Hello friends,
hope you are doing well. Happy New Year friends.
Wishing you and yours a wonderful twenty-twenty one. May it be filled with wonderful surprises and excellent health.
Someone spoke about this, I had my ears glued and I thought, wow! This is a topic worth writing about and showing people the angle from another perspective.
So, this is what I’ve also been noticing since I arrived in South Africa. Thankfully, travelling around the world has one’s head screwed on or at least focused on other things (speaking for most), i.e., usually healthy habits.
I’ve realised that when one lives in a town (a small town), a certain idea goes around about each other by others (you must know this is a lifetime of living and having family history go on from one generation to the next). It’s almost like any small town in Italy, Spain or even India, I mean the gossipers will keep gossiping and those who seek something else follow their own crowd. So, when one travels, one is not looking at who is rich, who is poor, who is this and that. Travellers go out to experience, learn, feel, get in touch, enjoy, become spiritual (without knowing, that’s how it was for me), etc.
However, if you’re living wealthy in a town and everyone knows you or your family, that is also quite a downside. Let’s look at how kids are affected by the stories of adults, young adolescents who still don’t understand the way the world places worth on money rather than self-worth.
Example one: Have you seen the face of a child who receives a balloon from a cashier who decides to give kids a little gift when they come with their parents to the till? Yes, the cashier being my sister for many years has brought a smile on many children’s faces, but she remembers most the smile that kids from wealthy families give her as soon as the balloon which she blew up reaches their hands.
This is her account from working as a cashier at a pharmacy for many many years at one place some time back (she worked there for say … something like twenty years or longer).
“One day I was doing my job as I would when a lady walked in. I knew her, our family knew her, not so well but who doesn’t know that they are wealthy, even my boss and most people who work there knew. I’ve seen this time and time again with others who are considered wealthy in our town and this is what prompts me to give every child that I can acknowledge the moment they do appear in front of me with a balloon. See children that come from wealthy backgrounds hardly get presented with something by families who have less than the standards of life they have, hence why they don’t get offered a small gesture or anything by anyone often enough. No one really knows that the meaning isn’t in giving the balloon, it’s in being acknowledged as an equal, just like other children, to be given that balloon.”
“So, when I took out the balloon, blew it up and gave it to this child, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a happy face compared some other children who got a balloon from me.”
Example two: Say roughly under a year ago, I met someone who had a chat with me. “We’re perceived as wealthy, but you have no idea the number of struggles and opportunists that came into our lives (endangering the wellbeing of my family); wolves dressed as sheep. Even close relatives take advantage of us when I and sometimes my family support their causes. They believe we’re rich so why should we get anything because most people have less than us. I mean one might be doing a great deed for the poor and make food packs, I donate all the time large sums of money but when I asked for a food pack to be sent my way it was received with retaliation. I was coming from the angle that the shops are closed, my parents are old and I rather they not go to the shops. I want them to be safe from COVID.”
I was a bit shocked by both accounts. There’s a division that rich and poor creates (I know you already know this, just reiterating) that it’s hard to reach a middle ground. So, when I say I was travelling around the world, it’s a great thing to feel, I mean to have not been in contact with this, or moving houses because of the job, (as I mentioned in previous articles, I hardly scratched the surface when it came to the third level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs), I mean it would be a pity to sit by the beach, and waste my time putting labels on such petty things, “Oh! His rich, she’s rich, her… hmm poor, that one… hmm,” I rather it just be as and when we meet, “Hey, nice to meet you (I don’t care whether you rich or poor), it’s awesome meeting you.”
Can’t we just adopt that even if someone is wealthy? It’s not ours it’s theirs, so why should our behaviour change? Unless through this article it’s evident that you have to change. – T. Dench Patel, 4 January 2021, 22:22
Example three: Lastly, there are many accounts from my book based on a true story, The South African: True Colours on how this affects Saesha and her family. Adolescent Saesha falls in love, and eventually, this too becomes a topic. How can a sixteen-year-old girl who falls in love for the first time fall in love with a seventeen-year-old boy’s wealth who was too young to have anything significant on his name in the first place? When young people fall in love for the first time, (I’d say over ninety percent of the time) they actually fall in love with the person, not the money…
Caste, wealth, social status are topics that are explored in The South African: True Colours within the segregated community during Apartheid and even after.
Let us know your thoughts, drop us a comment.
Yours sincerely,
T. Dench Patel
Thank you for the comments and support. Thank you for offering to donate if there was a donate button on here. I prefer not to take donations. You can support by purchasing my books (Paperback or Kindle), The South African: True Colours, The South African: Roamer or my children’s book Light. These books can be found on Amazon mainly and other sites in your country.
The audiobook for The South African: True Colours is available on iTunes, Apple and Audible. The South African: Roamer and Light will be released soon.
Note: Do keep referring back to this site as much as possible, as I grow, a more profound perspective may form and so I will always come back to each of these articles to re-evaluate them.
