Oh! How life can be so complicated!
You are walking down the street looking healthily beefy. And it immediately becomes good reason why someone, who’s been having good look at you as you walk down, thinks all’s well with you. Maybe that’s until you suddenly fall down and all hell seems to break loose! You are driving or are being driven in a very good car. Again, this becomes a good reason for yet someone, who’s trekking down the road and observing passing automobiles, to think that you must be living it up, maybe large too! You hold down a good job and occupy a position that everyone seems to covet; and every time you appear at work you look prim and proper, dashing almost always, and with your svelte appearance, you are sure that there’s someone who’s been observing and who thinks you must be on top of your game. Of course, you must be on top of your game, let’s not take that away from you. For if you weren’t, you wouldn’t be able to do the things that you do that make everyone think positively about what they assume you must feel inside – happy, without a worry!
But we know that’s not always the case for one and with everyone. There are things that are so cleverly masked that when they become known mouths and chins are forced to make a huge drop! I think the right picture would rather be closer to the case of the couple with a public appearance that covers up an awful lot, until you begin to see black eye today, broken lips tomorrow, which not only gets you worried but makes you want to form an NGO to save somebody – depending on which human direction you are most persuaded to.
Those are issues you can easily handle, especially where there is a good network of families and friends to help you navigate those aspects that are within easy and reasonable understanding. So things might not really get to the point of a black eye here and a cut lip there, for which the authorities might have to step in and undertake their social remit, but there are a lot more that are outside our understanding. I bet there are indulgees out there who have asked at some point in their lives why things can’t be normal. Why is it that they can’t see me? They think it’s all good, it’s all right! But they don’t know what I’m going through. You might find one or two persons to explain to, but millions do not like to explain it to anybody. They probably make the feeble attempt now and again, and soon chicken out.
We can’t really hold that against them. Sometimes, it can be so overwhelming, especially when you blame yourself for what seems like the internal torment that you are going through. You have tried to rationalise your situation within you. Perhaps that gives you some comfort, but it is one that lasts for a short time. You want so badly to wish your situation away most of the time, but you find yourself powerless to do any of such. You then get this huge feeling that you are stuck in this, but earnestly wish that your situation is anything near that described by Lionel Richie in the song ‘Stuck On You’. At least that wouldn’t be a bad idea. But it is sad when what seems stuck turns very slippery and begins to walk away.
It’s only a rot if you let it become a rot. There is always going to be that moment when you can’t seem to be able to get yourself out of what looks like a life-lasting confusion; why you can’t move this way or that way, even though you are so very sure which direction you would easily like to move. Sometimes, it’s either in the past or in the present. And sometimes, it is in both the past and the present. The complexity of all this can be overwhelming. If you are lucky, you can find a helping hand to assist you meander through the maze. If you are not, then you will get further lost in the maze. To deal with it all, you might really have to try not to see a maze but a straight passage way, one with light in front of you. It is this light that needs focusing on because it offers you some hope, the fact that you can see. In the dark you are lost, and that’s not what you want to add on to what you are going through right now!
It is the reason why it would be just right to say that no matter how dapper you appear, or how stress-less you look, you alone know what’s going on in your life. Some might say too, that you alone can deal with it. But some of these things don’t lend themselves that easily to such sweeping comments – you alone can deal with it; you alone know what you are going through. Of course, you alone know. But there is always something inside that yearns for the other person to see, understand things a lot better; not necessarily because you want a helping hand extended to you, but because you want them to look deeper and not just deal with what they see on the surface. You want someone to know that you are human, that you are vulnerable and that, like everyone else, you are also going without a lot of things, especially those things that others think you should take for granted!
One problem remains, though. Indulgees know how we live in a world that is both gender-sensitive and gender-unfriendly. So, depending on your gender, you might just find that you are forced to expunge any thought you might habour in your mind of being seen as vulnerable. Maybe it is the reason why men try to hide in all that self-promoting outward confidence, living in both silence and denial about what is, indeed, a looming and present danger that afflicts their lives. I guess life is too complicated for us all to come to a good understanding of what it really holds for us at any one particular moment in time (and trust me, I don’t think this is far from the reason why Whitney Houston sang, give me one moment in time). And so, when life hits you with its complications that seem to double up and make it near impossible to deal with, you get totally exposed and resort to bottling things up. But it is no reason for the other person not to make an effort to see past that which is presented.
Oh yes, of course, it is not their business. It is really nobody’s business. Who said it was? It never was and would probably never be. But I guess that’s the way with the world. It is the reason why they ask that powerful question of everyone who is in a situation to be oblivious of a global occasion for celebration.
PHILLIP ISAKPA