Hello friends,
how was your weekend? Hope all is well even in uncertainty… Talking about uncertainty, it’s that time of the year where power cuts begin like no man’s business in South Africa, but that doesn’t stop me from writing to you. It’s quite interesting, as we have a massive storm too, you know the ones where you hear the rain hit the ground with a splash and the water flowing through the gutters and into the drains. Lightning roaring, I love the sound of a nice storm and lovely rain, and not to mention how the air smells after hard rain.
I have a load of titles that I gathered but this one comes up as the one that I felt I really should write about. Intuitively I went with it, and it kind of also reminds me about a little piece from the book titled The subtle art of not giving a f*uck by author Mark Manson. I go back to when we were kids and teenagers, listen up if you’re a kid or teenager when you read my book The South African: True Colours and The South African: Roamer both books based on a true story, hey, perhaps even my children’s book Light might show reasons why kids and teenagers reject experiences which to be fair, if there was more self-awareness, education, self-improvement, and a world where everyone could access what we can access now at such a quick rate back then, then maybe we would have been smarter at not rejecting every chance we get where we can meet as many kids as possible (but then again, maybe we would be more on technology and less in the street playing with friends), many experiences where we can see all generations around us; weddings, parties, invitations, whatever the opportunity was or the way it presented itself to us. Saying that even though many opportunities can present themselves to us,
1) We aren’t always ready for them. We are still not spiritually, physically, emotionally, and mentally mature or wise.
2) We won’t get what we can’t handle.
I mean our ego grows, and we had and have no idea what it gets us into (especially when we’re young). When we are young, we just feel we got all the time in the world, but time goes so fast and before we even know it, we’re like, “Man, if only I knew that.” The thing is that mistakes and failure are the biggest teachers, but it is important to know the right goal or rejecting the correct one. See in the book mentioned above, The subtle art of not giving a f*ck author Mark Manson discusses the man Hiroo Onoda was a lieutenant fighting in World War II. He was in a Philippines hideout when World War II ended in 1945 but he continued fighting the war up to 1974 because he wasn’t aware that the war was over. Not rejecting opportunities from moment to moment when we’re young is good, however, again, it’s choosing and rejecting according to what can help us grow and not what will waste our time. I will argue that choosing to go and ride a motorbike when we’ve never ridden one before is questionable, such as knowledge, practise, supervision and experience is required otherwise we may be putting our lives in danger.
Choosing television, then choosing a new experience, choosing to hang around with the crowd we’ll see tomorrow, the day after, the day after that one and so forth rather than trying something different, going somewhere opportune, or a chance to hang around with someone different or in someplace different. We just make ourselves stuck, sounds familiar? You know I wrote hundreds of articles by now, and I wrote the article less than 60 seconds, I even wrote the article seventeen seconds, and so many articles that focus on thoughts, shifting thoughts and mindset.
I mean we can sit there and think continuously about each choice we’ve made, that’s a bit too much, we make choices on autopilot, we make choices on patterns and beliefs, and it just goes on… To think that one day we might get sick or have an accident that isn’t or wasn’t based on our action, e.g., we could be walking and all of a sudden, this massive chunk of a branch from a huge tree hits us on our head and we fall unconscious and say because of that the person riding a bicycle just behind us is also too late to brake and she/he ends up injuring herself/himself really bad. She or he could be an old person, who knows.
Now that massive branch could have just gotten hit by some freak lightning from a storm, or perhaps someone who was trimming the tree just forgot about that piece. That is someone else’s or something else’s action, now it really is no use blaming or finding fault when we really do not know the truth. The next best and smart action to take is one that is in our power, and that is choosing to take full responsibility now that that incident has occurred, especially when it comes to our self-care. This is where we don’t get to choose what life throws at us, but we do get to choose our next best action, thought, and words.
The thing about being a youngster is that youngsters often live detached of/from self, there isn’t much to unlearn when they’re just starting to learn, while what is taught to us by the time we’re a bit older often subtly has us a bit fearful. That is why youngers are known for being fearless, some are really brave, brave for their own good and oh! Boy! In my young days was I afraid or what? It was hearing about some daring youngsters who just often went off doing what they wanted to, and what sticks in our head? The ones that went and did things that went all wrong rather than the percentage of the ones that risked, and all that went right. I even wrote one article on living intentionally, as much as all these articles assist in trying to aim high and better, we know that often what we aim for in life can be completely different to the way we handle and look at uncertain experiences that come to us. In all honesty, this is where we really can excel, the minute we take responsibility, reject the fault and choose the next step/action and thought, we could end up rejecting something good or bad for us, the question is, how good are our choices of the decisions we’re making to reject?… This is what differentiates us from others who are on a much higher vibration or frequency of thought.
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.
