Frank’s Weird Little Journey
Firstly there’s the 2% rule. This says that what appears to be a small change is always bigger than you think. A 2% change may be all that is needed. The scientists say that if the world’s climate warms up 2%, in twenty years’ time the oceans’ level will rise enough to put Durban’s waterfront under water. Imagine a human body’s vital organs performing 2% less well. Imagine if by the time you finish reading this your attitude has changed by 2%. The rule reminds us that God as much as the devil is in the detail of our behaviour – that little actions can make all the difference in the world.
Secondly, there’s Rule No6 – Yes, Zander’s rule, but I’m borrowing it, right? For those who don’t know, the rule says ‘Stop taking yourself so damn seriously’. I’m sure you all know someone who takes themselves too seriously. They are little pompous perhaps, behave as if what they have is precious and what they can do is special – they behave as if life’s challenges are not supposed to happen. Rule No6 says that life cracks jokes at our expense all the time and that without the humility and courage that is expressed through a sense of humour we won’t cope. Rule No6 says, if anything, take life seriously – for life is precious and special – but only if you make it so.
So you must be wondering by now, ‘surely he isn’t here just to tell us about rules’. Every household or institution seems to have a pile of rules, all of which are neatly written down in a little book but most of which no one knows. I’ve often wondered about the point of these rules. And what I’ve come to realise is that the only rules we remember, the only rules that work, are those we’ve made for ourselves. The ones that come from your heart. That must sound pretty weird. Ok, ok, just let me tell you a story. After that you can throw me out if you want.
The story is about me, Frank, who back in 1989 went to work in Zimbabwe. In my third year there I went out with a beautiful woman for about 4 months. It wasn’t a bad relationship but it also wasn’t that good either. It was while in this relationship that I suffered from a lack of judgement, one that caused me to have unprotected sex. Within days of consummating the relationship I had a nightmare about the possibility that I had contracted a deadly virus. However, the fear of possible infection somehow went away and I continued with my unsafe ways, too lazy to be sensible, too complacent to think my laziness would catch up with me. I did a dance with words in my head, hoping that would make the possibilities go away. I told myself: ‘Tomorrow I will use protection’. Tomorrow never came and a few months later I was back in the UK, thinking nothing of what I had done.
I spent a year there pursuing a possible career in psychology. I also spent ten months of that year running away from the possibility that I was infected. 2 months after returning to the UK, I went to my father’s 60th birthday party – a large family affair with lots of extra people staying in the house. The night after the party I had another nightmare – I woke up the next morning in a muck sweat, convinced that I was HIV+ and for some reason thought that it would be obvious to everyone else staying in the house that there was something very wrong with me. Not surprisingly, the next day it was obvious that they knew nothing but I wasn’t convinced and behaved for the next few months like a criminal on the run. A quick test then, a 2% change in my normal routine, would have told me exactly what was going on in my body – but no, I held onto ignorance with both hands, somehow believing that the truth would take care of itself; I thought the right time to take a test would present itself but of course it never did.
From the UK I went back to Zimbabwe, from Zimbabwe to Botswana, from Botswana to South Africa, from school to school, increasingly convinced that I didn’t have a future, learning the art of putting on a good show. On the outside everything looked great, but I was faking it, busy avoiding taking a decision. I was longing to let someone know what was really going on. But the fear just got in the way. Shame, welcome to the human race, Frank.
A little way into this weird journey I developed ulcers. Initially I didn’t know what it was, so I was convinced this was the first stage in dying. HIV at long last had shown itself for real – about 2 years after the original stupid behaviour. I took packets of ENOs to deal with the chronic stomach aches, quietly suffering in fear of being exposed. At various times along the way, I went to doctors, sick from worry as much as from ulcers, but always putting on a sensible outward appearance. I was sure that one of those doctors would reveal the true state of my blood and yet it never happened. I should have drawn some sensible conclusions from such experiences, but fear can rob you of all your intelligence. If you haven’t experienced that yet, just hang around, it’s coming. On some occasions I desperately wanted to tell them about the fear I had, the possibility that I was HIV+. But something stopped me every time. The doctors eventually diagnosed my ulcers. You’d think this would have offered some relief, but not for long.
The really sick thing was that in some way I thought my silent suffering was heroic. I had lost sight of what mattered to me. In what I thought was an attempt to face reality, I concocted a very convincing dream-like state. The result was to put my life on pause – discovering all sorts of ways to excuse myself from knowing the truth. It was ridiculous trying to convince students I taught that life was an exciting adventure when I personally wasn’t living that adventure.
But ducking seemed a lot safer. Just do a whole lot of nothing. Go to watch movies, teach lessons, go to a few social events, sleep, shop. Simple. Leave life alone and it would leave me alone. How dumb could I be? It was draining the lifeblood out of me. But wait, I had a hundred well formed excuses to explain it away. The brain was working overtime to defend me against a part of me that said ‘You stupid idiot, what do you think you’re doing, get up, pull yourself together, do something!’ And the result of the brain offering all these excuses was that gradually I settled for less and less: less sense of achievement, less sense of connection. Loneliness, mediocrity and boredom became acceptably normal.
At times I laughed at my own melodramatic attitude. But not quite enough laughter to make me do anything decisive. I still couldn’t believe that I could do such a thing. I had grown up with more or less everything that I needed and what I thought was a decent appreciation of life …and yet something very human yet inexplicable pushed me the other way. A friend of mine called Phil loves bungy-jumping – going to the edge, taking his life in his own hands and jumping, trusting that the equipment will work and everything will be ok. The adrenalin rush is what he was in search of but it wouldn’t have happened if he wasn’t poep scared. Only when I started to do my own kind of bungy-jumping did his madness start to make sense –month after month, my morale flew low and then sprang up again as I found some new way of believing everything was ok. But even that wasn’t really stepping off the edge. I was just playing. The real risk, the real bungy-jump was in 1998 when I went to an ordinary-looking clinic in Hurlingham – admittedly it wasn’t quite the same as diving into a free-fall – but giving a sample of blood felt like a leap into the unknown. Once I did that, like the bungy-jump, there was no turning back, I knew there was nothing I could do but deal with the result. In my case I had no equipment. All I had to trust was myself.
I had to trust that it was not taking a test that was killing me. This laughable realisation tipped me over. But I still had to suck up enough courage to find out. Did I have enough bottle to treat someone well that I had been fighting all this time? But if I didn’t try to do something different, I’d have to resign myself to my habits. And so I took a test and discovered that I was negative. And wasn’t that the truth – I had been negatively living my life for all those years.
The worst clichés work the best: Life is good but tough – With work and some belief, life gets better, 2% at a time, and that’s on a good day. But only for those who realise how ridiculous they can be, only for those who laugh at themselves enough to realise how much more there is to learn and do. Focusing for seven years on a possible terminal illness has taught me that there is nothing like the present to make a real future, and to know that I have choices. However, this may seem a bit too romantic and rosy for you.
Instead, how about living with the idea of one day going to your death knowing that all you did with your life was to just get by, your heart full of clever excuses. Dying isn’t the challenge – it’s a given. It’s living that is the real risk we must take.
