I’m struggling with being fine. I have to be extraordinary. There’s no other way. If I’m not being extraordinary for myself, I am for my family, for my dad, for my younger brother, for my sisters. I struggle with just being okay with me right now, as I am. Meditation helps, it helps a lot. It’s not because of society, I think it’s just something that I’ve done to myself for a long time. And I’m coping with the loss of my mom. So I have to be extraordinary.
My mom is this person who suffers. Because she suffers, she expects suffering, and changes it into positivity, and knows that it’s not going to remain. She was an epileptic, they said she had to take this surgery, which is a 45/55% chance of success or be on meds for the rest of her life. So we moved to South Africa because there were no medications in Zimbabwe. Through that, she knew that she was a person with this condition, a person that goes through stuff. When she’s down, she’s down, she understands, she’s not fighting it or angry or crying about it. She raised us in a way that was like when you get new clothes, you have to lie to your friends that you’ve had them for a while. Simple lessons like that, allow the ego to never make its way in. I only started understanding that lesson at a later stage.
Moving to South Africa had challenges. I’m black, but the black people here didn’t like me, nor my family, because we are Zimbabwean. You think okay black people don’t like you. So what do you do? You focus on education, you focus on being in the self. You focus on how this bad thing is not going to last forever. Then you start to meet relevant people. Any person that I met was going through something, I recognized the suffering. The understanding of temporary existence helped me see, if someone is suffering, be there with them. I don’t know how long it will be, but I’ll be there with you. At the end of the day, this experience is temporary, and we’ll bask in it and pass these tails of suffering and learn from it. The vulnerable nature of our being determines our movements and what we find important.
