The Thrill of the Chase: Life, Success & Going Beyond the Numbers| Bucks Insights

On our last Sunday Edition article, we talked about letting go and giving in. The same thing happens in pursuits—you enjoy it more in the beginning when you are starting it out, or even more so when it suddenly comes to your brain that that's what you have to do at that particular point in time. Or when you are infatuated with someone for the first time and thinking of all of the ways to wow this person. And then the work begins.

That first day of jogging because you are seeing a different body in your mind than the one you are currently seeing when you open your eyes. Or you are trying to wow that yellow-bone (light skin) or ndoni yamanzi (dark beauty) that you can't sleep a wink after laying your eyes on her for the first time, trying to wow her by taking her on dates, trying to change the whole of you for her.

You know when you are quoted for the bad things, negative things that you allegedly said about someone? Or when you had a little too much to drink, and they tell you about things you said when you were drunk? How you promised everyone a job, money, some even marriages. The shame we feel when we get told about these things, which some you know very well aren't true, but it doesn't really help to argue them at this point. You just accept being a bad guy and move on.

Occasionally, you hear of the good thing or intelligent thing you said, and you are just completely stunned. You are asking the person telling you your advice back to you. You are like, "Me? I said that?"

It's a beautiful feeling, I can tell you that much. For me, it was when a friend told me that I once said that in all these endeavors, the reason why we as guys struggle in relationships is that we never really think about the actual relationship, perhaps not even quite interested in it when we are still growing up.

We enjoy the thrill of chasing, not necessarily of catching. I know this sounds a bit muddy right now, but bear with me.

One thing we do really think about and invest all our energy in doing is chasing. The moment you saw that yellow-bone or ndoni yamanzi, you become alive. Your brain during that time has something to chase and work on.

The hidden fact though is that you don't really know how long that chase is going to last. Some of us are grannies and have still been chasing somebody, and that's what gives meaning to the move to become the person we think that person might likely be interested in. This stage of playing mouse and cat is what gives the game so much fun.

When you start the chase, you don't know if this person might be interested in you or not. You don't know if they are available to date even, because you don't know them. They might be in a very happy and committed relationship.

The game has stages. Sometimes you get filtered out right in the beginning. You are greeting, just checking for the opening, and you are met with a cold and brutal reaction that makes you question your whole reality. But sometimes you get it just right. You are smooth, getting the right jokes at the right time, seeing yourself outdoing yourself. And then, getting a number. Smooth, my boy.

The next stage is a little harder. You are now convincing this person who has likely never seen you until that point you met for the first time, and you made an impression on her. Sometimes that first impression might be too far high that you are even struggling to maintain that standard going forward. And in most cases, it's because you are trying to beat that standard, which is what your brain and your whole nervous system is telling you.

You could join the group of the First Impressionists. These are the kinds of guys that come up with huge momentum in the beginning, and they generally like to be seen, taking the spotlight and winning a girl. But after that, they can't follow through because they can't maintain that level that they pulled through on the first encounter. So their chase ends here.

Some of us will pursue, despite the fear in our knees and the thoughts that all of this could be just for nothing. This person will be challenging all of your limits and pulling your ego into shreds.

You continue fighting relentlessly. Sometimes you think that's right—she's a monster, she's after your money, she's after the free good time you are providing, Mr. I've Got It, while you are behind on everything else in your life. Sometimes you might be right. She might be a monster, and you can be better off without her. Sometimes she might just have high standards that you haven't quite attained yet. Either one, you are on the next stage, whether you get the girl or not. It depends on how you perform at this stage.

If you are through to the next stage, you got the girl. You go to the next stage: Keeping the girl. The second hardest after the Getting A Girl stage.

You get the point.

Unfortunately, this concept of the thrill of chasing doesn't only apply to a boy wanting a girl scenario. It also applies to other arenas of our lives.

I've had bad things happen to me randomly, like manna. I learned that if those could come like that, and they happened when I felt the most alive, it's almost like dying. Overnight, everything you know is changed. You are finding yourself in an environment that you absolutely have no ability or skills to survive.

After hiking Table Mountain for the first time and being in pain for two weeks, my girlfriend at the time—the mother of my incredible son now—wanted me to take her hiking as well. I just didn't know how to tell her that's not possible. The thing is, when you are out there in the wild, fighting to get to the top, not knowing if you'll ever make it, there's no room for feelings, weaknesses, emotions.

Only one emotion gets you through that, and it's anger. Beast mode. After we did the second one, I made a joke that the only way I would advise anyone to go hike Table Mountain like that must be after your wife cheated on you with your worst enemy, and you found them in your bed that you bought with your last money before you got fired, and she gets pregnant with twins. I don't know how to say this nicely, but basically when you are fucked in all angles, that's when hiking Table Mountain like that is warranted.

When we got to the top, God, I hated Andile. And that's what gets you to the top. Not love and romance. That is reserved for picnics.

The Disconnect

When we look at things in our heads we want to achieve in life—like a qualification, relationship, a business—we see them in a spectrum. We can see where we start, which is thinking about that pursuit in the first place. You are thinking of it because of the end result, which is where you go to after thinking about that person. The end is the happy ever after, or the business and making it rain on the other end. Thinking about having a qualification, and then the other end is seeing it completed, graduating. Your whole family is there, your cousins, your friends are there, and you can add as much as you want on this end.

The Middle Band

Then the question comes: Can I do it? Am I the person that can do this sort of thing? Can I change myself from this current situation to the other I've envisioned?

The last time you enjoy it is not when you've arrived, but when you are starting the journey of getting there. That first day when you are leaving your house determined that it was the day you do it. But the journey itself is full of a lot of unforeseen obstacles and a lot of regrets, and your mind will tell you what a fucked-up thing you did by taking that journey. Sometimes when you've already accepted defeat, you might even pass out, and when you wake up, you were just outside the gate.

There Is Always a Next Level

One thing I've recently learned is that it's because we don't prepare for the next level. So once we've achieved what we want, we often don't see beyond that point. We only see that point we want to reach, and we get there. That's when we get this underwhelming feeling because there's something that says, "All that hard work for this?"

Keeping Out of Reach

That's why some things we often delay to acquire, because we don't know what is on the other side, and it's frightening.

I'm remembering the joy I got when I got the first letter that read "We are pleased to notify you that you have successfully been awarded a place to study in…" At this point, you don't care what the rest of the letter says. Sometimes, maybe in most cases, the first acceptance you get is the one that was choice number last or something. But it improves your confidence. You get those rejection letters as well, and some letters are inviting you to write the placement or psychometric tests.

Then you habituate to the one that you really want at the university that you really want. And at this point, nothing else matters. Now there is an expected possibility that it might happen. Every day you are checking that letterbox, and nothing.

But the day finally arrives. The letter arrives. It's sealed. The envelope even looks different from the ones you have opened before. It's got some weight in it. You open it with your shaky hands. You have opened many of these by now, and some, if not most, and if not all, they have come with a "we regret to inform you…" statement. You pull that letter out of the envelope, and you have somehow read it. The "regret to inform you…" is already programmed in your brain. But this time there's a glitch. Your eyes read incorrectly: "We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at University of… to study…"

You read it again and again, just this line, thinking that it doesn't make sense. What often happens is that when you read further, what comes after just blows your mind. It's even greater than you imagined. From that point onwards, you live differently. You have a renewed spirit. You know you have to live to experience that experience that you have envisioned over and over again. Now it will unfold, and you want to experience every bit of it.

So to keep alive, you need to be looking for new things that make you imbalanced a bit. To make yourself in a position of waiting for some outcome. One thing for sure is there will ultimately be an outcome.

Choose Your Battles Wisely

This basically means don't go over your head. It means that sometimes winning is not fighting or playing at all. But what happens when the battles choose you? You get diagnosed with a terminal illness, your spouse wants a divorce, you lose your family members in a tragic accident, you are falsely accused and end up spending the rest of your life in jail. No one is ever prepared for these battles.

Unpopular Opinion: Failure Is Celebrated, Success Is Not

We tend to think of successful people as people who have always succeeded in everything they did, but the numbers prove the opposite. They just get better at failing, and it becomes part of the process. Well, in order to become an expert at something, you have to do it multiple times. They say that in order to be an expert at something, you have to do it ten thousand times.

But you have to understand that this number is lightly subjective and superficial, because just going back to our Cooking More Than Culinary Skill article, most of the things that we do as chores, we never become experts at those. So the game changes when there is an intention to become an expert in that field, which means you take note of everything when you are performing that task, and every time you are doing it, you are looking at doing it better than the last time you did it. And me, I've certainly suffered more failures than I remember and still continuously do so. And I've started taking some notes in terms of what happens during this process.

Now, hear me out as you are right now probably already throwing tantrums, thinking about the massive failure that you've recently suffered. Let me correct you on something there. You are focusing on the results or outcome, which is when you got told that you have failed. You notice your reaction when you receive this outcome.

You can lie to the outside world but not necessarily to your subconscious. You get that sense of relief that it's over. No one, even your subconscious, is going to ask you about it anymore because you did try and failed. And you can do those self-destructive behaviors that justify that you have failed, which one might argue that you were already looking forward to them.

So even when you were performing the task, you couldn't wait for the results to come back to confirm that you have failed so that you can start the "celebrations"—the best place to be in because you get away with a lot of things during this time. I mean, you are hurt, and it can take however long you want it to take.

Success, on the other hand, is the most underwhelming experience ever. The suffering up to that point hardly matches the results. I mean, facing death again and again during the trials and refusing to die every time, when you could just let go and die and be absolved of all the suffering. You hardly feel success. It's mostly felt by people around you. You, on the other hand, will just be thinking, "All of this suffering just for this piece of paper, view, or whatever item you have finally acquired." If you succeed, it's the beginning of another struggle.

Now to get value from that thing you have worked so hard to achieve, you are facing another potential failure now—of losing it. But if you have just failed from the get-go, you are free of all of this. You can go and "celebrate." But if you succeed, there's rarely time to celebrate.

Now this is becoming some sort of a question with no answers we talked about last time. But let's entertain this idea for now. I've recently reframed how I see these things. Initially, it was about procrastination, where we are constantly pushing ourselves—by others or the standards—to do things within a given window. There's a huge miss about this idea because it assumes that a person is forever waiting to execute on those orders and expectations, disregarding the fact that you are not a machine.

There are other commitments that you have beyond those orders and expectations.

Failing can also be an achievement or success at the same time. Some of us spend a lot of time fighting failure while we are pushing right over the cliff. It's not a weakness to see that the battle you are fighting is much harder than you had expected. So it's either you continue fighting until imminent death, or you retreat or surrender, and you get to fight another day.

The Only Failure Is Death Itself

Surrendering and retreating—these are the two most underrated battle strategies. Either one you pick up of these strategies, you have advanced in the game. But if you die, that's it, isn't it? Say you retreat—the second-best move after dying—running back crying with nothing to show for all the pain you have suffered until that point but the scars, physically and emotionally.

But now you have an advantage of knowing the battlefield over the person that never went to the battlefield because of fear of death, or even worse, captured by the enemy, which is essentially what surrendering is.

You can suffer that loss, go away, lick your wounds, heal, and design a new strategy. And you get to play your next move. Obviously, if you died, you won't get to this stage. But you have to learn to live with and accept the losses that you suffered in the battle, and that's the worst part about this option. This is when you suffer all kinds of illnesses, depression, PTSD. It's a second battle.

And finally, you manage to deal with these, and have gotten ways to cope, and you have integrated back into society, living a nice civil lifestyle. And you have forgotten about the defeat, and perhaps you now have another arena that you are winning in.

This is when you are fed and happy. Clear mind. You can plot a completely different strategy from the one you had when you first went to the battlefield. The beauty—at this point you have an advantage. You know the battlefield, especially those basics that caused you to suffer greatly last time.

These are non-negotiable for you. You might be over-prepared this time. The next battle pops up. Anxiety. Will you be able to do it? Are you in over your head just like you felt last time? How much stronger has the enemy gotten since after their victory?

Obviously, you would want the enemy to not have changed anything and be distracted by the celebration of their victory. If we flip the script here quickly for now, there is a thing called over-celebrating your victory, and it's often our downfall—getting too complacent and forgetting about the enemy that fled. Not dying takes significant strength. That's why the young are more capable of surviving it than the old.

Of course, the worst of them all: surrendering. You are moving to the next stage. The possibility of death is still very much alive here, except at a much more painful pace than if it had happened in the battlefield. The enemy can do whatever they please with you and kill you the moment they feel like killing you. They can sit in front of you and rejoice as you are dying a slow death, almost like they're dancing a slow dance to their favorite tune.

But if they kill you, that's it. It's over for them as well. But if they keep you alive, they can generate more value from you than if they have killed you right away. Initially, the scales are tipped in their favor. You are weak, pathetic, no leverage whatsoever on this side. You are nobody. You are in a foreign land. You have to learn the dialect. This is where you have to kill that self-entitled, complacent, respected you. This, played well, has much greater rewards than other options—obviously after the one we all want, which is a win right away.

But to win, someone has to lose. And who wins is the one determined and prepared enough to win.

But even when surrendering, it's probably not what it looks like on the outset. Sometimes you are just forced to surrender, and you are taken away. But when you are there, you find a different battle than the one you have been fighting in the battlefield. When you are in the battlefield, you are probably fighting for someone else's cause. When you get captured by the enemy, that's when your own battle begins.

You might be waiting for someone to come rescue you—maybe the person that you have been fighting for. But you don't know for sure if they are going to come. And after a few days passed, you realize that they are not going to come for you, and you need to decide to fight for yourself or forget about fighting altogether.

You find that the biggest battle is the one you fight alone, where it's all up to you. Sometimes to survive, you have to forget your past and adapt fully to the new reality you find yourself in. And miracles happen.

I've recently heard a Bible verse, Genesis 41 tells the story of how Joseph after being captured by the enemy, and became a slave, but was able to becoming useful by interpreting Pharaoh's dreams, and from offering those services during those difficult times for him, led to him being appointed to lead Egypt during the time of famine.

You are gonna leave a mess. You can never be 100% perfect. Your mind is always going to go back to the past and want to do corrections. You are running against time. The more time you spend dwelling or reminiscing about the past, that's the time you are wasting that you could be using to execute now. Make it like eating. Just because you had a great breakfast doesn't mean that you have to spend the whole morning thinking about that breakfast.

There is a phenomenon I've recently found out about, and it's called habituation. There's a whole experiment behind this, with a dot in the middle of the screen with some shaded grey color surrounding it. The idea is that if you focus on this dot for 30 seconds, these shaded grey colors fall away, leaving only one background color and white. This basically means that once you have been exposed to something for some time, its intensity, value, etc., disappears.

Heaven and Hell

This one is a bit of a touchy subject, so I better tread carefully. This isn't about religion, which is absolutely necessary, but only to the extent that it comes with faith. On our Questions With No Answers article, we talked about the possibility of everything happening at once—the past, the present, and the future. What if we experience heaven and hell right in this lifetime?

I don't know about you, but I have experienced circumstances that felt worse than what hell is generally described as in the afterlife. Some people have suffered far worse than we can possibly imagine. Take all the gruesome and unjust events that have happened throughout history. You mean to tell me that those people, after suffering tragic deaths and losses, are guaranteed to go to heaven? If that's not the case and they end up in hell, does that mean their fate was doomed on both ends of the spectrum?

Habituation is real. You know you habituate towards pain too. So after some time of experiencing pain, it doesn't get as painful. The only way you can get hurt by pain is if the tactics and intensity are frequently changed. But if you are constantly put in fire and get a rest on Sunday, actually, that Sunday will be heaven for you.

Let's flip the script. You are in heaven. You habituate towards good things, which means that after some time, the good thing you were ecstatic about this morning, you have completely forgotten about by lunchtime. You're back to stressing about other things and looking for other new things to make you ecstatic about again.

But I'm also realizing that that's what religion is promising—that after life, depending on how you did in this lifetime, you will be habituating towards one thing eternally. In heaven, you won't chase food because you won't be hungry. You won't be broke, etc. Now this sounds like death beyond the religious realm—the ultimate end.

You know what, I'm going to come up with a code name. When I find myself going deep down into a hole and keep getting myself deeper, we are going to use the code name "KRUSH" to stop that route. So KRUSH to the life in heaven and hell. But the idea that you have to suffer here in order to rejoice in heaven? Can we pursue to reach heaven here while also remaining open that we are going to experience hell here as well? Like night and day? Winter and summer?

We might have those small heavenly moments where a friend shares a meal with you, where you are told that you are loved and matter, where for the most part of the morning everything is going well—like you are getting the train on time, you are getting your favorite thing on discount, you are getting a call from your loved ones.

But you might only see these things as they are happening, and a minute later, you are back to thinking about the possible hell that's coming next week. So the whole week you spend suffering that hell before it even arrived. We get wired like this as we grow old, unfortunately. That's how we never take the time to enjoy what we have because we are always thinking about what's next.

The Shaolin religion preaches being in the present the whole time. I know our mind is telling us that we need to be prepared. We can't get caught by surprise like last time. And by virtue of doing this, we are going back to our past and living the future that hasn't happened yet in the present moment, and missing out on the present moment. If I ask what the weather is today, someone might have to glance up to check because they haven't been in touch with the present moment.

Imagined vs. Reality

There is this saying that says we suffer more in imagination than in reality. You've probably experienced cases where you faced horrible situations and you survived them without thinking any of it but surviving. If it was physical pain, your body habituated towards it to a point that you didn't feel the pain at all, until after you've calmed down. And maybe even then, you are feeling the pain because you are seeing people feeling that pain for you.

Even now, thinking about that pain, you can't even face it right now. It's torturing you more than it did at the time. Again, that's when we get depression and PTSD.

When we hear of the stories of sufferings that people suffered in the past, we live those. We let them consume us. But for them, it had become their norm—a horrible one—but they were in that situation. Only a small thing would give them a break from that suffering, which to me, thinking about what they went through or watching it in pictures, makes my organs hurt.

Be Eaten vs. Live

We have been talking about chasing. What if you are the one being chased? Where you are the prey. Where it's a matter of outrunning the predator. When you are not chasing the glory, but you are running for your life.

The War We Lived

I still vividly remember the time when we were running in the streets, my mother carrying my sister on her back and holding me by my hand, with nothing on but blue underwear, because there was no time to get dressed. You see, this became a norm. Around the evening, you would have to listen carefully for the noise shouting "balekani" (run). I was a kid. I didn't understand any of it. For me, that was the reality I was born in, and I knew nothing better.

Although I would see when my father would take me to the suburbs on the other side of the town where he was working, it was a completely different environment. No one seemed to know what we were going through. The kids were happy and playing outside.

Even when we were running in the streets in the middle of the night, it didn't feel dangerous to me. And the fact that we were surrounded by other people who were running for their lives too made it like a marathon or fun run, as we were not running in the forests or anything like that. But as much as it wasn't causing much trouble to me, it was to my mom, who was running with two toddlers in the middle of the night, not knowing if that day was going to be our last. A lot of people—one of those days became their last, even people that were family to us. I just knew that it was uncomfortable.

I knew that we lived different lives from other people but somehow felt connected. My family was involved in working in the kitchens, from my grandmother, and my uncle was doing it during the weekends and school holidays to get himself some money. And he would take me to these places that he worked sometimes, and it certainly looked very different from where we were. But for me at that stage, difference was not entirely bad, especially if it's a good difference. It meant that I get to play in better conditions.

You see, during that time, it was war to everybody. To me, it was just weird. At this point, I didn't quite understand fear and the cruelty of this world. Not until a few years later when I got caught up in my own war. Damn! What is this? KRUSH.

My son was born during the thick of COVID. His reality was people wearing face masks and not being allowed to go outside. The country being in lockdown. I don't know if he would remember any of this or if he was just too young. But just like me, when I told my mom and aunt about what I remembered during the war, they couldn't believe that I remembered any of that.

And we would talk about the good times now, our lives before it got out of control. We would reminisce about the good times, even the disbelief in their faces about how we survived, as well as the sense of glory and gratitude that we made it. I missed my old home that we obviously ended up losing.

So I don't know what my son would remember when he is older. Maybe it would be nightmares about people wearing face masks, and he would probably write his piece about this too, the same way most of my nightmares always involve war and violence.

Years later, after the war was over and we were able to move freely without being hounded by the police dogs when taking the train—and what looked weird to me as a kid but the adults understood it and remained in faith that things will change—there's peace now.

These guys were no joke. They knew the perfect time to attack, which was at dawn when everyone is asleep.

We also had family members who were residing on the side that was attacking everyone, and we would get a message that they would attack that night. We would spend the whole evening preparing and waiting for the scream "run." And these guys won't come until you've decided that they're not coming—it was a false alarm—and you decide to take a nap, especially for the adults because they still had jobs. They still needed to show up to work the following day like nothing happened. Right after taking that nap, that's when they attacked.

Some people that were sounding the alarm probably didn't make it because they were too close to the enemy and got killed.

My mother and aunt, who I was with during this difficult time, couldn't believe how much I remembered. People grossly underestimate kids. In fact, when you are an adult, you are actively trying to forget things. You learn that the past has nothing but an experience for you, and you're grateful you are here and alive, and you move.

The spirit of forgiveness that we all have inside of us is incredible. I've seen my family forgiving things that I thought were ridiculous when I was younger, especially when you are a teenager—the most dangerous stage for any child. You easily get excited by violence, revenge, and a sense of danger. Unfortunately, most of our brothers get trapped in that stage and are never able to climb out.

Women

I've been fortunate enough to have been raised by such powerful women in my life. I still don't understand how they managed to build homes on their own. If you haven't been able to tell yet, I am a man. And growing up, I saw women building homes on their own while the men that were supposed to be doing that job were clueless about what these women were going through to make it happen. These men that were killing other people, who also included women and kids. These were the men that in the end were heads of households.

I saw women creating things, bringing things into existence, with little to no outside help. Creating things out of thin air. And when I later saw very few men who were working tirelessly building homes for their wives and children, I was so impressed that I wanted to do that myself when I'm older. That dream is still very much alive. I'm busy trying to pull things out of thin air as I saw them do when I was growing up.

I know this sounds like I'm saying that women are generally good and essentially homebuilders, while men are generally animals that go out and kill and come back to a home built by women and become the heads of the households. Maybe that's how they earn that right—through a matter of killing or be killed. If you survived that war, meaning that you killed or you were prepared to kill or be killed, and as a result, you get rewarded with a title of being the head of the household. But that doesn't say anything about being good. Is there no way to earn that title without putting yourself in a position to kill or be killed? I've actually found that there is. You still kill, but this time you kill the beast inside you by putting yourself through challenging obstacles where you could still face the possibility of death if you don't make it, and glory if you survive.

To occasionally put yourself into a position where your ego gets destroyed. An ancient proverb: If there is no enemy within, the enemy outside can do us no harm.

However, my statement wasn't at all saying that women are good and men horrible. You might have a completely different experience where you have encountered the opposite. Not all women are good. Some are slashers, and some of us have had tough childhoods where they were raised by slashers or who have encountered slashers in their lifetime.

But if the numbers say that some women are good and all men are slashers by nature—look, I'm a numbers guy—if you have a guaranteed slasher (a man) and a potential nurturer, I recommend you keep the potential nurturer too. It makes sense in numbers, unless the nurturer turns into a slasher. But if the numbers say that there is one out there who's a nurturer, I suggest you patch yourself up and get on with it. That's the thrill of the chase.

Playmate

You see, right now I'm an adult, so there is no more adult after this.

Even when I was younger, I used to have older friends. I used to love the wisdom they had. The problem was when it got confused as if I was in the same age as them. Then there would be a mismatch.

There would be a time where I would overstep my boundaries, and they would gently push me to the right side by saying things like, "He's a kid. He's never married before." Obviously, my ego would feel attacked—"How dare you call me a kid?" "We are hanging out together!" "I'm making you look cool!" But obviously, these would be my internal outbursts. Physically, I would just be stunned.

You know when you are playing with someone and they hit you in that special place that makes you cough? That's a guaranteed time where that person can do whatever and say whatever without you being able to say anything for those few seconds. When someone says something and you are just like "Huh?" with your mouth wide open for a few seconds, and if they say something next to add to that—that's it, you are done, KO. If in therapy, you might leave right then. You won't be recovering from that one anytime soon.

But these old friends gave me such invaluable knowledge, and I always felt privileged when someone shared that with me and treated me like their equal.

There was a Rasta. He once told me about the history of marijuana, how they had been fighting and protesting for years to get it legalized. He was even quoting prominent people that were aware of the struggle. Obviously, as a kid, I didn't even understand the point of fighting for it. I was just happy that we got freedom, and I just didn't want anyone to touch anything else. But I could see how invested and defeated he felt after trying to fight for this thing. He was talking about the 1970s, and that's when I realized that he was too high. He had been smoking weed too much.

It was in 2009 when this conversation happened. He was the only and the last person I ever saw smoking weed like that. He was smoking it with the seeds, and he said to me, "Most people get confused why I smoke weed with seeds." And I was expecting something brilliant to come after that statement, but he said nothing. I knew that he was talking nonsense. Weed had all these bad things that it caused that I heard of growing up, including the inability to have kids as it reduced sperm count, and how people smoking it would be society's worst mistake. But I loved good stories. If you love good stories, you listen to Rastas' stories. They are not frequent, but when they do happen, you better listen.

Nine years later, cannabis was legalized for private, personal use by adults in South Africa on September 18, 2018, following the Constitutional Court ruling. The Constitutional Court of South Africa is the highest court in all matters, specializing in interpreting, protecting, and enforcing the Constitution. It's the highest court you can appeal your case to after appealing in all other courts and getting denied. The Court consists of 11 judges, with at least eight required to hear a case, and its decisions cannot be overturned by any other court.

Imagine the awe I felt when I heard the news and the gratitude of having heard the story from the person that was involved in the struggle to get this legalized for years, which I've later learned is not all bad as I had heard when I was growing up, but obviously definitely terrible for kids.

But just hearing that some people still had their struggle that they had been fighting for years, during the time when everything else seemed to be running smoothly and peacefully.

At some point, I figured out that I was going to be an adult, which meant that I would have to deal with the issues that my parents were dealing with, and I started taking mental notes of the things I would do differently when I get to their stage. And by parent, I mean everyone that was an adult—could be a drunkard in the street, a pastor at a church, a gangster from somewhere, someone's boyfriend, someone's father, someone's grandfather. And I thought I was ready.

Damn! Some things are far easier to solve when you are on the other side of the river watching the battle happening across the river. Once you get to the other side of the river, it becomes a completely different story.

When you are on the other side of the river, everything is black and white. Once you get to the other side, you find out a lot of grey areas, and surprisingly, that's where you find yourself able to breathe. From the other side, you are not thinking about breathing. You are not thinking about that person fighting on the other side needing to breathe or making sure that their foot is well-leveled so they don't twist their ankle, because twisting their ankle gets them exposed and gets them killed. You are thinking about that person having to think faster and outthink their opponent.

So at this stage, you are all my playmates. And just like when we were kids, just because we were playmates, it didn't mean that we had the same tools to play with. Some of us had to work to earn playtime. Some of us had to play barefooted while others played with soccer boots. Some of us owned the soccer ball and wouldn't be able to take defeat, and they would take their ball if they were defeated or didn't make the team. Some of us would even play dirty in order to win. Some of us would throw tantrums when we lose and even tell on others.

Don't confuse this with being friends. No, no, no. That's something different. You see, when we were playmates, it didn't even matter whether we were enemies or friends. We would play together. Some people would end up getting a beating at the end of a few games, and yet the following day, they would be the first in the field ready to play. Some would know just before the game ends that they would have to run because the beating is about to go down. You know when you missed a game and you hear stories after about how your team got beaten up after the game.

But all of this never stopped the games. Even with the kids, there will be that kid that gets bullied but also cries a lot because, as I've just mentioned, taking a little beating doesn't stop the games. There would be this kid that's always bullied and cries out loud and goes to snitch. As an adult, you go and shout the hell out of those kids and tell your kid to never play with them. And right after, they are back with them, crying again. Taking a beating is part of the game.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that bullying is okay before I get misquoted. You'd be waiting on me to slip up and say something stupid. Now that I said you are not my friend, you are taking offense. Shut up. You are probably one of the bully ones. If you are, let me give one for the bullied team. Your skewed face, like you are waiting to sneeze. Even the way you say "Huh?" makes your whole head look like an oval shape. Prick. With your three-legged, left-handed dog. Take playmate and sit down.

I learned a lot of games in my life. Some I love so much that to this day I reminisce about them and feel a sense of awe and conquest. I get my own set of games that interest me and make me feel alive, and quite frankly, these games usually find me. When I play a game, I get to a point where I conquer it, when I beat the master, and that's it. That game is finished. I'm moving on to another, waiting to learn another game. I don't go around seeking new opponents.

Some games don't have clear masters, and they don't quite offer many skills besides building confidence. But at times, you find people looking for opponents to play, but sometimes they offer a game that doesn't interest me much. That's the worst game you can play where you don't feel alive and a great sense of danger at it. Otherwise, it's just pastime, making it look like we are doing something useful.

I apologize for my above behavior. I get triggered when it comes to bullies, and unfortunately, we are going to deal with them time and time again. If you are being bullied right now, just try once and mean it and be willing to put up a fight. Bullies are usually swollen balloons. You put them too close to the fire, they pop on their own. Anyway, let me give you a little something to apologize for my behavior. Let me tell you about my favorite game. My favorite game was swimming.

Sink or Swim

The hardest game I've ever had to play was swimming. It also matters a lot to know how you learn and who teaches you the game.

You remember when I KRUSHED somewhere above when I was talking about my wars that I started to fight years later, having seen or heard about the adults fighting their wars? This one was part of my war. It literally felt like the world had just tilted overnight. It's me and my sister again, except this time my mom is not there.

Damn! It was far easier having my mom holding my arm and her carrying my sister. Without her here, I don't know what to do. I feel like this is it. I'm going to die here. My sister was looking up to me, and I had no idea what to give, what to tell her. As a kid, for the first time, I felt how unfair life could get. My starting point was: learn to cross the river. You remember the river I drowned in from the Questions With No Answers article? This is the river I had to learn to swim in.

You know when everything you know completely changes overnight, as if the world has tilted overnight, and you find yourself trapped in a hole that you don't know how to climb out of. To make it worse, my sister is here with me. If it was just me, I would've probably opted for death, or it would've been much easier to only care about one person—me—to deal with whatever was happening with me and learn to be strong enough for myself.

I remember my first day like it was yesterday. I'm not sure if it was all our first day, but for me, it definitely was. With everything going around, it was one of those where you tell yourself, "Okay, I know how this goes. I'm dreaming. I just need to wake up, and I'm going back to my old life. I'm probably sleeping on my back again. As adults would say, if you sleep on your back, you're going to have nightmares." And after trying to wake up a few times without waking up, then you are left with two conclusions—it's either I'm dead, or I'm alive and just fucked up big time this time. But either way, I need to learn this new reality and figure out how to live around it and learn the rules, language, tricks, shortcuts.

Just like we discussed in our Questions With No Answers article, if you wake up, it's a dream. But if you don't wake up, it's your new reality, even if it's death. Until we prove with certainty what happens when a person dies, we can't rule out the possibility of it being another reality. KRUSH.

Just like you learn the rules of the game when the master is taking you through it. Some games you wake up at a loss right away, and you are playing to repay the loss. Some games you wake up with a win right away, and you are playing not to lose.

But when you start, you know none of these rules.

So it's me and my four cousins. We have this ruthless guy. He's supposed to be on our side, but he's not. The beast of a man. He looks like he's the one that's been sent to kill us. We have to cross this violent river by jumping on a few rocks that don't seem stable to get across the river. This crossing spot is right on the head of the waterfall, so if you slip, you have a few seconds to figure out your next move to jump out of the river before the river carries you over the waterfall.

Sibongiseni, Nqubeko, Josky, myself at last. Oh, the first time I was with my uncle. Someone from my family. I really couldn't cross. Every time I needed to cross the river after they had crossed, I would step on the first rock and feel it moving, and I would fight my way back. My cousins just skipped over those rocks like they were tennis balls in front of my eyes.

Except Josky. Josky was the youngest, and he took absolute advantage of this fact, and he got away with it every time, until the last moment. Since he was the youngest, that meant that he graduated last from the program, and when he completed it, that means he was alone in the program. And the stories I hear about what he went through—it's terrible of me, but it makes me laugh. But we all made it.

Remember the house I built with my cousins I talked about in the Cooking More Than A Culinary Skill article? These are the cousins.

Anyway, we cross the river for the first time with this ruthless man. At that point in time, every man was just ruthless. Had I known the kind of men we had fled, what they were prepared to do to us—well, it doesn't matter. I didn't know what those men were going to do back then. But right now I'm seeing the tall, dark-skinned man that's full of anger on his face, that's ready to kill somebody today.

Sibongiseni was the bravest and the sharpest. I was definitely the weakest. Josky was the laziest. He had all kinds of tricks to be lazy. Nqubeko was almost like me, just a little experienced and definitely braver than I was. But we later understood each other very well, and we played the game more efficiently and outthought the master. The master was our grandfather. Josky relied more on tricks to avoid doing the task at all, and he had kind of a heavy body. And these tasks needed you to be light—really light. The lighter, the better.

As much as my cousins were kind of experienced at it, they were just getting introduced to it, as they were also just getting into this age of working in the wild. And you don't wanna know what was waiting for me had I come of age in my old home that I missed so much, had we stayed there and the war continued.

Anyway, we cross the river for the first time with this ruthless man. It's Sibongiseni, of course. He's flying through these rocks. And these rocks—you can see they are not stable. As they step on one, it's tilting over to the sides, making it risky for them to drop off in the river and get swept over to the waterfall.

Nqubeko goes and lands his thing safely and securely.

Josky goes. He's a little familiar with the territory, but his heavy body betrays him. He stays a second longer on the rock, and the rock tilts over, and he's getting thrown into the river, and the river takes him over the waterfall. The ruthless man catches him when he's almost under the waterfall.

I am taking my jumps. I've seen Sibongiseni, Nqubeko, and Josky, and saw what made them cross and what made Josky almost drown. When I landed across the river and was standing there shivering with fear of getting taken by the river, I couldn't believe it. I did it, baby. I landed perfectly. Although no one clapped for me, the claps were loud inside of me. We just marched on, getting introduced into the wilderness.

The fear of getting thrown over by the waterfall, as days passed, slowly disappeared. We got introduced to the swimming level.

Again, Sibongiseni is flying already. You don't get taught to swim. The ruthless man throws you in the deep end, where it's known the creature lives. The river is muddy on the ground, so when you swim, the water gets dirty. The deep end, where the creatures live, the water is always dark green.

To teach you to swim, the ruthless man takes you and throws you in the deep end. But you must first know how to paddle. And to learn to paddle, you learn paddling with your feet dipped in the water while most of your body is out. We do this by the muddy bank of the river. Doing this practice—this practice is a little tricky as the water is not still. It's a flowing river. It's flowing with everything that comes in its way, unless that thing can swim.

We are busy with our practice with my cousins and younger kids on this muddy bank while we are cautious of the ruthless man, because the ruthless man and his crew, the masters of the current, they occasionally come and pick someone up and throw them in the deep end where the creature lives. And you have to swim out of the creature's nest, or you drown and become the creature's lunch.

The water is cold before you get in, but once you entered, it becomes warm and nice, so that the outside becomes cold. You just wanna stay inside the water. But the creature's nest is always cold, clean, and just still.

Already when we started, Sibongiseni already knew how to paddle. So he was no longer with us in the mud. He was already fighting the battles of the ruthless man, getting thrown in the deep end time and again. We would see him fighting and gasping for breath while he's swimming his way out of there. We knew that as long as we didn't become him, we were safe in our muddy pool.

Someone would occasionally grab us and get us in a little deeper section than the muddy river bank we were swimming in, and once that happens, you will be fighting for your life, crying, kicking, and screaming. But after that incident, the fear would slowly disappear. And you learn to paddle a bit. And now you are getting to Sibongiseni's stage and get thrown in the deep end.

I don't quite remember my first day in the deep end, but I remember the feeling. The water's texture felt a little thick and harder to paddle than the general section. Boy, swimming out of that place—you did it! You get that congratulations from my cousins. Now you're gonna have fun! And boy, we did!

We quickly became on our own. We were swimming butt naked. After the deep end comes jumping from a cliff down to the lake. My favorite. We would be shooting down from the cliff, butt naked, jumping one after another. We made it as dangerous and fun as it can get. If you're jumping first, you have to be fast to move when you land, as someone is right behind you. And if you are slow, they will be landing on your head.

That feeling of leaving the outside world, flying down naked with nothing but your soul and a creature that's potentially waiting to eat you down there.

I still can't think of a better feeling.

Ingwenya

Ingwenya (the crocodile) is the game we played during swimming. There is one person that's elected to be Ingwenya in the beginning. To be the first Ingwenya, you must be really good at swimming, deceiving, and delivering the punishment.

So there is one Ingwenya, and everyone else is prey. Ingwenya goes underwater. Obviously, the water is dirty, so you can't see them when they are underneath. And you have to run away from them because if they catch you, you are it. And they would ask the tribe (the preys become the tribe) for the verdict in terms of the punishment, which is in the form of drowning you. The tribe will say different numbers, and Ingwenya will take the highest number. You get your punishment, and you become Ingwenya.

When the game begins, a new Ingwenya has arrived in town. Ingwenya stands on one side, and the preys stand on the other side. Ingwenya goes under the water and moves undetectably and catches one of the preys that would then become a new Ingwenya.

That's when your swimming skills get significantly improved. When you are playing Ingwenya, you learn the fear of running for your life in the water because at some point, you know there will come a time when you have to do that. The older boys, the ruthless men, would be drowning you while you are trying to catch someone else to become it. You probably haven't even mastered the proper swimming skills yet. Probably why you got caught in the first place. You don't know how to breathe underwater, but Ingwenya must go underwater to deceive the preys as to its location, which means you have to be far deep underwater.

Then you get it, man! The best game ever. As you progress through these stages, your peers are also progressing at the same time. When you get proficient at being Ingwenya, you also get proficient at being prey. Every time you play, you learn new techniques. If you are prey, you learn to spot Ingwenya even when they are down under the water by small bubbles coming in the still water, and you can see their direction and escape them. This made me great at being Ingwenya, as I knew how preys were running away from me and looking for me.

So I learned to completely hold my breath underwater, so I gave them no bubbles. I would go underwater and not move in any direction but just continue lowering my body down to the ground by just making my body pull me down to the ground and land like a fish would. And I would hear them laughing and swimming towards my direction, and some wouldn't be sure which direction to move as I'm not giving them anything. And when I finally rise up, I'm catching some that thought they were running away from me by just coming straight to me.

I learned to give them a false impression, like going underwater in a way of diving to their direction, and then once I'm underwater, while there is chaos and they are running around, I'm also turning back to my starting point. I even learned to dive forward to their direction, and once underwater, reverse straight back to my starting point, as this was much cleaner and smoother than making a U-turn.

Mama Credit

Mama credit is that one thing you are born holding in one hand. I'm sure you've heard a lot of theories about what you might be holding when your hands are clenched fists. My theory today is that in one hand it's your mama credit, and no one can take it away from you. It's one credit that we protect with our lives, because maybe it is one and the same thing as our "life." Once you run out of this credit, your life is over. You have heard people saying that someone ran out of luck. This is the luck they are talking about—the mama credit.

This is the credit that you will be presented with every time you have run out of options, or you have just been completely fucked or messed up so badly that you see a glimpse of your life being taken away. And in that moment, a woman comes. She lies for you to make you live another day.

Even when iphara (drug addict) gets beaten up in the taxi rank, it's the mothers that beg for peace for him.

Even when you decide to go back home after a terrible failure, you live on your mama credit. Some of us spend our entire lives living on our mama credits. This is not a good strategy.

The nice thing about mama credit is that it's universal and heavenly, which means that if you suddenly die before you fix your affairs with the Lord, you can use your mama credit during the negotiations when you get to heaven.

You make deposits to this account by being respectful to the elders, helping when they need help, being respectful towards women. By today's standards, this is called chivalry. But from today, you would know it as servicing your mama credit.

Imagine you arrive in heaven. You want to buy a new suit to impress—you know, for first impressions and all of that. You are trying to impress the angels on your first day. You want to show them that you are a big spender. You try to swipe your card, and it declines. Insufficient funds. You've used all of your credit.

Or God pulls up your timesheet and invoices, and it's all the spending of your mama credit since you were born. Even God is in disbelief: "I don't understand how you managed to go over the limit of your mama credit."

Some of the invoices are even addressed to the morgue because at some point, you were right at the tip of dying, and you used your mama credit and paid your way out of it.

Mama credit is when you have run out of all options and you start looking for mom's comfort. This doesn't mean that it's your biological mother. It can be any female energy. You know when you start asking for favors from them.

When I was going through it, in the thick of it, I'm thinking that's it—all of my family died. I was even fantasizing about them, looking for them in different people at school, in teachers that looked like them. I would be like, "This could be my aunt or uncle." But at this stage, I knew that asking questions could bring consequences. So I wouldn't just shoot straight out. I had developed some codes to use, to fish around, and I was catching nothing.

Until one day, my mother came to see us. I couldn't believe it. This is it! A favor I've been looking for from God has been granted. He probably saw that this one is not going to make it. Let's give him something to keep him alive.

It's my mother this time. I'm not fantasizing. I've got about a minute at most with her. I needed to make it count. I've learned to speak faster here. I thought I had given all of the information. This is the person I trust and know that she has run with us against whatever was happening back then that I couldn't understand. I was ready to go back at it now. I might've even passed a message to my sister.

The next day, when I came back from the field, my mother was gone.

You see, mama credit—you use it to explain to them that it's hard, that you want to get out. You've had enough. You've had enough because you have also been blaming yourself. So you promise that you have changed. And you will notice how women listen to your story that doesn't make sense. That's your mama credit in action.

You see, even when she is kicking you out of the house because you messed up, you should bring your "mama credit" card. But you can only use it once. What about my mama credit? I demand my mama credit.

When we hiked Table Mountain, both times, not once did I reach the peak when I wanted to reach it. I reached it when I was completely beaten down, hating myself for ever making that decision. I can't tell you the last step that I could tell was the one that did it.

To The Brothers That Got Eaten

To the brothers who got caught and eaten, I just want to take this moment to relay this message: it wasn't your fault. It could've happened to anyone. But damn! We lived! We are still swimming in different mediums. These are guided by the rules, enforced by the people outside the lake, and there are creatures still. Some creatures look exactly like us, which makes the game a bit trickier. It's a little longer. I still haven't seen the end, let alone the direction. I'm not sure if this is a flowing river or what. Most of it is made up.

But it's so beautiful. There are women too. We are drinking alcohol. It's not so bad. I've been It for some time now. There are so many games that play at the same time. It's a bit confusing. But I've got a lot of nice fellow swimmers, so it's not as threatening as in the beginning. I've just recently taken a dive after realizing that it's been the river that's been moving, not the rock that I've been standing on. And boy! This is another kind of game. You don't see the players, which makes it really tricky to play.

I'm finding myself doing a lot of chores now. Not because I'm now enjoying them more than I did before, but because it's helping me distort my thoughts. This game involves a lot of thinking. And a lot of thinking is not good for a long time. It can kill you. That's how you and I discovered the water. We would be dead in the outside world, feeling like outcasts, but when we got to the water, that's when we would become alive. Which is a contradiction, because if we felt more alive among the dangerous creatures that were surrounding us than when we were in the outside world with the people that were supposed to protect us—who exactly was more dangerous, the creatures or those people?

But I have even been over the clouds. I tell you, brother, that is some other world up there. It's truly special. The lift when you are going up is almost like that moment after taking a dive and you are landing in the water—that peaceful moment when you become one with the creatures. You are there, and yet you feel love and acceptance.

To the brothers that went back to the river—damn, lake—and dived to look for their brother every day after he disappeared, knowing very well that he might have been taken by the creature and still dived—you are my heroes. In this platform, we reward you for your bravery. It made more contribution than you could ever know.

To the brothers that have gone into burning houses and saved families, the guys that are forever ready to save lives even though they are highly disregarded and ignored by society—in this platform, we reward and salute you.

Khasina

Khasina is a game of playing cards. The most popular one is called "Four Hands," where there are four players, only forty numbered cards, excluding jokers. And there is another called "Two Hands," where two players are playing. The difference between these two games is that in Four Hands, all 40 cards are in circulation at the same time. Each player starts with 10 cards in their hand, and you have a partner. So you and your partner have a total of 20 cards. Without going into detail as to the dynamics of the two games, the Four Hands game—you don't just rely on your hand. You also rely on your partner's hand, which you don't know.

Two Hands is the best. It involves a lot of counting and a process of elimination. The first part of the game, where it's just the two of you playing, you have limited knowledge about what hand your opponent has. As you play along, taking turns dropping the cards one card at a time, and knowing your hand as well, it starts with your opponent having a possibility of 30 cards. But as the game progresses and they are dropping a card every time, those 30 probabilities reduce until the first part of the game finishes and you're dealt the second hands. Now you know exactly how many cards your opponent has if you have been keeping track enough in the game.

Mlabalaba or Mrabaraba

This one is a puzzle game. Also, without going into details of how the game is played, why it's important to me: At some point, we stayed with Mkhulu Mhlanguleni, the most notorious man of his time. But when he stayed with us, he had been severely injured and got paralyzed. And all of that warrior glory was gone. One thing he knew he was best at was Mlabalaba.

He was a master, and playing for him was an art.

He wanted to play with people that respected the game, not like the ones we mentioned above that would throw tantrums when they lose. It didn't help that he also had quite a temper.

One virtue that's worked for me even to keep friendships with older people is the ability to keep quiet if I have nothing to say and humility. Older people love this trait. They get curious and give you advice that you didn't ask for and take you places you wouldn't have gone to on your own. When you are always talking, older people don't like this, especially the Rastas. You would find six people in a room when you enter, and yet it's just quiet.

Anyway, back to Umlabalaba. I'm not the kind of person that just jumps into the game the moment the game is available. I first observe my opponent. The game itself is as important as the opponent you are playing.

I saw how seriously Mkhulu Mhlanguleni took this game, and my cousins were not giving him what he wanted, so some games would end up with him throwing tantrums because he feels he's being cheated.

Then I played him. In Umlabalaba, it's almost like chess in a sense that you have to play the game in your head ahead of your opponent's obvious moves. You can in a way direct your opponent where to go with just your moves by giving them obvious moves and wins.

There is something called a double. This is where you have to maneuver the move in such a way that you take two pieces of your opponent at the same time. These were my favorite.

When I played him and I beat him, he couldn't believe it. You know when you beat the master, they don't believe it, and they would say things like they were distracted and ask you to set up the board again.

But this time, you've got it.

I was doing doubles back to back.

The shock and disbelief on his face when you say "double," and he loved the game. The laughter and the joy he would get when I beat him like that—it was everything.

And that was the last time I played Umlabalaba.

All of these games I've played, one common thing happened. Once I've beaten a master, I never found them worth playing as much. Every time I play after that point, it felt like it was taking my valuable time that I could instead be using doing something else.

Gambling

In case you didn't know, kids gamble too. A lot.

Your son is always asking for money and yet always coming home hungry with no money. I'm not saying that he's gambling. He could be bullied. Bullies also take a lot of money. Or he might just be saving. Yep, kids can do savings too. I did that.

Ispin (Coin Flip)

When I was in primary school, I learned Ispin. This is a game where you spin or flip the coin and cover it on the floor with your hand, and the other person has to guess what side this coin is facing. And you, as the person flipping the coin, also have no idea what side the coin is facing underneath your hand until you reveal it and you see if the person guessing got it right or not.

So it's a fair game. Not until you study the game enough.

The probabilities are for the books, not for the actual gambling. In gambling, there's no probability. At least the ones in the street. I've never gambled in casinos, so I'm not sure about that space.

When you progress in gambling, you realize that the game is rigged. In Spin, there is no 50% probability of heads and 50% of tails. Maybe when the coin is just lying there on its own. But once that coin is in my hand, when you flip that coin or spin it, as much as it's giving an illusion that it's changing sides between heads and tails, that coin is going to land on the same side you had it when you flipped it. And when you catch it, it's still the same side.

This is where also knowing your opponent comes into play. If you are playing with an advanced opponent, you would know that they would know this trick when you are either flipping the coin. So when you're catching the coin, you have to flip it inside your hand, and that's when the flipping happens, not when you are spinning it or flipping it in the air. Or you can make the coin vertical under your hand—a bit tricky—but if you are playing an amateur, they won't notice that the hand is a bit elevated. The moment they call, you simply flip it the other way.

Or you can have two coins underneath your hand, and you know which is tails and which one is heads. And you can just reveal one coin that's against them.

Mba

This is also a game of cards. Here, two players play, where one player calls a card, and the other player shuffles the cards. You tell the shuffler how they must shuffle the cards to make sure that they are fully shuffled, and you call your card. The dealer, if they win, will deal the cards—start by dealing one card to your side and one to their side, and it continues like that until your card appears. If it appears on your stack, you win. If it appears on their stack, they win.

It's a fair game. Not until you study the game enough.

In this game, that's where we completely go beyond numbers and probabilities. To win in this game, you can't just play a random card. The card you play is supported by a huge belief that's been built over time, after trying all the numbers and losing, and you get this one card that always makes you win. All the time. It's a first, which means that it's the first card dealt out, and you take your money and bets if you have also bet on yourself.

The players soon find out about this card. That's where the rigging happens. During this shuffling, the dealer can make your card a second, which means that it comes a second after they have dealt your side, and they win.

You learn to have quick hands when gambling—a sleight of hand.

As I'm explaining these things, the other gamblers know about these, and no one will speak up for you when you are being robbed.

If you still don't know these tricks, you would be the one funding the operation.

After learning these tricks, I lost interest in the game. It was no longer a game anymore. And I would get my winnings and buy sweets and sell them and make my clean money.

Being the Best Is Enough

Once you feel like you are the best in your field, like there's not much else new you can learn, where it's almost recycling and reshuffling of old things—at this stage, you are a champion, expert, master, etc. The extra thing doesn't have to be in the same field as your original field. For instance, once you feel like your work has sort of reached the ceiling, maybe it's time you also start pursuing family now, because this also looks easy on the surface, but deep inside, it's much more complex than it looks.

You would know if you are reading this and you are a parent that it's a full-time job that you took the moment you got gifted with that responsibility, especially during early days. And they say that it's going to get better with time. I hope I'm not the only one that's wondered if it doesn't ever get better—you just get better.

Being An Adult

This has proven to be quite a complicated game that I'm still not sure if it's rigged or not. It's a position that we try to stay away from as much as we can until it gets to us that we can't go anywhere else but to face the truth about being an adult. We spend our childhood chasing adulthood, and the moment we see the possibility of it happening, we get cold feet. The thrill of chasing wears off. Now we are it.

Yes, it comes with a lot of perks, like coming home drunk in the middle of the night and making noise, bringing a girl home, staying by yourself, etc. But you also know that there are limits to what you can do even though you are an adult now. A man is considered a fully grown man when they become fully independent, and also with that independence, it ends there—not when you come back home.

When I once woke up with a black eye after having a wild night during those December seasons when you drink until you are forced to go home—I had been coming home quite late, around 3 a.m., and would knock for my mother to open for me because I lost the keys. I am not seeing this black eye until my mother asked me what happened to my eye, and I checked in the mirror and saw the damage. I left the breakfast right away. I had to find out from my friends that I was drinking with the previous night who fucked me up like this. And they all said I was perfectly fine when I left them. And they dropped me off right outside my home. I didn't go out anywhere else after that. There was only one person I saw from my friends to my bed, and it's the person that I had to knock really loud for after realizing that I had lost my keys. And that's the person who asked me what happened to my eye.

I brought a girl home—the mother of my kid. I'm a father and a responsible grown-up man. And the first day we arrived, my mom said that I'm going to be the one cooking dinner that evening. My mom never asked me to cook before, partly because I have many sisters, and I was always outside playing or working and would only come to the house when I'm hungry.

I realized that this was about the authority.

So I guess you can never be adult enough in your mama's house.

The grown-ass men wearing matching T-shirts because of their favorite soccer team. One might wonder if this is not the same thing as toddlers obsessed with their Spider-Man, Sonic matching T-shirts. This is the definition of a man at its core.

The Last Trade

There will always be that last trade that you take in your life on one thing or another, where you go all in. That's where the chase begins—that understated thrill that comes with it. And you know what? These trades fail a lot more than we'd like to admit. When that trade fails after putting everything you have into it, as it was your "last trade"—after this trade, you are taking yourself out of the game.

The thrill is not generally a nice feeling. It's that feeling of feeling like you might not win, and you go either way.

When that trade goes bust after going all in, it's devastating. That's when you are playing beyond this universe. That's when the universe comes with different moves you've never seen before.

It's like the universe is asking, "You didn't think you would get out that easily, did you?"

The strength—although sometimes it takes some time and energy—is when you are finally accepting a loss and starting all over again.

And this is the hardest thing ever. You know, after losing everything and you still continue fighting, until you realize that it's all gone. Now it's just the noise and anger brewing inside you.

It's A Game

Every piece you throw on the board is worth something to you. You would very much rather do something else with that piece provided you had the knowledge that you were going to lose. When you take a lady out because you are interested in her, for some of us, it's firstly about throwing their cheap pieces in. And for some of us, those pieces are the most expensive pieces of the hand we have been dealt.

I mean, from moving across the country for a better job and career advancement, moving in with someone you are dating, having babies, to getting married. If you have expensive chips in your hand, you can play these games multiple times at a given period, while some of us can't even afford to play in any of the games I've aforementioned.

Flying Naked

I have been chatting with friends recently, telling them how low I'm flying right now. I can't even blink because I might crash. You know when you're flying a kite or toy airplane and the batteries are so low, it's struggling to stay up in the air? You are busy pressing the buttons frantically trying to make it not crash. That's me. I'm both the person holding a remote controller for the plane and the plane itself.

When you are flying so low and you are dropping everything that you don't need so that you can be light and can get a lift up, until it's just you and your soul alone.

Even if your pants are flying off, let them go. Fly naked. Any movement besides focusing on where you are going might make you crash. I can't even tilt my shoulders slightly, as I'm flying very low and very close to the ground.

The most confusing thing is that I'm going through exactly what my old friends were going through 15 years ago. It was chaos. It didn't make sense. I thought they messed it up somehow. It just didn't make sense.

And my friends! What we are doing here, I don't know. But working together, we might enjoy the game, as one thing for sure, we still have the masters to report to, one way or another.

I've been fortunate enough to have been allowed freedom to move around a lot. And I've met different kinds of friends on this journey at different stages in their lives, and I've lived with them, and we became brothers. But my journey has been moving after some time, and I'm still making new friends. I haven't forgotten not even one of them, although after some time the communication breaks down and phones get lost. But I still carry them in my heart. And while pursuing my mission, which I'm hopeful that once it's fulfilled, we will meet again and share the stories, have a game together.

My Big Dream

I have recently talked to a friend, and I told him about my big dream. I'm going to say this right away: if I die and find that all of what I've been experiencing in this lifetime I made up myself—for the times I would've fucked myself up, hmm hmm hmm—we will have words about that on the other side.

Anyway, my dream is getting every boy in the townships thinking sharp, being the CEOs. The township economy contributing at least half of this country's economy and contributing beyond just this country. And I know it's possible because I have seen with my own eyes the amount of strength that if we can direct, we can do more for everyone and get on the books. We need new kinds of men that are running things.

The men we have had before us were good at building physical structures. We have figured out the software, baby. Let's get on it. We need mama's boys to come to the front. It's time for you boys. Tell us how we can use that Xbox logic to get to Mars quicker. It's about time SpaceX has competition. Let's turn these prisons empty and make money out of all that real estate and have those brilliant minds working on improving the current systems by offering different insights from the mainstream.

For now, you are it.