Stress is the difference between who you are and what you do.
Career and life decisions are made from all the alluring options that we meet along the way. We choose things to help us fit in, reducing the conflict we have with the world, forgetting for a few vital seconds who we really are. Before we know it - we are what we are.
The result is a life of relative calmness punctuated with crises that get labeled as 'stress', 'going through a difficult time', 'mid-life crisis', 'nervous breakdown' or feeling down, dissatisfied or unhappy (I do not use the word 'depression', as I am aware of the debilitating nature of this disease, which already has enough unqualified debate surrounding it).
The crises occur when who we are conflicts with what we do, whether it occurs continuously as a small cancer eating away at our core, or a discrete event that brings our dis-ease to the surface.
I am sitting here close to tears today, as I come to grips with who I am.
I am Sid.
Perhaps I should apologise.
Especially to my family who have had so many inconveniences thrust upon them by this chap with so many strange ideas. Or my platoon, who probably ran up a few extra hills, because my attention was elsewhere, or my employers and employees who were always inconvenienced by my alternating periods of commitment and distraction, or even the women who have tried to love me.
Or perhaps I should not apologise.
1994 seems lost on the corporate world. We were supposed to have crossed the rubicon from the inequality of man to the moral sobriety that we are all 'equal in the eyes of G_d'. The corporate world has not even dipped its toes in the water - it has watched as other people get wet on their behalf - after all, they have paid for it with their 'social responsibility'. But real change is a personal matter. Very often it is a small thing that speaks volumes about our understanding of the personal cost that comes from practicing it.
If you're white, whether you like it or not, your corporate success, in a big way, is due to apartheid. I know that, even with all these advantages, life was probably hard for you and nothing came easy.
I also found growing up a confounding process, even though I had a high level of education (which I unwillingly accepted), my parents were allowed to live and trade anywhere they wanted, and I could walk into a tertiary institution of my choice. But the greatest privilege of all was, that when these advantages were removed, I did not have to restart from a level playing field- I could keep the cumulative effects of my privileged position.
Perhaps BEE does level the playing field somewhat, but it can't do the one thing that would make things all right: to go back in time. You can BEE all you like, but if you are a successful white male in South Africa today, like me, you had an unfair advantage.
Yet the business community carries on as if nothing has happened. I don't mean that there are not attempts to try and redress our barbaric ways, but the corporate mindset has become a sad indictment of man's inability to learn unless there is a personal cost. Social integrity is not a responsibility, it is part of what it means to be connected within a community that supports you. It is what it means to be human. I can't believe that leaders, including middle management, still need to be addressed as Meneer (from their own staff), or that even a phone-in caller to a radio station will say she is Mrs so-and-so. I know that this is the culture that 'works' for that closed community, but there is a vast difference between something that works and something that is right.
As a nation, we have shown that when we find a system resulting in a society that will run smoothly, where everyone knows their place, we will implement and cling to it with the tenacity and commitment we have become famous for.
Governments disappoint me, not so much from the inefficiencies, insensitivity and stupidity regarding AIDS, but that they behave no differently to the people they replace; people who serve themselves, live within a hierarchy ("I was following orders"), drive large dark cars, wear expensive suits and run up large expense accounts. I cannot believe that, having gone through so much suffering, a new order can take over the reigns with the same value set without so much as the blink of an eye.
There was one exception, but by the time he had been sworn in as president, his job had been done: to be a catalyst which would allow us to undergo that transformation. But what we did with that opportunity has confounded me. I am embarrassed for him, and I truly hope that he will see a transformation within us in his lifetime.
Intracorporate equality would not be an issue of such importance if our commercial and government leaders did not control the fate of so many people. Or if their ethos of inequality did not distill downwards into the rest of the corporation and then into the homes where they put the bread on the table. I do not want to hear any more cruel and egotistic stories about what goes on in the boardroom - I'm tired of it.
But it will continue, because it must. As long as it creates shareholder wealth it will still be part of us. How sad that so many millions suffered in vain.
I cry.
I stress.
I am Sid.
