Assorted Notes

TUESDAY, 30 SEPTEMBER 2003

So I was thinking, I stayed in Number 15 for 56 months, of course I’m going to feel a little lost now that I no longer belong there. And I don’t really feel as if I belong here … in Benevolent Light. Then I realized I don’t have much of a choice: Eventually I would have to buy my own house or apartment where I will know I belong.

The next thought almost immediately shoved the previous one aside: One cannot place so much value on physical address as your “place in the world”. Why not? As a principle, it can’t be applied universally and across all historical periods of human habitation on this planet!

Our earliest ancestors were unfamiliar with the concept of private property. They constantly moved from one place to the next. Every time the seasons changed or animals moved to greener pastures, they allowed the fire to burn out in their cave, perhaps gave their charcoal drawings on the walls a final glance, made sure all the older people and all the children were on tow, and then they started walking. And each individual member must have had a sense of how and where they belonged, did they not? What would have given them a sense that is more or less similar to the feeling that modern individuals have when they know they are where they “belong”?

The answer lies in relationships, in community with others.

Every time our ancestors tightened their furs and gripped their spears, they travelled in groups. There were husbands and wives, children, brothers and sisters, and maybe even a few cousins. The relationships that each individual had with the other – confirmed by daily contact – gave them a sense that they belonged to something bigger than themselves. What they had was a mobile foundation of membership and belonging.

If, during the current period of my life, I was involved in an intimate relationship, the change of address would have had a significantly less erosive impact on my “sense of belonging”. Why? Because the relationship would have given me a stronger foundation than physical address.

However, location still matters, doesn’t it? Even if I were involved in an intimate relationship with the love of my life, it wouldn’t be the same to live in Moscow than to live in, say, Pretoria or Johannesburg. Where she comes from and where I come from will of course also play a role. If she was a born and bred Muscovite she would certainly have felt more at home in Moscow than me, and I would have felt more at home in … well, any of the places in South Africa where I have fixed my pictures to a bedroom wall.

Environment and physical address do play a role in the extent to which you feel you belong. But I believe that relationships – close, meaningful relationships – play a more significant role, and provide a more solid foundation.

* * *

Relationships are institutions to which you belong. Examples that will illustrate this point include Romeo and Juliet, Spice Girl and Soccer Player, the Pope and the Catholic Church, Brand and his Apartment …

Romeo and Juliet is more than just Romeo, or just Juliet. Being in a relationship gives you a more concrete sense of belonging and identity than being alone. It’s one of the reasons why people feel so lost and vulnerable when a relationship comes to an end; when the institution that made you part of something bigger than just you, crumbles.

Of course, family relationships also provide you with a sense of belonging and identity. Why do I have pictures of my family on my wall? Because the pictures are visible symbols of membership to something bigger than the single me. Friendships also count under this classification. In an intimate relationship with another adult person, however, you experience a more tangible and definitive confirmation of belonging to something larger than just the single you.

The same value that the pictures on my walls provide, can also be found in rings exchanged at a wedding ceremony, photographs carried around in purses and wallets, and various other articles that might not mean anything to someone else, but for the two people who share an intimate partnership, these articles are symbols of their mutual recognition of membership.

To conclude: 1) Relationships – and especially for the adult person, intimate relationships – are institutions to which the individual belongs. 2) These institutions are not limited to a physical location, and are present wherever the person finds him- or herself (if not always in physical terms, certainly in ways that affect how the person feels and thinks). 3) These institutions are larger than the single individual, and contribute strongly to the consciousness that a person has of his or her place in the world.

Finally, I can only speculate what difference it would have made to my life here in Taiwan if “home” was here. Suppose my parents, my two sisters, my brothers-in-law, uncles and aunts, and cousins all resided on this piece of earth, would it still feel like I’m in exile? Would I still have clung so resolutely to the concept of SOUTH AFRICA AS HOME?

Certainly there will be people who will take a different position on this point, who will talk about culture and landscape and climate and things like that. It’s true that I miss the mountains, the sea, the wide open spaces, supermarkets where people speak Zulu and Sotho and Afrikaans, where you can buy biltong and milk tart with the same ease as you can buy bottled kimchi or rice wine in this part of the world. But all these things are salt without savour if you’re missing the main ingredient of meaningful personal relationships in your life.

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THURSDAY, 25 SEPTEMBER 2003

Is the issue of “exile” still relevant?

The end of this project is not only imminent because I have typed and written enough pages for the result to be called a “book”. I believe (perhaps because I really want to believe) that I now have a better understanding of how things work than was the case ten years ago. I have identified some principles I believe are valid for all people, and across all time. None of these insights or principles are original. It was nevertheless important that I sorted them out for myself, in my own time, and put them in my own words. I now have a more sophisticated appreciation of my own name (so to speak), and I have developed a vague idea of how I fit into the mass of life outside my apartment door.

Is the issue of exile, so central to the “story” of this project, still relevant, though? Is it still important that I go “home”?

This project has undergone an evolution. I did not originally undertake the writing process with the idea of a book as an end result. All I knew was that I wasn’t sure about certain things in my life, and that it helped to write things down. To write is also a good way to spend long days and nights productively if you tend to avoid the world outside your front door. Writing has been, and remains, my main source of entertainment, in addition to the fact that it takes me from point A to point B in matters of the soul.

Likewise, I did not force this second round of exile [after the first one in Korea] on myself for the purpose of finding answers to questions. This project began as scribblings in notebooks and on scrap paper, and as letters to friends and family. My journey to Taiwan began as the best route out of an office job and servant’s quarters. But what do you do when certain questions impose themselves on you, or even worse, when a book knocks on the inside of your skull, and “exile” turns out to be the only way to deal with them?

Am I, for the third time, still in exile? Do I still need to go home?

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MONDAY, 22 SEPTEMBER 2003

I feel as if I’m reaching the end of what I can call in retrospect, my “book”. I did not ask all the questions (who can?), and I do not have all the answers (who does?). What I do know, or sincerely believe, is what life outside my apartment windows is about.

What’s it all about then, according to me?

At the most basic level, it’s a struggle for survival. From the miserable homeless guy in the back alley digging through garbage bags, to Bill and Melinda Gates, the Pope, the Dalai Lama, the President of the United States, back to the baby who was born a minute ago in the slums of Kolkata, everybody is always, from the moment of birth until the moment of physical death, locked in a struggle for survival. This struggle is waged on several levels, and for a limited number of needs that must be met.

One of these needs has increasingly aroused my interest over the past few years. The more I look at my own life, and observe the world outside my front door, the more the importance of the need, the longing, to belong somewhere is confirmed – to know how your life is linked to other forms of life (and even inanimate objects), in terms of the past, present, and future. This includes understanding how you fit in between other species on this planet, and how you fit in between the screaming masses of people, and between conflicting religious traditions and diverse histories of humanity.

All mammals – to take the group of animals under which humans are categorised – instinctively know where they belong. That is, all mammals whose natural life and habitats have not been disturbed or altered to such an extent that they, too, suffer from the same affliction as so many people in the modern world.

To be confused about your place in the world – to not know where you belong – is usually the result of a variety of causes. One of these is alienation from the environment where at one stage of your life you knew in what ways and to what extent you belonged. This disposition is in turn caused by, amongst other things, disillusionment with what previously defined your identity and determined your place in the larger world. An example of the latter is the alienation that takes place between an individual and the religious community of which he or she had previously been a devoted member – alienation brought on by personal experiences and/or intellectual exposure that sometimes erode the credibility of truths handed down from previous generations.

When this happens, when you are confronted with the reality that you do not know anymore how and where you fit into the Larger Landscape, you will find it difficult to commit to anything other than what provides you with immediate comfort in the face of a world that you will find increasingly hostile.

Identity – to know your own name, your nationality, personality, preferences, talents, interests, fears, strengths and weaknesses, and your ambitions and dreams – makes it easier to at least have a fair idea where you stand with others, and thus to enter into relationships. It is through these relationships that you eventually obtain membership to groups and communities; a factor that will play a significant role in reducing your vulnerability as a single individual. Membership to groups and communities will lessen your anxieties, which will improve your confidence, which will increase the likelihood that your physical and emotional needs will be met. If these communities include a religious community, you may even find it easier to explain to yourself and to others how you believe you are part of a reality that stretches beyond this time and place.

The above description is the ideal of positive and constructive relationships. Negative and destructive relationships also satisfy the need to belong somewhere, but in a way that does not reduce fear and anxiety. Such relationships also sometimes prevent more positive and constructive social interaction. However, even “bad” relationships emphasize the importance of the need to be part of something bigger than just a single individual.

To actively participate in groups and communities, you need to know some basic things about yourself and when necessary to confirm these things (your name, your personality, interests, talents, beliefs, and other things that have already been mentioned). You also need basic knowledge and understanding of the world in which you find yourself on a daily basis.

If your intellectual development exceeds the boundaries of a handed-down understanding of “how things work” (in the community in which you find yourself), or if this understanding loses credibility as a result of certain personal experiences, or after exposure to an alternative philosophical frame of reference or comprehensive view of existence, you will inevitably ask certain questions. Principles will also need to be identified (or redefined) to facilitate your understanding of human existence. These principles and the corresponding understanding of things will be highly conducive to the process of identity formation (or then, the redefining of identity). This process will enable you to know, or discover anew, how, where and with whom you should cultivate relationships.

Ultimately, the hope will be to have a better understanding of how you form part of all that is, was, and may still be, and to continue with your existence, but as someone who does not feel alienated on a daily basis from everything and everyone around you.

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