Category: Personal Agenda, Book Two

TUESDAY, 28 OCTOBER 2003

I am not desperate enough to get rich. And I don’t mean to say that this desired state should arrive right about at the moment I withdraw the last small change from my inner pocket. No, this desperation should arrive on a plate filled to the brim with actions one could take, items one could purchase, and improvements one could only manifest with some real hard currency.

There can be no doubt that this is the time to be rich. If you’re not a terrorist, you can enjoy almost unrestricted travel anywhere in the world. The well-to-do man or woman can also embark on endless shopping sprees, accumulating a range of consumer products to indulge their every fancy. They can naturally also attract members of the opposite gender, or whatever gender they prefer.

It’s fair to say I don’t follow fashion, and I’m no devoted addict of consumerism. But in case sudden wealth befell me, I would purchase myself some shirts and maybe a new pair of trousers (my best pair is adorned with multi-coloured splashes of paint). I would also buy myself a new computer, and a new bicycle. And then I would fly to Japan, economy class, despite the fact that I’d be able to afford a place in a more elevated hierarchy. Going on a vacation like that would also mean that I will indeed have reached a degree of freedom of movement hitherto only imagined in afternoon naps. I could also fly home for a week to stock up on decent toilet paper, Steers garlic sauce, and some magazines where I don’t need to consult two English-Chinese dictionaries just to understand the title.

This is not only the time to be rich, it is also the time to become rich. Technology previously beyond the reach of common people is, in a lot of cases at least, now as easily obtainable as a new shirt, and not necessarily more expensive. It has become a mantra that I dutifully recite to all within earshot that it is now more unnecessary than ever to submit your labour to the highest bidder, and to submit your freedom of dress, speech, thought and movement to corporate authorisation. Information on specific methods, skills and tricks are widely available to the corporate serf who is planning an entrepreneurial breakout, or the odd rebel who has so far been untouched by the fascist claws of corporate institutions.

To seek out and find this information is one thing, though. The virgin entrepreneur also needs to re-educate themselves. They would need to carefully analyse, reconsider and change where necessary their ways of thinking about things. They need to understand that doing “free creative work under one’s own control” requires self-discipline, ambition, and confidence in one’s own abilities and talents – and an honest appreciation of one’s weaknesses. It requires of the would-be successful entrepreneur to work long, hard hours – almost like in a corporate job, but hopefully at home, in clothes ten times more comfortable than a suit, with music of their choice filling airwaves previously ravaged by the screams and whines of corporate authority figures.

All of these useful little titbits are not what I intended to state in this particular piece. I merely wanted to create a platform to express my opinion that I am not yet desperate enough to be rich. I am adequately aware of weaknesses and strengths I could have as an entrepreneur. I am also very stoic – in case that comes in handy (I eat cereal even when I have canned tuna in my food box), and the fact that I’m reluctant to socialise with people doesn’t mean I can’t call it self-discipline.

What I need though, is the desire that burns inside a man returning to city life after years in the desert, knowing that he can have anything and everything he’s been missing if he could just lay his hands on some local currency. That – is what I need.

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MONDAY, 20 OCTOBER 2003

The primary motivations behind the choices and actions that define my daily life are, as I mentioned earlier, the concepts of PRODUCTIVE USE OF LIFE WHILE IT FLOWS IN YOUR VEINS and an accompanying AVERSION TO THE LIE.

Many will want to propagate the idea that to make as much money as you can is a beautiful example of PRODUCTIVE USE. I believe it only qualifies as such if you take actions with the money that will lead to significant improvement in your own life and preferably also the lives of other people.

Just making a lot of money and then focusing on pleasure and entertainment is by definition a waste of LIFE WHILE IT FLOWS IN YOUR VEINS. It can also, on a certain level, and as the result of an argument I am not going to make right now, be seen as a LIE.

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SATURDAY, 11 OCTOBER 2003

There’s a popular saying that says we start dying the moment we’re born. Our cells start ageing as they’re growing, and even though damaged cells are, up to a point, nurtured back to full function, and destroyed cells replaced, the rate is never adequate to keep us alive forever. Then there’s the fact that our lives could be terminated by unnatural causes as soon as we venture out of our cots. Can anyone be blamed for having severe existential anxieties every time they go outside?

A few years ago, in that glorious year right when I was supposed to join mainstream adult life, I was fortunate enough to watch a classic epic on my borrowed black-and-white TV. I had never been keen on cowboy or outlaw movies, but this movie gave me a particular perspective on life, and an attitude that has proven to be most useful.

The movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, tells the story of two outlaws in the Old West. After robbing their way into trouble, they make their way to South America. By the end, the two bandits are held up in a small town in rural Bolivia by what they assumed were just a number of local deputies, unaware of a platoon of soldiers who also happened to be in the neighbourhood. Butch and the Kid are sitting in a room, their backs against a wall, discussing the chances of them getting out alive. Surrounded by the local militia, oblivious of dozens of soldiers also taking position, they calculate their chances to be slim. They would try, nevertheless, they decide. Outside, on the walls of the town, surrounding them from every possible side and angle, dozens of loaded barrels are awaiting their attempt. They check their guns, exchange a few last words, and emerge dodging and ducking hundreds of bullets. Although it is merely suggested by skilful direction, everyone knows the only possible outcome: They went down, but – with all guns blazing.

As I was watching the credits, mesmerised by the profound implication for my own life, I recalled seeing a screenshot in the newspaper that advertised the movie on TV that night. I located the newspaper, cut the picture out with a pair of dull scissors, and decided to make it a permanent and prominent fixture of every place I would henceforth inhabit. It was stuck to the bathroom door in the council flat I shared with my younger sister, to a closet door in South Korea, and displayed on more than one wall after I had returned to South Africa. It was the first picture I pinned to my living room wall when I got to Taiwan, and at this very moment it is pasted next to the front door of my current apartment, lest I forget where I’m coming from, or where I’m heading.

It has become the closest to a personal dictum, a philosophy of life other than “live and let live” that I can be content with.

Entering my living room this afternoon after Chinese class, the picture once again drew my attention. I had been thinking of my recent plans of leaving this island – an important train of thought that usually takes precedence over any other truckload of ideas, but the picture distracted me. I thought about how the picture explained what I have been doing this past decade, and especially during my time in Taiwan. My ongoing attempts at keeping myself busy are my own valiant way of going down with all my guns blazing. It’s not exactly heroic or brave, but it is my way of saying, “If we are going down no matter what, then I’d rather go down keeping myself busy to the final exhalation.”

It did occur to me though that my version of this dictum, and my attitude to life on earth might be a tad defeatist, perhaps even a little morbid, and embarrassingly boring. “Is there no place for some mindless entertainment?” I asked myself. I stared out the kitchen window for a second, and then it came to me: Nero playing the violin while Rome was burning. He – or at least the mythical Nero – ignored the horrible facts on the ground, so to speak, and instead amused himself with some musical distraction.

A lot may be said about this attitude as well, but it does have a certain panache, a degree of defiant flamboyance. To indulge in casual entertainment in the current day and age is not dissimilar to Nero’s drunken behaviour while flames were licking the marble pillars of his city. Watching a soap opera while people die of hunger may not qualify as flamboyant defiance in many people’s minds, but that doesn’t mean there is no justification for having fun.

We will all eventually die, our natural lives unavoidably reaching its conclusion. Going down with all guns blazing, whatever the substance of that for each person embracing this dictum, is one way of going. If you could have yourself some fun while you’re at it, then so much better.

Butch and The Kid stormed into an avalanche of a thousand bullets, their own guns firing away until silence fell, until their lifeless fingers slipped from the triggers. Nero tried to silence the screams of burning citizens by plucking at his violin. I do my household chores, learn a few Chinese characters, write the odd line of poetry, fix my bicycle when necessary, paint my walls and doors different varieties of eggshell white, and plan my repatriation from exile. And I’m pretty sure if I look for it hard enough I’ll be able to once again find that middle “C” on my cheap electronic keyboard.

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TUESDAY, 7 OCTOBER 2003

One of the most prominent ideals of middle-class culture is GOOD PARENTING. According to the criteria of GOOD PARENTING parents justify their choices in life. It is also according to these criteria they judge the successes or failures of other parents. It is, finally, according to these criteria that I have disqualified myself from parenthood – at least for the immediate future.

One of the fundamentals of GOOD PARENTING is To Give Your Children The Best You Possibly Can. It is about this principle that I want to make a few remarks.

To give your children the best you can, may have consequences unforeseen, even to parents raising their offspring with the best of intentions.

One of these consequences may be that young adults who were raised by parents who provided in all their needs, who gave them abundant opportunities to develop their interests, and whose personality developed in a protective environment, increasingly become conservative, self-centred and selfish adults when confronted with a tougher reality than the one in which they grew up. This reaction may also manifest in calculated support for “the way things are” – the status quo – that had given them an edge in life without them having done much to deserve it. In a similar vein, they will also support all social, political and economic policies that entrench their position, and give a cold shoulder to those considerably less fortunate. They may even go so far as to call these people who were given less, “lazy”.

Another possibility in the case of a person whose luck of the draw included the benefits of the aforementioned background is that they will turn ashamed and embarrassed to people less fortunate than themselves. They may explain it as something they owe society because they “had it so easy, while others had it so hard”. They may even be unsure about what their chances of survival would have been, had they not grown up in an environment where all their needs were provided for, and where their interests and personality could develop without the interference of too much pain and unfulfilled desires.

My advice to parents is to, indeed, give their children the best they can, to teach them the value of responsibility, and to support their interests within reasonable financial limits. Furthermore, parents should be facilitators of the process that will allow their children to develop a self-esteem based on ability and merit, and not just on membership of a certain stratum of society.

Children should be aware of the suffering of others; that, and their own more privileged situation (if that is the case) should be explained to them in a way that will provide them with an incentive to develop a sense of responsibility towards their fellow human beings – including people in more impaired socio-economic conditions, as well as members of their own community.

Parents should teach their children the values of faith in their fellow human being, honesty, dignity, responsibility for others, and responsibility for their own actions. These values should not only be taught in words but in the actions and conduct of the parents towards their children, and towards others. Children should be made aware of the result of both love and hate, and should be taught through words, behaviour and actions to choose love. Parents should also cultivate in their children an attitude of open-mindedness and tolerance towards other people.

Children should be taught the value of principles, and to maintain these principles even if they sometimes have to stand alone. Children should be taught to believe in themselves and their abilities, by parents who believe in their children. Children should be taught that mistakes are sometimes a necessary part of life and that they must learn from their mistakes as adults must also do.

Children should be nurtured, cared for and protected in ways that would increase the likelihood that they would become adults who will love rather than hate, who will take responsibility even when others look away, and who will protect the vulnerable against agents of destruction. Children should be nurtured as miracles of life, so that they can become adults who will maintain and protect life, and all that is good.

Finally, it is also important that children should be made aware, in a reasonable manner and at the appropriate time, of the possibility that they, too, might have to endure disappointment, pain and suffering. It will also not be inappropriate to teach them that death is inevitable; that it is the fate of all forms of life to reach the end of a physical existence.

However, it must always be emphasised that, although all forms of life reach an end, there is a condition that precedes death. Children should be taught that this state of LIFE should be cherished, greatly appreciated, and supported to the last breath.

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