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Nova 1035
This week I’m not sure that I thought about anything, or at least not anything ‘deep and meaningful’. I’m strangely tired and run down and I’ve been really busy – a combination which is not particularly helpful when it comes to writing a column like this one.
This Thursday marked the 10 anniversary of my baby-sister’s death in a car accident so I thought that maybe I could write about the feelings that dragged up, and ruminations on family, death, and dying, but I spoke about that topic in a way last week and I don’t want this to become some sort of morbid read that brings everyone down.
I also thought about writing something about the deadly head-on collision that happened on the Okahandja-Otjiwarongo road and how that got me thinking about how Namibian drivers tend to ‘make their problem’s someone else’s’, for example: swerving out into the other lane when there is a pothole in theirs and thereby making the oncoming traffic need to hit their brakes to avoid a collision (not that I am saying the driver of the vehicle in the accident purposefully swerved into the path of the other vehicle, he could have been in a state of panic seeing the guinea fowl he reportedly swerved to avoid and turned the steering wheel instinctually). I have previously complained about traffic issues though and I don’t want this column to become an avenue for me to come across as just whining about things each week.
Then I thought about how that seeming self-important driver behaviour ties into another form of self-important behaviour I witnessed this week. Two young men who, after having phoned to find out about our prices and hours, spent an evening bouldering at Urban Friction and then proceeded to bamboozle one of my staff members into letting them leave without paying by saying that they knew me, using my name (which they would have heard in the earlier phone call), and saying that I would be ‘cool’ with them paying electronically when they got home. As you have probably guessed, they never paid and while their outstanding bill won’t bankrupt me, it did get me thinking about how strange it is that they think they’ve somehow ‘won’ in some way by getting away with not paying me – a purely self-important and self-interested form of behaviour.
This is the same self-important and self-interested behaviour that leads people to think they’ve ‘won’ when they haggle with or ask small businesses for a discount – something they’d never even consider doing at a massive chain.
As an aside: I remember gaining a world of respect for IShowSpeed when, during the Kenya leg of his African tour, he was buying a shirt from an elderly vendor and his interpreter told him he needed to haggle on the price. Rather than trying to talk the man down Speed started offering him more and more money, haggling him upwards.
Even the topic of self-importance though is something I’ve written about here before and I don’t want to end up simply repeating myself week after week, complaining about the same things and turning into the grumpy old man sitting in his rocking chair screaming at the world.
All of this has me once again asking myself why I’m even writing this; my thoughts are not unique and they’re certainly not profound. While I know that very often the meaning and benefit is in the writing itself, I wonder why anyone would take the time to read what I have to think, why anyone should care about what I happen to think about at all!
I have still managed to write over 600 words about worrying about not thinking about anything worthwhile though, and perhaps much of my concern and doubt is simply down to the fact that I am run down and tired. Hopefully I’ll feel better next week and think more interesting and thought-provoking thoughts that I can share with you, convincing myself that it is worth carrying on writing and sharing these posts with you for at least a little bit longer.
