Zibuyile iinkokheli

Umntu yinkosi ukuzazi.
Iqaqa aliziva kunuka.
Isisila senkukhu sibonwa mhla ligquthayo.

Xhosa Idioms

If you’ve been around here for any amount of time and scrolled through this blog, you would’ve discovered that ndingumXhosa, proudly so. Back in high school I did isiXhosa as a home language and to quite a number of people, that was surprising news. More so when the class of 2012’s matric results were published on the newspapers. For some odd reason, a handful of people were taken aback by the fact that I did isiXhosa, let alone did it as a home language and excelled in it. Well…I’m Xhosa, of course ndiyakwazi ukusithetha kwaye ndiyakwazi nokusibhala.

The thing about isiXhosa is that asitolikwa nyani. It is so hard to translate phrases and proverbs adequately without them getting lost in translation. Additionally, Xhosa phrases just hit differently man and that is just a mission to explain. Perhaps it has something to do with the clicks or maybe it’s the depth of their meaning because most days I’m left wondering what our forefathers were thinking or witnessing when they came up with some of them.

The idioms I selected for the purpose of this post all make some reference to the fact that no other person can know you better than you and your true colours/what you are made of comes into full display during a day of trouble – directly translated to the best of my ability: You are king in knowing yourself. A skunk cannot smell itself. A chicken’s behind can only be discovered on a windy day. My Xhosa teachers might side eye me on these translations and I should probably pop them a message before publishing this post just to make sure that I did these translations justice!

So as I was thinking about these proverbs and expressions, I wondered what was going on with the chicken on the day our forefathers saw isisila senkukhu? Did they come across a skunk and were doused in its foul fumes only to realise that the skunk itself was left unbothered by the odour? Did someone lie about themselves and everyone knew it but just wouldn’t confront them so they sarcastically responded with, “Well, only you can truly know yourself.”

In my repertoire of lessons, I learned a few things about myself. Extremely interesting things. Some of which were discoveries and others reminders. Nonetheless, when I dissected these learnings, I was left gobsmacked – I still am to this day. Ndikhuza qho xa ndizicinga because in 2023, I was the chicken and the skunk sometimes. Which is a massive, bitter pill to swallow. I will expand on this later.

First of all, there is some truth in all of these statements and a lot of wisdom can be drawn from them, depending on how you choose to look at it. No other human can know you better than you do yourself. Regardless of the amount of time they have known or spent with you. Not your parents, not your siblings, not your therapist, not your peers, not your colleagues and not even your pastors. I am not even saying this in a bad way. They can absolutely know you and help you know yourself better but they are not sitting inside your head and mind. You can disclose your thoughts and feelings but then again, they can only know as much about you as you disclose, be it through words or deed.

I know a lot of things yet I can never say I fully know myself.

God knows me. All of me. Completely. Undoubtedly. Every aspect, down to the very last detail like the number of hairs on this thick afro! It amazes me that each time I shed a hair, God keeps a record of it. Probably on some, “Hair number 710 has fallen. Angels, I repeat. Hair 710 is down! She went a little too hard with the detangling, her hairstylist pulled those edges so bad or it has served its time.” This is just my thought. I’m not saying it’s true and that’s what happens, but I like to use my imagination when I read my Bible! In support of this concept, David – one of my favourite poets and writers of all time, puts it this way:

Lord, you know everything there is to know about me. You perceive every movement of my heart and soul and you understand my every thought before it even enters my mind. You are so intimately aware of me, Lord. You read my heart like an open book and you know all the words I’m about to speak before I even start a sentence! You know every step I will take before my journey even begins.

Psalm 139:1-4 (TPT)

So who better to ask about yourself than the One who created you and knows you so intimately?

I sat through quite a few lessons about myself in 2023. Some were during drives to run errands and locum shifts, others while doing household chores which at the time, seemed mundane yet later on proved to be lessons within the lesson, some during interactions with others but most of these lessons were learned in the solitude of my beach walks and late night talks with God.

Which leads me to the first major lesson about myself in 2023:

I am a planner

Sometimes to a fault. I like to have a layout of everything. I plan my meals, appointments, tasks, life, everything! You see, planning is something I am brilliant at because I am also a detailed thinker. I will look at every possible angle that there is to look at and discover some which don’t even exist. I have always known myself to be this way. However, a part of it stems from my experience with failure during my varsity years.

With my planning comes a lot of procrastination because although I tend to have these amazing ideas, they often die as just that – ideas. In my mind, if the final product doesn’t come to life exactly the way I had imagined it, that counts as a fail. I might as well not have gone ahead with it in the first place.

As if things couldn’t get any worse, sometimes I struggle with catastrophic ideations – imagining and perceiving things (which are highly unlikely so) turning out for the worst instead of the best. Case in point: this blog. I have a ‘perfect’ layout in mind and a long list of topics with categories on my notes app to write about with a posting schedule to top it all off, but because in my mind, there is often a perceived and actual mismatch between what I am envisioning and actually writing, I choose to sit and not publish instead.

So what drove me to discover the above about myself and what have I been doing about it? I moved to Cape Town as instructed, I believe, by God. Almost Abraham style if you may. There was a plan, albeit vague and not really fitting into what I had previously laid out for myself. So the plan itself was not sufficient for the planner in me. Yet I still moved. With an instruction and a promise. I still joke about my life being lived one day at a time but that’s literally what I am doing – living life one ordered step (sometimes leap) at a time! Zibuyile iinkokheli.

I moved. With only that plan – God’s plan, which was unfolding with each day. There were many options for a backup plan yet in my mind, I had decided that my contingency planning was going to leave me face flat in the mud. So the only plan I went along with was God’s plan. The plan so far? It’s going well, not according to me because I ask myself every two seconds, “What on earth?” Yet with the very same sigh, God constantly reassures me with the lessons I learned and shared on my previous post – He is sovereign and He cares so much for me and about me. It’s hard for me to explain this adequately but hey, it is what it is.

My therapist in 2021 brought something to my attention that I previously was oblivious to. She said (paraphrased), “Zoluntu, do you realise that sometimes you throw tamper tantrums as an act of rebellion just to prove a point since you have always lived up to people’s expectations of you?”

That halted me in my tracks because Ma’am! We just met! This is only our second session and you have the audacity to tell me that I throw tamper tantrums as an act of rebellion? Me? Tantrums? This well-behaved person? Rebellious? This do-it-by-the-books person? The skunk in me was in denial yet again. I never told her this though but I definitely thought it throughout that session!

Alas! She was right! We might talk about how she was right about this some other time. So in 2023, I stopped throwing tamper tantrums out of rebellion and can you guess how? I kept doing the unexpected. I shocked myself too you know. But there has been such a freedom and peace attached to knowing that I am where God has told me to be. I may not have every detail yet, but the planner in me has loosened her reins a little and decided to step according to the orders being given.

Let’s be clear about this one thing though. This has to be one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do – ceasing to plan every detail of my life. I mean, pre-2023 me planned weekly meals and outfits down to the last detail! Vision boarders, don’t come for me just yet. I am not saying that I am not writing the vision down as instructed by the Word. All I am saying is that my vision hasn’t always been the vision as given by God. It was a vision, my vision, yet still not the vision.

Have you ever wondered what was the vision the prophet was told to write down in Habakkuk 2:2-3 or are you content with just using those verses to back up your vision? Has it ever crossed your mind (or actually read preceding and succeeding verses) that this portion of Scripture was from a dialogue between God and Habakkuk?

The prophet was burdened about something and took it to God, who replied by drawing a mental picture of what He (God) was going to do in response to the distressing burden. God’s response (what the prophet saw i.e. the vision) had to be written down because it is in our human nature to forget things that are not recorded and solidified in our brains. I believe that the writing was for future referencing – this is what God said and because He stands on His Word to perform it, here are the results. Anyways, this is what dawned on me as I was contemplating my 2024 vision board.

God’s plan (vision) for my life is perfect and is intended to do me no harm. I believe that with all my heart. But have I cried over its execution many times than I care to count? Absolutely! The plan is atypical. Out of the norm. Sounds ridiculous to the undiscerning and carnal ear. What on earth? Even with all that, it’s still very perfect. Way more perfect and well-executed than mine could ever be.

So have I suddenly switched off my planner brain? No ways! I couldn’t do that even if I tried. This is one of the strengths I have been gifted with. This comes in handy all the time in my day-to-day dealings. However, I am learning how to manage myself in the process. I am learning to allow room for pivots, detours and recourses when things don’t go so well. Sure, I will cry over those because “What on earth?” but I will also cry to God because, “Your thoughts and ways are clearly higher and better than mine.”

Have the days been windy? More like tornadoes on a hot summer’s day. 2023 uncovered and toppled over fortified structures in my persona and character that were not necessarily beneficial to my well-being and yet with that, I discovered gems that I didn’t even know existed beneath all that rubble. This is just one lesson I learned about myself in 2023, and even that hasn’t been explored adequately here. So you can imagine what goes on in my head during my moments of solitude…

Hey leader!

As you do life and lead, I hope you will allow yourself to sit through the pain and joys that come with God peeling off all the layers that make the person that is you. Embrace the lessons along the way but most importantly, learn from them. Bank those experiences and discoveries, ponder them often.

Your true colours will show, it might be on a sunny day and all we get to see is the radiance and brilliance of the gemstone that you are. But I pray that if it so happens that life shows you flames, rain and thunderstorms, may the colours that come onto display be ones that will give glory to God, despite and in spite of.