I like women with unnecessary knowledge. She can tell you which wine goes with dinner, why your houseplant is dying, the name of an old R&B sample, and exactly which cousin cannot be trusted with information. Well-rounded education…”
When children repeatedly hear adults denouncing other people as inferior because they are Xhosa, Tsonga, Venda, Mozambican, Nigerian, Zulu, Zimbabwean, Somali, white, black or anything else, we cannot act surprised when those children begin reproducing the same hatred in classrooms, playgrounds and eventually society. Children learn what we adults normalise.
It is the same reason some start drinking at an early age. Reckless drinking is what they see adults celebrating every weekend and almost every Monday. It is the same reason some boys grow up believing that aggression, violence and forcing themselves on girls and women is somehow an expression of manhood. They have watched men behave that way and seen communities accommodate it.
So when political leaders, public figures and ordinary adults make tribalism, racism, afrophobia and the humiliation of others fashionable, understand that there is an audience taking notes. And that audience is our children. Much of what we call the moral decay of the next generation is simply the next generation reproducing what we made permissible, fashionable and normal. We are pathetic adults! A disgusting lot!
There is something so silly about success. Not because it is difficult to achieve, but because when it finally arrives, it looks so ordinary. No one announces that you’ve crossed the finish line.
One day, you simply wake up living the life you once begged God for.