Hello friends,
All good? I’ve had a hectic week, also got a lot of things that have come up this month. No time to procrastinate. What about you?
I am keeping fingers crossed that all is going great in the home front and other aspects of your life.
Let’s go get a drink, what say you?
Let’s imagine that we are at this really nice bar that serves non-alcohol and alcoholic drinks if you wish. I mean it’s Sunday after all :D. This bar has a straw roof, a wooden surface where drinks are served. We can see the tropical and seasonal fruit baskets while we sit on the outside couches made also of straw. Each table has a name and a different colour couch, so spacious that you can take off your shoes and drink while sitting against the pillows with your legs stretched out or even folded on the couch. The colourful glasses dangling from top-down at the bar shine so bright. We can see the Hawaiian like flower necklaces dangling there. We were given Hawaiian flower necklaces when we entered the bar just like every other customer. It’s almost like we’re sitting on a couch styled like a Morrocan tea house. We; you and I are sitting facing this incredible ocean, and our couch has a straw roof over us giving us shade. Can you feel the breeze against your skin? It’s not cold, it’s cool on this very hot summer’s day. The scent of the ocean is like perfume in the air. We’ve also been given hats at the bar which are matching with our couch. Our couch colour is blue just like the sky, and our table is called Fish, but you and I are certainly not here to drink like fish. We are here to connect in person and communicate. Our mobile phones are on silent. I have this amazing mint, a taste of orange and lemon refreshment which is one hundred percent natural and healthy in this really fancy colourful blue and white glass. You have the drink that you require to keep you one hundred percent good and happy so that I can listen to you.
The ocean is turquoise blue, people are swimming in the sea and surfing on this hot summer’s day. Light and soft music change the scent of the salty air now and then. The waves can be heard, and we are relaxed. I trust you and you trust me. We are in good spirits and really did need to get out of the house. We have the lifestyle possible for us to meet in person, for us to have days together and workshops together in awesome places like this one.
I get it, did you know, according to this article along with the study that took place in 2015. It pooled data from seventy studies following 3.4 million people over seven years. It states that lonely individuals had a 26% higher risk of dying and this figure rose to 32% if they lived alone. In this video Oprah visionary tour – Lady Gaga, Lady Gaga states that forty percent of (assuming America) has depression because of loneliness. Social media is causing more disconnect from real life. Please, go onto Google, type in the search box “depression from loneliness statistics” and you will see the whole search result that comes through. Let me see if I can take a screenshot. Let me show you, one second (sorry, I know we’re at a bar and I not supposed to pull out my phone).
It’s easier to escape it’s easier to condemn and we resolve nothing
After returning to South Africa and living in cities like Madrid, London and the first world life I understand that there are so many levels of escaping rather than dealing with things head-on. We live in those countries where facing things head-on is seen as a good thing and we feel proud of it. We should be proud that we confront what comes to us head-on but after living abroad I realise that we choose what we want to face head-on and what we’re not choosing to face head-on are the most important things that we will have to face at some point or another. Better sooner than never so that you can finish the process/cycle and have new, fresh beginnings sooner than never or later.
Areas, where people escape emotions, are family issues, trauma, problems in romantic relationships and fears. Emotions can feel like it’s eating you away, eating even at you. When I was in the United Kingdom, two women presented themselves to me at two different times before I left the country. One woman said that when she entered my flat, she lost the urge to smoke, she had lunch with me, and we chatted for say two and a half hours in total. Admittingly the lady said, “By this time I would have had the urge to smoke at least a couple of cigarettes but the energy in your flat is amazing, I don’t feel the urge to smoke at all.” This lady said she’s been using drugs to escape from rape and the trauma.
What I understood is that we’re escaping from things that psychologically need our attention before they spiral in directions that affect our mental state which in turn affects our physical state. Then I watched this interview two days ago Oprah Vision Tour – Lady Gaga – Mental Health which explained it a little bit more. When people self-sabotage, self-inflict pain or self-harm it all comes from something that is undealt with. I also talk about Saesha in my book The South African: True Colours (based on a true story) and self-harm after she faced a horrible incident which repeated itself through memory which then affected her psychologically.
Losing connection and communication with self first begins with a broken place inside you, maybe in a broken home, or something that caused you to break in the first place and when you accept that reality you accept the broken self and more without dealing with it. Healing that environment and those concerned including yourself in that past will help you and those concerned to move on creating new, fresh and healthy beginnings. – T. Dench Patel, 7 March 2020, 15: 47
There was something that Michelle Obama said that made me wonder on this video Oprah vision tour – Michelle Obama at 19:52 on the video timing she said when it came to herself and Barack Obama that, “Some of the hardest times in our lives we’ve escaped it, we’ve survived it. We went through a tough time; we did some hard things together and now we’re out on the other end then I can look at him and I still recognise my husband. He’s still the man that I fell in love with, who I value, and I respect, and I trust. He’s been an amazing father through so much. He has shown up well in the world and he has been who he has promised he would be to me. That has been tested over twenty-eight years. So what I tell young couples is that you got to hang in there, you can’t quit the minute it gets hard because this thing of living a life and building a life together, it is a naturally hard thing to do. So, you can’t quit when it’s hard, because then you miss the good part. If you define your marriage by just the hard times, then you’ll miss the truth of what’s really there.”
To conclude it seems like we need to take some things that our parents at their age of fifty and over are doing. This ancient knowledge is what we’re losing, the way they connect, the way they balance, the gratitude in the little things because they have never had what we have in our generation today. There’s an ancient knowledge that was naturally built the universal way to live before all the technology, social media, chat on phones and other ways to keep in touch have come into this world. Keeping in touch and keeping the connection together are two different things.
We really do need more empathy before condemning and instead tell people to find help even if they choose to continue spiralling down the path that isn’t serving them.
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 either purchasing one of 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 reevaluate them.
