LIVING AND WORKING TOGETHER: SURVIVING IN THE TWO CONTRASTING WORLDS OF TOLERANCE AND REPULSION I think in each one of us are two contradictory forces – the power to like and the power to repel; the power to love and the power to hate. There are things we definitely have to hate and things we definitely have to love. The ball is set when we meet a stranger every moment but we realise that such a stranger will not just be a stranger but some we have to work with for some defined or undefined time: meeting a new teacher at school, a lecturer in a college, beginning to live as husband and wife, becoming colleagues at work, etc. At first we are not sure of the behaviour of this stranger we have just established a relationship. Bit by bit we learn to stay or live with them. At first we don’t know whether they are professing or practicing Christians, whether they eat what we eat or don’t eat, whether they produce strange sounds when they sleep or not. The first friendship we have is just a mirage if not something based in hypocritical pretences. We have to learn to learn to live with them. In the staying and working together, we begin to correct our initial assumptions with them. May I also say, each of us is designed like a little puppy, with two contrasting natures in it based on love or hate. The power to love will make us wag our little tails in a jumpy way to those who embrace and tolerate us. We begin to resist and repel from those that are intolerant to us. A little puppy usually has itching teeth to bit for love or hate. Suppose it bites a piece of cloth, you may find it carrying it with some sense of heroism and conquest. On the contrary, suppose it didn’t know that it must not bite a stone or a steel object (just because, it first we just don’t know what is what), then it bites it. It finds out that steel is hurtful or hurting unlike cloth and foam rubber, and it develops certain attitudes towards the steel. It establishes that steel objects are not friendly to it at all. It may like the shape or look of the steel object but will automatically be field with resentment towards it, even though it was its assumption that all objects are like cloth or foam rubber. The puppy then develops a certain entrenched attitude towards stony or steel objects. It may still try to bite these stony or metallic objects just to see if it is really wrong or right that stony or metallic objects are not good to its teeth. This is usually what happens with each one of us. Give yourselves two months, if you are in a group, you will have developed some knowledge of who to be close to or who to avoid. It happens naturally. We tend to get closer or get further away from certain people based on the ‘juice’ that they emit from their mouths, how they conduct themselves or what they believe. Sometimes, we just isolate those aspects we don’t like about them and hold such constant but then have to continue with those we like from such people. Usually we don’t want to be labelled this or that. Our labellers, we tend to resist them and those who admire and appreciate us, we get affinity of so much. Sometimes people are surprised when you can still tolerate and co-exist with that person that they have all labelled as ‘deviant’ or ‘difficult-to-work-with-character.’ Perhaps, you have just realised they are a rotten onion but you have nicely taken out the rotten part and remained with the good part. Just as people describe things differently so we may also have seen differently. A glass filled to half with some substance or water, one will call it half-full and the other half-empty. So it depends with what you want to emphasise. I have often realised that the people who really became my best friends were the ones I first had, some ‘head-one collisions with’. We hurt each other but learnt to heal together from the hurts until we had forgiven each other and then known not how to avoid hurting each other again. I am not suggesting that we must provoke one another to anger to know each other. As I was growing up, I may have developed this sarcastic way of dealing with people I am not sure of with regards to their emotions and intentions towards me. Normally if I don’t do you sarcasm, I really respect you and you are some esteemed figure in my life. But when I am not sure, I will strike by my sharp teeth, then when you scream, I may feel bad and ask for forgiveness. One friend of my once told me when I was second year undergraduate studies, “Innocent, I really like everything about you except you dry jokes.” I knew exactly what she was talking about and I also didn’t like doing such. She spoke once and I heard what she said thrice. Really, I didn’t want to be this person. Although, I didn’t and couldn’t say sorry, because of some ego or what, the feedback really pieced my heart. I felt like crying but also had to be man enough and take it as if nothing had happened. If it was just the two of us, I could have pleaded for sorry and even shed some tears to show that I was sincere. Normally we really know how bad we are; it becomes even glaring when someone hits the nail of the head. In teaching students, I have also learnt something. Sometimes teachers/lecturers give example pointing to certain figures in class. Sometimes they really want to hammer a certain problem amongst the pupils or students once and for all but in trying to correct that in public, they also create camps of their little enemies who will seek to rejoice over their downfall. Sometimes, I am surprised how as pupils (learnt they are called learners down here in South Africa), we would so much celebrate when our teacher was reported ill or gone to attend a funeral. When I look back to this I say, really that was bad of us. Or how, I used to like it when grandmother had gone for a church service and we would remain behind (toitazve madiro aJojina). But I would know definitely that I could do without her for a long time. I remember in 1988, both grandpa and grandma went to attend a funeral of one of my uncles who had passed. I was left in the hands of one of my aunts. Those days, I had a problem with wetting my blankets and they produced a very bad stench (I was in Grade 5). Grandma and grandpa know my problem and had leant to live with it. Being left in the hands of this aunt was like exposing me and I didn’t like the experience. Of course to make sure, that I know how bad my blankets were, aunt told me, “Yes, I know grandma and grandpa have been tolerant to your wetting of blankets but I will not allow that to happen here. Wake me up any time you feel like wetting and I will take you outside!” Friends, I tried that night and I failed. So there I was. Although aunt didn’t beat me or say anything in the morning, I knew I had done a bad thing again. This was to happen, for the five days grandma and grandpa were absent from home. One of the mornings, aunt just told me, grandpa and grandma were back. I nearly jumped for joy. I didn’t wait for protocol to take my things back home. I just said, “Thank you” and melodiously carried by wet and stench burden back home. The five days I was with aunt was like five thirteen-months-calendar years. Sometimes the people we want to be away from us are the real people who make us feel comfortable and accepted. In living and working together, it is very important to know how long you are going to be together with your counterpart. Tolerance or correction is then based on this knowledge. Suppose someone smokes and you know how passive smoking on your part is. You don’t have to wait for many hours to lapse just ask for the smoke to got it recluse. But you have to find a way of saying it which perhaps says it but without souring relations. Perhaps if it’s me, I would say, “Smoke affects me severely but would you please find elsewhere to do it.” If the character is not churlish, I will expect as sorry from him/her as they find a suitable place or extinguish their cigar. But be warned, not everyone will be tolerant to you. But suppose you want to concentrate on a concept or grasp its meaning and then you counterpart is busy with his music and does not have a headphone or does not even want to put it down. Sometimes we think our must is loved or liked by everyone. We want our neighbours not to doubt that we are really enjoying. It always happens somewhere. How we handle matters make us gain or lose respect. At the students’ hostels where I am staying in Bloemfontein we have this Afrikaner neighbour. It is reported that with Afrikaners down here, they still have racist feeling to blacks. I used to hear about it until it knocked on our door. I was with the colleague I am staying with and we were watching our Zimbabwean soccer team play. As can be expected, we could be silent when our boys missed chances. Then we heard a gentle knock at our door. It was white Afrikaner security guard and he said, “We kindly ask you to lower your volumes please.” I could see what was wrong with us enjoying our team. “I just came to say that, guys!” But we looked each other into the face with my colleague and wondered how he had known that there was noise here. “The Afrikaner girl phoned him,” my colleague said, “Don’t you know this is what happens here. Whenever it is blacks they complain but they always make noise here and we don’t. One guard told me that some whites left their cat here, the one we normally hear mewing every night. This girl called a black guard and asked him to take away the cat. The black guard refused. So there is animosity over our skin here,” he remonstrated. But we also realised that we are deep in the Afrikaner zone of dominance. When you are in Rome you may just need to accept what the Romans do. After all, we are just here for three months! My expectation of the Afrikaner girl, because she is our neighbour was to come to us and not phone an agent. Sometimes we get it all wrong when we invite third parties in our issues before we even make an attempt to correct them between ourselves. It just deepens mistrust and distrust among us. We develop prickly horns towards each other and we can’t just live together. Jesus has said, “Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican” (Matthew 18:15-17). Before labelling anyone, we must first give them a chance. However, I remember was my Form 1-4 Science teacher said and it is still very fresh to me, “Some people are just incorrigible!” He had also his popular statement, “For other people to enjoy freedom, we just have to some people’s freedom!” The major question perhaps is when do we start enforcing correction? In living and working together, we know who offends us and who not; we know what offends us and why. But perhaps to be safe, we just need to separate issues from people. The problem is, if we bunch the two together, we are going to throw out the baby with the bath water. Sometimes we never know how important are those people we want to whisk away until they are gone. Those who ever worked mathematics in class you will remember this feeling we would have after the teacher had demonstrated how to solve a problem. We would feel he must give us our chance and we do it own our own. But after he had left us to ourselves, in no time, our hands will be up high, begging him to come back and clarify and simplify. How many things we feel we can do it without them and then find that, no, we are nothing without them. You even need your enemies too. Without them you have nothing to prove as good on this earth. Enemies are needed to keep us on our feet. Enemies are needed so that we separate between light and darkness, good and bad. I know we all like the life of the tale ending, “and they lived happily ever afterward!” Yes, but not here on earth in this present world. Because enemies are a perpetual phenomenon, they are not exactly a problem but a challenge. The two are not necessarily the same. Someone had said, and I adopt it here, “ problem is something difficult to deal or solve .It can also be a question or puzzle set for solution; a challenge is a demanding or stimulating situation. It can also be a call to take part in a contest or fight.” Challenges stimulate us for action. They give us a chance to demonstrate what wit and wisdom are. They beg us to fight. If we are not fighting then we are not conquerors. If we are not conquerors then perhaps we don’t deserve honour. I remember the words of my pastor when I was a deacon and in undergraduate studies. The payout wasn’t sufficient; this and that didn’t tally. Of course, he was speaking to the entire church leadership but it seemed the word was just directed to me. He said, “a person called by the name leader must fight and conqueror. You are a leader because you fight to win. Never be under your circumstances. Be above.” I thank God for this message. It was in early 2000, after my first semester in university and it propelled me and fuelled me throughout. I challenge you. You must be above your circumstances. Never indulge in self-pity. Never seek to blame anyone. Be above. Deutronomy 28:13a says, “And the Lord shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath...” We need challenges and daring challenges for us to prove the divine nature God has deposited in us. Shall I end by quoting a couple of verses from Matthew about evil, adversaries and enemies? Matthew 5:25 says, “Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.” Enemies, shall I say, are never meant for quarrelling with. This is where I cherish my grandma and grandpa greatly. I remember how, one person talked bad about grandma to grandpa. Grandpa was not happy about that and I saw some bad atmosphere enveloping the home. Grandma was so grieved. She could not believe how that woman had said so bad words about her to her own husband. I saw grandma prayin, fasting and seeking the grace of the Lord over the matter. Then I overheard her speaking to one of her churchmates saying, “After I went before the Lord, the Lord told me, to remain silent. (Mwari akanditi “Nyarara””. I didn’t know how God spoke then but I grew believing that when we pray over our matters, and appear to have consented defeat, God takes over to matters that bother us. In 2012, when I went to Matsue, Japan but waited to come back at Narita International Airport, I saw this book with big bold letters in title, “Embracing Defeat”. Now, I feel I must have bought the book and read it for myself and understand how Japan made it after the catastrophe of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Sometimes we appear defeated but that it not exactly like so. When we acknowledge challenges as obstacles to our progress, and learn how to outmanoeuvre them, then we have done ourselves a great favour. I say to someone, learn to agree with your adversaries quickly (hapana chaunobva ufunge). But don’t stop there. Do something about it, just to tell it that you started at me! About grandpa, I remember how he would sacrifice, his annual cheque as a master farmer to invest in buying cows and oxen to restock his cattle for draught power. But there was this family (it was always either the father or the son), they would come and kill or break legs of some of those cattle. I always say, I survived by a whisker when someone threw a stone through the room where I was supposed to be sleeping. It was a son from that family. Grandpa knew exactly who was doing that and he would tell us to be very careful about not making friends with them. But I don’t remember any one day when grandpa shouted at these people or tried to undress them. For most of my cousins they never were able to know who was fighting us (but I knew). I don’t know how, if we had all known it, it could have disintegrated and blown to an acrimonious saga, feud or generational vendetta. The wisdom of this old man! Again Matthew 5:38-45, Jesus says, “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” To my Christian fellows, sometimes, we are not as served as we think until, it gets us to the nose and now can embrace it. How many times we seek to defend ourselves, to justify ourselves, to show others that we have all the points? In living and working together, the foregoing is the menu and the choice is ours. But strive not to resist evil! We are more than conquerors through Christ who has loved us! .
Posted on: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 03:54:05 +0000
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