The Sunday News
Thandekile Moyo
I MUST have been about nine when at the end of the school holidays, my “friends” lured me to a tree we loved and attacked me for ignoring them over the holidays when my cousins were around. I come from a huge family and during school holidays, we all used to gather at my grandparents’ homes in Kezi and Nkulumane. Once in a while though, my cousins would all come to Gwanda for the holidays.
For the holidays in question, they had come to visit and I had spent the entire time with them to the ire of my Gwanda friends. The day after my cousins left, the Gwanda gang came to our house and invited me to our tree for what I thought was going to be an afternoon of fun and games. I went along happily because it had been long since I had played with them and I missed them.
We got there and the moment I was firmly seated on my favourite branch the attack began. They accused me of shunning them when my cousins were around and not wanting to play with them. I was shocked really because I had no idea it was a crime to choose my cousins over them. Shocked as I was that it was even an issue in the first place, I tried to explain to them that I really had not had much of a choice seeing as I had visitors and there was no way I could have abandoned them, but they were having none of it. They beat me up, I could be exaggerating as my memory isn’t the best, but they did manhandle me to some extent.
I went home crying and bumped into my brother who asked me what was wrong. I told him about the incident and he frog-marched me back to where they were and much to my delight, slapped each and every single one of them and told them he would do worse if they ever laid their filthy little hands on me again!
I learnt something about people that day, which has stuck with me forever. People seem to believe that we always have to choose between them and others. It seems as if most human beings cannot comprehend the fact that we are capable of loving and belonging to different groups, all at the same time.
We need to also accept the fact that people have the right to choose to spend time with others and not you, and it is not a crime. It does not mean they do not love or value you, no. It simply means that their lives do not revolve around you. My friends could not accept that I was capable of loving both them and my cousins at the same time. They refused to believe that in as much as I had spent more time with my cousins than with them, I had missed them a lot during the time.
Furthermore, my friends taught me that people do not realise that people actually have the right to prefer the company of others over your company. Assuming that yes, I had shunned them because I found my cousins more interesting than them, or because I did not want to be their friend anymore, where is the crime? Is it a crime to fall out of love? Is it a crime to stop liking certain people? What if I had chosen not to play with them simply because I did not want to? Or because I did not feel like it?
I have heard many people accusing their spouses of spending time, money and energy on their relatives as if once someone is married to you they have to spend all their free time with you. We need to accept that our husbands are allowed to prefer to go fishing with their friends to spending all day at home with you. We also need to realise that just because your spouse jumps into his car every time his mother coughs it does not mean that he does not love you anymore or that he loves her more than you.
Assuming he does love his mother more than you, where is the crime in that? Assuming that your wife loves her brother more than she loves you, should she be killed for it? We cannot help how we feel. And we have every right to allocate our love the way we see fit.
This mentality that once someone says they love you then they owe you all their time and attention is what makes it impossible to accept it when people fall out of love with us. Our society is filled with men and women who cannot accept that people fall out of love and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. We hear cases of people committing suicide because their lovers left them or people murdering their spouses because they cannot accept being dumped. It is absolutely ridiculous to force a person to love you.
It is painful to be dumped, I cannot downplay that. It is heartbreaking to discover that the one person you would die for, wants nothing to do with you. Unfortunately pain, heartbreak and betrayal are part of life and we need to teach our children to be able to handle disappointment from a tender age. We are not entitled to anyone’s love. Love is given freely and can be taken away anytime and this is something we need to accept.
When our children come to us crying that their friends do not want to play with them anymore we have to teach them that there is nothing wrong with that. We need to teach them skills of how to cope with rejection instead of teaching them to reject rejection. This is a coping skill they will need even when they are dismissed from jobs, lose elections or are kicked out of the soccer team.
If we teach our children that when someone does not want to play with them they can find other people to play with or find activities to do alone we will raise a generation of wholesome and independent individuals. We also need to teach them that once someone rejects them they cannot then allow them to just dance back into their lives when they are done with whatever they were busy with! No! The rejecter also needs to learn that choices have consequences.
Husbands need to know that if you neglect your wife in the name of having a right to spend your time how you want; she will find a way to cope with your perpetual absence. You can love your mother more than you love your wife but a clever person will manage the two different kinds of love beautifully. Wives also need to know that yes, you can love your brother more than your husband but that can be done without you neglecting your husband and marital duties.
Parents have mastered this by having a favourite child but refusing to admit it and insisting that we love them all the same. We do this because we have a right to have a favourite child and a duty to love all our children the same. In the same breath I had every right to host my cousins but I should never have forgotten my duty to “oil” the Gwanda friendship if I really valued it.
What my friends failed to realise was that they had the power to refuse to play with me after my cousins had left. Had they been aware of the value they had in my life they would have known that refusing to let me into their circle would have been more effective than beating me up. Beating me up turned me immediately into the victim instead of the villain who forgot all about her friends the moment something more interesting came along.
It is not a crime to fall out of love. We need to be free to love who we want, on a personal level, at family level and even political level. Love should not and can never be taken by force. The same way we can love someone and be unable to explain why we love them; people can just stop loving us for no reason at all. It is painful, unfair maybe and even cruel, unfortunately though, it is not a crime.
At the end of the day, it is more about loving yourself, valuing yourself and giving yourself attention. Once we love ourselves we will not burden other people by forcing them to love us. When people reject us, because we love and value ourselves, we will realise it is their loss, and gracefully let them go. Even at times when it is actually you losing out, you will have the capacity to value yourself enough to be alone or to find someone who appreciates you. There is dignity in letting go, no matter how much it may hurt.
