I was in Sunnypark Mall, in Sunnyside, the other day. Some old lady, probably in her early fifties, was carrying 3 plastic bags and some sort of board, walking in front of me. One of the stuff she was carrying fell, and some guy that was approaching from the front ask to help, she didn’t want to be helped. The poor guy stood there in disappointment while she picked up her stuff
We were going in the same direction, but I couldn’t offer any help even though I could see she was struggling because she just turned the offer right in front of me. She chose to struggle on her own rather than let a stranger close to her luggage
It’s no secret that there are more bad things happening all around us than good things out there. You open the window, something bad has happened. You switch the TV on, somebody died in a mass shooting in Cape Town. You switch the radio on, something bad has happened in flood-prone KZN. You call your friend in the Eastern Cape, they lost their tires on potholes. Even worse, a grandma has been gang-raped and had her pension taken away by criminals. You walk down the street, you get your last R3.50 snatched by a thief. You open your social feed, a woman has been killed and dumped by the side of the highway, and you wonder why nobody saw that with so many cars passing every second
As a result, we’ve become so used to seeing bad things that sometimes we think it’s a prank when something good happens
Someone says something nice, you immediately go like Wait, what do you want? Why are you being nice?
Someone offers to help, you refuse the offer, not because you don’t want it, but because you’re scared of what might happen I mean, why do you wanna help me? Come clean….. What’s your motive?
It’s just so easy to think there’s more to someone offering a helping hand unsolicited because of our everyday experiences
Here’s what I think: we all need a bit of lifting up, some motivation to lighten up our days, some sort of good news here and there, but through the bad things that are dominating around us, we don’t always get that
You can tell by the way we react when something good happens, however small it is, that we are so desperate to see good things happening. We celebrate like it’s the beginning of only the good things to come. There will be no more bad things that will show up ever again
The truth is, every day something bad happens, so if you’re waiting for someone to lift you up, you might just wait forever because they might never come
That’s why I choose to tell myself good stories. I understand that genuine help might never come, so I create that for myself
I start by being intentional about what I want, about what I do, the people I surround myself with. If it means to walk alone, I let it be, and I don’t feel bad about that. Everything I start, I fight to finish it
What I listen to, what I watch. It's always positive things. Things that teach me something, and I’m very intentional about that
I even go back to read things I wrote years ago to lift myself on bad days because if I can tell it to someone else expecting it to lift them up, it should do the same for me
Do the same. Tell yourself the good things you’d normally get told by others, motivate yourself, inspire yourself, save yourself
Lift yourself up, understand that you won’t get everything from others, but you can always give yourself everything you want. Give yourself a helping hand because when the next person offers that, it might come rolled up with dozens of expectations
Stay free, stay safe
Picture by Mathias Reding on Pexels.com Picture by Pok Rie on Pexels.com Picture by Henri Mathieu-Saint-Laurent on Pixels.com
