This content is brought to you by Brightrock, provider of the first-ever life insurance that changes as your life changes.
Life isn’t either good or bad. It’s both good and bad, and you’ll be able to cope a lot better with the ups and downs if you see them as part of the same continuum of change. Kagiso Msimango shares the childhood experience that taught her the lesson for better and worse.Â
by Kagiso Msimango*
Apparently a great source of our discontent is our belief in good or bad, when in fact everything is good and bad. We insist on seeing only one side at a time. For example, you hate being employed and you are ready to be your own boss.
There are hundreds of reasons why being a corporate slave sucks, and a trillion fabulous benefits of self-employment. You take the leap into self-employment and upon landing you discover there is no IT support, no free stationery, and ink cartridges cost the same as some countries’ GDP.
You discover that you are not your own boss; your clients are your bosses. This means you’ve just traded one boss for one hundred. Now you are miserable again because there are hundreds of ways self-employment sucks and a trillion fabulous benefits of working for a big corporation.
If you had acknowledged that there is an equal amount of good and bad in working for someone else, and an equal amount of good and bad in working for yourself, or getting married, or having kids, or emigrating, or owning your own home…and you simply chose a new experience without romanticising what you want, while demonising what you have, you’d always be content with whatever situation.
This is extremely easy to grasp intellectually, but not so much when you are in a situation you perceive as bad (being retrenched) or good (first week of a love affair). A great way to get an experiential appreciation of this concept is being in charge of toddlers.
When toddlers are quietly out of sight, it is good and it is bad. You have some quiet time to yourself, by yourself, and some peace of mind, until you realise that you have some quiet time to yourself, by yourself.
“Where are the damn kids?” the chilly sense of foreboding twisting in your stomach demands. Of course you already know the answer. They are being suicidal or homicidal, wherever they may be.
Once, when my sister and my cousin were around four years old, our live-in nanny also had her young niece over for the weekend. They had been causing a racket most of the time, as expected.
Around 7pm, my grandmother wondered why she was watching the news peacefully, when she had an instant realisation that the kids were not to be seen or heard. She sent me to investigate. I found them in the pantry.
There was a rudimentary ladder built with buckets and tins, which had been used to retrieve an insecticide called Blue Death from the top shelf of a cabinet. The poison was currently being fed, by my sister, to the other two. Panic ensued.
After my grandma got off the phone with our GP, who was conveniently our next-door neighbour, she proceeded to give the kids enemas. Yes, my gran had what according to Google is called an enimator, but we grew up calling it a spuit. She herded all three into the bathroom and proceeded to evacuate their bowels.
My sister, last in line, had the unfortunate opportunity of witnessing previews of her fate. When her turn came she tried to make a run for it, but they were locked in, so all she could do was scramble around trying to beat my gran off. Finally she hollered, “But I didn’t have any!” Without missing a beat my grandmother replied: “Then YOU I am spuiting because you are a witch!”
I think my grandmother successfully irrigated the witch out of my sister that day, because she is now one of the least homicidal people I know.
* Kagiso Msimango is passionate about the personal development of women. Since starting The Goddess Academy in 2006 she has been supporting and inspiring women to create lives filled with pleasure, passion and purpose. She has two daughters, whom she fondly refers to as her “things” whenever she writes about them.
** This article first appeared on the Change Exchange, an online platform by BrightRock, provider of the first-ever life insurance that changes as your life changes.
