sometimes…

 

Sometimes, like at the beginning of the year when every post you see talks about new year’s resolutions and how to achieve them or stick to them or make them and how important new beginnings are and you just don’t feel like quite like committing to them yet, because … because …you haven’t quite formulated them properly and you don’t wanna set yourself up, knowing that in a few weeks they’ll probably have floated away like the incessant smoke raging from fire after fire around our beautiful Cape Town, it’s better to wait until you’re ready.

Sometimes you’re never ready.

Sometimes it’s because other people seem to be doing such extraordinarily significant things that your little mission seems so entirely inconsequential in terms of human impact and Life’s greater purpose: this utilitarian approach to life is of course only one way of looking at it all.

Sometimes most of your underwear gets mixed up in the hot wash and all turns a uniform grey.

Sometimes you’ll be casually stopping at a stop street and a little family sitting on the kerb in the hot sun will ask you for a lift and you’ll pile them in and ask why the little boy isn’t at school and whether his baby sister wants a tissue for her snotty nose and it’ll be because there’s no money for school shoes and when you drop them off, even though it’s a random act of kindness, you don’t feel any better.

Sometimes you’ll read your daily horoscope and truly believe it was especially written for you.

Sometimes the same person you wake up with very morning and sleep next to every night looks like a guy who, if you saw walking in a shopping center, would make your head turn.

Sometimes you feel like you will spend your whole life looking for answers: that’s not necessarily a bad thing but it’s often a good idea to just pick up a great book to help you find them.

 

Sometimes it’s better not to think of what you’re going to do in the next instant and just tighten the laces on your running shoes.

Sometimes when your child passes you in the kitchen, you should just hug them hard without saying anything.

Sometimes, good selfishness grows out of an accurate understanding of what we need in order to maximise our utility for others. It stems from an unembarrassed sense of how we should develop our abilities, get our minds into the right frame, summon up our most useful powers and organize our thoughts and feelings so that they can be eventually helpful to the world.

(I wish I could say this is my own wisdom but it comes from a wonderful place of inspiration, http://www.thebookoflife.org/.)

Sometimes when someone takes your parking place which, with your indicator blinking on off on off, you were patiently eyeing, just find another one.

Sometimes you are taken by surprise when you look in the mirror and that face is not the one that was there the day before.

Sometimes, a lack of selfishness turns us, slowly, into highly disagreeable as well as ineffective people. This is also what the book of life tells us and I think it’s so wonderful that I’m going to include a longer excerpt here:

We recognise that we will at select moments have to back out of doing things that people would like us to – and have no compunction about politely explaining this in good time; unlike the selfless who will dutifully smile, then one day explode in vindictive exhausted rage. We know, as kind egoists, that we may be confused with the mean-spirited, but our innate conviction of our sincerity lends us the calm to pursue our aims in our own way.

The trick is to become better ambassadors of our intentions, learning persuasively to convey to those around us that we’re not lazy or callous but will simply better serve their needs by not doing the expected things for a while. Sweet people run the strange – but highly important – risk of becoming a nuisance to others by what is only ever superficially a good idea: never putting themselves first.

Sometimes, you can live being a ‘sweet people’ for just so long.

Sometimes you spend your days teaching your children how to go about life until you realize that, often, they are the better teacher.

Sometimes all you may need in 2017 are moments of …sometimes…

HAPPY 2017 to you all !