Tladi Mothwana

This space is merely a canvas, your opinions and introspection create the artwork. There is no memo for this Life thing, so keep a note pad close by, sketch it as it starts to make sense, and as you make sense 

[tladimothwana]

A Memory...

Have you ever lived in a shack? Have you ever set foot on the sandy carpet of a shack where they can’t afford to get cold cement put in? Here is the funnier part, have you ever been too poor to own that type of shack? Have you and your family ever had to place black disposable bags over that sandy carpet floor, all four of you, sleeping on that in a make shift living room where strangers had taken pity on you because you had nowhere to go. Have you ever had to sleep next to a rusty punctured bin burning with coal because the body heat of four bodies was not enough to keep winter from penetrating the metal? Many a times I watched my mom wash our uniform and hang it outside overnight, only to take it down in the morning after we have had our meal from the paraffin stove, so that the paraffin smell won’t cling to us, so that the scent of poverty won’t escape from our colours blazer in our model C schools. What’s scariest is that I never, not once did I see my mother cry. Everyday she burned the imboula and every day she washed our clothes late at night long after the candles were out that marked our homework, and every day she went to work and disguised the poverty as hard labour.

[tladimothwana]

The Never Ending Spring

1. Life is a seasonal experience. Equipt yourself with the appropriate company for each season. 2. You are a seed, constantly growing. And with each season your needs for nourishment will change. 3. As a seed, you NEED water to grow, but weigh that up with the importance of sunlight in your cold winter 4. In the winter of life, arm yourself with sun: warmth to fuel passion, and light to photosynthesy. Photosynthesy to keep you as the grass greener on the inside despite the barren fields that surround you. 5. In the summer, remember the rain. The warmth in your roots eventually causes dry cracks in your soil. Hydrate. 6. Let it rain in your summer. The gloom of an overcast sky, is the quench of a dire thirst. 7. In the Autumn of your life, remember that the leaves you shed -though it hurts and leaves you bare, provide compost for your roots. 8. In autumn, it's not what you surround yourself with, it's the decay of your fallen leaves that nourish you for the next season. So let go, strip down to necessity, let fall. 9. Spring. The beautiful rebirth. What you surrounded yourself with, what you shed, what fed you and watered you, combusts into to a new you, beginning 10. Spring: "And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud, was more painful than the risk it took to bloom" -Anais Nin

[tladimothwana]

The Juxtaposition of Hope

Existence in itself is a sick game. You are born with no say to whom, to what circumstances or when. For the first few years you live off the hope of your parents. They hope you can play sport,they hope you’ll be a clever baby and some day an adult. They hope all sorts of things for you and act on it. Even before you are born, they are hoping, hoping that you’re a girl or boy. You are surrounded, preceded, and grown by hope.

And then you grow your own hope. You hope to pass, you hope to do well, to be rich, in fact you hope on the hope of your parents, your spouse, your family and friends. Sometimes you materialize the hopes of those around you just to be considered a good person. Existence is hope. Every second of your life, you are hoping. You wake up early because you hope to get to work on time. You study because you hope to pass. You prepare so hard to materialize your hope. Everything you do is an effort to secure a better variation of hope. You pray so you can have faith that things will happen, you prepare, research or study so that you can know that things will happen. And being able to say, “I know” and “I have faith”, sounds much better than saying I hope. It’s consoling.

But what happens when hope turns against you, when despite implicit faith and the certainty of knowledge, things don’t happen. There are times when faith and belief toy with your knowledge so much you become angry at God.And your mind can no longer make sense of all that is happening in your life.

Truth is, there exists a rock bottom, and you will hit this place several times in your life. You will discover that rock bottom has a lower basement, and the lower basement is made of quick sand. With each visit to rock bottom, you will discover a new strength, but with each trip a new strength tested. You will fail despite hope, but you will rise from rock bottom despite it too.

Personally, hope has scared me into darkness and non-belief many times, often left me questioning even the things I do know. I think you’d be a fool not to fear hope, but perhaps an even bigger fool not to have it. Because even in the moments when you will God to take your life because you just can’t take it anymore, there’s a dual hope to survive and for it all to end. And maybe sometimes it’s scarier to hope to make it out a situation than to know you can’t.

If you had all you hoped for, would it stop you from hoping? If you had hoped for money, even though you could afford the best medical care in the world, would you not hope for good health.

You never stop hoping, it’s involuntary, it’s perpetual and irrelevant to circumstance, reality, faith and knowledge. At the atom of existence is hope. Your life is based on the preparation for when hope materializes, YOU ARE in essence, HOPE.