On This Our Freedom Day In South Africa Poem by Diana van den Berg

As my Nelson Mandela
(whom I am happy to share with everyone) ,
says, “Nobody was born hating
others for the colour of their skin,
their background or their religion.
They must learn to hate
and if they can learn to hate
they can learn to love.”

If we take this further,
we can learn to love
and forgive
all people
for all things.

Generally people are – or appear to be -
rude, greedy, insensitive, uncaring,
and mostly selfish
and worse still
truly and poisoningly unknowingly
self-centred.
And yes, this is frustrating,
and inspires the will to be
the same back
tinged with cutting sarcasm,
but to what ends?
That is a lose/lose situation.

What about either
fixing it
if it can be fixed
and/or if it is worth fixing

or forcefully
ignoring it
and embracing
your own happiness
whilst allowing sadness
for the limited values and pleasures of the perpetrators?

My keep left (in South Africa!) philosophy
requires only that you keep left,
for
no matter your reason -
whether lawfulness
wisdom,
love of what is right,
selfishness,
logic,
or a simple desire not to
be involved in,
and/or not to cause others to
be involved in
a head-on collision -
the result is
exactly the same –
avoidance (in most cases)
of a head-on collision.

Hating causes you pain
no matter how much
you may think
you enjoy it.

Sincerely loving the world en masse
and spreading that to specifics
in as far as you can,
causes you a feeling of well-being
no matter how silly or impossible
or illogical or impractical
you may think that is.

What good reason
could you possibly have
for not wanting to feel sincerely good
and making everyone around you
feel as sincerely good
and being the creator of a win/win situation?

However, it is your choice
entirely.

(27 April 2011)