Alone

Maya Angelou wrote a poem titled 'alone' that I fell in love with upon hearing it in the movie 'Poetic Justice'. It reminded me of a fundamental fact of life, we are all alone. Most of the people around us can't penetrate our cores to get to the point of attaching themselves to us. This leads to all kinds of decisions based on a need to belong and escape loneliness. Maya stated that nobody can make it alone. That emphasizes the need human beings have for companionship, but it's not the easiest state to accomplish. Loneliness is a lot easier than making real friends. Making friends, working, maintaining a family, maintaining a hobby, among other things are all things that we have to do on a daily basis. Sometimes it's a bit overwhelming.

With this in mind, it's quite easy to understand suicide victims. Sometimes the burden gets too heavy to bear all by oneself and we need the lonely walk of life to simply stop being so difficult now. 

Some people are lucky. They never think about the hard questions in life. They simply go through life being ignorant and happy, never searching for deeper meaning, never wanting more than they're able to get at the moment. I used to think they were pitiful but these days I've revised my opinion about them. They're lucky and blessed. Today I came across an English proverb, 'a life in search of happiness is a sure way to misery'. 

There are a few days out of every year when I feel like those people. I enjoy freedom from my mental condominium for a short while then i have to return to my life as it was meant to be. On the days when it gets overwhelming, of course I wish I were different, but on regular days, I am fine with the burden I bear of thinking about questions that have no answers in this life.

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone. 

Maya Angelou

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/alone-6/

Death has no calendar

Today I saw an interesting T-shirt with the words 'death has no calendar' neatly written across the front. I had to pause and think about it for a moment. What does it mean? If death has no calendar then there is no season of life for dying and therefore, no season for living. Wouldn't it make more sense to say Death has no appointment book or schedule? I thought it must have been a recently coined phrase. However, it turned out that 'death has no calendar' is an actual English proverb. (I learnt something today :). 

Scary films that scare us the right way

When I was a child my mother always warned me against watching horror movies at night. Now that I think of it, that was a rather strange warning, given that nobody watches horror movies during the daytime. Anyways, recently, I've accidentally come upon a different type of horror film that has started giving me nightmares or mildly disturbing dreams. This type of horror film is not scary in the traditional horror movie way. It's scary because of my realization that a lot of people may not be taking their lives and other people's lives seriously.

In my quest to become a more cultured individual with cultural knowledge from all over the world, I search for and watch tv shows from several countries. As a result of this, I stumbled upon 'Love games' from Zambia and 'Shuga' from Kenya. These tv shows started off on light topics of love and sex and progressed to HIV and AIDS very soon. They show lifestyles that cause the Human Immunodeficiency Virus to spread like wildfire. By this, I mean quite regular people living regular lives, except that some cheat. 

For example in season 1 of 'Shuga', this woman had a habit of partying and getting drunk, occasionally having sex with random men and forgetting to use condoms sometimes. One night she had sex with her ex boyfriend, who one would think is better than a random guy, but he ends up being the one to give her HIV. In another episode, this guy and his girlfriend got tested for HIV and decided to stop using condoms then on her birthday, he neglected her, so she slept with his best friend. The next day, she made up with her boyfriend had sex with him and the next thing you know, they all had HIV because the guy's best friend was an unknown carrier. 

In love games, the people who contracted the disease were more mature. For example, a woman who had been in a long term relationship contracted it from her partner who cheated on her. She found out long after when she wanted to get more intimate with her next boyfriend. Another woman had sex with everything that moved for everything she wanted - money, job, grades, etc., and she thought condoms didn't feel good, so she didn't use them. An old respectable, married judge had a woman on the side, who had another man on the side (with two wives and other women on the side) got HIV. The judge started getting treatment but neglected to tell his wife. Good thing she was always holding out on the sex and quarreling with him, so she did not contract the disease. 

These people, as do most people in life, swear that they are loyal to their spouses, but the diseases they carry tell a different story. Even messing up just once can lead to permanent illnesses! 

Of course the shows are about more than just the careless and reckless way people live, it also shows how they deal with the disease after realizing that they have it. They show ways to deal with it, like changing your lifestyle and managing your health. In 'Love games', an HIV negative guy married an HIV positive woman and they had an HIV negative baby together. They procreated the natural way, while following the doctors orders to a tee. I didn't know that was even possible until  I watched that tv show. 

These two shows that I've stumbled upon scare the shit out of me, but they also teach me a lot about this lifestyle disease that enough people don't seem scared of. Every time I think of cheating, I think of HIV, herpes and genital warts and the thought goes away. And every time the conversation of leaving the condom in the sachet comes up, I opt to trust the condom manufacturer a little more than my spouse. Trust is important, but spouses sometimes mess up and they may not mean to give you a disease, but they just might. So, avoid that mess. Wear a condom every time!!! Love safely!  (http://safelovezambia.org/category/love-games-zambia/)

Love Games - season 1 episode 1

Shuga - Season 1 episode 1

Time heals more than wounds

There are some people that we meet who we become friends with so easily. They are extremely easy to flow with; however there are others whose personality clashes so much with our own personality that maintaining that friendship is almost like pulling a stubborn donkey along. With the friends that flow easily, there is no question about continuing the friendship, but for the other type of friend, questions about the pros and cons of maintaining the friendship pops up. Should I expend more time and energy pulling this donkey along with the hope that soon it will decide that it wants to come along with me and enjoy the journey of my friendship? Or should I simply let the donkey go and if it follow me then great and if it doesn't then I can view it as a loss and move on?

There is no right or wrong answer to these questions and each individual will have to decide what to do in each case. It's just another case of life showing us that there is no roadmap, no guidebook for the test of life. We can look at other people's lives but our situations are so different that we can't simply follow someone else and expect to end up in the same place they did. Life just doesn't work that way.

So, I've developed my own model that I tweak frequently to deal with the changes in life. I'm willing to be friends and work on friendships to a certain extent, but when they become too burdensome and detract from the pleasures and benefits of life, I will stop communication with that friend and give the problematic situation time to heal itself or become less problematic. After all, there is an old adage that says 'time heals all wounds', so why worry about broken friendships, with time they will heal.  

Manila - Day 1 - The taxi and the Patty

The Philippines has shown me so many faces that I can't just write one post about it. Before arriving I was so anxious. Finally I would get to eat all the fruits that were once normal for me but have now become 'exotic'. I was looking forward to jackfruit, all different types of mangoes, rambutan, mangosteen, sweetsop and soursop, among others. I soon found out that Manila was not the place for these fruits. I had to buy fruits in a supermarket in plastic wrappings just like in countries that imported them. I had wanted to simply walk through markets and buy lots of appealing fruits, but that was not to be. 

Jackfruit from the mall

Upon arriving in Manila, I proceeded to the airport taxi section. I had read that the airport taxis were a bit more expensive (maybe 500 or 600 pesos) but safer than regular taxis. At a taxi booth, we were given the license plate number and taxi name on a piece of paper. This seemed very official.The taxi driver was great. He pointed out places along the way, maintained lively conversation and was just overall pleasant. However, the meter seemed to be broken. The main screen was off. The driver explained that it was fully functional and that the main screen would light up when the meter was stopped. The traffic was bad. When we finally got to our destination, the fare was more than 1200 pesos. We were surprised, but what could we do? We paid then asked at the hostel if that price was normal. We were told that usually the price from the airport to the hostel is around 200 pesos. So, we were 'officially robbed' by our first Filipino. In response to this, the receptionist at the hostel smiled and said 'welcome to the Philippines!'. What a welcome!

Jamaican Patty in the Philippines

Thank God the hostel was nice and safe. We later took a stroll in our immediate surroundings and found Jamaican patties that tasted authentic. Woohooo! That wiped away the sins of the taxi man and left me in heaven. For years now I've been dreaming of patties, so this was literally a dream come true! (My dreams are pretty unambitious, haha. I know.) 

So my first day ended with a bang for me. I was looking forward to day two :).