Hm.

Big fat punch in the face right there.

Sitting at my computer thinking i should write a post on how difficult my life is right now because i’m sure there are people out there who are finding life incredibly difficult and a post on how difficult i am finding life might be encouraging or something. Put words on to what someone else is feeling.

But then my mind drifts to aspects of poverty in township life. Crap, i’m found out.

Then friends i have who have lost people they love, especially in this last year. Flip, especially in this last month and even week.

i think of people i know who are struggling to find work.

Too much perspective. i think i really just wanted to have a little rant about how tough i’m finding things. My tough is so much lamer than so many other people’s tough though.

Is there any space for me to feel like my life is difficult when perspectively [it’s a word! Now.] it’s really not at all? In other words, can this be a BOTH/AND or does it have to be filed under EITHER/OR as so many other things seem to be.

What? Too busy? Too many things you want to do? Too many white people upset with you for constantly throwing privilege in their face? Too many folks on the social medias thinking you’re the dick because of your strong opinion on this or that? Too much not enjoying the running you’re trying to do and the weight you’re not losing? Too many boxes of that book you wrote still cluttering up your cupboard?

You did solve the mold on the roof problem yesterday. So that’s a thing. Although now you’re talking about yourself in the third person and that’s kinda strange.

chilled

i think what brought this on is that i remember a time when life was easy. And by time it feels like it was all of life for all of time until suddenly it wasn’t. And not like hard spaces didn’t happen within that time… but more a general sense of most of life being relatively easy.

And when i try think back and try and figure out when that stopped, the best i can do is trace it back to returning to South Africa. After three years in Americaland, there isn’t anything particularly different about the South Africa we came back to… EXCEPTING for that whole “woke thing”.

In Americaland, following stories of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown and the incidents at Ferguson and Fruitvale Station [just down the road from where we lived in Oakland] i suddenly somehow became passionate about race and diversity and reconciliation stuff back home. And a whole new journey began.

That seems to be the difference. Because i can’t switch it off. It’s Matrix red pill/blue pill stuff and i can trace the dis-ease [not to be confused with ‘disease’] to starting to have those conversations, and the Robben Island weekend sleepover visit and leaving with a copy of the Robert Sobukwe book “How can man die better?” and the realisation that not every white person is super amped to talk about, acknowledge or do anything about white privilege.

The knowledge that people of colour don’t get to “turn it off” when they feel tired of, for many of them, the daily struggle of facing racism or prejudice or subtleties and nuances that most of the rest of us don’t even notice because we’re used to being on top.

i think that’s it. Faith has been a bit of a struggle as well at the same time, not because it don’t believe what i believe but because largely i don’t feel what i believe and that makes living out the belief a lot harder. Doubt is good, but it’s certainly not fun. And then also trying to hold my faith and my activism [to be honest, i don’t feel like an activist – activists are surely much more hardcore than me – social activism maybe? The watered down form.] or social justice drive together. Especially when some of the other faith people are going “That’s not our thing” when i’m reading the book and going “I’m pretty sure that’s totally our thing.”

Blessed are the least of these…

All that to say, i’m finding life pretty hard at the moment and remember years and years and years when it wasn’t. And wondering if it ever will be easier again.

And that reading “Country of my Skull” by Antjie Krog is probably not helping that cos it is a hectic hectic book but i’m going to add it to my pile of ‘every South African should read this’ books, right after ‘How Can Man Die Better’.

And that if you are finding it hard for whatever large scale significant reasons or smaller scale stuck-in-your-own-box-of-yourselfness reasons, then i am with you right now.

But there is a day ahead of me which needs to be lived. There is a struggle to be continued. And so strength must be found. Hope held on to. Perspective sought. Holy Spirit called upon for strength and wisdom and clarity and direction.

Let’s do this.