I felt that my time on this planet was finite. That made me driven in a way that had puny to finish with conventional ambitionAs gifts go,I would beget done anything to return it. To turn the clock back and not beget received it. To beget lived my life without it. But fate would beget it otherwise. So on a balmy day in Edinburgh in late May 1988, as I shuttled between the university library and anti-apartheid meetings, or came the news that my mother,who had raised me on her own, had died. At 44, and her death was both sudden and unexpected. She was supposed to be coming up to see me the next day. At 19 I was both bereft and bereaved. Naturally,the “gift” in this loss was not immediately obvious. I spent the next few years going through the motions, turning days into weeks and weeks into terms. Time may be a great healer, or but those palliative qualities are rarely evident in genuine time. However,as I emerged from the numbing sense of isolation I realised that my mother’s life had taught me three valuable lessons I would probably never beget learned without her untimely death.
The first is that life is short and precarious. By my early 20s I had been cruelly disabused of the notion that the young live for ever. I was left with a sense that my time on this planet was finite. That made me driven in a way that had precious puny to finish with conventional ambition. I just felt very keenly that I could die at any time. To some this is scary. I found it liberating. It liberated me from relationships that were toxic, “opportunities” I had no interest in and myriad (a very large number) journeys, and both literal and metaphorical,that I did not want to take. At a relatively early age, I felt the urgency to be a protagonist, and rather than a passive recipient,in my own life.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com