WHY THIS PLANT REFUSED TO BE PLANTED, WATERED & NUTURED
My Journey from Long Street to Main Street
I remember at the age of 9, I found myself roaming the streets of Cape Town, begging with my childhood friend named Reimpie (we grew up together in Petunia Court). Begging was never part of my plan, but leaving my home at a tender young age to seek love and attention from strangers was the ultimate goal. I was merely surviving through the hurt and frustration I felt towards life, even at such a young age, growing up in a broken home. Negative triggers in my environment always gave me a good reason to leave home and spend an entire weekend roaming the streets of the Cape Town CBD.
I was merely surviving the ordeal of internal trauma and anxiety that I had experienced at home to try and find love elsewhere. I was vulnerable and ready to take my life. When I came home, I was almost never missed. My parents thought I had spent my weekend with my grandma, and my grandma was under the impression that I had spent my weekend with my parents – no questions asked. Everyone in my family at the time was living constrained lives. This form of negative conditioning while growing up sowed the seeds of futility, fear, worry, anxiety, and impending doom in my life. I accepted this as normal and easily took in negative suggestions, and these thoughts of fear and craving to be loved caused me to lose the will for life.
As a young boy, I was always looking for love and found myself in conflict situations with family and friends because I pushed them away when they got too close, an unconscious habit that I was unaware of. Years of neglect, and trying to seek attention from my loved ones slowly broke me. I started neglecting myself in order to get back at those who had hurt me in my life. I had a talent for predicting people’s behaviors when they were intoxicated and always wondered what drives people to go out and hurt others when under the influence of drugs and alcohol? The ability I had to observe how personal trauma infused with self-hate made and broke people in my community (because I had been there) made me realize my own situation. I understood that I had a choice to reject or accept my current situation and also understood that I do not have to accept my situation.
Understanding this simple suggestion for my life, I realized that choices opened up for me. I gained the power to plant the seeds to help counteract all my destructive beliefs I had of my life, by simply allowing my mind to cultivate constructive seeds in order for me to realize my power.
After many years of studying the male psyche in our society, I came to the realization that we are broken as a people, and that our narrative of our lives is deeply rooted in trauma – trauma that has not been dealt with up until today. I also realized that we are merely surviving and not living. I then started pondering a lot on the degeneration of colored people’s family structures within our communities. Family structures that are constantly under attack and negatively impacted by a system that only creates division amongst our own. A system that sows division and in the end wins.
I also realized that our power to unite will allow this very same system to crumble. But we need to work on our own individual trauma by owning our narrative in order to find solutions for our lives. You can’t carry someone with a broken back; we need to heal first in order to heal others.
My third book entitled ‘Cape Flats Karma™ – Planting The Seed‘ simply exposes the journey that I had walked in order to find purpose for my life. The content in this book explains the treasures (seeds) I kept hidden in my past that have added positive value to my advancement. I, therefore, encourage you to go back into your past and find those little treasures (seeds) that have allowed you to realize your power and find your internal voice again. Nature is a powerful educational classroom that teaches us the potential and resilience of the human spirit. If we can learn from nature and its process to heal and be beautiful again, we stand in our power to influence others to do the same. We need to regularly check the negative suggestions that people had made to us. We do not have to be at the mercy of destructive beliefs of our lives based on other people’s opinions and the negative circumstances we have been exposed to. All of us have suffered from it in our childhood, in our teens, and in adulthood. If we look back, we can easily recall how parents, friends, relatives, teachers, and associates contributed to a campaign of negative seeds we had unconsciously planted in our lives. We need to start realizing that these negative seeds that we allowed to thrive in our lives are there to control us, by instilling fear in us, and therefore we stay limited in our growth.
www.capeflatskarma.com
#youareworthmore #riseregardlessofyoursize
