Am I too sensitive for this crazy world?

 

The violence...

 

My cousin's cousin in South Africa, William Nunes got into some sort of fight in a club and someone smashed a broken glass into his face. His mom got a call at 3 a.m. in the morning and he had to be rushed to the hospital for stitches etc.

 

The commercialism...

 

Every day on the TV, sell, sell, sell is pumped through the air. Holland being liberated has sex phone lines and call girls for sale on the TV. It is so in your face. No hiding from reality here. The point that it brings home very strongly for me is the fact that it seems to me that many people would sell

their own mothers perhaps for far, far less then a million bucks (he, he). When I look into the world of commercialism, I feel I have I have no place there, I just do not belong, I have no stomach for this Dog Eat Dog world.

 

Hope...

 

I have found trust in the strangest places in this world. I ordered some tea from a company here in Holland. They sent it to me but I had not paid yet. When I got the tea I got the invoice and I paid it. I guess people who buy tea by mail order are not the kind of people who do not pay?

 

Coping...

 

I am not one for advising sticking your head in the sand; I have always wanted to know the truth. Know what is real. Yet, with the knowledge from the tree, with the ability of being able to pull my head out of the sand and looking around comes a heavy price. It weighs me down, pushing, pushing, until my head sinks back towards the hole in the sand.

 

For me the only way to cope with living in South Africa was to live in delusion, creating little bubbles, little worlds of my own creation just so I could get through the day. Living my life in a normal way. What I think normal should be. Adjusting my ways to maintain my illusion...

 

"It will never happen to me",

"I don't watch the news it just brings you down",

"I don't drive certain roads or areas",

"Exclusive shopping, Exclusive clubs and Exclusive social lives"

 

Many people I know live this way, including me, but every now and then reality would check it. My illusion is broken with the blood and pain of the people I know and love. And then for a moment I would have to face the truth of the anarchy that prevails in SA, and the world.

 

The bubbles we live in, the sense of a normal life we construct for ourselves is critically important for our survival, sanity and way of life. It is what gets us through the day. But what I have never forgotten is that it is an illusion. Life is not normal. The world is a chaotic land full of predators and angels in disguise and I am not OK, I am very far from OK. Perhaps I will be a peace with they way the world is.

 

So what do I do? So what do we do in this world where pain is at your fingertips. Where mass media brings the world into your home and your hearts.

What do we do? I have no idea. What I do know is that my naïve believe in governments being the answer is being shattered. I thought that is why I pay

taxes, to support the government and the 'civilised way' of life. I expect the police force and education department to bring justice and equality to the land. But this belief system has failed me dismally.

 

So what do I do? What do I do when my hard earned tax goes into some politician's pocket instead of the education of a poor black child? Do I take up

arms? Do I get involved often at the risk of my own life? Do I leave for greener pastures? Do I put my head back into the hole in the sand? I don't know. I just don't know.

 

Perhaps it is just me, perhaps I am too sensitive for this world. Sometimes I wish for numbness, sometimes for ignorance... Sometimes I think of just packing it up moving to a small town in Alaska. Leaving behind this fast paced world behind in exchange for a simple life. Could I actually go through with it? I do not know. City life is so much a part of me, entwined in my makeup. It might be like separating the blood from my veins? Could I sustain separation from it? Could I survive the daily routine of a simple life. Could my need for entertainment and stimulation bare the isolation?

 

And I am still left with the question. So what do I do? I have no answers and have only to four more things to say to you...

 

1) Don't forget to check in with reality from time to time.

2) Focus on the proliferation of good.

3) There must be another way, a better way.

4) Pray for rain.