Blame&Responsibility

Blame shifting....

Pointing fingers; mentioning setbacks, downfalls and traps. Excuses and plots of holding on to a past we could never change, memories long gone that we held on to just so we could remember “how good things could have worked out, if only”

All that…all that does nothing but prevent today from happening and tomorrow from becoming a better yesterday. All these excuses. Playing the blame game as if we didn’t have a choice to move on or decide to let go of all that has been and focus on what could be.

Blame….

We hardly visit the mirror and talk to the man/woman/person staring back at us. We hardly mention our flaws out loud. We hardly accept our mistakes, let alone try harder at making amends. We hardly appreciate other people’s success. Instead, we remind the world “why it isn’t us” who are succeeding.

We put blame on family.

“They hate me”

“Aunt never loved me after mom died“

“ My father left me when I was young”

“ Uncle never showed any interest in me, his wife told me I was good for nothing and the good grades I got at school were because I copied the answers or the teacher made me his/her class pet.”

We are quick to point out the negative and find it easy to dwell on it, hold on to it as if success will spring out of it. We allow it to drag us down, hold us hostage within invincible walls that we build around our minds. We think we need that because “we all have to suffer before we could prosper”.

We allow our lives to be dictated to by people who feared dreaming beyond what they have been exposed to, turn around and blame them for holding us back and wasting our prime years. Blame them for all the false hope they fed us. Blame them for making them the “middle men” in negotiations for our future.

We blame others and forget  that we had choices and we could have made them and ran along with the results, bad or positive. We forget the power to be happy resides within us and is fully controlled by us. We forget that life as we know it could never be the same if we put blame aside and focus on what we want/need or deserve.

We all deserve happiness; we all deserve financial freedom/stability.; we all deserve to live a comfortable life…..Question is: who is to provide for all that?

Isn’t it our responsibility to give life a shot?

Isn’t it our responsibilities to make do with whatever we have at our disposal to try and build or multiply it to suit our needs and wants?

Blame……

We blame the Gov, we blame our bosses, we blame the TAX man, and we blame the high cost of living. We want want want, but forget that whatever we want, we should be willing to work for. Set aside the past and put our efforts into making life a better present and future past.

For how long are we going to mention Apartheid? Some of us have never even been exposed to the old regime, yet we shout out loud as if we bear scars from sjamboks/donkie piers/teargas/bullets and torture by the police.

We see fit to shift blame instead of getting to the root of every issue we have and formulate means to get ourselves out of it.

For every action there is a reaction, same applies to life: If we set aside time to find out where the problem lies, we could be the solution we seek. We get back what we work for.

For how long are we going to lament about how good we are at what we do at work yet we are underpaid, forgetting that, if we say we are that good, we could start our own companies and be our own bosses.

We are lazy to do a bit of research, draft proposals, knock at corporate doors and present what we have on paper. We are too lazy to run around searching for mentors/curators/investors or individuals dedicated to spotting talent and diamonds in the rough.

We get content with what we are given, what we hear and forgetting that there is more out there that we can achieve, and we complain when we do not become anything bigger/better than the positions we were given or advance in life due to the “I deserve better” mentality without wanting to do anything about going out there to get what we deserve.

Who is to blame?

Who is responsible for our achievements?

Who is fault is it if we do not achieve those goals?

Are we part of our problems or solutions to them and many other social ills?

Take a moment in your life, look around you. Take a small walk around your office block, look beyond the ordinary and see the world through the eyes of the street beggar at the street light. The old woman digging for waste paper/tins & plastic to recycle, just to make enough to buy bread and a tin of milk for her 4^th grandchild she knows not who the father be.

Take a moment and blame yourself for not being part of the solution you seek so much from the Gov, your employer, your neighbors or friends.

Remember this:

 “If they shut you out, remind yourself that you have the brains, you have the hunger, you have the will and determination to succeed, you have the energy to make it all happen……why are you wasting that very energy on negativity? As much as there are many fish in the sea, so are many different approaches to life.”

Don’t put the blame on others, take that responsibility to find alternatives and live your dreams.



“Be the architect of your future fond memories….build that tomorrow you dream about”

Dedicated to everyone and anyone willing to stand up and be part of the solution to their problems/issues or circumstances.

(P.S: This is hardly all that I wanted to say, we can discuss other factors haulting us from being who we want to be on an open platform, via feedback, email or facebook...the choice is yours)

s.c.mbelu@gmail.com

Sthe Ngcobo ( on facebook )

Negligence - Courage - Hope

Negligence

Negligence, an act carried out by many of us, directly or indirectly, but carried out nonetheless. We neglect a lot of things. We neglect ourselves, our values, integrity, customs/culture and others around us.

We lose ourselves while in a quest of chasing success and achievements. We get changed by circumstances, harsh lessons, situations we had thought we’d never find ourselves in. We pity ourselves, become our own problems and wallow in dark spaces we want to move out from yet don’t show any initiative of ever doing so. We see enemies where there are none, we oppress where we feel threatened, exposed or challenged. We ridicule where we see potential, we dissuade where we see determination, drag others down where we see achievement looming.

It has been years since I was a teen ager. It has been a decade since I visited that jovial phase of my life. It has been a decade since I have looked back and asked myself “where did it go wrong”. It has been years since I have looked at old images and tried to remember those moments captured in time.

Life was good back then, simple, carefree with fewer responsibilities. Back then, I knew my values. Back then, I knew what it meant to be free and carefree. Now that I am older, I ask myself: “Was I really free or were I committing crimes that will see my dreams; aspirations; hope and courage imprisoned forever in an imaginary prison with no walls or bars to hold me prisoner”?

Was I preparing myself to be a victim of my own circumstances without me wanting to admit that I brought this upon myself? Was I preparing myself to not admit guilt; responsibility or constructive criticism?

How did I not see all this? How did I ignore the signs? How did I not get rebuked or brought into my senses? Did I deny help and advice, dismissing it as ways of trying to “control” and “restrict” my new found freedom?

Was I trying to hide the pain within, or the shame I’ve been through? Whatever the case might be, the question remains: “How did I allow things to get to this? Where did I go wrong or how did I go wrong?

Did I neglect my roots; culture and customs? Did I BECOME THAT MUCH OF A MORDENISED BLACK TO REMEMBER HOW THINGS WERE DONE AT HOME WHEN I WAS GROWING UP?

I find myself questioning a lot of choices I made, choices that were made for me and choices I allowed to be made for me where I could have objected or opposed. I find myself questioning a lot and the solution is always the same, no matter how different the question is.

We can never change history. Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.

Late hours; parties; alcohol; rebelling against & questioning rules we were brought up with became a norm. Isn’t that what being young was suppose to be about?

Courage

I never knew the meaning, but I knew the feeling. I saw courageous people, met and spoke to them. Heard and headed their advices. Shared ideas and grew mentally and spiritually.

I discovered positive attributes about myself. I discovered my passion. I discovered self love. I discovered myself and the values I had thought I had lost and forgotten about.

I discovered a world I thought I had long lost directions to. I discovered love and most of all I discovered acceptance.

I accepted my mistakes, I accepted my shortfalls and I accepted that time wasted is time never regained. I accepted the truth about the person I had become. I embraced history and vowed never to repeat it again or allow others to repeat the errors I made.

I accepted that pain will always be a part of life, so is happiness. How we deal with it makes us the better person we wish to be each and every day.

I accepted my fate and acknowledged that I have a gift. Recognized by others or not, I accepted it and vowed to use it to change my current state of affairs. I have grown, I am growing and I am still going to grow.

If a new day is an opportunity to start anew, why should I starve myself of my happy tomorrows today? If every day is an opportunity to start all over again, why should I hold on to a past I want to let go of?

If moving on means letting go of what was and embrace what could be, what is stopping me?

Hope

“ithemba alibulali”

"Finish constructing that bridge towards your goals and dreams. Never give up"

Hope doesn’t kill. It is that small spark, glimmering softly in a distance waiting for you to use it to spark off an inferno of possibilities and achievements.

It is that little voice from within that constantly assures you that “day light will break, with it, new beginnings shall be had”

It is that small voice in your head telling you to hang in there. That little voice in your heart telling you “kuzolunga” (it will be alright)

It is that unmistakable endearing attitude, that fighting spirit we are all equipped with. It is the whole of you, determined to see yourself through whatever dark space you are in.

Hope is what we have left when we have been stripped off everything we once thought was godly to us. Hope to start anew, hope to get through today, hope to live to fight another day, hope to make amends, hope to gather strength to face our demons and skeletons…….

Years have passed since I have visited myself and held a dialogue with the person I see in the mirror every morning.

I am no different from you and him or her or them.

I am in a quest like you.

One full of many possibilities, many positive outcomes and a lot of pitfalls and traps.

One full of temptation, one full of joy; pain; rejection; acceptance; belonging; etc….

Embrace yourself for who you are. Acknowledge your past and allow yourself not to live there anymore. Pick yourself up and put an end on living a life of a victim. Dust yourself up and revisit old ideas, reinvent them and allow your creativity to flow.

Pull yourself together and remember opinions are just that, they shouldn’t define or restrict you. The one person you owe explanation is yourself. The one Supreme Being you need to explain yourself to is God (be it you believe in Christ and God)

It is never too late to turn a new leaf, pick up a pen and right your future past. If birth came with a manual to adulthood, we wouldn’t be where we are or who we are.

If that were the case, we wouldn’t have known what being victorious meant. If that was the case, no lessons would have been leant; no purpose would have been identified or perused.

“Life is what we make it to be, albeit the situations; circumstances or situations we find ourselves in”

Learn how to let go, life ends with your last breath, not your last mistake!

Keep that flame burning.

Dedicated to all those who are in a journey of self discovery. Sharing hope and encouraging others not to give up.



                                                  "God willing, I will further my purpose."

-Sthe Ngcobo-



(All images shot and edited by myself. I am an apsiring photographer, looking to share the world I live in with the rest of the world through images and constructive dialogue that I aim to spark)

Did I fail myself...

“Have I failed myself or has life failed me”

There was a point in time when I wasn’t what you see me as today. A time in history where men (peers and older) would stop dead on their tracks to pass me praises, try their luck to win my heart and attention. Nowadays, they pass me over like a rag doll that has been used a dog’s play toy. Some hardly recognize me, pretend they have never known me, some point fingers and share tales of how they once took turns with me, satisfying their egos and fantasies till they couldn’t raise it no more.

The person you see today wasn’t at all a bad person, less want to know how she became the wretched creature you see today.

You have probably heard of similar stories, you probably have an idea of how this will end or how it took a turn for the worse and resulted in me becoming a drunk, a druggie, a loose woman, good for nothing except spreading her legs wide open for whoever will afford to buy her a fear bottles of alcohol to numb the pain, shut the memories out and have her floating in a dreamy world where all her wishes came true, even if it was a world that never lasted forever, at least it provided me with an escape from what I lived everyday under his roof.

You probably don’t want to hear about this because you yourself have been through similar situations or you are currently living under similar conditions. You probably don’t want to hear or read about it because of the pain it brings you knowing in the afternoon, he might come into your room in the dark, put his hands on you and tell you not to tell anyone or he will throw you out on the streets; he will tell his wife you have been seducing him and asking him to come tuck you in every night when she worked her night shifts; he will tell the family what kind of a demented child you are, always making provocative moves on him and wearing revealing clothing whenever he is around.

You probably don’t want to hear about this because of the period this has been going on for. You never knew at first, but you ended up giving in and not doing anything about it after finding out it was wrong. You feared you’d be asked: “but why didn’t you say something”…… You feared it will shatter families and shame him. You protected the monster that he has become for the sake of keeping nosy neighbors at bay, at your expense and that of the good man who knows nothing about the pain and suffering you have been through or are still going through.

“Do I deserve this”?

“Did I fail myself or has life failed me?”

“What did I do to deserve such a two faced being as a father/uncle/brother/cousin/step brother, etc?”

“Is it my fault, did I Invite this to happen to me?”

You probably have asked yourself some of these questions…you probably know someone who once asked you these questions, with eyes full of tears and pain, confusion and despair written all over her face.

You probably have heard your flat mate pray to God to forgive those who have done her wrong and heard her mention relatives you might have seen coming through to visit her during odd hours of the night/day, and saw how she became once they have left.

You probably know that smart child who went through high school and tertiary without saying much about the uncle who paid her tuition fees but no one has ever seen her at her place whenever there was a funeral.

These are all assumptions, things I think you might be aware of or know.

To you, they might be just stories, to me though; it has been a dark reality I have been living since I knew what puberty was.

To me, they have been a reality I have been subjected to since my father passed away and my step mother remarried.

To me, this has been happening for as long as I could remember, to a point where I have learnt to live with it.

At first, I would wonder why certain women drank so much, dressed so seductively, drove expensive cars and had successful careers yet failed to sustain a stable relationship. I would wonder if they might have went through the same phases of life as me, I would wonder if they also got traumatized by the molestation they went through, the repeated rapes and how families protected those who violated them.

I am a woman who gave up the fight and opted for the easy way out. I am a woman who is ashamed of what she was put through, I am a woman who cannot face herself today, let alone look into the mirror and recognize the person staring back at her. I am a woman who allowed him to throw all the punches, endured the verbal abuse, the scorn and sexual abuses daily. I am the woman who allowed her future to be trampled upon and discarded like spit in the gutter.

My time might have come and gone, my habits to shut the pain out might have consumed me and left me finding it difficult to distinguish between what is real and what was a figment of my imagination.

I am no heroin; I have no great stories to tell. I have no accolades to show off. I have no children who are proud to call me “mother”. I hardly remember what it feels like to know affection.

What I am is a woman, who was robbed of her beauty, childhood, virginity, pride and freedom to choose.

I am a half the woman I wanted to become; thanks to half the man I have come across, who’s other halves were nothing close to even being described/called human. They were all monsters, and the few with golden hearts, I have hurt, fearing they would hurt me first like the rest have done previously.

I am an empty shell of what I used to be.

 Have I failed myself or did life fail me?

Did I bring this upon myself?

There is a lot that is not right in our country, there is a lot we haven't addressed or openned up to, let alone acknowledge that it happens. Abuse knows no colour, abuse knows no financial differences, culture or religion.

Us men, are the cause of sexual abuse, us men enjoy sexual favours and think we are entitled to them at whatever time, us men are the cause of so much pain and we act/carry on as if it is a norm.

I wrote this with a lot of women in mind, strangers, close friends and family. I wrote this hoping it will encourage women all over the world to speak out, that it will encourage the few good men left out there to talk to others and try change other men's mindsets and certain believes regarding how women should be treated.

We owe it to ourselves to change the world to be what we want it to be.

You will never know the next person's pain untill it happens to you, don't wait to become a statistic before considering taking action!

Breaking out......

Humility……

It has been a long while since I have had the will to pick up a pen and paper and jot something down, tease my brain and force it to embrace reality.

Truth be told, I have been lazy to write about what I see, feel and experience each and every day . Instead, I have been relying on my images to convey all these feelings & emotions, thoughts and perceptions I have about life.

I have been bottling a lot of things inside. Emotions, thoughts, ideas and advice, mainly because I didn’t know how to voice it out, maybe because I feared I’ll be judged, maybe I was afraid my words would fail me and end up sounding like one of the many loud empty voices or I’d be seen as another “opinionated smart black”.

Being the impulsive person that I am, I decided to spend this year’s Easter weekend on the road. Started off by accepting an invitation to attend an exhibition in Jo’burg….Gauten, Maboneng, where every man’s dreams and fantasies are made possible. I went there with nothing to lose but a lot to gain. I saw what I am losing out on, I saw the smiles, heard the laughter and experienced the support for visual arts a lot of people have in that side of the world.

 I got reminded that there is nothing holding me back from exploring, I got reminded how good it felt to make a sale and see the authentic smile on a satisfied client’s face, I got reminded of how good life can be if one learns to let go of everything not worth worrying about and focus on the positive aspects of life, little or not. Such a mindset is bound to make you have the most out of the little that you have.

I found myself discussing my pros and cons with a friend of over 15 years, I discovered habits most people didn’t like about me but they have never had the guts to tell me in my face and these I wasn’t even aware of. I found out how annoying I can be, I found out how supportive I can be and how I give whole heartedly without any expectation of rewards of any sort.

I found out how I can better myself, how I am already on the right path to success but still fear embracing that.

I got offered opportunities; I got introduced to people doing it on their own without much help from their parents or affiliations. I saw how picking up a phone and making that call could yield positive results. I discovered what it means to throw oneself in the deep end and swim as if one has been swimming for ages. I shared ideas, shared perspectives and had my bit of contribution heard.

I made bad calls, forgot to make a few follow ups and disappointed friends along the way, all in all, it wasn’t intentional but it happened and there is less I can do to change that. What I can do though is invest more in me, introduce new means of stamping my foot down and saying no to doing favors and taking demands from people who aren’t willing to acknowledge what I can do and keep on getting better at.

This past weekend, I got introduced to a life without fear, a life full of opportunities, a life that requires one to work for the rewards, one that needed one to get out there and let the world know who he is and what is he about.

I got re-introduced to T.D Jakes…I got reminded how bad as a young man I have had it, I got reminded how much frustration I have been going through and how bad friends have added on top of that without me complaining, least I got reminded that men don’t cry or that men don’t whine.

I got introduced to a film maker from Chiawelo (Shawelo) in Soweto. The very same person who has been giving Metro cops from Jozi a headache with his efforts to make Spinning and drifting a legal sport in South Africa as a whole. I heard his story, heard about the movie and felt the passion behind each word he shared and understood what it meant to not look at where you come from but focus on where you want to be one day. It isn’t much about the way you start the race, it is how you participate during the race and how you finish that counts the most.

I shared a couple of photos in a brief morning meeting and immediately got introduced to words that went along with how I had portrayed what I had seen miles away from the person who made the song. I got introduced to a different side of Kabomo, heard him sing as well as rap, something I didn’t know much about. I know he is huge and got humbled to see how this rapper guy had thrown himself out there so that he could be heard and do collaboration with him.

I got held up in a road block that we had feared and hoped we would avoid till we get home. I got reminded how the power of thought and tongue could help “predict” or bring into fruition what you have told yourself will happen.

Humility……

This past weekend taught me how humility could open doors for you. This reminded me that life is not a sprint but an indefinite marathon that can end at any point and in any way!

“Humble yourself all the time, but never stoop so low that people ‘mistake’ you as their door mat”

Stay true to yourself, don’t let success change the being you were initially or allow greed to overcome your innocence. We are want to be heard, we all want to be appreciated, acknowledged and commended for the good that we are. Problem lies with how go about getting all this and how we react to negative results/outcomes.

We fear rejection, we loath those who shine brighter than us without putting much of an effort, we hate asking and fear sharing, least those we share with supersedes us and outshine us.  These and many other factors determine the beings we become, these shape and moulds us to beings we never wanted to become or ever dreamed of becoming. These can either make you the exemplary being, a beacon of light and an inspiration to generations to come or they can make you but leave you feeling empty inside, with nothing to hold on to or share with those close to you.

Respect your fears, acknowledge them but never allow them to restrict you from growing and reaching your goals.

It takes guts and courage to live life and make it in life. How you define: “ I’ve made it” is entirely dependent on how one sees himself/herself in years to come, could be 2 years, could be 10, etc….Without putting  effort, all those dreams/aspirations will never come to fruition. Growth will happen physically, change will be seen and acknowledged but mentally, financially and spiritually, we would be less developed.

When you are old and grey, with your strenght failing you, how would you want to be remembered?