A letter to my younger self

Let me pose two questions to you: Right now if you were to write a letter to your 18 year old self, what would you say about life and what you have learned? What advice would you give yourself?

Dear Moloko,

You have just started out at Monash University South Africa and once again you are in a new environment feeling nervous and excited all at once. You have no idea what’s in store for you but you embrace it in the best way possible. But let me take you back to when you were younger growing up in Botswana. While growing up you sometimes felt that you were automatically put in a position where you had to be alone seeing as you grew up with two boys. You often played with your dolls and spoke to them as if they were mortal friends. Sometimes either mum or dad would join you during your Barbie doll tea parties but mostly you were alone and while it may have sometimes been an unpleasant feeling then, guess what, you are now your own best friend – you love your own company, you love eating alone at restaurants and your favourite pastime is going to catch a movie all on your own. You now realize that once you learn how to be your own best friend, then you are NEVER alone. You realize that in order the venture into unknown terrains and dive into greater adventures, you will have to face them alone, so now….now you do not mind being alone, infact you look forward those moments. For you also know that one who travels alone travels fastest.

You daydream more often than you would like to admit. You daydream about a beautiful world, travelling across oceans and experiencing new cultures. You daydream about adventure and often visualise your goals and dreams. You spend so much time daydreaming that your imaginary world actually feels real to you. Well guess what, it is real. You will get the chance to travel the world and meet amazing, encouragement and enlightening people. You will travel across borders quite often and realize a marvellous world still awaits you even though you’ve travelled to almost all continents. At 29 years old you will still have a burning desire to just travel, travel and do more travelling. You will constantly be curious about the world.

You are like any other girl who dreams of having a family one day – those are actually one of the things you daydream about. At 29 years old that will not have happened yet, but guess what, you’ll realize that you put too much emphasis on things that you cannot control. In matters such as these, just let go and let God – God’s timing is always perfect. You will learn to love yourself, appreciate those who love you and encourage those who need to be encouraged. In your journey for continuous improvement you will realise that love can be many things, but one thing that it is not is what some humans have deemed it to be – a shallow, conditional feeling which when given ought to be received. Take careful note when I say to you “love frees you, it is liberating, it is not selfish and it is certainly not flaky.”

People will come into your life for different reasons. Some will last a lifetime and others will wither away like the last leaf drop before winter. Let them be who they are meant to be in your life and let them do what they are meant to do. Hold on to the lifetime friends and don’t chase after the ones that break out of your life. However, treat all humans with the same respect as you would show yourself.

Listen to your parents. Your parents have been where you are and even at 29 years old, they have been where you will be right now (if that makes sense). Spend as much time as possible with your mother for she is exemplary in defining the kind of woman you would want to be both personally and professionally. Spend as much time is possible with your father for he was exemplary in portraying how a man should treat a woman, the things that matter most in your significant partner (things that money will never be able to buy), and he also defined the true meaning of a man of quality. His approval will also help you in defining the kind of man whom you will adore, not worship…but adore and support.

Read this letter and ponder upon it but not too hard because you still have a life to live. You will be okay. More than okay.

Love you most,

Moloko at 29

A letter to a higher power...

Dear God,

Thank you!! I know that many people would say that I deserve all the blessings that have come to me lately, but it is all through you that I can even talk about them. I am truly grateful and in awe of your power, but I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t tell you the other side of my feelings – I AM SCARED. I know you know my heart’s desires and I know you have already planned my life but I am anxious about this unfamiliar territory that you are putting me in. You are throwing me out of my comfort zone into another terrifying zone, you are throwing me into a place where they follow another language, they speak a different rhythm and they dance to a different culture – do you feel me? It doesn’t even make sense to me for I have never dared to explore such terrains.

But I realised that you intend to make me feel uncomfortable in order for me to grow. You intend to show your power by allowing me to realize that I cannot control what you have set in motion. You intend to make me realize that unfamiliar territory soon becomes my comfort zone only if I dare to venture into it. You intend to say “do not become comfortable if you want to grow, succeed and flourish. You say to me “do not fear my child, for I already know you and your life.” And I respond “Dear God, guide my steps and guard my soul for I only rely on your mercy and my faith.” I want to thank you God - thank you for my life, for my fortunes, for my health, for my ability to have faith in you, for my……unknown future, thank you. As humans we yearn to plan our lives with such precision that we forget to live, we yearn to have control over our time that we constantly look at our watches and clocks. We forget what is really important in the world. Most importantly we forget to just say thank you….Thank you.

For one of your beloved children.

Words of a younger sister

I have always wondered when I’d be brave enough to write this without feeling the same kind of pain that I felt, so at last here it is. Think back to December 2003, I had just completed my first year at Monash University and was back home for the Christmas holidays. We were all eagerly waiting for my brother Kagiso who was driving down from Johannesburg with relatives. We hadn’t seen him for a year as he was studying in Australia and so we were waiting with so much excitement and waiting to hear about his adventures in the land down under. For some reason -  and I will never ever understand how my mother just had that intuition – my mother kept saying that she is quite worried about Kagiso driving in the evening and she just felt that she would be unsettled until he arrived home. My mother never lets such negative thoughts cloud her mind but that day was different for she kept on repeating her fears about the entire journey. And to make matters worse, she had a dinner that evening and so she didn’t really want to go but we all convinced her that all was well and she should go and enjoy herself. But she was right. While I thought she was being irrational, she was absolutely right. That evening my brother never arrived home.

The phone rings and it’s my mother. She tells the family that my brother was involved in a very unusual accident about an hour from the South Africa / Botswana border – a young female kudu had jumped through the windshield and the hit my brother directly in the head. I know that sounds bizarre but along that Zeerust road it is more common than we think and usually people who get into such accidents where a kudu is involved never survive. I didn’t want to think the worst about the situation and I didn’t want to think about the severity of it all so I simply blocked it out of my mind…..I blocked it out of my mind until I was told that my brother’s heart had stopped twice while he was being flown by paramedics from Zeerust to Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg….I blocked it out of my mind until I heard that he had suffered severe head injuries…I blocked it out of my mind until I saw him lying helplessly in the hospital, in a coma, plugged to a life support machine…I blocked it out of my mind until I heard that he may not wake up from that coma and if he does he may be brain dead. Doctors had nothing positive to say but told us they’ll do everything possible, medical insurance was told to cover my brother for just a week because nobody thought he would survive beyond that week. I saw him there, his body was perfect but his head was swollen and bloody.

We were told so many things that nobody ever wants to hear about a loved one:

"His skull is crushed"

"One of his eyes is missing"

"He has a blood clot in his brain which may or may not dissolve but we cannot operate on it because it’s in an area that is too sensitive, it’s too risky"

"He’s too weak to breathe on his own"

"He may not be able to walk again"

"He may not wake up"

"Let’s take it one day at a time"

About eight different doctors were working on my brother, working around the clock. I found myself negotiating with God. Negotiating in the form of a prayer and it went “Dear God, please spare my brother, please do not take him because we still need him. I still need him. I know us mortals shouldn’t question your plan but this very one is hard to even fathom”. Unlike the pain that I felt when my father passed away, this pain was inexplicable simply because you do envision your future without your parents as that is the natural order of life – we live and ultimately we die and leave our loved ones behind – but I always envisioned my brothers in my future so the fact that I suddenly had to shift my mind to the possibility that life may not happen the way I had always thought it would was something truly hard to come to terms with and quite honestly I refused to come to terms with it, it was too hard to even think about. My emotions were hanging on a threat that any sort of disruption set me off. Even though the nurses kept telling us to speak to him because chances are he could hear us, I couldn’t say sentences without my voice getting shaky, I could say much to him without tears rolling down my cheeks. I just couldn’t say much.

When I say miracles happen it is only because I have seen them happen. My brother underwent about three  or four operations and beat the odds – he woke up, he was not brain dead, even though he was weak at first he could walk nonetheless. Even the doctors were stunned – one doctor even said “I may be atheist but this is the working of a higher power because I can’t truly explain this.” In three months my brother was out of hospital and back home…three months….this is a man who nobody thought would survive…this was a man who even experienced doctors had told us that there’s little chance of survival…yet in a month he was out of ICU and in three months he was out of hospital.

Dear God, Thank you…..

…..For a man

Interesting title huh? Well this post is actually geared towards feminism. A few months back I had a very interesting conversation with one of my family friends. While I told her that I wanted to further my education to do a doctoral degree, she immediately said without hesitation “Don’t become too educated because if you become too smart men will be scared of you and won’t approach you”. I was stunned by that statement because I found it rather strange, shocking and confusing but mostly bizarre. The word mind boggling even comes to mind when I think about that comment. However I did realize her statement was not far from the truth though. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said it perfectly when she said: “We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller, we say to girls "You can have ambition but not too much, you should aim to be successful but not too successful otherwise you will threaten the man". Hmmm all so true, these words ring so true. It is amazing but above all tragic that society literally insists that young girls and women aspire for marriage above everything else, to a point that they are often told to “dumb themselves down” in order to be approached by a man.

I was fortunate enough to be raised by an EXTREMELY strong and powerful man who often pushed me beyond my limits because he believed I was always capable of much more. My parents never for a moment uttered the words “My daughter, if you continue wanting to achieve so much men will be too intimidated by you”. Instead my father uttered the words “Never accept anything less for the man who truly loves you will allow you to flourish, won’t be intimidated by you and will have enough strength and maturity to encourage you. And if you come across someone quite the opposite along the way, let them go. The heartache that you’ll get over with time is far much better than sacrificing your dreams your entire life”. These are words that I carry with me in my daily life, and sometimes when I find myself in a whirlpool of confusion I say “what would my father say I wonder?” – that was truly a wise man. Heaven bless him for his life lessons.

Back to my point though ladies - please do not dumb yourselves down or stop dreaming big just to keep a man (I’ve seen this happen so many times, oh my). I wouldn’t even truly call that a relationship because that is just plain dysfunction to say the least.  I would like to think that if someone truly and wholly cares about you, then they would want to see you flourish and do well in whatever you decide to do – Not a partner who thinks “flourish, just as long as it’s not better than me”. But amazingly enough there are quite a few men out there who think that way, a greater number than I’d actually like to admit.

There is a very fine line here however - I have also seen ladies who treat their men with very little respect simply because they define themselves as those Independent Women. Being an independent woman is exactly that in every sense of the word – it means that you can hold / carry your own and stand on your own feet but it should not in any way determine how you treat a man. I think many of us women have that concept twisted, be an independent woman yes, but also be human. BE HUMAN, not super woman. I personally strive to be great and independent however I would also love to find a man who will be strong enough to carry me and catch me when I fall. It’s really that simple ladies – A man who will be emotionally and mentally strong enough to lead and to catch me when I fall.

Our time is not ours

I am not one to do a movie review so I won’t even attempt to but I have to talk about the Best Man Holiday and one of the most important lessons that I got from the movie. FINALLY…FINALLY the Best Man Holiday is out in Africa and I quite literally felt the entire continent celebrating with me this weekend. *insert excited smiley here*

To avoid being a spoiler for those that have not watched the movie, I will be extremely vague and not reveal too much of the movie, but enough to get my point across. I loved the Best Man and so to see the entire cast back again for the sequel got me even more excited. They have all matured in their respective acting careers and it shows during the course of the movie. There was a point during the movie where an unexpected turn was revealed and it is that moment that I would like to talk about. Often enough us humans live life on earth as if we have full control our time on earth. We don’t take enough risks and we often just merely survive, often thinking “I will do it another day”, yet that day may never come (dare I say it). That part of the movie hit hard because it made me think of life in general and how uncertain it can be. It is often unnerving to think just uncertain our lives are and yet we do not take full advantage of the world while we are still in it. It is almost like we are too scared to go out there and explore this breath-taking planet because we think “it is too risky, what if something happens to me”. It’s ironic isn’t it, that the fear of death can actually stop us from living life to the fullest – what a catch 22 that is.

And so I would like to expand on that point a little bit more. I have always taken time out to think deeply about such wonders and have lived life according to a certain philosophy. Many may not fully agree with me on this but these are just a few points that I think us humans should take into consideration:

1. Live life to the fullest, and when I say to the fullest I mean if given the opportunity to travel the world, take it – even if it is just for holiday. Go to the places that you never thought you’d ever go to. It’s through exposure beyond my country’s borders that I learned to see the world as if I were still a young innocent toddler – exposure constantly renews my faith in humanity and re-enforces my optimistic view of the world.
2. Take time out to appreciate your surroundings and the people around you – they always have something to offer.
3. Family is EVERYTHING in the world. Always put them first before careers and everything else.
4. Some people are meant to be in your life for a season and some for a lifetime. Each person serves a purpose in your life, to teach you something that you would have never known had you not met them. Do not confuse the two though – do not allow a seasonal person to become a lifetime person. It often has catastrophic results and it is a waste of your precious time.
5. Forgive anyone who has ever hurt you for if you do not forgive them you are only doing an injustice to yourself. Forgiveness is often viewed as weakness, but it is truly the greatest of strengths.
6. Love one another. Treat one another the way you would want to be treated. Apologize if you have done wrong. 

Many of you may take the time to think about what I wrote above and many may not, but I will say this to you and perhaps it will trigger something - Our time on earth is not ours…..Our time is not ours…..but God’s. I’ll leave you with that ladies and gentlemen.

When greatness is thrust upon you

I recently experienced quite a significant shift in my life over the past few months, moreso over the past few days actually. I had the opportunity to fly to Germany for a 2 day business trip which enabled me to solidify a career abroad, meet the people that I’ll be working with and interact with some of the corporate executives. My title rings true in this case simply because indeed this great opportunity was thrust upon on me. One of our senior managers just happened to believe that I have what it takes to be able to make a smooth transition to Germany and flourish in that environment. Going to Germany is quite an important move and a HUGE deal in my world and company and so the fact that this man thought me capable lit a spark in me. It is amazing how when you think you’ve reached a cross road, someone lights a candle and shows you a path that you never dreamed of walking down. It is encouraging, but most of all this senior manager gave me a renewed sense of motivation and the courage to know that anything truly is actually possible. I have always believed that God puts certain people in your life at certain points of your life – guardian angels if you will - just to remind you that he is still the almighty God, and for me that person is this very manager. It also occurred to me that when greatness is thrust upon you it then gives you courage to achieve greatness going forward and so when people say that “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them” they aren’t necessarily referring to three different types people for sometimes those who achieve greatness need to have it thrust upon them in order to even realize it.

This is an exciting opportunity and after my brief trip to Germany I’m more at ease about my decision to move there. It is also nerve wrecking and anxiety is a constant feeling for now. My heart is outside of my body I’m so scared, but with every great result that is desired an equally great risk must be taken and I may not know where life takes me or even how long I have on this earth, but for the time that I have in the world, breathing the same air as my neighbour I shall become the greatest that I can be. I do not even know where this opportunity will take me but I do know that it is bound to be some place good. I have always believed that everything that is difficult or requires hard work in life is surely worth it and I apply that principle to every aspect of my life whether it be my career or personal relationships.

So in a nutshell, if anybody ever has an opportunity to step outside of their comfort zone, DO IT. It is only when we are outside of our own comfort that we see the world for what it is and the beauty that it holds - the way God intended us to see it. There is also no greater feeling than being able to look fear in the eye and overcome it - it is liberating.