A veranda
Friday, March 28, 2025 | 90 Views |
Yesteryear: The verandah holds a hallowed position in many people’s memories PIC: SA-VENUES.COM
But, it may, for a moment, discard its propensity to be too ordinary if for instance, through a fortuitous discovery, we find within our homes a place of stunning juxtaposition: a place where we struggle most ardently with our thoughts and imagination, a place where our manners may be most restrained and yet still be a place where our happiness is most freed. At that time, even as we accept our ordinary life, we may wonder if, and then hope that, there is a way to make this ordinariness and ourselves inseparable for the rest of our lives.
Every once in a while, wondering can have this effect on us. Imperceptibly, it can make it possible that the past and present commingle, allow yesterday to linger ineffectually into today and permit the promises of the future to appear as if they are happening now. And because we are humans, in a small pocket of our thoughts, there will always lie hope. This hope will be held despite the odds that it may not happen. And then it happens, prompting a density of the realisation of the hope to start hanging in the air we breathe which we exhale in gratitude. This quiet seeping of the past and present into each other, this nursing of the hope that miraculously materialises, is often the reward of sitting somewhere.
It is not uncommon in this part of the world for parents to actually punish their children when they show signs of depression associating it with issues of indiscipline, and as a result, the poor child will be lashed or given some kind of punishment. We have had many suicide cases in the country and sadly some of the cases included children and young adults. We need to start looking into issues of mental health with the seriousness it...