Weightlessness

Living Light in a World of Much Heaviness

Sometimes I try to make my articles very “deep” and full of new thoughts and insights, but somehow also, I realized that reiterating what has been said or written before also goes a long way to keep ideas and thoughts fresh in the mind. Msingi Afrika Magazine is not just about trying to create and share concepts, solutions, ideas, innovations and thoughts from various authors, but about simply giving people, especially Afrikans mirrors of their own minds to look at so that, just maybe they can see that almost all that they cry and wail for has always been within their reach. And to help them see that they don’t get, either because they have not paid attention to, or noticed it, or their minds are too complex to appreciate the power of simplicity, especially in this complex world system that we have created and which is choking us by the day.

Lots of people get carried away with the issue of wanting to lose body weight, to the point where they get even weightier because of the emotional madness that they end up getting into. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to pound the metal in the gym, do your morning runs and all to maintain a healthy body that is both sleek, admired and most importantly, healthy. But like every other thing that man keeps missing, the real weights that we all deal with are often left unresolved. They are the weights that no one else sees. They are the weights of emotional instability, sexually abusive relationships, the weight called debt, the weight of wanting to please people, the weight of drug abuse, and the chase after the ever elusive happiness, the quest for someone to love and appreciate us. The weights of running around like batteries powering this world system of futility and the chase after the wind of vanity. These are deadlier weights that we don’t often pay attention to, but which are the very foundation of why we are never satisfied, why we get fat and then need the gym to get healthy. It’s a world of heaviness that we have created and it’s getting heavier except we learn how to cast our burdens from off our shoulders, see life from a simpler perspective, learn to love a little more and also accept love a little more.

It’s no longer news that the global pandemic has forced each one of us out of our comfort zones, thrown us into conforming into new definitions of comfort zones and also forced us to begin to love those new spaces and we are fast becoming creative with it also. Almost unceremoniously and unapologetically, we’ve been instructed to stay put inside our homes and get involved with the things and people we would rather have wished to avoid if we were not grounded at home. And somehow, in a most grand manner, many are being forced to deep-dive within, re-look life from a different perspective and with ample time to re-evaluate our daily choices, beliefs, opinions and even aspirations.

But while there is much to say about this issue, here is what I also think, in the midst of the pandemic linked to deforestation, biodiversity loss, and intensive animal farming, economic breakdown and all the negatives that the pandemic brought with itself, all roads still seem to point towards a life that is more sustainable, compassionate and mindful. That is, a life that is weightless and light enough to be flexible and real.

Pretense, hyped reality, people pleasing, high-mindedness are all examples of dead weights that create not only inhuman tendencies within us, but which also drain life out of us, filling us with negative energies that creates more weights and deadness of soul.

Days have turned into weeks, weeks have turned into months and many of us are either still at home or have accepted the fact that working from home is actually more fun than sitting in the office from morning till night or are simply not sure of what the next things to do are.

My thoughtful resolution
I and whoever is paying attention must know that we are actually sure of where we are going after now. I have envisaged it for long and now there is a better reason to now do it.

I speak of a weightless and nomadic lifestyle, void of the many distractions that mankind has bedeviled himself with. A minimalist lifestyle that is devoid of encumbrances of life and the gathering of material things that covid-19, in one move, came to put to shame.

With all that is going on right now in our world, we have realized a few things, that is, we can live with less and still be better and even happier.

It has shown that we don’t really need visas for anyone to live in any foreign country or that it should be considered a crime for anyone to stay beyond the duration of the visa given.

It has shown us that we can actually work at home and be very effective without those crazy traffic jams we generate every morning and evening due to movement to the office and back.

It has shown that mankind can actually produce less pollution, actually live simple within reduced means, pay more attention to family, the kids and even learn to communicate again with those who live around us. Because for many generations, humans have tied happiness to new shoes, new exotic places of fantasy, new cars, which are outside of the actual things that create happiness, that is, a life of purpose lived with others in mind.

And if you ask me, I think we are closely going towards the generation that will have no choice but to embrace the reality of minimalism, backpack living or a weightless and light living of nomads.

Absolutely, we can’t shy away from this reality that somehow we have stepped into. It’s a weightless life of gathering nothing to oneself. It’s a new age of living for love, compassion, mindfulness towards others, kindness towards everyone and a better attention to nature and how our lives and health are tied to the health of mother nature. It certainly is the one and only way to go, not just because it will help the environment and others, but because we are the environment and we are the others.

Is it possible?
Oh yes! It is possible a hundred percent more. But we just need to disabuse ourselves of the age long programming that we have structured ourselves with, based on what we were told was what a developed country or community should look like. Imagine if each and everyone of us had a small garden in our houses or planting buckets on our balconies where we planted simple medicinal herbs and vegetables? Covid-19 would not have taken the toll it took on us, for we would have been prepared with our medicinal herbs grown in our own backyards or balconies to deal with the hyped-flu called Covid-19.

Maybe I am alone in these thoughts, but I sincerely think that life is much more simple than the complexity we have created out of it.

We can do without the weights and the complexities. We just have to know that it is worth it, but only if we give it a try.

For eight months and more, we have told ourselves that wearing mask on our faces like ninjas was good for Covid, but what about the masks and the weights in our hearts and minds that no one sees?