When I was 18 years old I visited a young woman in Glencairn. I had unrequited hopes. One late-Autumn evening I drove away from her in my AA-Yellow Mini Panel Van.
Within seconds I smelled fresh dog guano. That was the icing on the evening’s cake.
A long dark road runs down the mountain through Glencairn. I stopped to clean my shoes on the grass.
While standing at the car door I saw headlights coming down the hill. I jumped inside because it was cold.
A second later I heard screaming. It took a while to realise it was me, on my back, in some bushes. My car was in the bushes a few metres further on. And in the distance another car had stopped.
A large Valiant loaded with drunken folk had plowed into the back corner of my panel van. This had banged open the back doors. The driver’s seat tilted back under the impact and I slid not-so-gracefully through that gap, the car pushed out from under me, batting me into the fynbos on the sidewalk.
A miracle, in hindsight.
And yet.
For the next while all I could think about was the loss of my car. It took fifty years of hindsight to realise that how we see things rarely matches reality.
I have spent a lifetime worrying about bad stuff. None of it ever happened. What bad stuff did happen came as a ridiculous surprise each time. There I was worrying about the future of SA, my medical career, women who were not interested in me, money, and a whole lot more besides.
I thought about this as I drove past that same spot while taking Mom to breakfast last week, fifty years after the accident. As a result of it I changed careers and had great adventures. I drove dozens of new cars. I met fine women. The money was like sugar, always enough on the table.
Almost everyone I know still worries about the future of SA. Just as I did from 1976 onwards.
We forget the miracle of 1994 that has given South Africa prosperity it never saw before then. Despite some challenges. For everyone prepared to work.
We do not remember the facts. We remember our feelings. They are very different. And we are driven by those feelings. We project them into the future. That future always seems bleaker than it turns out. In the meantime we spend too much time worrying.
After two of the best weeks of my life, wandering between Wellington, Fish Hoek, Durbanville, Somerset West and Constantia, I can honestly say that SA has turned out better than all the fears I have had, almost every day, since I left school in 1975.
“Ja Boet,” I hear you say, “but what about Zuma and the coming junk status?”
As I see it, at least we know about what the man seems to be up to. Our robust democracy allows the press to chase anyone. That didn’t happen back in ’74. Where else can someone be lampooned with a showerhead in quite the way our press does with our Prez?
Neither you nor I are powerless. Maybe neither of us can change “the” status quo. But we sure can change our own circumstances. Times change. Rather than bewail our apparent fate, we can respond to improve our own station.
At the time we began worrying about the tragedy of our politics the Internet arrived. Where you live no longer matters. How much you earn is no longer tied to your local prospects. Instead of trying to micro-manage the government, we can cut our own paths. That means making more choices for ourselves. Its harder to do. But the results are liberating.
Next week I will get back to going it alone.
Warm regards from a crispy Norway.