Hello friends,
how was the weekend?
Yah! Spring for some of ya’ll, getting warmer into the summer months, right? I can just see you there, making me jealous with your ice cream. We’re busy saying bye to autumn now in Africa, and this autumn was just great, with some chills in the morning and evenings, with 4 to 5 hours of the scorching hot sun during the day, this can be compared to some of the hottest days in England.
Still, I remember 40 degrees in Spain, I remember the days where my laptop sounded like a helicopter either about to crash… Vooom… Vooom… Vooom… Vooom… it went… unsure if the drivers would survive take off or if they were about to crash and burn… After all that… the ending of my laptop days met its fate when coffee spilled on it and suddenly Jesus appeared sitting at the bottom of the screen with his legs out… as if he was leaning against the sidewall of my laptop screen. After that, Jesus! It weighed a ton!
Alright, I will step on it. I was going to go into some other topics but this one just seems like it wanted to feature itself right now. This is a simple question right, it’s something starring right in front of us, but we miss it so easily, camouflaged in everything we’re doing, yet we miss it right? “Who are you going to be?” when I heard Michelle Obama asking that question, her book Becoming just flashed in front of me, and from just the title of her book becoming it branches off to this question which she asks, “Who are you gonna be?” It’s not even, “What’s it gonna be?” because there are billions of things out there that we can choose from just like this very hard question, “Who are you gonna be?”
“Who are you gonna be?” when I heard this question, I was like…. “Woooo …. Shoooo,” come on let’s admit it, it’s a very loaded question only made of 5 very short words. … Yes, still loaded. I was like, damn, “Who are you gonna be?” is defined by billions of moments, billions of thoughts, billions of actions, billions of dreams … this is why this short little question is so loaded, in a world with a constant stream of shiny objects, the question is “Who are you gonna be?” the final question after this question, “What’s it gonna be?” It really does end there and continues like this until you die. You are constantly choosing, “Who you are gonna be?” and sometimes and often we don’t choose right in the moment.
Michelle Obama didn’t ask, “What are you gonna do?” “Who are you gonna be?” meaning how do you plan to embody everything that you are in your daily life and how will you respond to that. “Who are you gonna be?” is a serious question and some of you out there reading this article have no idea what this real world is like, what space it will hold for us, who might even be around us when we have no one but ourselves to rely on when something is very important to us, or if something is threatening how far we have come in life thus far, “Who are you gonna be?” This question defines that moment you are in something very important, the way you respond defines, who you are through the choice of your thoughts and actions, and unfortunately majority of the world will define us by that even if on that day, we have made a mistake.
Are you going through a divorce right now? Have you lost your job right now? Is someone in your family very ill? Are you emotionally bankrupt? Are you taking the smallest action right now because you can’t find the energy or words to get through the now? These are the times where we most need the answer that is right for us about, “Who are we gonna be?” First Lady Michelle Obama might not be your favourite person, maybe Mahatma Gandhi isn’t, maybe Nelson Mandela isn’t, Maybe PW Botha is your favourite person, maybe John F Kennedy wasn’t your favourite person, maybe Abraham Lincoln is your favourite person, maybe Brenda Fassie is your favourite person (hey, they’re not all dead in this list, and I bet you have some that are alive even on your list), the thing is that everyone has some kind of positive contribution to, “Who are we gonna be?” it just depends whose words or stories hit us the most, like that, “CLONK! Now I get it.”
Hey, just in case you didn’t know, Brenda Fassie, in the list of people I mention above, she was a South African singer, whom I enjoyed listening to the minute I heard her first song (it just catches on to people the minute they hear it). She won a series of awards being one of very few successful South African artists who thrived during and after Apartheid, she was the Madonna of the townships according to Time magazine in 2001, Brenda has won a series of awards. She was the youngest of nine children and died at a very young age, 39 years of age, she was one of Africa’s top-selling musicians, sang for 20 years, in English, Xhosa and Zulu (this reminds me, I will celebrate some of her music during this week).
Back to Michelle Obama’s question, “Who are you gonna be?” Being First Lady, she states that being a straight-A student is important, test scores are important when it comes to, “Who are you gonna be,” BUT it isn’t enough of a contributor to “Who are you gonna be?” A combination of intelligence to skills such as resilience, conscientiousness, resourcefulness etc… and she goes by stating that West Point Cadets who scored high on GRIT and determination were more likely able to finish their basic training compared to those who ranked high on class rank, S.A.T. scores and physical fitness.
By far, “Who are you gonna be?” when you fall determines how much you will keep getting up, how much you can take, and how much you will succeed each time… there is no game over if “Who are you gonna be?” is chosen very carefully.
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.
