"Thank You For Loving Us."

Happiness, too, is inevitable.

This, at least, is the opinion of one Albert Camus, incidentally the author of a book I read just recently called The Outsider, quite an interesting read, which I picked up in Jinja, Uganda, of all places. I got this quote off An Ordinary Man actually, Paul Rusesabagina the manager of Hotel Rwanda's own account of the events that happened and an exceptional read. His point being, it's easy for us to, when disaster/depravity strikes, fall into the depressing belief that you know what? This is the natural state of human beings after all. We are base animals etc.

But consider the word decency. When paired with the word 'human', it seemingly takes on new meaning. Human decency seems like such a scarce commodity nowsadays, or at least that's what some of us feel like we have no choice but to conclude. But what does the word decent on its own mean? It means okay. Average. Nothing exceptional. Decent means okay. Okay means normal. Human beings are normally decent. Why then is it so easy for us to discard this notion in the face of unnatural violence? "Reverting to our primal states." etc etc.

No. War is unnatural. So too is violence, and depravity. That's what the hotel manager was trying to put across. He was nothing but decent, in a country which had forgotten what decency meant. Courage? It does not take courage to do the decent thing, normal things, don't we do them everyday? That's what decent means, that's what normalcy means. He's trying to say that you do not have to be exceptionally courageous to do the right thing, we just have to be able to remember what "right" means.

This actually coincided quite neatly with the current course I'm undergoing, Military Leadership at SAF-NTU Academy. I shit you not, this is the only module I've ever gone through the reading list and prepared myself for lessons. I guess it's finally hit me this year what I've chosen to do as a vocation, as a profession. It behooves me to, as much as is possible at my current stage in the service, find out for myself what leadership actually means.

I was wondering what courage meant. I think too often we mix up daring into the concept, and we get everything muddled up. Daring is thrill-seeking, the search for exhilaration, it is a self-serving quality. It is superficial. It is saying, hey look, I can do this! I just did a bungee-jump! I sky-dived! It is not valuable. Certainly it does something for your self-confidence, your self-belief, but it is shallow. Courage is not. Courage is, or should be, selfless, or at least not entirely selfish.

Actually I'm not entirely sure. I think it takes courage to face up to your fears, of heights, of public speaking, or whatever. And yet that is something that is not immediately valuable to others/society either.. Oh well okay nevermind I'll have to refine my own definitions. But the question in my mind was, how can we tell that we are courageous? What acts of courage has life demanded of any of us?

I'm not trying to say that it does not. I think it takes courage for each person to go through each day, some more than others. The courage to carry on, the courage to face adversity, or even just a sadistic boss or a sarcastic colleague or whatever. Small acts of courage throughout the day. But great courage? Acts of daring do not count, so taking the Battlestar Galactica etc will not qualify. I'm not sure.

Anyway, just some thoughts I thought I'd put down. I've just uploaded all my photos from Uganda, and it's surprising how I'm actually feeling this sense of loss. It's like letting the world in on a precious secret. Not that I want it to be a secret, of course, if any single one of my photos can inspire someone to go to Uganda or anywhere else in the world to do or attempt to do some good, I think the wretchedly long hours and minutes it took me to upload all these pictures would be worth it. The power of social media, so often portrayed as negative, would have asserted itself in a positive way, and I would be extremely gladdened. And of course I do want that validation as well, that people in whatever superficial way, thoughtless way (just hitting 'like') approve or admire what I have done. Or even, dare I say it, delight in the pictorial evidence of what I have done, or hopefully inspire in them such intense envy that they decide they must do it for themselves.

And yet this sense of loss. Maybe it's the (irrational) belief that by not uploading the pictures I was holding on to them somehow. That because I kept telling myself I had to upload them I'd think of them more. Because there is this undercurrent of fear. It is hard to explain, and I am not skilled enough of a writer to adequately express in words what I feel in my heart. This is my attempt, which I actually wrote on my flight from Uganda back to London. Bear with me.

It is a peculiar heartbreak. In the sense that it's all very removed from oneself, detached. A sadness that doesn't seem to affect you very much at all. A broken heart which does not break you. Even while you expect it should, at some level even hoped that it would. But no, this is not a sadness that overwhelms. It is a sorrow that will not linger. It resides in one of those lesser visited regions of your mind, catalogued as one of those memories which only affect you when you choose to let it do.

When you return from some place you know has (or should have) changed your life, but whose details fade much too quickly, and this worries you, because that is the last thing you want to happen. It is alarming how seamlessly you fall back into your old ways; the trip that should have left such a deep impression on you leaves you instead unmarked, traces of it appearing only when you stumble upon certain pictures, or the odd snatch of conversation.

It is funny how you are worlds away, you may even have rapidly adapted to certain customs and mindsets, but immediately upon your return the familiarity of your old routines, the normalcy of having friends and family around you, just minutes away, takes over. And you're left wondering, "Is this it?"

Each of us has to deal with this particular, peculiar, sorrow in our own way. It is, paradoxically, not a matter of moving on but its inverse, that we are moving on far too quickly. "What does this say about me! Surely I cannot be so unfeeling!" Some of us may cry, Others, merely silent dismay. Some of us just feel this niggling sense that something feels wrong, just slightly troubled, but are unable to place it.

This quiet, distant heartbreak. Which does not make sense, so our brains do not make sense of it. A jumble of unelucidated feelings, untranslatable emotions.

Maybe it's the feeling that, now it's out there, I don't have to care about it any longer. It doesn't quite make sense but there it is. I've got a huge chunk of my notebook that I might want to put up here as well, so brace yourselves please. That's for next time, however.

Despite this fear that I might have left Uganda not in any way different, I know that I am. It has left its indelible impression on me, and I have been ineffably changed by my experiences there.

This, now, is my exhortation to you to go and do something. It did not take me much to go to Uganda, proximity and finances aside. It sounds so incredible, impossible, when you put it up in the air, when you consider it, but once you actually start doing it, it's incredibly easy. It does not have to be volunteering. It does not have to do with your ultimate purpose in life, however much or little you may know about that. It does not have to be anything at all. Just something.

Go and discover something, or rediscover something. Confirm something about yourself. Challenge something about yourself. I always thought I liked kids, and that I might be decent at handling them, but I never actually knew for sure, not until I went to Uganda and into the deep end of 400 primary schoolchildren. I fell in love with the children there, the country, and I loved that. I loved that I was falling in love with a country, with a people.

Go and fall in love with something, or find something to fall in love with. Go and be affected, impacted. You can't ever plan for everything. You can't say okay today there's gonna be a beautiful sunset that's gonna be so affecting. No, you just go for it and open your mind, open your heart, let life have its way with you. Let go of your stranglehold on your life.

One thing made the greatest impact on me, the words of a mother whose children I played with most nights as they lived right next to the lodge. And it was this: "Thank you for loving us."

Such a simple statement, and delivered so simply, but what a profound effect it had and still has on me. I didn't set out to love these children, nor did I realize (or at least had not consciously thought about it) I did until she thanked me for it. Yes, I did love these beautiful kids, whom I was gonna leave behind in just a couple of days. With this discovery of love came immediately sorrow and loss. How I relished that sorrow.

Why? To be perfectly honest, I'd begun to doubt my ability to love. Not to sound dramatic or anything but I've been on my own for a long while now. I have sought solitude, have enjoyed it, and have gotten used to it. I am comfortable now with being alone almost anywhere, in any setting. Sure, I wasn't always alone, in fact I largely wasn't, and yet essentially, in some sense I was. I spend about 2-3 months a year traveling and that mostly I do on my own, in foreign lands, no 3G no connection no nothing. Possibly I even wanted to be cut off, if only to prove to myself that I could be with no real consequence (is that not actually quite sad?) As a result, without ever really thinking about - I mean who does really, who sits down and ruminates hmmm am I capable of love? - I developed this doubt.

This mother did not know any of this, of course, but her frank openness and sincerity caught me completely by surprise, for which I am immensely thankful. She followed that by saying: "God has blessed you. You love children." which broke my heart. Most children there do not get to see their fathers very often because of working hours/locations, which could be hours away from home. And there are so many of them, anywhere from 3 to 10 or more per family, that I think many of these children grow up without really knowing what it is like to be loved. Any attention you pay to them, physical touch, the simplest of games like letting them hang on your arm or lifting them up into the air, any of these could make their days. I was relieved to know that this mother did not resent me in the slightest for, without asking for any permission at all, playing with her kids on an almost daily basis, but instead seemed to like me as well.

So this is it - go out and do something. When I was having fun with those kids, that was exactly what I had in mind - having fun, but this was an act of love to them. By saying those simple, profound words to me, without probably meaning to this mother managed to deeply affect me in a way that few other statements ever have, or ever will. It does not take much to make a difference in someone else's life. Anything will do.

With that, I'm out.