It’s My Birthday and I’ll Continue to Tip on the Tightrope

Today is my 32nd birthday. I thank God for all the wonderful years filled with pain and pleasure, support and challenge, happiness and sadness.

Today I’m feeling the song Tightrope by Janelle Monae. I only heard it last night when Lelemba posted the video on her Facebook wall. I love the lyrics and she sings “happy birthday” at the end so it’s the right song for today. It helps that she’s hot and has James Brown’s moves 🙂

I’ve always been inspired by music. I listened to a lot of hip-hop when I was at varsity. Certain songs kept me strong and certain songs helped me to dream. I used others to scream and take out my frustrations and I used others to get inspiration and motivation. Looking back, I see some common threads in the songs I love. They all say something that I aspire for or believe. For example, the song Tightrope by Janelle has struck a chord with me today. Why? Because it’s talking about balance! For me balance is the panacea. St Augustine said the will of God is equilibrium. The person that made this very clear to me is the greatest philosopher I’ve ever read and had the honour to meet and be taught by, Dr John Demartini. He says and demonstrates that balance and equilibrium are essential for wellbeing.

I took a dip in the past year in my activities and achievements. I felt I was not achieving as much as I wanted. I lost hope. I failed to post on my blog for about 6 months. I was down. I felt like a failure. Interesting enough, it is in the same year that I learnt the most things in a single year. I attended the Prophecy 1 Experience by Dr Demartini and I managed to lay my hands on some of the greatest books of all times. So in the area of knowledge I was high and felt like a success. Balance!

But in my perceptions I still saw more failure than success until I took time to count my blessings. I stopped one day and meditated and thought about what I wanted to achieve and what I have achieved and what I’m grateful for. I felt centred and present again. I had never meditated or sat down and been still to think in a very long time. I was busy all the time. I had forgotten the value of stopping to smell the roses. Since I forgot, I was forced. Nature forced me since when you’re down the only way to look is up. Of course, people can hardly see things like these going on. I would tell my best friend, business partner and wife, Lelemba. Sometimes she would be frustrated with me that I could explain how things work and why things happened the way they did but I failed to move. Other times she would encourage me. She encouraged me to write for her blog a few days ago and I’m back up. Thank you Lele and I love you. I’ll continue to tip on the tightrope and keep going! Balance is essential to move on the tightrope.

“Take no credit, take no blame and stay focused on your chief aim” – John Demartini

“Whether you’re high or low, you gotta tip on the tightrope” – Monae

“Whether we high or low we gonna get back-up, like the Dow Jones and Nasdaq” – Big Boi

For song lyrics click here