The Consumption of Assumptions

Update on "A Million Pieces of Blame"

 

After my last blog I was not sure how I was going to top the "Dear Daughter" letter as it had shot my viewership ratings up within minutes.  I knew that I was not alone in the single-parent boat having to deal with a difficult child/teenager/adolescent but I did not expect to hear that co-parenting households were experiencing the same problems. 

 

The update on the letter to my daughter clearly made some impact on her and the very next day she enrolled for an interior design course via correspondence all on her own.  The books have arrived and she is hopefully on the road to her future. 

 

May it be as colourful and exciting as she would like it to be, and may the potholes she comes across be filled with gold.

 

Connecting the Dots

 

On a recent coffee break with a "blast from the past", and I mean all of a life-time from childhood acquaintance, not someone I dated, or had a crush on, or whatever is assumed when the words "a blast from the past" conjures up in a number of minds.  We had "very little" to do with each other growing up, even though our paths had crossed a million times over the last 40 years without realising it.

 

We kind of basically lived past each other with just a passing smile and a wave but never a conversation. 

 

He assumed I was "sturvy" ( for the benefit of my non-South African readers - meaning, snob, stuck up, full of one's self) just because I went to an all girls, Catholic school which by the way was the sister school to the one he went (all boys).  And of course I thought the same of him.  But then again it was the old issue of stereotyping.  I guess I am just as guilty for having thought differently of people just because they happen to have lived in a certain area, or mixed with a certain crowd.  Thankfully I soon learned not to think like that.    

 

So here we were after chatting via cyber for close on two weeks having our first verbal conversation over coffee.  Considering we never had two words to say to each other in our life time, we sure made up for it on this occasion, catching up, comparing notes and setting aside our "differences" of what we assumed of each other.  Like the saying goes, "We cannot change the past, but we can change the future". 

 

Our two worlds had collided under sad circumstances when a mutual friend from our old neighbourhood passed away from his long struggle with cancer and the irony of it all is that my "new" friend is the CEO of Can-Sir https://www.facebook.com/cansir4men. An organisation which counsels, men and their families with cancer in the poor communities of the Western Cape and wherever else they can possibly assist.  Little did he know that his old neighbourhood friend had befallen the same fate (diagnosed with cancer) as he did before starting this organisation with two of his friends (who have also unfortunately passed on since). 

 

What I was surprised to hear during our coffee break was that more men die of cancer than women do.  I never knew this, and it is all due to the fact that most men are afraid to speak out, for fear of coming across as weak. 

 

Men have been so conditioned to not express how they are feeling, or that they need help, we just don't get to know what men really want and so we assume they are coping.

 

Ladies our men don't need mothers, and they don't need to be burdened with all the weight of the world.  They need to feel that they can speak about how they are feeling.  It is not just all about us, and what we want.  Be quiet for just a little longer than 5 secs and they will soon start talking.

 

Our coffee break could have probably gone on forever, but after a good few hours of sharing where we have come from, and where we are heading, we agreed to make sure to reconnect the past with the future.  So to all our old neighbourhood friends reading this, expect to be invited to a braai soon.

 

The assumption problem can blind one to many a great opportunity.