Tag: adult life

Deep gratitude as defiance

SATURDAY, 14 FEBRUARY 2026

Deep gratitude as defiance, a form of “Fuck you” to anyone or anything that wants to keep you down.

“What if you are diagnosed with cancer, or even worse, you’ve been suffering from cancer for months?”

Deep gratitude that I’m still alive. I still have a chance to beat it.

“What if you have terminal cancer, with mere weeks to live?”

Deep gratitude that I still have time to get my affairs in order.

“What if you have actually died from the cancer?”

Deep gratitude that the pain is over.

“Okay, what if you’re a man and you’re in a fight and it’s not going well?”

Deep gratitude that I’m still standing.

“What if you’ve actually lost the fight?”

Deep gratitude that I’m still alive.

“What if the other guy actually killed you?”

Deep gratitude that I don’t have to deal with assholes like him anymore.

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Hope for a good and happy life – even in Gaza

WEDNESDAY, 30 APRIL 2025

Goal: A good and happy life, now. And a comfortable retirement in old age – if one makes it that far.

Isn’t that what everyone hopes for?

“Not people in Gaza,” someone will say. “They just hope for peace, and for the bombs to stop.”

Correct, I will answer. For now, they desperately hope every single day for peace and quiet, and for food and medicine and other supplies to reach them. And to be able to start rebuilding their homes and schools and hospitals and other infrastructure.

But what will they wish for if the psychotic-terrorist European colonial project called Israel is finally defeated in its efforts to wipe out Palestinians and steal their land? What will they hope for when their homes and hospitals and schools and mosques and churches are rebuilt?

They will most likely hope for a good and happy life, and a comfortable retirement in old age, if their lives stretch that far.

What I say and what I do

MONDAY, 14 APRIL 2025

If I had to ask myself what my primary goal has been for the past … say, twenty years, I would say it’s to make money. Twenty years ago, I was suddenly no longer alone. A young woman had decided to take a chance on me, and I had to justify her incredibly optimistic hope.

The last thing I want to do is bore the reader again with a list of projects and schemes with which I have attempted to make money over the past two decades. Point is, plenty of the endeavours had nothing to do with gathering knowledge or insight, much less with sharing knowledge and insight with people who might have needed it.

Now, when I teach, I don’t just explain grammar or vocabulary – I use every opportunity I get to inject a little history. Or I try to give a slightly non-cliched opinion when the conversation is about relationships, or other aspects of human existence about which I may have had an intelligent thought in the past. Most of the material I have created so far for ESL students, and the social media material I publish these days, reveal the ambition of the person behind it to share knowledge. (Of course, I assume most people don’t already know what I have to say.)

Other personal projects, like Asian Histories of Listed History, and even Familiegeskiedenis (an Afrikaans site about family history), are not exactly supposed to make money. The ambition has always been more noble-minded.

My primary task – by default, although I don’t think of it that way every day – is to gather knowledge and insight. And when I have managed to obtain another kernel of knowledge or insight, to then share it in a way that is a little different from the next collector of knowledge and insight, in order to hopefully make it somewhat easier for the person receiving the knowledge and insight to lead a happier and more productive life.

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Old, small, powerless, and useless

WEDNESDAY, 19 MARCH 2025

I dreamt last night that I had to stand in for a teacher at a high school. I found myself surrounded by hundreds of teenagers.

After a few minutes, I was scammed out of my cell phone. For some reason, I was also persuaded to take off my shoes. The shoes promptly disappeared.

Next thing I was walking around in my socks asking about my cell phone. I said that I needed to contact my family in South Africa, and how could I do that if I didn’t have my phone.

I was ignored, and every now and then laughed at by groups of teenagers standing around everywhere.

After a confusing hour of wandering around among what now felt like thousands of teenagers, someone helped me find my phone. All the phone numbers and WhatsApp messages and so on had been deleted.

I still couldn’t find my shoes.

Two young ladies who were responsible for the disappearance of my phone tried to explain that their lives were not easy either.

Not only did I have no sympathy for them, but I had a strong desire to wish them an early death. (Note that I did not consciously think these thoughts. Nevertheless, the full thought was that I wanted to wish the teenagers not just an early death, but a painful early death.)

I woke up with a headache, thinking: What a nightmare.

The feeling that pressed even after I had lifted my head from the pillow was that I was old, and small, and powerless, and useless.

(Roll the drums for a Grok-created image of a happy, smiling, bald, middle-aged man.)

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