Maggie's diary

In high school I was one of those girls who received quite a number of letters. I was cute, I don’t want to lie, so I was in demand. I looked forward to letter days every single time. I’m trying to remember the days of the week when we received them🤔. I’d run fast whenever they were collected so I could stand close to the one who would be reading the names of the recipients out loud. My heart beating so fast I could barely breathe. I’d wait to hear the sound of my name being repeated over and over again, signalling more letters for me. Get me right, it wasn’t the quantity that excited me but the higher the potential of me getting lost in a well written proclamation of love. The more they were, the more the chances I could find a gem because it was so rare to find one that sucked me in. They usually all sounded the same but once in a while, I’d get a really special one. One that transported me from my dorm room to a stimulating realm that this suitor would have painted on a clear canvas for me. It was the unique ones that got to me. I guess I have always been a sucker for witty words…well crafted full words that made me feel like I was deep diving into the deepest sea of complicated and ambitious emotions. That was the epitome of the ultimate romantic gesture for me. Words that could convince me that their contents irrevocably without a doubt came straight from the heart. I think with a letter you could tell if someone was willing to invest the effort and time in you.

The details were in the way it was presented, the length of the letter, the little scribbles and drawings on it, the intricate design on the envelope that was used, the smoothness and prettiness of writing pad, the way my name would be clearly and carefully written on top, the neatness of the handwriting, the kiss and scent of the perfume that sealed it, and the P:S and P.P.S added as a note at the end; as if they didn’t want to say goodbye. And of course, the song dedicated that sealed and hammered home the love expression in case the words were not enough. It was hard to artfully fake each stage. You were bound to catch malicious falsehood if it were there, as the steps by a person truly infatuated would have been all well calculated and drafted to perfection for days.

People were not as accessible as they are now. We had to send our feelings and thoughts on paper and hang mid air, not exhaling fully for days until we received a response. The suspense was exhilarating. There was always something to look forward to. Some imagination that hadn’t been printed on the internet to so freely see yet. Life was not boring. Courtship was not for the faint hearted. It was for the creative, artistic and brave. It required true patience and determination and maybe thats what made commitment more lasting and sacred those days as it never came as easy as a slide into your DM. I guess the convenience is great now but I’m a writer, that stuff will never impress me. A handwritten letter on a writing pad will always trump an empty “hie you are cute” on social media. I find it to be a lazy effort to getting a woman you deeply desire. It should never come so easy because people naturally put a lot of importance to things they put more effort in. I’m old school I know but it’s hella sexy to me for a man a sit down and be vulnerable enough to express his feelings for me on paper. I can imagine how it felt for a young man to carefully craft his words and pour his heart out to someone and have to wait for that love to be carried by the postman to his crush, ingested and regurgitated back to him in rejection or revered in acceptance. I imagine the young man imagined the postman cycled through towns, through rain and gruesome heat, through rocky mountains to get there. It was surely as equally as hard and as dramatic for the postman to get there as it was for the young man to write the letter. Anything less would not have been good enough. The level of dedication was immense, and the struggle truly real. I feel sorry for the generation that has been robbed of this experience for they will never know the true meaning , the full feeling, the intense immersion of emotion that a love letter gives❤️.

I had a conversation with a friend recently who I was trying to preach the “forever good news” to and he said to me, “What if things are never going to be ok…” and I really struggled to find something to say because he had really been through tough times. Iv heard this question so many times and I’d really like to be that writer who always soothes your soul with a positive song when you come here on this platform but if I’m really honest, I don’t know if things will always be ok for you in whatever you are facing. Most times I don’t know if things will be ok for me too. Most of us grew up reading and hearing fairytales and so our mind is hell-bent on looking for the light at the end of the tunnel when sometimes that tunnel is a dead end. But the older I get, I acknowledge how life can be really hard for most people. Life can feel like a battlefield. It can feel really empty even for those who have found purpose or “success” to their journey especially if that purpose or success doesn’t give them the peace they expect to receive after searching so much. Then there’s people who just have it really tough for stretches of time and they are exhausted. These people live with this question in their heads, will it ever become better? Will it ever be ok? Will I ever have a smooth life, why am I the one who has to struggle, the one who has to fight all the damn time. They don’t know if they have the strength to face a brand new day and keep fighting. Their spirits are battered daily and they are dragging shreds of their remaining souls through a world that calls them weak, uninspired, demotivated and shameful. The society has managed to blame people for their circumstances and in as much I believe that we have power to change our circumstances and make better choices, I now also understand it’s harder for some to get  “there”. Wherever there is.

There is also a lot of successful people who feel a crippling void in their lives. They can’t express this as this makes them look ungrateful because, again the material is expected to fill them up. Because of my exposure to both types of emptiness and people, I realize a bigger population is so wounded. Because we seek answers and can’t find them, we feel lost. There’s nothing on this earth that can truly fill us up. Both rich and poor, famous and unknown, suffer from this decapitating loneliness and suffering. There’s never a state that is better than the other from my observation and personal experience. The things we think will solve our sorrow or are the cause of our suffering, I don’t think are really the solutions or causes. I can’t claim to know it all but my theory is this:

Maybe we got this whole thing wrong. What life should be like. What if there is no happy ending as such? What if the emptiness we feel is not bad. What if it has its place? What if the space of non clarity is not bad. What if our suffering comes from the judgement we have of the experience. What if emptiness is a compass to remind us how fleeting joy is. How we should grab hold of the small moments that mean so much and what if we just allow that sadness to be there and the hole to exist coz clearly most of us have it. What if we are meant to have it for reflection and direction? Some have it for longer moments than others. Some have managed to temporarily fill that hole with religion until their God lets them down. Some have filled it with ambition, until they reach their goal or never do and feel even emptier either way. Some have filled it with people until the person breaks their heart. Others have used drugs, sex, money to fill the hole until they are all not enough to fill the insatiable hole. The more one succeeds the more susceptible they are to it. The more someone struggles in life the more susceptible they are to emptiness as well. The extremes always cause deeper suffering as the gap is wider. I find myself between both spaces of struggle and understanding and peace. My poem My Face demonstrates that internal suffering and the poem Vacuum expresses that understanding. I think that’s where most of us find ourselves. Most of us can survive if there is a balance of that Yin and Yang but if an imbalance exists, it’s usually very painful and causes suffering. The balance is not found in our circumstances but it’s found in our perception.

I wrote a poem called Vacuum in my book First Thirty (find links below). Vacuum is one of the poems I wrote in a meditative state. I felt the poem wrote itself. The explanation I give to people on what that poem is about is really a toned down and simplified version of what I really meant. I simplify it because I know most will not understand what I meant. The deeper version to the poem Vacuum is this : The poem speaks on how I aliken the infinite space, to God and God being divine creativity, and space being the true essence of who we are. Let me explain and I hope I can explain it well.

Space can also be defined as emptiness or a vacuum. It’s called a vacuum if that space is judged. When judged it becomes a painful place to exist as the judgement states that something is missing and requires answers to complete it, that sometimes our human minds cannot fully comprehend. Otherwise with a neutral mind, any emptiness can be described as space. And the word space means to me, allowing room for infinite possibility and “anythingness” to happen. (I create my own words as we go lol). Space is nothingness and in nothingness we don’t become less but more. We allow, we are free and we simply are, in nothingness. When we have not defined something, it can be anything. This goes with who we are and who we should be. With attachments to our prescribed identities we become trapped in that definition yet our essence itself can never be defined in human terms alone and those definitions trap us, suffocate us as they stop us from evolving and changing. Real peace needs no definition or explanation. It’s understood completely when it is felt. Definitions make everything feel certain, predictable, “graspable” and controllable as we fear the unknown and the instability of things we don’t know or understand, so definitions and explanations are our safe space but not necessarily our truest space. Space is a blank canvas, it is somewhere where the unknown exists. The space between 2 objects allows for another object to exist.

Infinite potential requires space. So the poem Vacuum states instead of trying to fill that space with the familiar, maybe we should sit in that space and feel it, not fill it, because space is who we really are. So in life, we end up looking for ourselves in things outside of who we are yet we have all we truly need.

Wherever we are in life, we can find peace. The sweet spot is finding our own way to that peace. Because if we can find the way, we can continually go back to that path whenever we need to. What if life is just a dance between forgetting our true nature and remembering, in hopes that when it’s all finally over, and everything we deem important falls away, our path to true divinity is easier to find.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09WCJQFLW https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/first-30-margaret-chideme/1142036764
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/first-30-1
https://www.scribd.com/audiobook/588050754/First-30-A-Collection-of-a-Woman-s-Poems-about-Love-and-Lust-Pain-and-Abuse-Divorce-Womanhood-Searching-and-Rediscovery
https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9798822642164
https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details/Margaret_Chideme_First_30?id=AQAAAECCajYqpM
https://www.storytel.com/se/sv/books/3410457
https://www.audiobooks.com/audiobook/first-30-a-collection-of-a-womans-poems-about-love-and-lust-pain-and-abuse-divorce-womanhood-searching-and-rediscovery/619942

What do you do when you feel completely lost?

When the dreams that used to push you before don’t push you anymore. What do you do when you no longer know where to go, where your true North is. When your compass stops talking to you and stops showing you where to go. How do you smile at dawn, at the break of light when fear cripples and clouds your days? When purpose feels empty, when talking about it seems futile and when you have no strength to fight. What do you do when you feel you’ve lost too many times. When you have lost a life? When life has beaten you to a pulp. Where does a shattered heart go? When each decision feels like a strife, do the angels ever come down and heal a heart, touch them exactly where it hurts and scars, where does a broken heart go? Where does a broken soul go? When religion is no longer a place of solace, when love no longer feels safe, when a friends shoulder is now a dangerous place, when it’s all tainted and wild. When the world is a ball of pain and being kind is only a show by the meek and weak and the strongest are those who do not care. When brokenness, pain and a lost life is now a story to laugh about on Twitter when they give up on life? Where does a broken life go?

The lucky broken hearts get past their own pain and shine. Some drown their sorrows to waste in alcohol, pills and drugs. Others feel better when they hurt those they love and others shy away from everything and hide,their beautiful rainbows in boxes iced solid shut.

May all broken hearts find solace. May the parents of the kids lost in the Nyanga accident find their way to light. May those suffering from addiction and depression find peace. May the souls of those who couldn’t heal from a broken heart and gave up on life find eternal peace. May those still alive find a way to thrive.

My broken heart comes here to write ❤️

I met my tribe and family in creativity and art during the experience. The experience forced me to reflect on my life, on what I consider important and what I need to actively do to create the life I want. We live a life full of distractions and wear the daily masks we are expected to wear. Eventually it all becomes blurry, we lose ourselves to the world and end up not knowing where we want to go. In the process, the journey loses its magic.

I have wondered many times the meaning to life and I have concluded many times that we may never truly know the answer to that. I am convinced though that creatives come very close and touch that magic every time they create a piece of art and that magic transfers to anyone else who appreciates it. They bring those who experience their art closer to the stars. Art is the place people run to when they feel lost, broken and lonely. It is also the place to go to find the way back to yourself and a place of solace. It is the band aid to society’s pain. It is where we find our joy and inspiration. It gives us space to fall in love. Our memories are attached to art and its magic. One song can make us remember that one dance, that one occasion, that one moment. We turn to soothing melody to heal us. We are captivated by the movement of dance. We sink our teeth in the depth of poetry. We get lost in the intricate design, the color and expression in imagery. We get lost in worlds that don’t exist through movies and we see ourselves through the actors and actresses. Each expression of an artist can never be duplicated, neither can it be the same for each person who experiences it. It is truly unique and divine. It is true magic.

My prayer is that every creation finds its home and each creator the courage to create.

I took mental pictures as the van drove us into the beautiful home where we would be staying for the next few days. My instincts told me that I needed to remember every single moment and my instincts were right. The experience would prove to be a very profound one for me, both emotionally and creatively. We chose our different rooms and I tried to settle in before having dinner. We were exhausted as Keith, our “big brother” and chaperone from Kay Media Africa, the facilitating hub for Interstellar which was also part of the Scripts and Bars program, asked us to gather. We all introduced ourselves formally as we stated the foods we hated to eat and we had a good laugh while at it. Slowly peoples’ personalities were unravelling as I still stayed safely tucked away in my cocoon, watching and absorbing intently. Tafadzwa with his huge grin looked like he was right at home, chatting away. My gaze moved to Patrick, curiously searching his face for cues, as he constantly kept pushing his silky hair from his forehead. I wondered if he felt at home. He seemed at ease as he also had so much to say. Novhuyo was engrossed in her phone as she tried to multitask and keep up with the conversations as well. How do they fit in so effortlessly, I thought to myself. Keith on the other hand was calm, quite comfortable to oversee the different personalities and very big “brotherish”. Keith explained to us that the theme would be “University” and we were to produce a song and incorporate each of the four artists that were there, and that we would perform the song at the Baseline Academia conference in 3 days. Talk about pressure…We briefly discussed how we could interpret the theme and decided we were too tired to do anything meaningful that night. As I had initially suspected of our videographer, Ngoni decided to take video diaries of us while we were tired and looking like overworked donkeys. He craved to tell a raw and unedited story. I guess art, in its purest form, is really about expressing your unfiltered core.

The next day, the creative process began. I woke up feeling quite excited at first. It was the day we would create and soak up all the minds of the creatives on board. Exploring a creatives’ mind is like diving into unchartered deep waters for me. It is some of the most exhilarating minds for me to explore and get inspiration from. It was the day we would share and show what we had…wait…did Keith say I had to be part of the song somehow?! I was so out of my element. How did I get here? Now I start to panic. I started feeling nervous on how it will all pan out. Am I good enough? Do I belong? The imposter syndrome started to rear its ugly head. I was so used to creating on my own, in my bed, late at night when I had no other voice judging or watching my creative process. Now I have to share that intimate space with complete strangers who could eat me alive and drown my voice, the one that felt so safe standing alone. I say a quiet prayer for my poor insecure soul, as I prepare for what felt like a naked exposure that would leave me vulnerable in an unfamiliar space.

We decided on focusing on creating a piece of art rather than a commercially appealing song. Our end product, according to Ngoni, sounded like a soundtrack from a James Bond movie…dope. Patrick quickly came up with a beat we used to come up with the lyrics. Tafadzwa and Novhuyo suggested some sort of sultry poetic piece. We worked really well together with absolutely no diva moments from anyone. Using our different individual creative processes, we fused our ideas into a masterpiece called Ubuntu Ngabantu, which means “I am because we are”. The song talks of how our individuality is important to humanity, how diversity can make unity powerful. That is how we interpreted the theme “University”, in that there is unity in diversity. I learnt the art of collaboration and team work as each artist shared ideas and gave each other feedback. My team made me feel at home and put to rest any insecurities I had had about being part of a song for the first time in my life. In them I found my tribe and a safe space. Novhuyo has an amazing powerful sultry voice that can shake mountains and the presence of a goddess, Patrick has the mind of a wizard and is a musical genius, Tafadzwa is a brilliant comic artist and even though Ngoni recorded us from the sidelines, he also contributed insightful ideas and gave me tips on how to feel more at home with my performance. We created a recording “studio” in Patricks’ bedroom using a mattress, sheets, pegs and some Zambezi cans as a cooling system for Patricks’ laptop, or so we thought 😉

Apart from creating the song, we explored Bulawayo and also had the chance the visit Matopos. We also visited some cool studios like Tizzie Studios as well as different restaurants like The Deck and Smokehouse, where we enjoyed our meal over some good liquor and loud incessant belly laughter, especially after Eugene joined the group on the third day. As soon as he arrived from Harare with the other team from Kay Media Africa and Page Poetry Alive, who had come for the Baseline Academia conference, the group suddenly became louder. Part of the reason being that the group was larger but I am quite sure the main reason was that Eugene took up space for at least 10 people. He switched the big brother role with Keith on the day he arrived and he brought out a different side and flavor to the Creatives’ Big Brother House. In a way they balanced each other well, with Keith being calm and Eugene hilarious, the experience was full bodied like a good glass of vintage wine.

I fell asleep the day before the Interstellar Program was set to begin with one powerful wish in mind. I wish…

It’s only a few who dare to chase a passion to its fruition. It’s also a few who feel moved to ask the universe for a dash of magic and move to a beat of tenacity. It’s a few who dance to a beautiful unique pattern, carved by their very own vision and walk faithfully with a bold conviction that one day, all that’s in their head could become real. This is a story of the creatives who represent many others, different in their own ways but the same with a desire to truly live.

I woke up the next morning and decided I had packed too many clothes. I spent an hour trying to decide which outfits to pair. Placing my displaced anxiety on a bunch of clothes I probably wasnt going to wear. I realized time was not on my side. I tried to hurry and rushed to the bus while the Kay Media Africa team was calling me to caution me from being left behind. I made it on time, 5 minutes before departure time, phew! I met Keith by the bus as he handed me my ticket. Keith, one of the team leaders from Kay Media Africa, has a quiet “put together” demeanor to him. He would prove to be the perfect “big brother”.

The idea of the Interstellar program felt more like the big brother house for creatives, without shower hour ofcourse and with a different kind of chemistry required between the participants . I hop in the bus, grateful to be finally settling in. I sat right next to Ngoni who was wearing a black cap. He was going to be taking footage of us the whole entire time during the program. He hands me a lollipop and tells me how obsessed with them he was. I accept but remember I’d had too much sugar the previous day so I put it away in my purse to enjoy later. On my right Keith and Patrick, the DJ and mix engineer who came all the way from London were chatting away. They were talking about something… about creative something something… I dozed off as their loud voices started to fade in my head. I felt really exhausted before it even began. My anxiety had worn me down. At some point I woke up with my mouth open and realized that Ngoni guy, the one with the camera, may take a picture or a video of me at any time he felt inspired. Some of these photographers and videographers prefer the most weird things to show, just to prove how expressive they are. Kind of like when they decide to do daily diaries of their poor victims as they look like death just before they go to bed or as they have breakfast with some gravy streaks on their cheeks. Ngoni looked like that type of a photographer, the type who would want to capture the rawness of a moment. I don’t trust him, I thought, so I put my mask on. At least if he decided to take any footage, I would look a little decent without my mouth parting like the Red Sea. Safety first. I dozed off again.

As we approached Bulawayo, Ngoni nudged me to wake me up. Just like how he had nudged me when we passed an accident scene, or to tell me he loved jelly babies, right on time to disturb that delightful peak of an addictive delicious bus snooze. A stank eye would have been an appropriate response to his abominable behavior, but no, because I’m so “proper”, I pretend to be grateful that he woke me up. “Thanks,” I say and smile at him. He grins back, I bet feeling like a superstar.

While waiting for the transport to the “secret location” to arrive, we meet the singer and songwriter Novuyo, a short young lady who seemed very reserved at first but is a real life fire cracker. She was trying to get a hold of Tafadzwa the storyboard and comic artist who would be also part of the team. As soon as Tafadzwa enters the vehicle, his wide grin reaches every corner of the van. We set off to what would be our new home for the next few days, at a secret location, with strangers… the perfect setting for the beginning of a classic horror film.

We step on to a beautiful home, perfectly manicured and adorned with cozy furniture. It was the perfect retreat as we all had our own private beautiful creative spaces as well as places to sit as a team and congregate. By then we had started trying to figure out who the dark artists where through our conversations, those who drew their art from a painful place but no one could surpass Tafadzwas’ dark levels. Looking at him with his huge grin, you’d never suspect the stuff that went through his head. He loves imagery that reaks blood and gruesome vampire toothbites. He confesses his fascination started as a young boy after his father had strictly told him not to watch a certain horror movie because it wasn’t for kids. But ofcourse he waited until his father would be gone so that he could indulge in the forbidden fruit and he was hooked from then. The beautiful curse of the dark artist began.

I’m inspired to write today. This blog is really my home. Even if no one reads, it is ok because writing on it already gives so much back to me. I can just be a creator who expresses and creates just because… I’m a creator. It’s a fulfillment of who I truly am at my core. It’s a place I come back to remind myself why I write in the first place when I get lost in the commercial aspect of turning a passion into a career. I have been pushing my book First Thirty since last year and have hardly been able to write on this platform as much as I would like to. I don’t have a title for this post yet as I write. I usually have a direction of where I want to go before I write each post. Today I don’t. Love brings me here. Love for you who reads, love for my craft as well. Love for how I feel when I write from my heart. I’m not sure where this post will lead me today. I will just let my thoughts unfold. Join me please as I open my heart up and allow myself to be vulnerable and honest with you .

I’m listening to a Sunday radio show on Mixcloud by DJ Eskay and he plays the kind of music that strums at my heart strings. The way I feel while listening to this kind of music is similar to the way I feel when I write with no reward expected in mind. Life seems to offer very few opportunities as we grow older that remind us of all the day dreams we had growing up. I don’t even remember the last time I day dreamed. Imagination diminishes the older you get it seems. Imagination becomes a state for those who have not yet been heart broken by life enough times. It’s a place where anything is still possible. Where your greatest crush can tell you they like you back and where the most beautiful love stories reside. It’s also a place where you can be who you want to be without restrictions, failure, disappointment or rules. I have the heart of a day dreamer, in a world that kills all magic daily. I loved day dreaming growing up and my kind of day dreams had no restrictions to what was possible for me. And now… I’m lost in this world of the dead, where day dreamers are weird, unreasonable and woo woo. We do live like we are dead.

I’m amazed at how much amazing phenomenon is in the world in all aspects, yet it seems we have veils covering the magical potential this temporary place holds for us. Maybe it is the way its supposed to be. We live like zombies in the hopes to find life while we live. Maybe life comes in moments. In those short special moments that make us feel alive. Like the moment we reach a mountain top… the moment we reach climax in love making… that moment we achieve a life time award or achievement… that moment in which we feel so very alive… But it’s only a moment. If only we can carry the view of the mountain top as we climb down or as we face another mountain… If only we could carry the climax for eternity as we find monotony, boredom or heartbreak in the same relationship… If we could carry that one “best climax” in our pockets to remind us how good it was… how good it can be. If only we could. But we quickly forget as life shows itself to us in fleeting passing moments. The moments we then chase and crave for their highs, while we are miserable in between. We all have vices we search for inorder to feel alive. They say all human beings have little gods that they chase like prestige or fame, money, power etc. And iv realized once we get to grasp any of these little gods, we realize we are still empty. There is no lonelier person in the world than the famous person. There is no poorer person than a rich person. Real people become less, you become a commodity to those around you, you stop mattering as a person and what you have is now what they are after and you feel it. You become the one others are striving to be but less and less people can relate to. So what is this all for? It all seems in vain, as we chase our vices. And at some point, no matter how much we have achieved, it’s all meaningless.

The older I get, the more I crave for people who fill me up. I crave real conversations, real connection… maybe that’s why I crave this blog when I feel disconnected. It’s a place where I can be real and write about the stuff most people wouldn’t care to talk about. So the people who do come to read these posts, I know crave the same as I do. They are family to me. So I guess this post will serve to remind you of the day dreamer in you, of the moments you felt alive and to ask you, why you do it all? What purpose do your passions have? Let’s hold on to those moments a little longer and when they come let’s truly savour them. May our kisses be deep delicious french kisses… May our hugs feel warmer, may they be tighter and may they last longer… May our passions truly leave us more passionate and may our mountain tops become our plains. May life be magical and our day dreams unfold as we live each day.

I would not be a writer without a reader. I love and appreciate you all so much ❤️

“So which internet platform do you think is the busiest,” asked Father B. I pause, take a moment to think of a clever answer. I say, “Instagram of course,” getting ready to explain why I said so. “You must be one of the good ones then,” says Father B, “It’s pornographic sites” he bluntly blurts, it startles me. It was too blunt for a holy priest, whose mouth in my mind, should never be defiled by such words. I say “Ohhh yeah… ” thinking that even if I’d thought it, I wouldn’t say it out loud to a priest. “Do you know why?”. I answer privately in my head “because people are nasty and horny as hell, no pun intended”, trying so hard not to smile, struggling terribly… trying not to arouse any slight suspicion of my devious thoughts in fear of the hottest parts in hell for unpure ideas in a sanctified place. I say “I’m not sure”, with a straight face. He says “Because… people are starving for intimacy with the self. People go to these sites thinking it’s for pleasure and self gratification but really, it’s a longing for love and for intimacy with the self. They can never find it there fully so it becomes an addiction and a longing for something they truly do not understand. In essence even in relationships, we are looking for ourselves.” I sat back, feeling like I always feel when Father B reveals epiphanies to me. I choke up with no response coming out of my lips for a couple of breaths. My heart beating fast as if iv found the answer to all life’s mysteries on love. I finally say,” That makes sense.”

As I drove down the Christmas pass the other day, I was thinking of that conversation I had with Father B while I was at the monastery. As part of the silent retreat, I’d get an hour or so to talk to him about anything and everything, although that hour could easily turn into 2 or more. I lose track of time. It always feels like a therapy session as our chairs are strategically placed about 2 or 3m apart, facing each other. In that space, time stops. I’m open to learn and to be honest about how I feel and Father B is a natural. He allows you to open up and also gives gentle guidance when need be. I never feel judgment in his presence in as much as he is a spiritual monk. He exudes an aura of unconditional acceptance of anyone and anything. My most favorite conversations on spirituality and religion have been in that zone… 3m apart from him, in that library at the monastery.

I really felt emotional when he said that. I’m not sure exactly why it struck me so personally in the moment. I guess I resonated with its truth. I felt it deep inside. I could literally feel myself losing breath and trying to calm my pulse. I thought, “It really is all a journey to find oneself, to love and accept oneself and then radiate it to someone with the same energy in order to complete and reflect what’s already on the inside.” Our love interests reflect to us who we are on the inside. We manifest our demons, our fears, our pain or our self love in intimate relationships and this is why love feels like a wild goose chase for most because we point a finger to another, not realizing how much of the unraveling has a lot to do with what’s going on inside us. We romanticize it so much, we have lost the truth in it all. In essence life is love, God is unconditional love, we are all one and to find each other and know each other we have to find and know ourselves. This is the reason for it all. To be reminded of who we are in this lifetime, to love who we are and to see ourselves in others… if we understand and accept our strengths and flaws and we recognize ourselves in others, making the gap smaller to our differences, we will find it easy to love our neighbor or our spouse. It’s all one and the same thing. One can not truly find love if they have not found it within and a lot of us will never experience that unconditional love we long for until we understand that. And until we love ourselves.

That was a profound revelation for me. And not many will get it even after reading this and the love birds may never agree as that only shines a light to the cracks of their “love”. You see, the world… the entire world is truly inside us. Everything we perceive, see, feel is experienced within, even scientifically. The world feeds our senses and our senses process everything inside. Color is only color once our brain processes the stimuli. Color does not exist outside ourselves. So is love for another. It’s an inside process for another outside of us. So everything in us will determine how we love. If we never learnt to unconditionally love ourselves, we have no unconditional love to give to another. We don’t even know what that means. I learnt in that moment that I had a task. I needed to understand, truly understand who I am, whose I am and what that means. I learnt that I will never find the love I desire from another if I never learn to know, love and accept myself. Some say your true love is your mirror, ever wonder why it feels like that? I don’t think it’s anything to do with similarities but with recognizing ourselves in the other. That… I think is true love, true intimacy and wouldn’t that be amazing to find❤️.

https://youtu.be/5zjMYdQD6yI

Having learnt at Monte Cassino, the monastery was always a mysterious place to me. We were never allowed to go there or make noise while we were close. The only time I remember going there was when a few of us were chosen to go and help out in the garden. I remember being so excited to harvest some peas for the monks. My favorite monk was and still is Father Barnabas. He just has this aura of peace and tranquility around him. Some of my most favorite conversations on faith and life have been with him. He is one of the wisest people I know. Then there was Father Robert. He was deathly honest and upfront and never minced his words. During the Mugabe era, he would not shy away from reprimanding politicians and this was at a time when people would not dare be seen voicing out their opinions. He would boldly speak his mind during Prize Giving Day, a day when parents would come and celebrate their children’s academic excellence. We had a handful of politicians who would bring their kids to learn at Monte. It was afterall among the top 3 best performing Girls’ Schools countrywide when it came to O level results. When I say top 3, I’m being modest lol. Most times we were number 1 countrywide for excelling with a 100% pass rate.

Religion to me had always seemed so monotonous and stale for me growing up, unless if it had something to do with youth clubs and if it were time to sing and dance to the Diwali beats we would strum on the drums as students to remix the usual “fata murungu beat” for the songs at Shona mass. Ya’ll remember Diwali right. It was lit. We used to love shaking our bums vigorously, waving our hands high in praise. (yes… in church. We were young, what can I say.) That was the most exciting part about church for me. If not the only exciting thing about mass. The rest of it I didn’t really understand or care to understand. I found the silence of mass excruciating and having to sit and stand in one place for 30 minutes seemed like cruel torture. This was the time it would take for our weekday masses. The weekend ones were longer as we would be joined by the teachers and villagers so there would be more activity and sometimes some dance routines that were quite entertaining.

On the other hand, I was desensitized to the nuns because we saw them everyday. We knew they were human, bled like us and had flaws too. So nothing about them made me wonder in awe as I did with the monks. To me, the nuns were my English teacher who made me write spelling corrections numerous times, my Geography teacher who was so strict she would make us write pages and pages and endless pages of notes every Friday and called us bush babies when we were lazy or my cool Science teacher called Sr Pia who never aged at 60, 70, 80 something (we could never really tell what her age was) whose glasses would get a slight tint in the sun as she rode around on her bike wearing her small bucket hat which we called an Oyi Oyi hat back then because those are what those Kwaito stars used to wear. She was tiny and petite and her smile was deeply contagious and borderline naughty. I’m not sure if it was her style that made her seem so or if she really had a tinge of naughty in her. When we would start our Integrated Science lessons she would say, “Veeeeeeeelllllllll (well🤣) good morning everybody, ” and we would chant back, “Good morning Sr Pia” with huge naughty smiles on our faces. My best friend Tafadzwa and I’s favorite past time was goofing around and this included annoying Sr Pia. We would sneak into the lab to steal batteries for our illegal radio. Her lab would always have dead creatures brewing in preservatives and if you were too naughty and she caught you, you could be one of the unlucky ones to be made to skin smelly dead snakes that she used for science.

The monks on the other hand stayed mystical creatures to us. How does one ever desire to live most of their life in silence and solitude, we would wonder. We get the sex thing, nuns vow the same but silence!!! How!!! Double punishment only meant for super humans.  So we would peak at the monastery whenever we got the chance to in order to spy on these mystical creatures lol. There was always silence there. Real… pure… palatable silence.

Four years ago, I felt a persistent urge to come to the monastery. I discovered that people could actually visit the place for prayer and or rest. I was excited that this mystical place was finally accessible to me. I believe my first visit carved a different path for me spiritually. I have been going there every year ever since. I could never express my experiences here quite adequately. I say here because I’m there right now. I always fall short of words. When I try to, I feel like I do not do it justice. So it’s one of those few things I have actually never written about publicly until now. It is a piece of me that most do not know about me or find it hard to believe I’m into. There’s so many layers of me I’m yet to show, yet to discover, yet to unfold and allow to grow as I step more into my authentic self more confidently. I will try my best to share this place with you everytime I go. I’m working on putting my current experience into words and I will share more details in my next post. For now, let me meditate on this silence under these big beautiful acacia trees before I say goodbye, once again, to this magical place until next year. I am quite sad to be leaving today but I’m so grateful for all the life it restores in me. As Father B said to me yesterday as I expressed my regret on postponing my trip to see my aunt who had just passed away that morning as I never got to thank her for taking part in raising me, “We should never take life for granted but AS GRANTED.” The difference between the two is gratitude. Living in gratitude as life comes to us makes us take each moment as sacred. We tend to live life fully that way. We never assume or feel entitled to another moment. We treat the current one with utter gratitude and never leave any stone unturned. We tell those we love how much they mean to us and not wait for another time. As granted allows us to live completely each day no matter our circumstances. Even the bad times are gifts if we have faith that our God is ever loving and is with us every step of the way. There’s so much to be grateful for.

Rest in peace gogo Mai Lesedi 🙏

One night I had a very weird experience. At this time I was possibly at my lowest in life. I had no idea how I would get out of the dark place I was in and everyday was a challenge trying to convince myself that life was worthwhile. It all seemed painful, life seemed cruel and in vain. I felt shadowless at this point in my life and Toni Braxtons song above expresses it perfectly but instead of a lover, it was a call and yearning to finding me after losing myself in a world that kept handing me what I felt to be unbearable purposeless pain. I felt like an empty vessel walking around, doing mundane daily tasks with absolutely no spark of desire or passion. And as a mother who loved her 2 year old daughter at the time, I felt so guilty to be feeling this way. My daughter should have been enough to slap me out of the depression, but she wasn’t. I was struggling to get a grasp of meaning and hope. I really struggled every single day.

So this particular night I dreamt I was hovering above myself and the weird thing was I could see myself sleeping. I will try to explain this adequately so that you can see it clearly in your mind. It was as if I existed in both versions of myself and I existed in both dimensions of personalities. I felt the pain of the me that was sleeping yet I was fulfilled in the me that was awake. In the me that was sleeping and the me that was hovering, the difference was the me that was hovering was so complete, she was absolutely perfect. Her perfection was not in beauty or anything physical only but also in every aspect of her soul, her demeanor and poise. She was graceful and divine. It was as if she was the version of me I was supposed to aspire to be in my lifetime. This me was not worried about the sleeping me. She was self assured. She was all knowing, compassionate but yet also confident that everything was exactly as it was supposed to be. From hovering, this perfect me knelt by the me that was sleeping, besides the fragile, broken me. Then she blew on my face lightly and as she blew on my sleeping face we became one as I woke up. I say as I woke up because it felt like she was blowing life into me and the sleeping me was woken up by the breeze from the blowing on my face. I really felt that and it woke me up. I sat up confused at what I had just experienced or dreamt. Somehow after that, I had a slight glimmer of hope. Through her, I could see what I could become. What I had potential to become, an earthly representation of the Divine’s expression in me. The poem in my book First 30 called My Face is inspired by that dream. I’m not even sure if it was a dream or reality because it felt so real yet surreal at the same time. The poem speaks of how I’m constantly seeking her, reprimanded by her when I lose my way and guided by the belief that I can be her one day. I knew I had to try to start stripping down all the layers in me that were weighing me down. I had to face me.

So I believe we all have a version of ourselves we are meant to be. Most times we betray that person. Most times we become them briefly, only briefly because that other version seems unsustainable in the world we live in. The world does weigh heavily on so many people and most of us have lost touch with ourselves. I have got to believe that everything is in divine order so sometimes that detour is part of the plan and necessary. The journey is what matters most I believe because through the journey we get to experience all emotion, for to pain is to feel and to love is to live. The perfect part of the story is that I don’t think it’s about perfection but it’s about being masters of our own journey and we are the only ones who know what our perfect version looks like even if the entire world disagrees. We get so caught up in socialized definitions yet none of us really know with all certainty all there is to know about this strange world we live in. The truth is not all of us will ever get the courage to live up to who we are supposed to be. I don’t judge that either because we all have our reasons and demons. I do hope we find our way so that the moment we breathe our last, we can smile and say to ourselves, “I have truly lived.” ❤️