As I grow in my professional career, I often wonder what I’d be like if I was a supervisor. So in my vivid imagination I wrote some odd things down. In addition to all the formal stuff, here are 10 things I would say to my future supervisees…

 

Let me write from the heart.

My natural instinct is to always consult my heart first. Whether I listen to my heart is a totally different matter. This world sometimes require us to do the total opposite of what our heart asks. 

But for now let me listen to it and write from the heart.

Nursery school are my first few memories of being in an environment where social acceptance wasn’t assured. It’s where I first learnt the concept of feeling alone, but not actually being alone, Nursery school was where I learnt that the world was bigger than home. I was dropped off  by my father every morning, and even with welcoming teachers and making new friends, I felt alone. I felt separate. I felt like I could easily be forgotten. Dismissed. Overlooked.  

Don’t worry. Eventually, I found it fun; this new world. I learnt my way around. My teacher wrote in one of my reports that I spent more time taking care of other children than playing.  I wonder what my mother and father thought when they read that. Especially, since I was the youngest in the house. Where could that have possible come from? It seems I was more concerned with giving myself a purpose in order to fit in.

 I am reflecting on that moment because I see around me a number of people who struggle with feelings of loneliness. I think sometimes we are scared to say that on some days we not comfortable in this world. Sometimes the mission of existing is tough, and the experience is rough.  But we are scared to say in case we appear ungrateful. 

Someone asked those same questions long  ago, and it even inspired them to write a poem.  Have you heard of the poem ‘The Dark Night of the Soul’ by St John of the Cross?

He writes about this strange euphoria he experiences in mist of despair, when he finally realizes the purpose of his suffering. (btw... I am not saying that we are all Saints) I love his honesty in the poem. I love the fact that his journey is not always blissful. That there are moments of doubt, fear, loneliness and even dullness in the process of life. As much as we try to fill our lives with things people, places, there will always be emptiness. There will always be sharp moments of stillness. Thoughts that remind us that this is all temporary and we are mortal.  It will always catch up with us but it doesn’t have to overcome us, most likely there is a purpose to not fitting in so neatly into this world.

Years ago, I went on a catholic retreat. We visited a monastery for the weekend. I don’t even remember the name and yet it had such a monumental impact on my life. I was going through a break up and the stress of back to back assignments at University. My friends and I were also going through the tensions of renting a house together for two years. I needed a break. The Catholic Student’s society offered one, so I packed my bags and disappeared for the weekend.   

What I found interesting about this retreat is the fact that  the Monks were not allowed to talk to each other. That was one of their vows. One of their sacrifices. They spent their days in silence, with very little time in the day allocated to speaking. An hour into the retreat, we joined then, we sacrificed our voice to God and began our silence. I spent atleast 24 hours in silence. Solitude. 

In our world with 7.1 billion people, everyone must struggle in some way to be seen, to be noticed to be acknowledged. Office politics, social circles, family gatherings, daily life require us to use our voices and our words, our conversations, and body language to assert our presence. Imagine a world where you can’t. Imagine if those 7.1 billion people were told they could not speak to anyone for two days. How would we communicate with each other? Imagine if we took it further and said everyone must wear the same clothing. What would that do for egos? How would people be able to catch clues of who we are if we all dress the same, and if we could verbally express who we are? Even the graves of the former monks have no names. Just a modern cross, marking the loss of many  in a special section of the garden. At first I thought it was a modern art exhibition. We don’t know who they are. We just know that they are graves.

Yes. I just quoted a Beyonce single. I thought it was interesting that she choose to put this song on her album. As a successful woman with a husband and close family, she chose to sing this single. She never promoted it that much though. Interesting. 

A lot of our masters spent time in solitude, Jesus, Buddha, etc.  So don’t worry you are in good company. A lot of great works are produced when the mind is allowed to wonder on it’s own. But it’s so nice to be with people, to connect, to laugh, to share moments, to share each others’ lives. As Brene Brown says we are hard wired to connect with each other.

After a good night sleep, I remember enjoying the first early morning hours of the Catholic retreat. I liked this new challenge.  Five hours in and I was starting to feel it. No TV. No Movies. No Magazines. Just books. Lot’s of books on history. Lot’s of books on theology. No loud music was allowed, we had to commit to being quiet. I would pass a fellow retreat member  in the corridor, or find them in the tiny kitchen making tea, and force myself to  swallow the urge to speak. It felt rude. It felt unnatural, yet I had committed to silence. We had tea with the monks at 4.00 pm that day. Some really good scones…but no conversation. Just silence and the sound of people sipping and chewing. A few moments of eye contact and short smiles but mostly emptiness. By night time as I lay in bed the emotions hit me. I realized how much I rely on connecting with people throughout the day. Also everything that I had been bottling up, suddenly came rushing out of me. Demanding to be dealt with. Such is the nature of solitude.

Solitary confinement in prison is supposed be the worst punishment of all. Is it because the prisoners are left alone with themselves? The mind is incredible, but is it all the more unbearable if you’ve committed despicable acts, if you lived a terrible life?

Is solitude only for the strong minded like our masters?

When I asked people to write for a “welcome to womanhood” series, it was mostly because I was reaching a milestone in birthdays, and feeling extremely self reflective. I wondered whether other women had the same internal struggles that I was having. So I asked them to write their stories. I asked for moments in life when they realized they were grown women. My story is about solitude. It’s so far removed from my ideal experience of what it means to be woman. Yet it sticks out like sore thumb, it’s my experience. I see so many people dealing with loneliness but I am not quite sure why it’s there. They have families. They have children. They have partners.  They have great jobs, a social life. Yet there is the feeling staring them in the mirror. Loneliness. 

In my head solitude feels odd. In my heart in feels good.

A month ago I attended a party with a friend, where we met a kindred spirit.  Barely a few minutes into knowing each other, somehow we found ourselves talking about some of the struggles women go through when dating and when in relationships.  She told us, during a very dark period in her life, a newly single mother, and extremely heartbroken, she used to go to bars and order a drink by herself because for most of her young life she had always gone with someone. She had always ordered what she thought other people around would approve off. Forcing herself to go to the bar alone, made her figure out which drinks she liked. When she started figuring out who she was, she felt like she could be a good mother. I immediately thought she so brave, to go to a bar by herself in Kampala. Most people when they see a women by herself in bar… they assume certain things about her lifestyle. Even I was judgemental, as i listened to the story. When people see a woman alone they feel sorry for her, like she should be miserable.

In my world I’d be able to write the following sentence across my forehead:

“Stop feeling sorry for me, I am chartering my course, figuring out my destiny. ” 

Some people are like me,  innate nurturers, we feel guilty about alone time. We usually happily forget all about ourselves in other people. It’s so tempting and so easy for us. Regular solitude ensures I have no excuses. I have to work on myself. I can’t get lost in someone else’s life.

I feel like am fighting back for the woman who feels alone. It’s the experience she finds herself in. It's okay. It’s okay to have dark night of the soul too. Don’t worry, great things come from solitude.

“Nourish yourself with grand and austere ideas of beauty that feed the soul… Seek solitude,” Young Delacroix counseled himself in 1824

I want you to imagine a person who has everything that you are currently working towards in your life. Imagine that they have the dream house, the dream relationship, the dream job, the dream friends, the dream life and a perfect personal brand and reputation. Picture the kind of person that has over 5000 friends on Facebook and each time they post a simple selfie, within an hour they get over 300 likes and 100 comments.

Visualize a person who is always dressed impeccably, and speaks so eloquently, even when caught off guard in an office meeting. They are always seen at the hippest events, and let’s not forget to add the fact that they have  a feature column in the national newspaper to share their latest escapades.  Imagine this person is always posting pictures of themselves and ‘bae’ on some paradise island trip, while you are busy sunbathing at home in your garden reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s book ‘ Eat Pray Love’.They have told people that “bae” is amazing and fulfills all their dreams and expectations, so poor ‘bae’ joins the perfectionist bandwagon by focusing on making the kind of money that maintains their lifestyle. ‘Bae’ has no time to post perfect selfies. You are not jealous of this person, rather you admire their tenacity to  reach  their goals and really succeed  life.

Now let’s add a little twist to the story. Imagine discovering that the person is obsessed with your life.  This person would like to know every detail of your life, from the house you live in, to the friends you have, to the person that you are dating. Immediately upon befriending them online, this person went and studied every Facebook post you’d ever made and every tweet you’d sent out.  When you realized this, you  decided to alter your name on Instagram, because you were tired of the online trolling. All this time, you were quite content to share your simple life with your 150 Facebook friends, until this person, started making sly comments about how boring your life was.  Eventually, after while you find yourself questioning your mundane existence, and you stopped posting your life events and stuck to the regular bible and inspirational quotes. One day after this person had thrown a full blown public tantrum in my face because I’d subtly blocked them on Facebook , I found some time to reflect on the way home about the kind life that would create such behavior. I wonder whether some Social Media Stars unknowingly set a claustrophobic trap for themselves by the life they create online.

They set the bar high and make it impossible for themselves to appear human and flawed.  I am a picture of flaws so I am not surprised when people point them out.  My experience in this particular case was that, anyone who didn’t bow in adoration was  bullied and manipulated to help the star maintain their status and reputation. Although it makes me giggle, one has to admit it’s hard work taking the perfect selfie. You have to think of the background, the prefect angle for your face, all the while balancing the phone at the right height so that you can catch the right light! I feel sorry that some social media stars have made everyone believe they don’t make mistakes. That bad days don’t happen and, that acne breakouts consider their skin an inhabitable foreign planet. We have all been made authors and artists because of the way we can narrate our lives on social media.  I believe that we all have a right to share the good, the bad and the ugly of our story as we choose.   Is it too much to ask that anyone who wishes to part take in any social media discussion try and use some social media etiquette too? 

Originally Published on : Memoirs of a Kangaroo in the Sun