Socien's Blog

I hit the screen unlock button only to find these words above, deposited on the lock screen, fired through the notification tunnel by some app I never open. “Maya Angelou,” I mumbled to myself: “What is she doing now? Trying to change the mindset of the hunter? Hoping that his desperation can end?”

Her words found me just after I had written my first rule of the streets: “Do not leave your pockets empty.” Anticipating some cash from the patriarchs to pay the rent and buy food, I used the remaining $30 from my salary ($54) to buy myself a new phone for the calls (Oppo R7 plus, 2016). I was thinking that after a 30-minute wait, my Patriarch would arrive and give me the cash I had been waiting for and go home and pay the rent and feed my tiny self.

This didn’t happen!

A dollar had magically appeared in my pockets. I was thinking that my migration back home was now possible. Just sleeping on an empty tummy was another possibility lingering on the horizon. Like a wounded and isolated lion, I walked in solitary weaving my way through the crowds in the streets of our concrete jungle. If these people were to see the horrors that I was going through in my hunting grounds they would have come to a standstill and offered a minute of silence to my ability to withstand them all.

“I am quitting the job,” yes!,” I sighed. “I am quitting the plans I had when I joined the job, no!” The evidence was clear. I wasn’t going to address my plans. There was no change ever to be there. Maya was suggesting that the only change possible all the time is a change in thinking. It doesn’t matter when and how. A change in thinking is the most possible change.

I salivated over bigger kills, the glory I would bring home when I had enough cash to give Momma and family. Like a wild dog walking in drying up hunting grounds with no signs of water holes of success, it was clear that in the process of changing the status of things I wasn’t involved. Sure, one animal does not change when the rains come. It is only the way it thinks that can provide it with safety when the rains don’t come.

When we pray or contemplate for the courage to change the things we can change, we are simply longing to change the way we think. But we get it wrong because once we are done contemplating for minutes we lose the definition of this form of courage. Because the change in a way you think is not a tangible result, it is downplayed for nothingness. We occupy ourselves trying to make visible results forgetting their actual source. No one was ever designed to act out of his/her thoughts.

I went to a park to wait a little there. Maya’s words started to make sense. Wearing some white jeans and a white T-shirt, I had to watch where I was sitting. I wiped the bench free of dust. Indeed the powers to change the bench from its state of dirtyness to a new state of cleanliness were all mine. I did it with no effort like a lion roaring in the Savana as a means to assert its rule. But when I realised that the bench was in a shade and I had no jacket to cover myself from a little cold, I only wished I had the power to shift the bench several meters forward and capture the sun’s energy. The powers to do such were not mine. I gave up the thought, chuckling at how silly had I become to wish for such a change.

In life, we deal with matters that are more sophisticated than the bench. Recently, it has been for me an employer who was not willing to pay me for the work I had done, depositing only $54 into my account. I wasn’t going to change that. I wasn’t going to mobilise the brainwashed workforce to conspire with me against the company. But my powers were to call it a day, be happy and find something that could stand as remembrance (a $30 refurbished 2016 phone, really?) for the work I had done.

The best way to answer the calls of a brighter future lies in this form of courage: The courage to change only the things you can, beginning with your thoughts. If you don’t change your thoughts at a time you must you can only be a slave to them and the actions they produce. It is only this form of courage that can make patience produce greater results.

~Subject Me Personal Diary 06Aug24

I passed by my former workplace. To the lady I worked with at the cash collection point (different employers), I bid my farewell (here is an article written after one of my many discussions with her). Of the cash my former employer didn’t give me, she said, “Think of it as cash lost when one of your pockets misbehaved. You are not going to succeed at making them pay what they owe you because you cannot afford a lawyer. But you can relieve yourself of the stress by bypassing thinking about the days you were robbed.”

Her point hit home: I was not robbed. I simply lost my initial bid to double my income in the period June/July 24. Aha, she simply was encouraging me to give up thoughts that could keep me worried and start focusing on the future. (A theory emerged true to many events in my life: It is rare to worry for a long time when money or a card slips out of your pocket. But when there is someone you trusted involved in robbing you of what was yours, worry multiplies). I reminded myself of the book The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari where is written: “Worry drains the mind of much of its power and, sooner or later, it injures the soul.”

~SubjectMe Personal Diary 07Aug24