HAS SA LOST ITS MOJO?

THERE’S a song by James Morrison that goes like this:

And I know that it’s a wonderful world;

But I can’t feel it right now.

I thought I was doing well but I just want to cry now.

That feels like our national anthem, round about now.

There are many reasons for not feeling the magic. As South Africa descends deep into recession, it feels like the nation’s suffering from collective clinical depression.

There are attempts at light relief, like this tweet: “I don’t mean to attack Eskom, but how many more times must your coal get wet before you build a f…ing afdakkie for it.”

That’s funny. But our woes are far from amusing.

Millions of our most vulnerable countrymen are about to start suffering a whole lot more.

In times of mental anguish, it’s right to focus on gratitude. Like this exceptional piece of insight: “Gratitude is not a passive response to something we have been given. Gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without and beside us.

“Gratitude is not necessarily something that is shown after the event, it is the deep, a priori state of attention that shows we understand and are equal to the gifted nature of life.

“Gratitude is the understanding that many millions of things must come together and live together and mesh together and breathe together in order for us to take even one more breath of air.

“That the underlying gift of life and incarnation as a living, participating human being is a privilege.

“That we are miraculously part of something, rather than nothing.

“Even if that something is temporarily pain or despair, we inhabit a living world with real faces, real voices, laughter, the colour blue, the green of the fields, the freshness of a cold wind, or the tawny hue of a winter landscape.

“To see the full miraculous essentiality of the colour blue is to be grateful with no necessity for a word of thanks.

“To see fully the beauty of a daughter’s face across the table, of a son’s outline against the mountains, is to be fully grateful…

“Being unappreciative might mean we are simply not paying attention.”

Radical words by the writer David Whyte in his book Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.

But right now most South Africans are feeling too numb. Blocking out the pain, exasperation, sadness.

And the joy, too.

We’ve 22 days left until the year 2020.

We’d better start identifying authentic “reasons to believe”. Fast. Before our national depression becomes chronic. And our nation is formally institutionalised.

But right now most South Africans are feeling too numb. Blocking out the pain, exasperation and sadness