Tag: adult life

Personal Agenda, Book Two: Introduction

Part One: Options for young adults

Middle-class South Africans have embraced in the last half century or so with great enthusiasm a cornerstone of the industrialised world: the Permanent Position. The idea is to finish high school and then through tertiary study and/or practical experience qualify yourself for a career. After the successful completion of this training phase – usually when the young adult is in their early twenties – the rule book dictates that the young graduate or recently certified professional should embark on a frantic search for an opportunity to work and earn money – and the more permanent the position, the better.

The stable income that a permanent job provides will make the single man or woman financially independent from their families. If they so choose, it will also enable the young adult to get married. Status in the community, annual raises, professional advancement, and other benefits of a permanent job like medical aid will furthermore enable the young married couple to start a family, and to ensure a good, stable life for themselves and their immediate descendants.

Of course, a permanent position is not available to all who desire it. Economic realities and other factors make it sometimes impossible for everyone to graduate from high school let alone obtain a tertiary qualification. However, a permanent position remains the ideal.

An alternative for a permanent job is to start your own business. Even though the parents of young adults who show entrepreneurial promise would prefer for their children to obtain some or other tertiary qualification – perhaps to fall back on, an entrepreneur once successful can buy his freedom from the conventional path with cold hard cash generated from his own business. This can be anything from professional gardening services to a range of pizza restaurants, or the making of lawn chairs and tables. As long as such a business provides the entrepreneur with a regular income, and he can therefore prove that he can not only take care of himself but also accept co-responsibility on the long-term for the well-being of a family, what he does will be rewarded with approval and even respect from his family.

Talent, personality, personal convictions – religious or political, or a combination of motivations drive some young adults, however, to fill their days with work that does not necessarily generate an income. One example is the musician who only earns enough money to pay for a room in a boarding house, and who regularly engages in arguments with his family because he never manages to explain to them how he’s going to take care of a family one day. Another example is the missionary who preaches the Gospel for meagre payment for months at a time in some country far from home. The latter can at least hope for a little sympathy when he drives around in an old pickup truck, and when he doesn’t have money to eat at expensive restaurants. He can justify his financial situation because what he does is seen as self-sacrifice for a Good Cause.

Part two: The writer, faith, and the permanent position

This brings us to the writer of this material. A musician he would love to be, but the few musical instruments he owns gather more dust by the day. Being an entrepreneur, on the other hand, is something he has always associated with a Saturday afternoon in 1985 outside of a local rugby stadium, with him trying to sell hot dogs for the coffers of the Christian Youth Association. His opinion of this alternative to a permanent position has, however, become more sophisticated in the last few years, and he has started the learning process that would eventually enable him to sell whatever makes money.

It should also be mentioned that the writer took certain religious beliefs very seriously in his youth. (For what other reason would he have sold hot dogs on an afternoon when everyone else in the area were on their way to a rugby match?) Certain personality traits and his earnestness with church teachings led his family to believe he may not be heading for the world of money and business. A clergyman perhaps, or a missionary, they speculated.

Unfortunately, money for the luxury of six years of theological studies to eventually accept a permanent position in the Church there was not. And so the writer exercised the second best option – training as a teacher.

His interest in theology and religious doctrines were never overshadowed by the realities of the adult world. When he had to choose subjects for his bachelor’s degree in the arts, he chose Biblical Studies (later Religious Studies) rather than a subject that would have given him a better chance at getting a teaching post. For the next few years, his focus was on theological studies – that he was actually studying education was only of academic value.

By the time he finally came to the Diploma of Higher Education, however, he had undergone a transformation regarding his religious beliefs. He started asking earnest questions that his parents and any high school principal would have preferred he not. About the existence of the god to whom he had wanted to devote his life he was now doubtful. Against the formal doctrine of the church where he was baptised and confirmed as member, he regularly carried on long arguments.

Sincere interest in the “true purpose and meaning” of his own life continued unabated, though. In the process of investigating the possibilities he lost all certainty that he had ever had about what it means to be human. He also began to make notes about his opinions, and the questions that bothered him.

The writer’s life had hit this disastrous stage precisely at the time when he was supposed to polish his shoes for his first attempt at getting a permanent position.

By now the serious student had acquired two degrees and a diploma, and it would have made sense for him to try to gain a teaching position somewhere. Anything temporary would have put him on the right track. If he were lucky, and he could turn himself into a dedicated high school teacher, he could have claimed within a decade the most prestigious prize any young teacher could wish for: a permanent position.

What did the young, recently qualified teacher-writer do? Did he scan the notice board in the Faculty of Education for a possible job? Did he make inquiries at local schools? Did he at least draft a resume to give any principal who looked at it an idea of what a loyal and competent teacher he could be? Nope. What he did was to grow his hair and pierce a hole in his earlobe where he inserted a stud of a silver sun. And that was the end of his immediate hopes of a permanent position.

Money had nevertheless to be earned; this he would have known even if his parents and his more responsible older sister had never broached the subject. “What are you going to do with your life?”, “What are your plans?” and “How do you plan to make money?” were questions no one really needed to ask him. Along with all the questions about the existence of God, the purpose and meaning of his life, and the question of what exactly human beings are, he also had to contemplate the question of where in the labour market he was going to make a start that could possibly, over time, lead to a stable, salaried position. For apart from the money aspect, he had to at least try to fit in, maybe find a partner, and – who knows? – perhaps buy a car which could take him further than the nearest town.

Over the next few years, the writer tried to find a middle ground in places like South Korea and Johannesburg, and finally, in southern Taiwan. How could he answer all the questions that were haunting him like possessed hounds, and at the same time earn money? How could he commit to something that gives him a regular income, while at the same time be convinced of the fact that he was not wasting his life in the seemingly endless struggle for survival and perhaps a modicum of material comfort?

The young boy who had prayed earnestly and who had diligently studied his Bible gave up his beliefs in the teachings of the Church as a young adult. But this boy had also become a man who was still convinced that he had to do “more” with his life than “just” make money.

If he had become a missionary for the Christian gospel, he could still have called on the support of a Higher Power. He could have quoted appropriate verses in his arguments about why he could not, or would not, accept a permanent position in an enterprise that is primarily focused on profit. He could have claimed that he was serving a good cause, and he could have prayed with his family for understanding – and financial support.

Reality for the writer was, however, that he had begun to serve an increasingly personal agenda. After a few years he did not really care anymore if people called him headstrong, arrogant or selfish. He wanted to do what he wanted to do.

Except that he missed his family very much and still would have liked the basic comfort of his own family someday, he knew that his life in self-imposed exile in the Far East offered opportunities he could not take for granted in his own country. He could contemplate for days and nights at a time the questions that still bothered him after all these years. He could also earn enough money by teaching a few English classes every day to show his family (and the bank) that he was taking the whole money-earning business seriously, as befitted a responsible adult.

However, he knew that self-imposed socio-economic exile from the land of his birth was not sustainable. He had to return sooner or later, no matter how many questions would remain unanswered, and regardless of the implications of such an action for his financial and social status.

As time went on, he also became increasingly convinced of certain things that reminded him to some extent of the teachings he had rejected years earlier.

It was certainly true that he enjoyed writing, that it was a good way to keep up with his own thoughts, and that he could explain his own fears and ambitions in such a manner to his family and anyone else who might be interested. In the years since he began thinking of himself as a “writer” he often tried to produce material of a commercial nature. Whether short stories or articles, he believed that he could in this way bridge the gap between his personal agenda and the economic realities of the modern world. But he could never concentrate for long enough on fictional characters or descriptions of night markets to get a career as an income-generating writer off the ground. Instead, he continued writing essays about his own life, about the questions that bothered him, the emotional wretchedness of his life in “exile”, and the potentially fatal implications of an untimely return to his homeland.

But there was more to his writings than a good argument, or an attempt to leave something behind when everything was said and done. He was not only writing for his own amusement, or for the entertainment of others. This former child of the Reformed Church, of Bible study and prayer circles, were trying to do more than just express his personal agenda – he was preaching. That he did it in his own words, dyed in the shadows of his own political convictions and motivated by his own insecurities and fears, took nothing away from the fact that what he was writing increasingly looked like a message.

He did not just talk about his own life (which was pretty boring at the best of times), and he did not only wish for his family to understand why he still did not want to consider the possibility of a permanent position in his own country. He wanted to declare what he considered to be wrong in his sometimes simplified view of the modern world. He wanted to share what he believed could be done to improve the situation. He wanted to preach to people who he believed did not always make the best choices among the available options. He wanted to make known to others who wonder – and doesn’t everyone wonder in the end? – that he had put some thought into these matters, and that this was the way he felt about things, even if people didn’t agree with him.

This child of a sort of middle-class Afrikaans family wanted, after many years, to proclaim his own vision of a better life for all who desired it.

Did the writer thus, eventually, become a missionary for a Good Cause? Even though he sometimes coughs and splutters in a language that is not quite church-like. Even though he doesn’t quite know who the Boss of the Good Cause is. Even though his writing causes people to drift into slumber half of the time. Even though he has still not worked out how he will make up for the fact that he does not want to look for a permanent position. And even though it may take him twenty years before he can enjoy the basic joy and comfort of his own family.

Part three: Administration

This is, as you may have surmised, the start of BOOK TWO. The main protagonist of the first book is again at the podium – with enough prepared words, as it turned out, to warrant a second book.

The “story” picks up from the first part of May 2003, soon after I completed BOOK ONE. As with the first book, the material is mostly in chronological order.

It should also be noted that this second book involved a different kind of writing process than the first volume. By May 2003 I was well aware of the fact that when I wrote something, I might not be able to resist the temptation to include it in my “project”. It has not affected the integrity of what I have written, though. Since I was (and still am) not sure whether the project will ever be sponsored by a commercial publisher, I knew I could write what I liked, and in ways that I believed was most appropriate for the specific content. This approach was strongly boosted by my belief that the honesty and integrity of the material was much more important than any monetary reward I might ever receive. If this project is ever published (especially by a commercial publisher), I can confirm that this text was never written in a way that would have made it more publishable. And if it is never published, then I can just shrug and declare that at least I said what I wanted to say.

Just a few last comments on the content, and the potential value to you as a reader. The material is self-centred, that I readily admit. This book is mainly about one person, about his experience of reality, and how he views life. The potential value to you as a reader is that it may make you wonder about the choices you have made in your life, or about choices you are contemplating at the moment. It is also my sincere wish that if you do not agree with the opinions in this book, you will attempt to articulate the reasons for it. And if you do agree, fair enough (again, it would be ideal if you know why). This project is clearly no Stephen King thriller or Tolkien epic. So comfort yourself when you yawn through the umpteenth piece: if the dice had landed differently, it would have been you that had to write this book.

Brand Smit

Tuesday, 6 January 2004

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Three thoughts from the 16k

SATURDAY, 13 DECEMBER 2003

“You don’t have a house, you don’t have a car, you don’t have a real job, and you’re already in your thirties and you’re not married.”

“Yes, I know. But …”

“No buts. These are the things that matter when I judge a man. You might have spent seven years in Northeast Asia, speak broken Chinese, and have filled an entire literary project with your opinions. But you don’t have a proper home, you don’t have a car, you don’t have a job, and you’re already in your thirties and there’s not even a romantic relationship on the horizon.”

And that’s it. Case closed.

Does it matter? Not as much as it annoys.

TUESDAY, 30 DECEMBER 2003

Many people reach a point where they realise they don’t really count. Some people keep trying; others don’t.

I have seen many people in Taiwan who give the impression they’ve stopped trying. They lie on a chair, bare feet baking in the morning sun, waiting for someone to buy a soda, or for other Mah-jong players to arrive, or for the cigarette between their fingers to burn out so they can light another one.

Is it possible that I just don’t understand these people’s outlook on life? Maybe not everyone is so bothered with “counting” in the greater understanding of things.

* * *

One of the positive effects of the Industrial Revolution was the emancipation of the serfs, and the ending of a system that had bound them to the soil and to their landlords. This emancipation, together with a policy shift which resulted in a significant percentage of public land not being available anymore for agricultural purposes (as was the case in England), however, ensured that the former serfs soon found themselves, for the sake of their own survival, bound to the needs of new industries.

The Industrial Revolution also meant more freedom for the individual – in theory – and gave them more choices. Money does sometimes make things equal. More than just capital bound the serf to the land and the landlord under the feudal system. Today, by contrast, money buys almost anything you need. If you are an industrial or corporate serf today and you win the lottery, or if you think of a good idea, you stand at least a chance of calling the shots tomorrow in your own little kingdom.

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The end of an address/Transformation

FRIDAY, 26 SEPTEMBER 2003

I’m sitting in a denuded apartment waiting for the moving truck to move me and my junk to a new habitat. Some thoughts have to be jotted down immediately.

First, as I have mentioned many times, my sense of where I belong is highly unstable at the best of times. This raises the question of whether I will ever feel at home somewhere. I mean, some people never fit anywhere, right? Is that not the meaning of the labels “drifter” and “loner”?

Contrary to the first point, I recently experienced a more developed sense of where I belong. I’m also sceptical of fitting in too well. Is it because you have to conform to sets of rules – which are usually never spelled out – to fit in? Such rules include what and how you should dress, how you should behave towards different people, what you should say and what not, what you should believe, which ideals are acceptable and which not, and what ambitions you should have. But what good does it do to be honest – to not conform to the detriment of who you believe you truly are – if you end up alone? What is the value of remaining true to yourself if that means you always walk alone?

The other related thing I want to mention is that I could consider transforming myself into a creature that fits in more easily. It can’t be that difficult – I do after all have friends! (Family doesn’t really count in this case. They have a moral obligation to accept you in their midst … that is to say if your clothing style, your behaviour, what you say, what you believe, and your goals do not offend your family to such an extent that they reach the point where they feel it would be better for everyone if you don’t insist that they satisfy your need to be part of their intimate circle. Fortunately, my clothing style, my behaviour, and even my ambitions are of such a nature that they don’t offend my parents’ or my two sisters’ dignity too much. It is naturally to my advantage to believe this to be true.)

So, with the moving truck drawing closer, what are the chances that I can transform myself to such an extent that I could more easily make an entry into groups and communities?

* * *

At 14:55 it was all over. I wanted to end the last part with the words, “So, as the villains in their blue truck draw closer …” but I thought I’d give them the benefit of the doubt. Rogues they were, all right, but friendly enough after they managed to extract twice as much money from me as I had hoped the whole operation would cost me. I wanted to argue, but they gathered together, with one of them lifting his T-shirt up ever so slightly to show his underworld tattoo. At that moment I remembered yet another one of the Important Principles of Survival: Restrain yourself from physical conflict with more than one villain at a time when you’re alone. This principle is of course even more applicable if the villains are of the type who carry sofas and washing machines on their backs up three flights of stairs, and even more so if you are, let’s just say, the scholastic type. (Is it necessary to add that it’s not a good idea to want to pull sheets of papers with notes on them from said sofa while the aforementioned villain is carrying the sofa up a flight of stairs?)

All in all, the process went by without much incident. Right now, I’m sitting outside my favourite coffee shop, quietly sucking on a cup of creamy Viennese coffee while I breathe in the sulphur-polluted air of this part of town.

In the hours that passed between the move and the coffee, I had to teach a class at the school where I’ve been working for almost five years. Here I was in the fortunate position to spot a Taiwanese colleague – who works in the office – out of the corner of my eye. Needless to say, her sensual beauty inspires me to make as many photocopies as possible, and to even enter into conversations with her in my distinctive Chinese dialect.

I heard her mentioning something about being single to one of the students. That forced me once again to contemplate my own reputation as a wandering wolf on the road between my house and … well, the 7-Eleven. A quick mental computation of the reasons for this sorry state of affairs reminded me how I have a problem with my place in the world.

This brings us back to my pre-confrontation with the tattooed movers question: Is it possible that I can transform myself into an individual who will have the ability to fit in more easily?

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Establishment of the Anti-Futility League

THURSDAY, 25 SEPTEMBER 2003

Is there something like an Anti-Futility League? If not, I call it to life at this very moment. Our motto will be straightforward: “What’s the point?” The league will be an exercise in meaningful endeavour – a deliberate attack on futility. (The thought did occur to me recently that this material I am working on might be just a useless enterprise. Who really cares if I know my own true name? Who cares if I see meaning in my life, and whether or not I fill my days with meaningful activities?)

We all have groups to which we belong – or most of us do, anyway. Most people like to be part of something, so now there’s a group of which you as a reader can be a proud member! We can even have name cards printed and give everyone a special number.

Membership would be free for the first million members; then we may start charging a small annual fee. One rule will be that everyone except poor artists must bring cake and tea to meetings, and preferably enough of both so that the artists can fill their plastic bags and empty bottles after the meeting.

Perhaps we should be a secret organisation, with cells that can infiltrate communities around the world! Then we can write a manifesto, and in fifty years take over Russia, or Cuba, or Mpumalanga. We can also launch protests against useless organisations and institutions, like publishers who are just interested in profit. We can even train missionaries to go from door to door …

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(Initially about) The fauna and flora of Taiwan

SATURDAY, 20 SEPTEMBER 2003

Taiwan has many beautiful flowers, and bees too. There are also trees, and every now and then one sees mountains. The air is quite dirty, though. There are also many dogs roaming the streets that bark at people with long noses. Some of the dogs are green.

What really bothers me about this story is … why am I so desperate for answers? Why do I have so many questions? Is it because of my education – religious environment where one was regularly preached to by those who were supposed to know? And if you didn’t know, you could go to hell! I mean, no one could ever use it as an excuse that they didn’t know! You were either one of the lucky ones who knew, and therefore could go to heaven, or you didn’t know, and was therefore temporarily condemned to eternal torment in Satan’s hell. I say “temporarily condemned” because there was always the possibility that you could acquire the necessary knowledge before you breathed your last, and as one of those who then knew, you could enter eternal utopia – not because you were a good person, or because you died while saving your neighbour from drowning, but because you knew!

(I promise I’ll come back to the fauna and flora.)

Round about ten years ago I wasn’t sure of what I knew anymore. I panicked for understandable reasons. I had to start from the beginning to sort out what I knew, because even though I was no longer sure about heaven or hell, I still thought you were in quite a predicament if you didn’t know certain things.

This resulted in me not following the conventional priorities over the past ten years of someone with my socio-cultural background and tertiary education. I decided that I couldn’t give immediate attention to such mundane things as financial wealth, position and status in the community, and whether or not I might end up in the madhouse one day. All I knew was that I didn’t know.

I met many others who apparently knew, or just pretended they knew, or for reasons I’ve never been able to figure out, did not care whether or not they knew. I, on the other hand, was in a position where everything I had known had lost credibility. I therefore had to postpone all conventional priorities until the day of liberation when I could finally announce that, after years of uncertainty, I finally knew again.

Very soon I was confronted with a harsh reality. Banks that are so kind to lend money to ignorant young students, grocery stores, and the owners of rooms and apartments simply refuse to wait for payment until you know or understand what you believe is necessary to know or understand. Everyone wants money now, whether you know what you need to know, or not.

That’s how I ended up in Northeast Asia. Here I am able to earn money without pretending I have the type of “knowledge” I previously possessed. Here it is good enough that you look different, that you come from another part of the planet, and of course that you can speak English. What a paradise! I’ve been wandering around for years in this part of the world in my apparently endless quest for answers.

To not acknowledge that there are advantages to ignorance would make me a liar, though. One advantage is that one can reflect your ignorance in your appearance. Indulge yourself a bit by standing on a sidewalk in the town centre and staring at passers-by. I surmise that the well-dressed pedestrians with clean-shaven legs and faces can explain in well-articulated sentences what they know. The other part of the crowd, those with furry legs and cheeks and dressed in old jeans and dirty T-shirts, will probably fail to explain what they don’t know in long boring monologues.

Now, here’s where ignorance comes in handy: If you find yourself in this second group, and people look at you and think you look like a homeless person, you can simply drop your shoulders and tell them you know how you look, but it’s because you don’t know! In some cases, they’ll understand, and they will sympathise. Other people – who one can only conclude have always known – will not understand and will probably never have any sympathy.

There is a third group: Characters who don the fashionable uniforms of people who have answers to key questions and who therefore know, but who stare uncomfortably at the ceiling when they are required to make a definite statement in this direction or the other.

By the way, the factor of financial resources, which allow people to buy a pre-assembled and pre-packaged uniform that would give them the appearance that they possess all the important pieces of information can never be underestimated. The same is true for community. If everyone in your group wears the same uniforms and recites the same rhymes, the likelihood is slim that anyone in the room will ask awkward questions – except of course if one with a dirty beard and a T-shirt that advertises shoe polish stumbles into the coffee shop, and accidentally plonks down at the wrong table.

* * *

A more liberal attitude towards your appearance, and other advantages of living in the Far East such as eating Chinese takeaways every day, cannot be overlooked. I nevertheless look forward to the day when I had gathered enough knowledge to again be able to proclaim: “I know.”

There are always alternatives. I can say that I give up or try to convince myself that I don’t care anymore. This could just make it possible to use my time and energy to pursue wealth and material comfort, although it would surely require a transformation of incredible dimensions. The odds are always that I would be confronted later in my life with the fact that, despite appearances, I still don’t know. For me this is a great dilemma.

As I already mentioned, the grocery store, the bank and the landlord don’t really care whether I know or not. As long as I continue to stuff cash in their hands, they remain polite. This is not a desirable situation for the long term. I must either quickly get to the point where I can declare convincingly enough that I possess the most important knowledge (and that I therefore know), or I need to get my hands on more money I can legally call my own. In the latter case, I would be able to buy more time in order to formulate questions better, and to find an appropriate set of answers.

The ideal result is that, without blinking an eye or staring at the clouds, I can declare that indeed, after years of ignorance, I know again – though it would not necessarily be the same as what others think they know. I would again be able to grow my beard, and I wouldn’t feel compelled to dress in a more or less fashionable way, even if I could afford it. Why? If people then comment on my appearance, and speculate about my ignorance, I would be able to straighten my shoulders with a renewed sense of pride, and politely inform them that I might look like a homeless person, but I know.

Now, about those green dogs …

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