the pressure crash through their bodies as the world plummets.

So, so scared.

If you’ve been looking for a sign to let yourself feel what you’ve been trying to hide: this is it. Take my hand, and let us, together, experience ourselves through the depth of emotion birthed by our own souls. For all emotion is fuelled by love – love gained, lost, craving, absent; and love is above all things. Maybe falling isn’t what we should be doing – we should, rather… rise.

I'm, undoubtedly, selfish in this invitation to you to let yourself live with your emotions - because, truth be told, I want company. I would love to see people smile when they want to, bubble up inside when they see people who make them happy. It would warm me to see people laugh until their sides ache, and to tell all the people that they love how they truly feel. 

In a world where your emotions are put aside so you can fit the grey scale description of perfection - let us together have the courage to colour the sky with the palettes of our hearts.  

"Your Skin Is Not Dirt"

I found this incredibly powerful; coming from a culture where peroxide is set to skin and where actresses enter Bollywood the gorgeous colour of almonds and leave blanched. Where we look at the array of crèmes behind the counter at Gorima’s and wonder about whether we, too, should be using Golden Pearl.

Stop.

We are beautiful. 

If ever I’ve thought about a cause I could fight for – or see myself advocate close to home – it has to be the issue of the Indian female complexion. It was a topic as potent as the smell of peroxide.

I was in high school when a family member and I experimented with peroxide; it was a hideous smelling yellow powder that was applied to my skin – and it burned me. It hurt something awful. I had to wash it off within a few seconds of it touching my skin.

Looking back, I feel absolutely ashamed for all the times I’ve used Fair & Lovely, Golden Pearl or any of those terrible skin lightening creams. For what? Perhaps it was the murmur at the back of my mind at how everyone loved how fair my mother is; and how I did not match her yellow-white glow. Perhaps it was the realization that Rani Mukherjee, whom I saw a lovely caramel colour in one movie became an ivory beauty the next. Or, perhaps, it was the way that Bollywood lyrics idolised the ‘gori-gori’ fair glow of a lighter skinned beauty.

It was an issue I, thankfully, left behind in Durban.

When I got to Cape Town, I found myself walking. A LOT OF WALKING. The sun exposure was not avoidable at all. I could hear my mum chirping at the back of my mind – ‘Don’t walk in the sun, you’ll get so dark’ – but, what could I do? I had to live. I also learnt that sunblock has no bearing on whether your skin will tan, it just mitigates sun damage.

I think lots of girls realized this, too, and in doing so, we came to see how really unimportant the issue is. We joke about it, laugh about it while we walk from upper campus to lower campus, giggle at how the sun is tingling against us – but, the sad reality is, these jokes all have deeper origins. Darker ones, for a terrible, terrible pun.

So, to those ladies who are trying to look like almond milk.

Stop, sweetheart.

Chai comes in many shades. 

On Burning & Being Indoctrinated By One's Uterus

“Ohfooh ma, I don’t even want to get married!” The heroine vehemently exclaims, burring her milky, doe eyed face into her hands while the eternally maternal Kirron Kher figure pats her on the back going on about a certain boy who would be appropriate. Indeed, this is the very foundation of most of the Bollywood movies I’ve watched this week. However, even when the heroine craved to see the face of her hero – as when Kajol scampered about in her famous white outfit in the rain during the first song of Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge – she eventually found him. So I guess someone always wins in these scenarios.

The issue, I find, is when women feel almost reserved about admitting that finding a hero falls into one of their life goals. As if, post-bra-burning, it is something to feel shy about. We whisper it to each other in our accounting lectures and throw hints by posting links to the songs we love from abovementioned cliché movies. Yet, I always feel as if I’m disappointing my gender by admitting to this. I mean, you barely see a male figure blogging about finding a lovely little Bindi-Binki-BCom-Babe to settle down with. So why should females say the same?

Personally, I wonder if it has something to do with the casual ability we have to carry life within our bodies for 9 months. We’ve quite possibly been indoctrinated by our own uterus – feeding us subliminal desires through hormonal changes. Furthermore, this organ will not be ignored, kicking us from within whether in anger form not being used through monthly cramps – or lashing out by a kicking baby when used. We can’t win – can we? But that’s another story. I digress.

Refreshingly, a few days ago, I read a line from The Carrie Diaries by Candace Bushnell, where Carrie asks herself whether there is anything wrong with her wanting to be with a man, and further questions the fact that she knows she would forever want to be with a man. In juxtaposition, we have the perpetual ‘I don’t need someone to rescue me. I have a job, an apartment, my own life. I don’t need any hero.’

I think the flaw there is that, in one frame of mind, Carrie seeks something of a lifelong friendship. She doesn’t necessarily want to be ‘saved’ from her invisible demons, but rather looks to perfect her otherwise adequate existence. However, when we begin to look at a partnership as hero and sidekick, the contention begins and we find ourselves mumbling uncomfortably that we don’t really care about being married because it would threaten our independence and sense of self-constructed confidence.  

In a world feeding off a buffet of love stories of every flavour, portion and appearance, how do we know whether we just want to order off the menu? Naturally, it is impossible to try each and every dish – and most are perfectly content to dine alone. But, this is about the awkward ones approaching the buffet, completely overwhelmed and confused about how to perceive all that lies before her.

The truth is, there is no definitive answer as with most things. I’ve observed that my opinion of the entire scheme of things changes with each pop culture item I am spoonfed and with each glace of Mr. Darcy that makes my heart stop. 

Indeed, the malleable temperament of opinion is what keeps relationships and our perception of reality in flux. 

The passage of time slowly etches away at our wood-hearts; some initials are engraved, some lightly written – and there are some names waiting to be brought to the surface.  

Edit:

In all honesty, I felt completely ashamed to have written this post. No, rather, to have published this post and I would feel far too shy to share it on a more public platform. It is completely soaked in the bittersweet taste of irony that, as mentioned above, I would feel ashamed to shout this from the rooftops. This all in a quest to protect my future felicity, for I know this would readily terrify any and every male who were to read this post. Naturally, you would all assume me to be some positively hormone driven lunatic whose sole purpose in life would be to get you to book out the infamous Kendra Hall.
But, I pray, do not flatter yourself. 

Hope & Fear

She walks in cool, calm, collected. Her dark heels click to the tiles in seemingly rehearsed coordination. Perfectly poised and planned. Her glasses perch at a vogue angle on her nose, eyes wide and alert – quickly scanning the room calculating every possible scenario that she could fathom and a possible reaction. She wears a tweed blazer and a matching skirt, in a regal (albeit far too mature for her age) yellow with dark undertones. Her hair is dark and she is in control. Fear is not withered. Fear is not cowering in the corner, hiding herself.

No, she is not.

Hope glides in on her bare feet, on her tip toes just for fun. She wears a long, white flowing garment and you can’t quite distinguish her body shape beneath it- but you know she is simply lovely. Hope is simple yet frivolous. There is not much to her at face value – her complexities only emerge when you begin to make enquiries; but most people are happy to simple sit and look at the way her hair glistens in the sunshine.

Hope does not rule, she simply is.

I would rather be fear.

The revered Nelson Mandela once said that he hopes our choices do not reflect our fear, but rather our hopes. Yet, what is wrong with making life decisions based on our fears? Making decisions within the bounds of a given situation to mitigate future perils appears rational to me.

I wonder, what is wrong with being a fearful person? A fearful person is not backed into a corner because she has thought about each window in the room and the number of glass panels comprising the windows and how she could kick them out if she needed to. Fear knows every centimetre of the room and makes her decisions such that she isn’t in the corner. She is Baby from Dirty Dancing – and has taken the calculated risk to make that terrible joke knowing someone out there will cringe reading it.

Indeed, the next question would be what fear would do when put into a completely different house let alone a new room. Fear probably knew this might happen because fear has a close friend called Paranoia who likes to play on the tight rope of Fear’s nerves. Consequently, because Fear thought this may happen – fear is not jarred and instead attempts to pre-empt and solve the new house’s issues.

The crisis, it appears, is when fear becomes paralysed. Then, there is neither Hope nor Fear, rather a senseless melancholy from which no inspirational quote can save you and instead you must pray for Hope.

This is because Fear and Hope works hand in hand – because Fear is there to protect the goals that fragrance Hope’s skin and dance on Hope’s lips. Once you have Hope, I suppose, stashed away in a corner of your heart with a desired outcome, you can let yourself be guided by whatever means you find necessary to pursue it.