We Are NOT Meant To Do This Alone
In July 2021, for the first time in my life, I felt my toes curl over the edge of the abyss called hopelessness.
I never want to experience that again.
What happened in July 2021? South Africa, my home, was wracked by devastating violence and looting.
It’s hard to describe the range of emotions that rampaged through me as I watched the images of the unfolding anarchy. Horror and heartbreak predominated.
was a sense of helplessness when I spoke to family and friends and staff trapped in the areas of the greatest violence.
There was heartbreak as I watched peoples’ businesses and much needed jobs go up in smoke – literally.
Of all the emotions that swept through me, perhaps the most devastating of all was the taste of hopelessness forming in my mouth.
There is nothing more brutal
than the loss of hope.
I felt my toes curl over the edge of an abyss called hopelessness for South Africa – the land I and so many others fought so hard for.
For the first time I doubted that South Africa could rise again and save itself from becoming a failed state.
South Africa was in trouble prior to 1994 because of the injustice, the oppression, the brutality and the marginalisation of the Apartheid years. Then the ‘new’ South Africa arrived with Nelson Mandela as head of state and a decade of hope followed. Unfortunately, Mandela left a vacuum that was filled by politicians only interested in lining their own pockets. The years of corruption wrought by Jacob Zuma and his entitled cronies as they pillaged this land brought South Africa to its knees. The situation was exacerbated by the economic hardships of extended Covid lockdowns.
The loss of hope was like a hot coal searing through my heart.
Yet, after nearly a week of looting and mob violence in South Africa’s two most populous provinces, hundreds of volunteers began to clean up the devastated streets. Civil society played a huge role in restoring the shops and infrastructure that ordinary people depend on.
With shops emptied and destroyed, communities had to rally together to share what food was available and get food to hospital workers already exhausted by the third wave of Covid sweeping through the country,
Hundreds of others formed human chains to guard their communities against the looters, supporting a totally overstretched and inadequate police force.
The volunteers, together with local charities, community leaders, and business groups, worked behind the scenes to quell the violence.
All of this provided an inspiring counterpoint to hopelessness.
So too did the outreach of so many friends from all over the world, checking in, offering support and love. A very dear friend, Richard, even offered to airlift us to safety.
All of this reminded me…
We are NOT meant to do THIS alone.
‘This’ being life. ‘This’ being a wealthy life, well lived.
The following is an excerpt from an email I wrote to my Financial Freedom alumni a little while back.
I chose to remind myself of these truths to help me find my centre again.
I thought there might be something in them for you too.
Three Freedom Truths
Truth 1 – Freedom is a choice
Freedom will NEVER force itself on you.
I had to choose to put myself into the freedom arena.
You have to choose to put yourself in the freedom arena.
I must keep choosing freedom. Mostly daily, sometimes hourly.
This takes commitment.
It takes tenacity.
It takes heart.
It’s vulnerable.
It’s exposing.
It’s exhilarating.
Freedom is where life resides.
Most people choose to cling onto their familiar suffering instead of choosing unfamiliar freedom.
I hope you choose freedom.
Truth 2 – The opposite of scarcity isn’t abundance, it’s enough
There are two mountains we all walk between on our freedom journey.
The mountains of fear and greed.
In the valley between is the valley of enough.
This is where your freedom path meanders.
This path of enough is where joy resides.
Enough is the throughline of a wealthy, free life.
Enough is a magnificent current of deep joy.
Enough is not about winning or losing.
Enough is not about fulfilling every desire.
Enough is not about having everything you want.
Enough is resting in the grief that we will never be able to have, do, experience, create, achieve… everything this magnificent incredible life offers us.
Enough is showing up, engaging fully and being willing to be seen despite this.
Truth 3 – Choose those you journey with, with discernment
❝ It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out
how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds
could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man
who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust
and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes
short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds;
who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions;
who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the
best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement,
and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring
greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid
souls who neither know victory nor defeat." ❞
Theodore Roosevelt
There are a lot of scared people who will never venture into the freedom arena but they have a lot to say about it.
There are a lot of people that don’t want you in the freedom arena either and will have a lot to say about it.
Be selective about the feedback you allow in your life.
If they are NOT choosing freedom AND taking action to make it happen, and risking their familiar comfort to thrive and live, instead of merely existing…
... then their opinion doesn’t matter to me, and it shouldn’t matter to you.
I choose to be with and listen to those that are in the freedom arena with me.
ARE YOU going to get in
and stay in the arena with me?
Freedom is the journey we have all been called to take.
In the wise words of Seth Godin…
❝ Freedom has a partner,
and its name is responsibility. ❞
It’s a choice and a responsibility to have and live our fullest, truest, wealthiest lives.
It takes courage, tenacity, and perhaps a little madness to keep hope alive, to believe in your dreams and get up and do what needs to be done to make them so.
Here’s to all us slightly mad ones.
Thank you for being in the arena with me.
Big love
Ann
P.S. Let’s continue the conversation about what it means to be free and what gives us hope. Visit our Facebook Community Page (it’s free to join) and see what others are saying about freedom and what’s enough. We’d love to hear what freedom means to you.
