Democratic South Africa turned 27 today.
We experience life as a controlled hallucination. We interpret our experiences and the information we gather through the stories we have soaked in. It takes about 25 years to settle into our own adult perspective.
I think you get a few more years, maybe a decade, where you have some grace to work through all the baggage that entails. Sins of the father leaking into the next generation. Stories colouring stories that are not our own. If you do the work. If you unpack all the obstacles that obscured your way of seeing. If you want to release burdens to look with fresh eyes. Relooking. Relearning. Reworking. Reinvesting.
A 27-year-old is verging on being able to claim their story. Claim their community. Claim what it is that matters to them. But Freedom is not the ability to impose yourself on others. It is not the ability to do whatever you want. Freedom includes the messy work of caring what others think, and respecting that freedom. No adult is unconstrained by the past if they want a future that matters. A future linked to the freedom of others.
Happy 27th Birthday Democratic South Africa. The messy work of building Freedom continues.
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