Doubting Thomas's

On the road to success there are people who appoint themselves as ‘officers of doom’. These are the people who stand on the side of the road, pull people over and tell them why their dreams will not come true, why they won't arrive at their destiny, why their business model won't work and why their proposed project plan won't succeed.

Sometimes they are family members, sometimes they are trusted friends, sometimes it is even the prospect themselves.
Personally, I have experienced all of these scenarios. I have experienced them so much that I have gotten to the point that I really believe that some people are delusional about their prophetic abilities. I mean, some people will cling to their 'Doubting-Thomas' status even when they can see that you are proving them wrong.

I find the human spirit such a stubborn gift, I call it 'spirit' because I really do believe that what we have in us is a super-natural being, that dares to believe even when the odds are stacked against it. I think it was the human spirit that lead people like the Jennifer Hudsons of this world, to rise above criticisms at the highest levels. It is the human spirit that spurred people like Tiger woods back to world number one, after he had fallen so high from grace. And it may even be that this is the same resilient spirit that got people like Nomzamo Mbatha (the lover of my soul, the one who warms the cockles of my heart) to rise to such stardom after losing the MTV Base VJ search.

The human spirit is funny, every time you tell someone that they will not do it, even though the mind, surroundings, statistics and current situation of the person may agree with you. The laws of logic, mathematics and economics may very well agree with you but if the law of the human spirit doesn't agree with you, then you've got another thing coming.

This spirit refuses to let Doubting Thomas's have the final say on peoples' dreams. It refuses to let naysayers have the final word, or the professional pessimists have the last laugh.

So I have a word of strategic advice that Sun Tzu neglected to put in his military strategy manual, 'The Art of War', if you really want an adversary to fail, or a foe to fluster...please, for God-sake, do not add fuel to his fire by telling him he won't make it, you are just causing trouble for yourself.
-SGM

Making a change in my community.

(On the 1st of July I spoke to recipients of the FNB Bursary on certain issues. We did not receive enough time to go into all of the topics we were meant to discuss. I then decided to continue the conversation on the blog. The following is one of a series of blogs on the topic, “Making a change in your community.”)

One of the biggest mistakes I see from both my friends and other fellow varsity students is that we get degrees, we get jobs in the corporate world, people buy cars, live in good suburban homes, start to travel etc. but they stop being driven. They lose that fire they once had, that desire to make a difference, that desire to be a world changer, agent of change and confront the issues of the world head-on.

They achieve these wonderful things, and believe me these are worthy achievements...but they are not the end.
We are not mere intellectual beings, we are not mere professionals, we are so much more than that.
We are beings whose existence is connected to other beings.

One of the things I am sure about life, is that just as much as we have abundance on the inside of us, there is another voice on the inside of us and that is the desire to make a difference in the world.

I know I spoke about the voice of abundance, but another voice which is connected to the voice of abundance is the voice that says, “I can make a change in my generation.”
Equal to the hunger to make a mark in the world, is the hunger to make a change in the world.
Equal to the desire to be somebody is the desire to help someone else be somebody too.
It is there, we are born with it!

But what kills it, what kills the voice of change, the desire and hunger to make a difference?

Before I answer that question I must answer this one...briefly. “What kills the voice of abundance, what kills the voice that tells us we are great?”

There are 2 short answers I want to touch on:

1) Life: some of the challenges we face in life hit us so hard that we are forced to draw a conclusion that we are not as great as we (think) are. It may be the fact that you didn't get the marks you wanted in class, or you did not get into the university you wanted, or you got in but had to drop out because you realised that you did not love the course, or a relationship that failed and you got hurt, or a business that failed...all of these failures or struggles are enough to force some people to think of themselves, "as not so great after all”?

Some of these challenges are enough to make people abandon their dreams, and think, “Oh maybe I should be like everybody else and travel the road most travelled.”

2) The feared "Comfort Zone": The comfort zone is as horrible as the friend zone.
A person who is comparable to a person in a comfort zone is a person whose belly is full. I don't know if you've been really hungry, you know that growling hunger that forces you out of the comfort of your chair into the street to look for something to eat.
I don't care how comfortable you are, but if you are really hungry you will get up and make a plan. The effects of hunger are so lethal that in Zulu we have a saying that "Indlala ibanga ulaka" (directly translated means, hunger causes anger/violence/fury). All of us know or have experienced that it is not wise to mess with a hungry person, a hungry person will deal with you now, "Not yesterday, Today" *Leon Schuster Voice*

But there is a feeling on the opposite end of the spectrum, the feeling that one gets after they've just had a satisfying meal. After a meal, all I want to do is sit and relax as my digestive system goes into full gear.

That's the same with contentment, it kills the drive to go and look for food. It kills the drive to look for opportunities, for growth for development...so you're fine...you've got a pay cheque every month, why should you go to school and study some more. Why should you read all these books? Why should you develop yourself?

Just like food satisfies the drive for man to look for food to fill himself, so does contentment satisfy the need for man to look for tools of development and opportunities for growth.

Now what kills the voice of change, the voices to be agents of change?

Well that's even more complex...

1) Passing the buck:
I think during the transition of democracy, one of the biggest mistakes we all made, as a country , is we took to much power and/or responsibility and put it on government and politicians. That is one of the biggest mistakes that we all made. The job of building a country is too big for a political party.

In doing this we shifted the responsibility to institutions and made it their sole responsibility to fulfil some of the challenges in our country. This mistake was a grave one, because it also lead to people assuming that they need to be elected or hired into certain positions in order to make a difference.

The mistake of passing the buck to government has only served to exonerate us of the responsibility to play an active role in our society. And that's why we as a country are good at complaining, we cry about the quality of education, lack of leadership, lack of accountability. We do this because it makes us feel like the real failure is the government, and not us the society.

It is important to note that it is not political office that suffers directly when young people do not have the tools to express themselves and resort to drugs. It is the community that suffers when these young people resort to criminal activities in order to finance their habits. It is the community that suffers when young ladies get pregnant at young ages and have to leave school early in order to support their children.


2) Exodus:
It is common knowledge that when most young people dream, they dream to leave the township. There is nothing wrong with this, I would easily leave a double storey in Diepkloof to live in a Sandhurst mansion. And Soweto is a very advanced township, as President Mugabe alluded to: it is not a bar.
All townships were created to be oppressive, the system that created them was a well orchestrated system of oppression.

The problem though is the unintended consequences: When the good crop of people leave for the suburbs they leave behind a township that is short of role models. People to whom the young people will look up to, whom the young people will seek to model their lives around.
When the people who have the experience, skills and education to help alter the situation in townships and rural areas...leave the township, they leave a void that is hard to fill.
The same principle holds when they put their children in private schools, and participate in those school governing bodies...the result is the great divide between the private and public school education systems right now.

When the proverbial "out of sight out of mind" process happens, the desire for change is slowly overshadowed by other pending more urgent matters.
Both of these are contributing factors...the list is not exhaustive, there are other reasons, but these are the 2 most prevalent.

(To Be Continued…)

-Simon Mtsuki and Ziyanda Khumalo

When God Closes One Door

I'm sure many of us have heard or even used the cliche: "when God closes one door, He opens another."
Basically this phrase means that when an opportunity, or what seemed to be a great opportunity, is taken from you, God (or fate) will reward you with another one. This I believe, because I believe that God is too great and life is too long for the well-being of our lives to be dependant on one person, opportunity or 'big-break'. Our purpose is bigger than that.
The problem I have, however, is that this phrase does not fully capture the truth of reality, there is something missing.

There are 2 other important points that this cliche fails to capture:

1) Sometimes people are kicked out of doors.

Many of us for whom doors were shut, they were not shut under peaceful or serene circumstances. Some people were kicked out while they were still enjoying the fruits of comfort, after they had poured the 2nd teaspon of sugar into the tea and still salivating over the tastiness of the chocolate cookies.

Just as you were getting comfortable, you were dragged by the scruff of your neck and booted out.
Some people were dumped by people that they had already dreamt of a future with, others had already signed off on future life plans after grand promises were made.

Some people have been fired from jobs while they were still hoping for a promotion or whilst they were still strategising on the best way to fund their first car.

Some people were robbed of business ideas and plans, others were kicked out of contracts by conniving adminstrators that wanted a share in the spoils.

So the exit out the door is not as uneventful, as the phrase suggests. Sometimes the doors are not even closed, for some of us they are kept open so we can still witness the enjoyment that still occurs without us, for others the doors were slammed in their faces mid-sentence, just as they were about to motivate for their stay.

2) There is a very dark and long hall-way in between.
When the doors are shut, and you can still hear the slamming of the door ringing in your ears, you are stuck in a very long and dark hallway. That hallway is probably the darkest you will ever see, much darker and even longer than the fourth watch of the night.

Yes you heard that there is another door that will open for you, but the problem is the process is too long and confusing.

Trying to find your door in the dark is a pretty testing process, one that stretches your faith and tests your boundaries, one that involves a lot of trips and stumbles.

I know people who have been in the dark hallway for 3 or even 5 years, I know people who have even given up hope on the existence of another door and decided to get comfortable in the darkness. I have even heard of people who have even died in the darkness.
It's tough in the darkness.

The trick of the darkness is that one must be patient, persistent and have an ear for direction.
Don't lose heart in the darkness, don't doubt in the darkness, dont die in the darkness.

Because the truth is that the next door does exist, it is bigger than the previous one.

Behind it lies treasures and spoils never heard of before, that you had never even imagined with your mind.
When God closes one door, He doesn't just open one, instead He opens one, that leads into other doors of opportunity.

The intention with allowing the previous one to be closed is that you would've gotten so comfortable in Egypt while the land of Milk and Honey awaits.
If you hadn't been kicked out there you would've been comfortable with little when much awaits,
You would've been comfortable with being Good, when Greatness awaits.

So whether you're already in the darkness or are still about to be kicked into it, I just wanted to let you know that there is nothing wrong with being in the darkness. It's part of a mandatory process. Fall but don't stay down, fail but don't stop trying, cry but don't stop dreaming. Remember: The Other Door Awaits.