Author: Brand Smit

TUESDAY, 2 NOVEMBER 2004

It is to be expected that the unattached single person will seek someone with whom they can suspend their solitary existence for a brief period – if a better arrangement cannot be reached. A rich variety of problems, however, sometimes prevents the best among us from crossing the divide between I-on-my-own and I-together.

Unorthodox views on life, human existence, what and who we are, religion, politics, and what people do with at least eight hours each weekday are one factor that inhibit the leap across the chasm.

The author of this note, as one or two readers may by now have realised, is one of those miserable souls who is convinced his own beliefs are so unusual that people who haven’t known him all his life and who have made their peace with the words that so often flow from his lips would be so terrified of him that they will run screaming to the nearest bus or train station to establish as much distance as possible between themselves and this strange creature.

Like most other miserable armchair philosophers worth their butt-contoured cushions, I blame other people’s short-sightedness for my situation. If people could just broaden the passages of their own minds by tiny degrees, maybe push open some windows, and occasionally enter through a different door to the one they normally use, I won’t be able to keep up with all the social appointments.

I find myself in an environment where potential female companions can be divided into two groups: women who were born and raised in Taiwan, and women who were born and raised in Western countries. In reality the latter group, for my own purposes, amounts to women of my own country, who mostly share my language and cultural background.

There is an important difference between Taiwanese and Afrikaans candidates, as far as my person is concerned: my unorthodox views, and my lifestyle in which these views are a daily palpable reality, are a much more pertinent topic of discussion with the latter group. It is, in many cases, for example, easier to get away with my particular religious beliefs with a Taiwanese woman who either has no clear religious beliefs, or who follows her own mixture of more than one religion, than with an Afrikaans woman whose identity and worldview were formed in a Calvinist household.

The environment that is Taiwan is also conducive to me being a full-time “writer” whilst still earning a good income as a part-time “English teacher”. If I enter into a relationship with a woman with whom I share a language and culture, there’s a strong possibility that we will return to South Africa. The challenge to set up a life in South Africa that is similar to the life I lead in Taiwan is, however, much more complicated.

My so-called unorthodox views almost always come into play with Afrikaans women, in a language where I can’t hide behind limited vocabulary and poor pronunciation, and in terms and implications I know we both know and understand very well. Meeting a woman of my own linguistic and cultural group with whom I can share my views and beliefs without inhibition is therefore an exceptionally difficult challenge.

It can be said that I need one of two types of women in my life:

* a woman who is unaware of exactly what I believe in; or

* an extraordinary woman who understands my beliefs and personal politics and who thinks broadly enough to be able to say: “I don’t necessarily agree with everything, but I like you.”

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SATURDAY, 23 OCTOBER 2004

In case anyone has forgotten

We need to function, and for that we need information – who we are, what we are, what we need, what we want, and how we should and may go about getting what we need and/or want.

We also need to create or assist in the creation of an environment that is conducive to us becoming what we want to be.

This process of “becoming” should however not be confined to people serving only their own agendas, their own needs or wants. The participation of individuals in a larger process which aims at a result that would benefit more than just a single person, or a handful of individuals, should always be sincerely and actively encouraged.

Why? For one reason, as you participate in the improvement of someone else’s environment, so someone else participates in the betterment of yours. We also share environments, both in the larger sense, and in a more domestic sense. If we all partake in the improvement of our common environments, we all benefit individually.

MONDAY, 1 NOVEMBER 2004

I am rich – until I need to replenish my cereal stock

Everyone knows how important it is to measure wealth … or then, everyone who is serious about money (are there actually still people silly enough to not be serious about money?).

Various criteria are used to determine wealth: the type of vehicle in which people cruise around; the number of vehicles the person possesses; the number of toilets someone has in his or her place of residence to choose from when essential business calls; the number of times per year one goes abroad, and in what class seat one plunks down his or her butt on the airplane; the quantity and quality of clothing that people have to drape around their nudity; shiny little pieces that people hang from their limbs, and so you can go on.

As you can certainly guess, I am also very serious about money. (Why else would I produce this piece of text?) But since when are you not taken seriously if you measure your wealth by the number of boxes of cereal you have in your kitchen cupboard? I mean, does anyone with three cars and seven toilets and a tailored suit and a gold watch know how much American muesli cost these days? And I have at least four full boxes in my kitchen!

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TUESDAY, 19 OCTOBER 2004

“Good government” and adequate identification data

It should be one of the objectives of good government to facilitate the process through which people acquire adequate identification data (not necessarily to provide this data); to create an environment that is conducive to the individual identifying him or herself with something greater than him or herself.

This “something greater” should, however, NOT be the government itself, nor the state – rather the “nation”, or historical figures, language, culture, etcetera.

As an active agent in the constructive process through which people identify themselves to themselves, to others in their community, and to people both within and without their national borders, good government can and should play an important role in producing results beneficial to both the individual and the community within whose midst the individual lives and works.

WEDNESDAY, 20 OCTOBER 2004

The contradiction in my idealism

I believe every man, woman and child has a right to dignity, and I believe it to be a birthright of every man and woman to satisfy their natural desire for free, creative work under their own control.

Here is my problem: I cannot ignore the hypocrisy of my position. To be free in my own pursuit of creative fulfilment, I need an army of people to ensure the smooth running and administration of the world outside my front door, knowing full well that the ways in which they run and administer this world are sometimes in direct contradiction to values I hold dear.

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TUESDAY, 19 OCTOBER 2004

One day, a long, long time ago, there was a man who lived just a stone’s throw from a very small village. Some people thought he was a giant. Others argued he was certainly a large man, but no giant. But that he was much bigger than the people in the village was obvious to all who encountered him.

This man … was a lonely man, because he lived alone and also because he … was different from the villagers. At times, his loneliness became unbearable – so unbearable that he could not stop himself from leaving his house to walk the few hundred yards through the dense forest to seek some companionship in the village.

When he did find himself in the village, he tried his best to make friends. But it was always a slow process. Although he was friendly, he could never hide the uneasiness about how different he seemed. He tried hard to convince people that he is like them. He wore clothing that was similar to theirs – or so he reckoned anyway, and he tried to talk about things about which they could add their own opinions or experiences. He also attempted to speak in ways that were similar to their ways of speaking, all in an effort not to alienate them.

All the inhabitants of this village lived in small houses, with small pieces of furniture, small doors, small windows, small chairs and tables, and very low ceilings. Every time the man visited the people in the hamlet, he had to bend down low to enter their homes. His butt hurt from sitting on their little stools, and sometimes he was somewhat clumsy at their small tables. He also hit his head against their ceilings, and his eyes burned from looking out their small windows. His back ached every time he walked home – from all the bending down, of course.

The structure this man called home – which he had built with his own hands – was much, much larger than even the largest house in the village. Compared to his house, the houses in the village looked like doll houses; compared to the houses in the village, his house looked like a castle. Of course, the man didn’t like talking about his residence. He knew, or suspected that the villagers would feel embarrassed about their own cramped dwellings. And the man never invited the villagers to visit his home because he feared alienating them so much that they would never want to speak to him again.

So the time went by, with the lonely, shy, gentle “giant” trying his best to be part of the community in whose midst he lived – even if it was a short distance away.

Occasionally, he allowed himself to dream that a young woman from the village might just one day look at him with different eyes, and just maybe come live with him in his magnificent home. But the months and, eventually, the years dragged on without any young woman of the village looking at him and seeing anything other than a somewhat ugly, bald giant.

This man started growing tired of bending down all the time. He got tired of all the low door frames and the low ceilings in the village residences. He got tired of trying to focus on the view outside the small windows. He even got tired of getting butt cramps from sitting on the little chairs.

The “giant” wanted so much to stand up straight just once, in the middle of the village where everyone could see him, and then bellow out to all an invitation to visit him – at his home, his castle. He wanted to show them who he truly is. He wanted to explain to them where he had come from, why he is different from them, but also that he is just a man.

He knew he would have taken a considerable risk in doing so. The villagers were so used to their own houses, their own little doors, their tiny windows, their own small pieces of furniture and their low ceilings that they would have become anxious in the big castle. The big, heavy door would have scared them. The high ceiling would have caused them to grasp one another in fear, and they would have felt terribly small in his grand old chairs, sitting by his gigantic table. Finally, they would have gotten dizzy in the head from the enormously wide view from his huge windows.

People would have run away from him and his castle. They would probably never have wanted to see him again, and they would certainly have felt awkward if he had sought their company again in their tiny little hamlet. Never would he then have been able to convince a young woman from the village to come and live with him!

Still, the man was tired of bending down all the time. For once, he wanted to stand upright. Just one time he wanted the villagers to see him for who and what he truly was; to see the man he saw when he looked in the mirror.

______________________

The search for identity is hampered from the beginning by the limited set of options available to you.

* * *

I do not believe anymore in what I used to call “revolution” [abandoning my life in Taiwan and moving back to South Africa]. I believe in sticking with the current structure, gradually reforming it, and creating something better with what I have.

* * *

I grew up with the God of the Rich, who tests you with poverty and rewards you with wealth. How would the God of the Poor do it? Test you with wealth and reward you with poverty?

* * *

My lowest point on a Monday arrives nowadays during my 16:30 to 18:00 class. Today, however, I had a reasonably peaceful ninety minutes with the seven-year-olds. And the class was peaceful not because I was suddenly hit by positive thoughts – in fact, my thoughts were about my parents and how things have still not worked out for them after all these years.

That lead me to the thought that despite our tendency to choose hope over nothing (followed by physical death), you sometimes have to admit “things” do not always “work out” for everyone – this may not force us to go so far as to give up on hope, but it still stands as a verifiable one-plus-one-equals-truth type of fact.

The thought then came to me how it appears I have the same problem as my parents. That was when I made the connection between God and money – how it appears that those with money are rewarded with things working out and how those who are poor just keep hoping and believing that things might work out for them as well.

I felt surprisingly peaceful after these thoughts, as if I had wanted to say these things for a long time, but perhaps I had believed I ought not to; that it would qualify as rebellion against God, punishable by the loss of my soul.

An hour or so later – after dinner, drinking a bubble tea opposite the coffee shop – I thought how it is totally acceptable to entertain the thought of the God of the Rich, and the Middle Class, because this god is in service of the rich and the middle class, and thus not the True God.

[Hope is a strange thing. Someone might raise his hand and say, “Look at my life. What if I am one of those people for whom things will never work out? Where does that leave me?”

I don’t believe life is a script that we play out as puppets or second-rate actors and then we die. If you are already of the opinion things are not going to work out for you, then for all practical purposes you are taking a giant leap in exactly that direction.

Another thing: it’s not for nothing that my hero is the guy who continues to believe and who stubbornly clings to his hope even though he has a strong suspicion the battle is almost certainly already decided.]

———–

Noam Chomsky said this in an interview: “You basically have two choices: you can give up hope, feel hopeless and therefore ensure that the worst is going to happen, or you can have hope, and then try to realize the hope, and then there’s a chance that things will improve.”

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