As I come to the end of the era of one particular writing project, that had become organically conjoined with another, I have achieved so much psychological distance that I'm genuinely surprised to read some of the material I had, myself, written. Whereas I can evaluate the writing in terms of abstract, formal, criteria, I've lost the sense of the original drive that pushed me into a flurry of investigation -- first emotional, and then intellectual.
I'm genuinely satisfied with my life, although as Camus notes in The Rebel, sometimes this can be a negative factor, as in the sense that I'm not driven, at the moment, to prove anything in particular, or to discover something that has been eluding me.
I'm also a little resigned. I have limitations, I've concluded. One is that my health is always delicately balanced. I'm like others who have had underlying difficulties -- Bruce Lee too up martial arts to overcome childhood frailty, and Cecil Rhodes gapped it to Africa, to escape the British climate that exacerbated his tuberculosis. Similarly, I impose a regimen involving lots of exercise and being careful to attend to the subtle messages of my body as regards shifts in need for diet, rest and fresh air. Ignoring these issues for a few days, I tend to succumb to my intolerance for certain foods and allergies, which lead to a depressed immune system. For me, vigorous exercise is an absolute antidote -- and it has been for the past twenty years.
What I need now, having attained this precipice of maturity, is another project. I do have a couple going on: one has been sorting out my ideas as regards my thesis, so that I can put forward the issues in an increasingly simplified way. I've also been working on my father's memoir. His reflections debunk much of the mythology circulating regarding the colonial settlers in Africa -- that we all had wonderfully privileged lives. My father's life was one of emotional and material deprivation -- especially during the childhood years.
The incongruity of how things actually were, as opposed to how they have been seen to be on a mass level contributes much to my exasperation in looking back. This fact doesn't reduce my sense of success in having tackled difficult issues in order to understand them to my satisfaction. That was entirely worthy and necessary, and I would do it again, under force of necessity and compulsion and at the drop of a hat.
Still, it would have been useful if I had trusted my own instincts rather than leaving so much to fester as an "intellectual question". For instance, if someone seems not to understand you despite belonging to what you've taken to be a more sophisticated culture than your own -- they probably don't. It's not an intellectual puzzle, in that instance -- it's a different culture. Secondly, I should never have given credence to anyone who plays with the fire of identity politics. It's a political propensity all dressed up neat and tidy and seems to make a genuine appeal to the humanity of others, but its goal is not political equality. It seeks revenge.
Had I found a way around my notion that my original state of mind was not sophisticated, and had I managed to see through the nature of revenge politics in time, I would not be feeling so depleted.
Nonetheless, I've picked myself up and I have moved on. The sea is altogether motionless right now but ultimately, I plan to catch another wave.
