Your mess is your message

Hello friends,

hope you are doing great.

I was thinking of taking a small break, I believe it’s been a good two years since taking a proper break and then this topic came up along with the next one which I will write about soon. So, I said goodbye break and welcome to your mess is your message.

While some are starting to unwind from this crazy year we’ve had thus far others are ready to put in some massive efforts right about now with Christmas being roughly eight weeks away. I must say it feels a bit weird saying Christmas is roughly eight weeks away when I’m sitting here in almost thirty degrees of heat (Spring) in South Africa. It really doesn’t feel like Christmas will be here unless I was in some country right now spending Autumn (rather not shall I say), however, I can say that the Hindu Christmas, i.e. Diwali is in roughly three weeks.

So, I’ve just told someone a couple of days ago who didn’t feel like what they were saying is of value to anyone how much value I’ve received from listening to him. It’s funny how one thing you believe might not be of interest to someone is actually of incredible value as was in my case when I heard this man speak about his experiences before retiring from being an American soldier. I remember hearing this, i.e. your mess is your message a few times from several people actually, and it wasn’t until looking at my timeline i.e. the ups and downs over the years and then seeing people harness their stories within their calling/job and vice versa that I felt empowered to tell my story.

When you’re feeling the energy and strength in what you’re saying and get goosebumps at how it’s received I’d say you pretty much in full alignment with your essence, but until then you’re still coming into full alignment, i.e. you’re learning to see how your mess is received, which parts of it are the most inspiring, and then you learn how your message is impacting others. As the mess in your message grows the strength in how it’s received is inspiring both to the reciprocator and the messenger. – T. Dench Patel, 20 October 2020, 15:10

Currently, after the massive job losses, I believe there’s an ocean of people being awakened that they’re all trying to find their own value within themselves rather than waiting on external happenings for them to get their lives back on track again. I believe from what has happened in this year we are going to hear of some incredible stories where people’s mess have become a message through creating video games, apps, home products which never were required until COVID struck, entrepreneurs creating all sorts of new stuff. There are new surges and new industries currently being created. Schools won’t even have and currently don’t teach kids for jobs that don’t exist as yet.

I reckon in the future of schooling we should have a subject called emotional intelligence so that kids can recognise behaviours within themselves. Almost like a special class to learn about you i.e. getting to know yourself and where you’re operating from. This way bullies can stop straight in their tracks before they go on to become high school bullies or even work bullies. This way kids who consider committing suicide stop and understand where their strengths are and where they’re operating from. Almost in the sense that they can recognise the issues within themselves and even educate themselves on breaking negative cycles. With the internet, resources are out there for free.

What if there wasn’t a mess?

I come from a Hindu society, to be specific from the many categories the label I was raised in was Gujarati. All my life growing up I was sick of hearing what the society thought was someone’s shame and the screwed-up misconception that you’re supposed to live like a good gal or good boy. I wondered what “good gal” was supposed to be, was she supposed to be rich and elegant, was she supposed to cook and clean, was she supposed to dress traditional and say yes to everything, was she not supposed to play with skateboards, was she supposed to not complain and allow patriarchy to exist just like apartheid never existed in her head, was she suppose to ignore unfairness and just be this quiet fragile doll? I heard so much don’ts served to women, so much shame thrown at women, seen women get degraded and when the arrow started moving in my direction I rebelled almost instantaneously in what might be considered as defiant, perhaps not a good gal.

I did some ridiculous stuff and have been through some ridiculous stuff if you read my books The South African: True Colours and The South African: Roamer which are based on a true story, and at the same time when I cut myself off the societal nonsense, the whole thing about “What people are going to say,” I lived some magical moments, truly magical. Today I believe everyone goes through this after travelling and seeing different cultures, i.e. everyone is worried of what others think. A story can be so powerful that it can either stop you dead in your tracks or it can get you moving, and that’s the stories I really wanted to write, the stories that truly get you moving, that truly inspires from what might seem impossible at first to you or anyone out there. In The South African: True Colours you see a story that you can get stuck in, a story that can stop you right in your tracks and then The South African: Roamer is just something else.

Gone for almost two decades I spent just the same amount of time being raised in an eastern culture to living life in western culture, this is why you see so many varied titles under my blog posts. In the last three years (of life in an eastern culture) before hopping over to a completely new lifestyle, I was simply debating whether it’s here or there that I wanted freedom, whether it’s here or there that I would truly feel free until the decision was made through a massive spiritual awakening which I write about in The South African: Roamer, i.e. a gun was held to my head in my first full-time job during a robbery.

See what if there wasn’t a mess? Then there wouldn’t have been Gandhi, what if there wasn’t a mess, then there wouldn’t have been Mandela, what if there wasn’t a mess, then there wouldn’t have been justice. Another example is Shakespeare’s Hamlet, it gave the first black actor (Papaa Essiedu) who was waiting for his first role that would give him a career break. At the age of twenty-five, he was the first actor who played the Protagonist in Hamlet in the 61-year history of the Royal Shakespeare Company. I mean should the world really be inequal? Of course not, not when it comes to race for sure. It’s just too long in our history, it just ruined too many lives, but even to this day we have heroes, you, me and even George Floyd didn’t know his life was important, his story is going around the world, so see, you might not believe but something up there has already put its belief in you and the value of your life, you just don’t know how it’s going to happen and at the same time so many of us just don’t surrender to it.

You know, I once visited the United Nations in New York and there is a room with an unfinished ceiling. I believe in two thousand and thirteen it had a renovation and Sweden presented a new version of the unfinished ceiling designed by a Swedish architect. The representation of that unfinished ceiling is that of the world and its problems, i.e. the problems in this world are never-ending.

So, I am pretty sure, that you are here, reading this very article, not by coincidence at all. Your mess is the healing the world requires.

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.