To earn is not to receive, to earn is to become

I am so, so frustrated. The birds are now singing and I've been awake since 12:33. Urrrrggghhhh. Monicca's work on this week's lesson has mysteriously disappeared. So here is the English - the Sotho will follow shortly!!!

To earn is not to receive to earn is to become (Boo)

Go gola ga se go amogela, go gola ke go ba filwe

(To) <Go> (earn) <gola> (is) <ga> (not) <se> (to) <go> (receive) <amogela>, (to) <go> (earn) <gola> (is) <ke> (to) <go> become <ba filwe>

These words have haunted me. They are one piece of a puzzle that had me retracting from my working world because it just didn’t feel like I was becoming.

In the last 13 years, I’ve sometimes felt like I was just receiving, and then had moments where it felt like I was becoming. I have worked with people who were clearly just receiving. I have also worked with people who were definitely becoming. It seems that both these paths are painful for different reasons. Obama, Mandela, Steve Biko are examples of beautiful “becomers”.

Many artists “becoming” has us all dumb founded and paralyzed wondering how they got there, how they did this… but I think its because they have their ears close to the chest of God (what Osho calls “it”) and that they are still writing holy scripts that people thought were complete.

Ingrid Jonker, who I also discovered through Chris Chameleon, has a poem in which she describes her life and her work as a mere grain of sand, and yet, Nelson Mandela quoted her during his inauguration speech. I also once watched a documentary on a black man deeply touched by her words. He had translated one of her poems for the woman whose tragic life it was about. He uncontrollably sobbed as he watched her read it. The memory of this man crying is a work of art, unfolding long after Ingrid’s death and a direct result of her self-proclaimed grain of sand “becoming”.

Thank you to the artists who have influenced my life and my struggle to become, which has been slow and solitary but there very strongly now. And thank you mostly to my little Kesiah – my catalyst. 

This is where the lesson ends, but I want to add...

I'm having a hard time - my shifting causes earthquakes around me in those that I love. Part of me just wants to retract back into my shell and live a solitary, quiet life that makes those I love feel peaceful. 

These poems were written after a therapy session at a time when I was struggling with anxiety. My two fellow Cancerian friends and followers (there's something cultish about that word - it should change) - know most of my full story - so this should not come as a surprise to you... they are poems that feel incredibly significant at 4:08am this morning...

I struggle to tread

Will it leave the same footprints on your soul?

I want you to be free

Of me

And my things

I want you to be free

To love and feel and run without looking back

I want you to dance and dream and play

For you

You sweet angel

No, sorry, little girl

You wonderful wonderfulness

That makes me cry and smile

Just sitting here writing this

You

Why do I burn with this?

Why do my hands shake?

And my insides fall

Why now

The becoming painful without a full become

Why do those that I love create this?

Me

I need silence

I need space

I need health

I need connection

I need freedom

I

Need

I don’t feel like writing this

My head hurts

Is my brain swollen?

Depleting itself with all the drama

Karma

Drama

What an ironic rhyming

Is this yuppie wondering?

Do the peeps in the kitchen in front of me have the same stuff?

Buff

Off the fucken cuff

Irritating stuff

Blah de blah de blah

Enough

Seriously was a poet

And didn’t know it