Gaining life changing perspectives

Some things may seem like the end, but in essence they serve as fuel which gets thrown onto an already smouldering fire, serving as the drive behind the beginning of something far greater. This speaks truth to my situation. Arriving back in my homeland, back where I truly belong has brought the end to our American-trip/Internship, but it has brought forward the beginning of exciting, challenging and new things.

Gaining perspective can be a very valuable thing. In order to gain real insight into one’s circumstances you need to extract yourself from your immediate surroundings, and take a few steps back in order to gain real perspective on what you are busy with or where you are heading. This is exactly what I did the last few months. The visit to the States has brought forth a lot of new things within me, fruit that will bear, hopefully, uplifting consequences for our fragile society.

To be honest the States has changed my life. Firstly, I have gained insight to my own life and not fully yet, but in a big way what I want to do from here onwards. These past six weeks has sparked within my heart, a renewed passion for South Africa. I want to move into the corporate world, but I want to use it to make a difference in the education and development of our people, especially our children. Education is one of the great keys to a better prosperous nation. No longer will I confine my thinking to my own little world, but I will think much further, much bigger with greater implications.

Secondly, the trip has given me perspective on our challenges and that we cannot postpone in not addressing them anymore. I’ve said this before, but we are not engaging interracially enough. We need opportunities for black, white, coloured and Asian to interact and to learn from one another. Forums and Societies must be erected to address the lack of this. This does not happen overnight, during our trip we got to know this first-hand. We long for having trust in our relationships, this is one of the pillars on which a solid relationship is built. This takes a lot of time. We should also realize that there will always be very urgent things to be done, but more importantly that there are essential things that should be done which will have far greater consequences than the very urgent one’s.     

 Thirdly, it has showed me what can be done when you bring people together. The power within the SAWIP group which still remains till this day is huge. One of my team mates could not have put it better when she said that we are the fuel driving each other to do great things. The same can be said to about our country, we as the country's people will in the end inspire each other to greatness or failure.

Fourthly, it has shown me that although we are 17 years down the line, people still have a lot of pain in their hearts and that some core things deep inside has not been sorted out. This is something basic, but to think that most people have moved on from apartheid is unmistakably wrong. We still have a long way to go and we should look at this urgently.

The challenge is here and now. The challenge is to take up this challenge and to do what I have learned, to change firstly my immediate friendship circle's way of thinking and to work hard at changing our country thereafter. This is but a spec of what I have pondered on, but this is not the end, the thought process must go on, and on, and eventually grow into action…