Making connections

Perhaps I should explain my garbled Friday post.

My 40th birthday is coming up at the end of this month, and with this milestone in mind, many of my thoughts have invariably been reflective – the ‘taking stock of my life’ variety.

I’ve harboured this idea of jumping out a plane on or near to my 40th. In fact, I casually mentioned this idea to my work colleagues at our regular Friday afternoon get-together after work, and now a growing number of them want to join me! Perhaps the stress of locating markets for titles like The Large Sieve and its Applications has something to do with the number of volunteers, but I digress...

So you may be thinking that seems a pretty predictable reaction to a major birthday – do things you’ve always wanted to do, celebrate your longevity by hurling yourself out of a plane a thousand metres above the ground, have a midlife crisis etc. But stick with me a while longer, I normally get to the point – eventually.

One of the other things I’ve been thinking about, is the matter of being thankful for where I presently find myself on my life-journey, which raises the issue of giving thanks, thanksgiving. As I have no specific religious orientation, that becomes pretty interesting.

I come from a nominally Christian background, and my wife’s family is Hindu. In both these, and many other faiths, there is a common thread related to giving thanks, counting our blessings, making offerings, gratitude.

I have also been feeling something else, a desire to give back some of what has been bestowed on me. Without an obvious religious anchor both concepts; thankfulness and reciprocity; are problematic – bestowed on me by whom/what? Thankful to whom/what? Give thanks to whom/what? In what form – prayer, offering, sacrifice, ritual?

Lastly, I’ve been thinking about interconnectedness, the way we are connected to others. I went through a long period of disconnectedness when life took a bad turn, ironically while the world was busy connecting at a fast and furious rate via the Net. Having come from a family that kept few close friends, seldom visited or had visitors, and eschewed socialising generally, being insular was an easy, even natural state for me to withdraw into.

My wife’s Indian upbringing made her quite different. Her childhood life had been filled with family and friends who lived next door to one another (many for their whole lives). People didn’t ask if they could visit, they just rocked up at the door, and that was fine – even during meals, when another few plates would be brought out and the food shared without question or gripe. Everyone in the area knew each other’s names – and personal affairs. The place I’m describing is Rylands, an apartheid-created community of people designated as Asian, one of many such places in South Africa.

As soon as she was old enough, she left Rylands to live in the city bowl area of Cape Town. I’m sure she felt a sense of freedom, of lebensraum, being in a place where she could choose to be anonymous or not, and she slowly lost quite a few ties to her old community. Even so, she ended up creating her own community in the city, one of her choosing. Eventually she even met and married me there.

When we were forced through circumstance to move to Rylands several years later, it was quite surprising how things turned out. For the first time in my life, I was awakened to the concept of connectedness on a larger scale than my immediate loved ones. I finally appreciated the meaning of the word ‘community'. During Eid, I saw Muslims knocking on the doors of their Hindu and Christian neighbours to bring them plates of cakes, and during Diwali, Hindus knocked on the doors of their Muslim and Christian neighbours to bring them plates of sweetmeats. Oppulent mansions nestled amicably with cement block semi-detached council houses in the same street. I suddenly had to start remembering the names of vast numbers of neighbours who would greet me by name in the street or at the local shops. We both healed in this place, I connected, and my wife reconnected.

So, finally to the point

You know when ubuntu is there, and it is obvious when it is absent. It has to do with what it means to be truly human, to know that you are bound up with others in the bundle of life. Desmond Tutu

The African concept of ubuntu is helping me to tie these three strands of thought (thankfulness, reciprocity and connectedness) together, and about how best I can mark my 40th, which will be to do something for others. My work colleagues and I have been helping out forty kids from rural schools with shoes and other basics, in addition to the books donated by the publisher we work for. The astounding gratitude they show for these simple things is humbling, and I think doing what I can for them would be a good fit - it may even turn out to be more fun than jumping out of a plane!

I'll let you know how this idea pans out soon.

If you are feeling down, jump!

About five years ago, I finally lost the fight to keep an insurance brokerage business that I had started going. The final nails in the coffin were a devastating burglary and a motorbike accident that happened almost at the same time. In the process, my wife and I lost everything - except for a few suitcases of clothes that is. For a long time afterwards, I felt paralysed by despair and a sense of failure.

Slowly, very slowly, I began to look at my old life and began to wonder, how the hell did I end up in financial services anyway? I'd always wanted to be a writer, journalist, entrepreneur - never a banker or insurance salesman! What a waste of years I thought, I've blown my chances and there's no going back.

After close to a year of unemployment, my wife found work in a publisher, and every now and then was able to swing some freelance work my way. Another year passed, and I was getting work from two publishers and a freelancer. Dull, monotonous stuff it was, called datacapture, which is essentially retyping manuscripts into a format for typesetters to use to lay out text, as well as much more interesting, but infrequent PowerPoint presentations for book fairs and exhibitions. Though it gave me back a sense of self-worth to be at least partially economically active, I still saw little by way of a future for myself.

At this point, a friend of ours invited us to go with her and her young daughter to Knysna, which is situated on the scenic Garden Route in the southern Cape. Along the way we passed Gouritz Bridge, a metal span bridge some 68 metres above the Gouritz river. I noticed there was a bungee platform on the bridge.

Though I'd never wanted to do it before, something inside me told me I had to jump, I must jump, this act of calculated insanity will teach me something, and allow me to release something (other than my bladder). Somehow, I convinced my wife that I must do this thing, and she, who is dreadfully afraid of heights actually accompanied me onto the bridge, ashen-faced, along with our friend and anxious daughter.

The moment, I call it the Zen moment, is when you are buckled up and standing on the edge, with your hands behind your back holding the railings hard enough to crack bone, and you then have to will your hands to let go and put your arms straight out on either side of you, before leaping off the edge towards what seems certain death.

It is the moment that all other fears, doubts and perceived inadequacies are at once crystallised and condensed into a tiny, insignificant point. You see them all, even those that you hadn't even been able to acknowledge before, and you see that they are puny things in comparison to The Fear that is confronting you. In a strange, ironical way, you realise that if you don't face The Fear, all those lesser fears will regain their significance and perhaps have even more power and control over you in the future.

So I jumped...

Two months ago, I jumped again - this time off a 100m cliff in Zambia, near Vic Falls. I jumped to celebrate that first leap into the abyss, the one that I haven't completely landed from yet.

You see, my inner strength came coursing back in the skies above the Gouritz, I realised that I can overcome anything - especially self-imposed limitations. More importantly even than this, I regained the belief that I can achieve anything that I set my mind to as well. Within a year of that first leap, I started working full-time in publishing; doing work that I completely love together with a group of highly dedicated, professional people.