How good is it to have clearly-defined and healthy boundaries?
I have a colleague friend whom I have texted privately on occasion, sometimes my friend would reply and sometimes not. But would always speak to me on our work Skype accounts.
Yesterday I was ill in bed and not logged into my work account. I whatsapped to say I am sick and cold and maybe I will play candy crush on my mobile.
My friend replied with a somewhat terse, “please do not whatsapp, keep it to Skype only”.
At first I was taken aback and felt a bit shocked inside.
And then I thought, well, it is good to know that person’s boundaries. I can then respect those boundaries. Much better than ghosting me. Actually more respectful too. I hadn’t figured that we could quite openly communicate on one communication device and not on another.
The past few months I have been participating in my local toastmasters club. I wonder if any readers have participated before, and what their thoughts might be?
Last night I presented my third speech. It was meant to be a prepared speech, but I was standing in for someone so pretty much spoke off the cuff.
The club president had a word of praise for me. He said that I have a ‘genuine story-telling talent’. I am not able to express how much this means to me.
I have always been introverted, overlooked for many things in my daily life, have a small circle of friends. But when I look back, there has always been a desire to speak in front of people. To speak into a microphone. To speak with authority.
Someone last week mentioned that a far as public speaking goes, I need to push myself. I can either live ten years once, or one year ten times. It is a nice thought. However, I cannot just stand up and speak. It has to come from within. It is the same with poetry. I cannot write a poem. It has to appear in my mind before I can pen it.
These thoughts were echoed in the comment last night. I have a genuine talent. And it’s only a talent I am discovering now.
Yesterday I bought an old favorite of mine, Estée Lauder Beautiful Sheer. Apparently it is being discontinued. I managed to purchase one of the last three bottles in the store.
I wore this scent on a trip to Harare, Zimbabwe a few weeks before I left South Africa. It invokes memories for me. Good and bad and pain on my then soft heart.
But today! I am wearing it again. And I am back in Harare. With my perfume and my children then still babies, and a new future ahead of me.
And my heart is no longer as soft. The years and scars and experiences and feelings have toughened it up.
It was all of eleven years ago when I sat in a Johannesburg office wanting to see the last screening of Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth. I had project commitments that needed to be completed, and so I decided not to go.
This week, I noticed the sequel is being screened at my local cinema. I thought it would be an idea to watch the first one first. And so! Thanks to technology I was able to rent the documentary, and watch it eleven years later.
And this morning I managed to watch the sequel, An Inconvenient Sequel.
Now dear readers! I do not understand how others, as well as leaders (especially leaders) can sit back and deny and / or do nothing. Our planet is crying. Our planet is pleading. Resisting and fighting back.
The sequel included a two-second Donald Trump insert where we can hear him denouncing climate change, and asking why would we waste our time when we have isis to fight. We see him exiting the Paris agreement. We see him facilititating the production of gas, oil and coal. We see him making climate change jokes. Climate change jokes.
All while Greenland and the ice caps melt. All while Cape Town droughts, Sydney sizzles, tornadoes rampage, floods drown, our planet and life as we know it dies.
My late mother, if she were here, would say (in response to Potus) that the mind completely boggles.
The might of nature and the power of the planet is far beyond anything we can comprehend. We are rendered powerless in the event of major catastrophes. The best we can do at times is to flee. And hope and pray for the best.
And yet. And yet. We do nothing. Trump plays golf, devours his two scoops of ice cream, and utters useless threats. Threatens nuclear war.
Many thanks to Al Gore. For being the leader that the world needs. For speaking truth. For standing up for what is right and good and true. For making a change.
Trump has children, he has grandchildren. You would think, any reasonable person would think, he might well want a planet for his offspring to grow up on.
Poems and Petals 