US = Good Medicine.

Here's a little nugget of gold about yours truly:

I'm super-concerned about what other people think of me and it kills me to admit it.  I want to be liked by everyone.  I hide it pretty well (we all hide our little crazies) but when it gets right down to it I'm a real pleaser.  I've improved over the years but I still hate the idea that anyone might walk around with ill feelings for me or (worse) that someone out there (gasp) maybe doesn't like me.  That I've been judged and found too light.  That I don't live up to other people's expectations.  (You have to remember we are talking about deep subconscious stuff here people, just stick with me.) 

On top of that I want to be successful at everything I do, and if for a second I believe that for some reason I might not be really excellent I will rather stop than fail.  Pretty limiting attitude, how many things I could have done in my life if I had managed to get over this fear earlier in my life!  The combination of these two things sometimes makes me feel like I live in a box.  I am forever playing by other people's rules.

But life is a real trickster.  The universe is forever conspiring to rid me of this fear of judgement and obsession with perfection by giving me big desires that I find irresistable, except for the fact that in order to accomplish them I need to not give a damn about anyone else and believe that whatever I have is enough. 

Here are a couple of examples of my work:

1. Acting.  This is all I wanted to do for years and years and years.  I seemed to be pretty successful at it too and it served as a type of outlet that kept me sane through my own younger days.  Then I went to drama school and people shot so many holes in my performance that I pretty much stopped believing that I would ever be the best and so I stopped performing altogether.  It didn't happen immediately, and once again, it wasn't a conscious decision.  I kind of limped from audition to audition for a year or three but couldn't really find the joy in it anymore.  I stopped.

1. However, not long afterwards I ran off to be initiated as a Sangoma!  I might as well have given everyone else live ammo and gone and stood against a wall.  Bone readings?  How do you measure a bone reading?  How do you know if it has been successful or not?  I enjoy doing them so much, I find it deeply satisfying, but people literally have to trip me up to get me to sit down and do one for them.  What if I'm wrong??  What if everything that I say is just utter nonsense and the person's face starts wrinkling and... what if they laughed at what I said???  This has never happened, not even close, but bone readings by nature are unpredictable, as are people, and the combination is quite overwhelming to me on a bad day.  I have to really focus and speak soft words of wisdom to myself in order to let it go.

1. Then there are relationships.  (As I said, the world conspires.)  Inevitably I attract partners that have  exactly the same issues I do and when I finally realise it I am devastated, disappointed and shoot holes in their work because that is what was done to me.  I become judgemental, speak down even, deeply frustrated by the fact that they cannot see the error of their ways and stop caring what others think in a heartbeat.  If they can just fix this one thing, everything will fall into place and they will live a life of integrity and strength of conviction.  Don't they know that that is really what people respond to- integrity to your own being, in spite of everything. 

Relationships have been such a great source of healing for me in my life.  They are always there to help show our bones, to serve as a mirror first of our own excruciating beauty and then to show us the ugly monster that lurks beneath.

Today it feels like if I could change this one thing about myself, if I could truly live without worrying about what my family or friends thought of my actions, that would be freedom in my book.  If I could realise deep, deep inside of me that I am essential to everything around me, that I am part of it, that I am it, and that I am not, that I deserved all the goodness in the world and that it would be ok for me to be even great if I wanted to be, I would be ok.

Being in the US is giving me a tiny bit of this freedom at the moment. Here you can stand out and not worry. No one cares if I'm wearing skanky clothes or singing karaoke.  They are all just faces in my crowd that will disappear tomorrow or the next day and forget all about me.  I don't influence their lives.  Besides for that I am so bland when I'm in a crowd of Americans, if anyone is going to be judged it aint gonna be me!  Americans are all born performers, all of them seem to live like they are the be all and end all, and this in itself is a great example and medicine for me.  It means that I am allowed to do the same.

Have you ever watched a show called "The King of Queens"?  It's a sitcom about a delivery guy and his wife, living in Queens NY.  Personally I've always thought it's a bit far fetched.  A delivery guy could NEVER live in a house that size, or have such  great self esteem.  Let's face it, the man's a delivery guy, it's not like he's found his calling in life, right?  Well here's the clincher.  People in the US don't seem to have this obsession that South Africans do, the one that says that you have to find that thing that you were born to do.  If you are a delivery guy you can make good money and be very proud of your job.  Bus drivers are super cool people and proud of their professions.  Ofcourse there's the crowd that wants to get to the top of the heap, go to Harvard etc, I'm not denying that.  What I'm talking about is an unspoken understanding in the lower and middle class that they are good enough, no matter what.  Maybe its not that South Africans are told that they're not good enough, but rather that they are and that they should make sure to let the world know about it!  Let's face it, we're talking about a country where the white people made a big point of continuously proving for years and years and years that they were better than everybody else, and that's the way we grew up.

I have spoken to a couple of South Africans whilst I've been here and all of them nod knowingly when I broach the topic.  A good example is my cousin Jana.  When I spoke to her about this she admitted that she would never have felt comfortable being a manager at a restaurant in South Africa.  It would feel like she had failed somehow.  She was always the budding artist in the family and it feels to her like the fact that she doesn't do art full-time and make a living out of it woud have been cause for judgement.  In the States no one cares if Jana is a full-time artist or not.  She works at the restaurant during the week and paints over weekends.  Her whole flat is covered in the most beautiful artworks you could possibly imagine.  She has never had an exhibition and doesn't have any plans to change that status in the future.  She just enjoys painting and drawing so that's what she does.

John F Demartini is a well known speaker from Texas.  He says that whenever he gets up infront of an audience he knows for certain that by the end of his talk half of the people will like what he has to say and the other half won't.  That's balance for you.  That's the way the world works.  It's  preposterous to try and be liked by everyone, in fact it's a complete impossibility.  The world balances itself out continuously and as I'm part of it so do I it seems. 

The idea of going back to SA is starting to niggle in the back of my head.  Who will I have become by the time I go back?  Will I be able to (or want to) revert back to who I was before?  Is there anything left for me in Cape Town, and if not, is there anywhere else in SA that I really want to be?  I miss my friends and I love my country, make no mistake.  I am the most grateful South African you will ever encounter.  It's just that right now this feels like opportunity, and it feels pretty goood.

I immerse myself in every bit of freedom that I find:
Bring on Burning Man. 
Bring on more travel. 
Give me adventure and unpredictability! 

Kick me back into existence Universe, let's play a little game.