whenever I meet new friends for the first time, one of the few things they learn about me is that I'm stoical by nature. I express almost no emotion and nothing they say or do shocks me in the slightest. This works both ways, on the positive I have friends from every sphere of life. I have really good friends who are area boys and touts, and I have banker and lawyer friends, all just as close to me as the other. True that I may exhibit different levels of caution when dealing with street folk but other than ensuring that nothing of value is within sight when they are around, you can't tell one friend from the other.
The downside of my stoical nature is that I come across as fake and impersonal. Colleagues often come to me with what is supposed to be a life threatening national emergency and meet the same blank face with which I address complete strangers telling me about their pet animals. Yeah, it's called the "I couldnt give a rats ass" look. Those who are able to look past this mien often find that I'm all but impersonal in real life. So naturally, the question is "how" and "why"? How am I able to appear completely unfazed in the midst of chaos, and why?
I would attribute the why partly to my training as a lawyer. You see the honest truth is that lawyers, like doctors, cannot get emotionally involved with either the clients or their issues. Emotion runs counter to logic and the profession requires the sharpest logic on a daily basis. After ten years of handling issues that always start out as the end of the world, you quickly learn that high blood pressure is a killer disease and that all the issues that appear to be the end of life as we know it, aren't really that serious when you get to the basics. In fact, beyond the garb of the lengthy stories and bitter renditions of events leading up the issue, the answer is often very simple really. Seeing beyond the hype therefore is the primary job of a lawyer.
The second part of the "why" is the incredibly tough life I have lived. I have surmounted incredible odds if I may say so myself and the honest truth is that you cannot be emotional and survive the trauma. When you live every waking breath with the constant reminder that you do not deserve to live and that you should be subservient for the basic provisions of life because those who should have provided them abandoned you to your fate at birth, by the time you're 10 it becomes clear to you that noone actually owes you jack. This comes with the conjoined lesson, that you also owe no man anything but love...and even that isn't guaranteed. But this is life's greatest lesson. Survival in itself requires a certain amount of disconnect, the ability to bark, bite and scuffle comes with a great level of selfishness but this is what the best leaders are made of.
So as I went to see a new born on Thursday, went to a burial on Friday and ended up in a hospital room tending family on Sunday, I am reminded to be thankful for life, not only for those who have just started it, or ended it or are fighting to keep it but for the lessons that only life can teach us. The experience that only time can bring us and for choices the consequences of which only the future can disclose to us. Above all, I am thankful that I learned early on not to expect anything from anyone (including myself)...it has ensured that I am never disappointed and that I have no regrets.
It's the way to go peeps. You only have today, stop expecting tomorrow.
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'Dufa