This Is Life

Short while after a second procedure on my bladder, to remove the rest of a growth, tests had confirmed it was high-grade cancer. Someone asked me.

“So how's life treating you?”

Wobbling my left hand, “comme ci comme ca.”

Both phrases I have used countless times throughout my life without thinking twice about it. Didn’t then either just carried on with my routine for the day. However in the early hours of the next morning, when I went to bed, I was starting to drift into what I call neither world, neither here nor there. It is between being awake and sleeping, my body relaxed mind at peace with myself. It is also when I am most vulnerable to unwarranted fears and unwanted thoughts. It was then a thought lay on the empty stage of my mind, like a white plastic carrier packet laying on an empty street at night, in the circle of a street light, waiting for the wind to sweep it up. The thought was waiting for me to carry it away.

Knowing from past experience trying to sleep would be more exhausting than getting up, I got up quietly made myself a cup of coffee and sat outside on the porch pondering on the thought:

“So hows life treating you?”

Herman Charles Bosman once described the African veld by saying,

"Sometimes at night when the world is very still, a soft wind comes sweeping across the veld. Then, if you are outside and listen very carefully, you can hear the story it has to tell."

If he lived in Berlin he could have said you can hear the bleeding grass grow and it only has one story CUT ME. Berlin Eastern Cape really is a village, no traffic lights, there is one four-way stop street, all shopping can be done in one block. At two-o-clock in the morning, it is very quiet.

“So how's life treating you?”

Where did that phrase come from, my Doctor treats me, my wife treats me, very well thank you, other people treat me, some good some like... well never mind like what. Life deals me a hand, taking a line from a country song: The Gambler

“Every hand's a winner every hand's a loser

you have to know what to throw away what to keep.”

One period of my life I was doing telesales, in the evening, for a construction company, my job was setting up appointments for consultants. We were given a computerized list to phone from. For the appointments, the husband and wife had to be present. One time I was given a list with a large majority of railway workers whom by the nature of their work finished late at night. At the end of my first evening on that particular list, I handed in all my appointments, only to be told the next day they had all been rejected. It took an average of three months to work through a list, which meant the next three months my commission would be next to nothing, basic pay barely covered expenses. I asked the supervisor if she would be offended if I spoke to the sales director.

“You can but it won't help, the guys aren’t prepared to go out so late to see anybody.”

I went in to see the sales director who was getting ready to go home, he saw the appointment cards in my hand, after greeting me got straight to the point.

“Sorry Stan no can do, to late for the consultants.”

“I could give you a long spiel on all the products I have sold, this is today not yesterday. I walk out of the office these are dead. You give me a sample kit your price per square meter, one of two things can happen, you can get what you already have a no sale, or you can get these deals. I will cover my own expenses. You have nothing to lose.”

He looked at me in silence for a while before telling me:

“From tomorrow night one week, you sell nothing no deal.”

Six weeks later I was told I had to stop selling, the “salesmen” were complaining, I was taking food off their table. I closed those deals not because I was a great salesman, I closed them by being the only  person willing to see the clients any time after ten at night, a few times one-o-clock in the morning.

This is life.

Life is like the instructions they used to have on detergent boxes, rinse and repeat. Learn from mistakes apply principles from successes. Because I have vast tomes of experience's there has been a lot of rinsing, shaking off the shackles of fear, determining different dreams and desires; when we wish we also have the power to attain it all preparation to play the hand I have been dealt.  

THIS IS LIFE.