TO WHOM IT MAY CORNCERN

CHANGES

CHANGE IS INEVITABLE

Photocred: Pinterest[Rebirth]

I was going through my WhatsApp statuses today when I came across something posted by MaKubheka. ⚖️ . It said, “I’m a testament of much more failure and success. I’m also a testament of being aware that today is to be better off than the version of me that came before.” I don’t know why that particular status stayed with me, but it did. I read it once, then again, and somehow I found myself thinking about the different versions of me that have existed over the past few years. The person I was before the rejection letters, the person I was during my gap year, the person who watched his friends move forward while wondering when his own life would finally begin, the person who sent CV after CV and kept receiving the same words, the person who eventually got a call from a restaurant asking me if I wanted to work with them, and the person writing this now. When I look at all of those versions of myself, I realise that maybe I have been going through changes this entire time without even noticing it.

Life has a weird way of making you realise that change does not always arrive in the form you expect it to. Sometimes it arrives as a rejection, sometimes it arrives as a gap year that you never planned to take, sometimes it arrives as an opportunity you almost convince yourself is beneath you, sometimes it arrives through a person leaving your life, a friendship changing, a plan falling apart, or a door closing in your face. I used to think that change was something that happened when life finally decided to give you what you wanted. I thought change meant improvement. I thought it meant moving from one good thing to another better thing. But I am beginning to understand that change is not always about becoming more successful; sometimes change is simply becoming more aware or learning how to look at the same situation with different eyes, but sometimes life changes around you before you are ready to change with it.

I think people look at me sometimes and assume that I have everything figured out. Is it because of the way I carry myself? Or because I am studying a certain degree? Maybe, just maybe, it is because people see the things I post and assume that the person writing those words must have everything under control. The truth is that I have had to figure things out while I was still confused about them myself. I had a great APS, but I was not at the university I thought I would be at. I was rejected by UJ on the same day, thirteen minutes after collecting my matric statement. Other universities followed too. The strange thing is that the institution I am currently studying at was not even one of the institutions I had originally applied for. If you had told me back then that I would eventually become a student there, I probably would not have believed you. Life had already started changing the direction of my story before I even realised that I was no longer walking on the path I had planned.

I decided to take a gap year. During that gap year, I decided to upgrade my marks because I genuinely believed that if I worked harder, changed the numbers, and tried again, things would eventually fall into place. I still remember the lady who was tutoring me pulling me aside and telling me that my marks were beautiful and that I did not belong where I was. She told me that I should work hard and take myself out of that situation. I remember those words because there was something about being told that I could become more that made me believe that I had to become more immediately. But somewhere along the way, I got distracted. I threw myself off the path I was on. I delayed myself and made mistakes that cost me time. I did things that I wish I had done differently. Yet when I look back now, I do not want to spend the rest of my life punishing myself for the person I was when I did not know what I know today. Maybe growing up is also learning how to forgive the versions of yourself that were still trying to figure things out.

The difficult part was that the delay did not simply feel like a delay. It felt like my entire life had stopped. I fell into a very dark depression. There were nights when I felt like I was being left behind by everyone around me. I would look at my friends and see them flourishing while I was still trying to understand what had happened to me. There were moments when I called my mother late at night because I did not know what else to do. I told her how left out I felt and how difficult it was watching people close to me achieve the things that I had also wanted for myself. There were moments when my thoughts became so dark that I did not know whether I wanted to keep going. Looking back, I understand that I was not simply jealous of their success. I was grieving the version of my life that I thought I was supposed to be living. I was grieving the timeline I had created in my head.

That was something I had to learn slowly. Someone else’s success is not evidence of my failure; this is something I said on one of my recent Substack posts, “PRESSURE”. Just because my friend graduated before me does not mean that I will not graduate. Just because my friend bought a car before me does not mean that I will never own one. Just because somebody is living a life that looks further ahead than mine does not mean that I am standing still. I think social media makes real life difficult because we are constantly shown the finished product of somebody else’s life while we are experiencing every unfinished part of our own. We see the graduation pictures, the new cars, the jobs, the relationships, the apartments, the trips, and everything else, but we rarely see the uncertainty, mistakes, setbacks, and everything else that existed before those moments. I have had to learn that I can be genuinely happy for somebody else’s success without using it as a measure of my own life.

I am really proud of my friends, and I know that they know.

I am happy when they achieve their goals. I genuinely believe that when my own time comes, they will be there to clap their hands for me too, but I do not want to live a life where I have to downplay somebody else’s happiness because I am still waiting for mine. I do not want to look at someone else’s achievement and immediately ask myself why it has not happened to me yet; maybe the better question is this: what can their success teach me about what is possible?. I have spent too much time looking sideways when I should have been looking forward. I am learning that external validation can make you feel successful for a moment, but it cannot build a life for you. When I achieve something, I want it to be because it means something to me. I want my goals to be rooted in the person I am trying to become rather than in the need to prove to somebody else that I am doing well.

My father used to say “phelela wena, o seke wa phelela batho”

I think that is one of the biggest changes I have noticed in myself. I am becoming less obsessed with proving that I am okay, but I am becoming more interested in actually being okay. For a long time, I thought that if I could make people believe that I was doing well, then maybe I would eventually start believing it too. I thought that looking successful would make me feel successful. But life has a way of exposing the difference between appearance and reality. You can have the right words, the right plans and the right picture, and still feel completely lost when you are alone with yourself. I am beginning to understand that becoming better is not always something other people can see. Sometimes the biggest changes are the ones that happen quietly inside you, and then you only realise that you have changed when something that used to break you no longer has the same power over you.

I still remember sending my CV to almost everywhere I could think of: restaurants, internships, law-related opportunities, basically anything that could give me some experience and put me in a position where I could learn. I sent applications and waited. Then the emails came: “We regret to inform you.” There is something incredibly dehumanising about receiving those words over and over again when you have already started questioning whether you are doing enough. Eventually, you start wondering whether the problem is you, then you start thinking that maybe you are not good enough or qualified enough. Isn’t it wild how one sentence can slowly convince you that you are not enough if you hear it long enough?

Then, one day, a day after my birthday, while I was just at home relaxing at exactly 13h42, my phone rang.

This was divine timing because 42 - 13 = 29 (My birthday is on the 29th of July), but let me get back to what I was saying.

A restaurant was calling me. They told me that they wanted me to come for an interview. I remember the feeling that came over me because it was not just excitement about getting a job offer. It was reflection. I thought about all the places that had rejected me. I thought about all the applications I had sent. I thought about how many times I had opened those emails and read the same words. Then suddenly somebody was calling me and asking me to come and work with them. That moment taught me something that I had heard many times before but had never truly understood. Sometimes being delayed does not mean being denied. Sometimes waiting does not mean that nothing is happening. Sometimes the thing you are waiting for is not the thing that eventually changes you.

I know somebody might read this and ask how I can be so happy about getting a job at a restaurant when I am a law student. I understand the question because I probably would have asked myself the same thing a few years ago. We have created this idea that once you study a certain degree, every step you take afterwards must be directly connected to it. If you study law, you must immediately find something in law. If you study engineering, you must immediately work in engineering. If you study medicine, you must immediately become a doctor. There is nothing wrong with pursuing your field, for what it’s worth. You should, but I think there is also something valuable about putting yourself in situations where you can be exposed to life outside the classroom. A degree can teach you a lot, but it cannot teach you everything. Sometimes you need to leave the lecture hall and enter a completely different environment before you realise how much there is still left to learn.

My first day at work changed something in me. When I came home, I sat down with my mother and told her that working there had made me value my degree more. It had made me realise that there was more to life than simply pursuing a qualification. Working there taught me about human nature. It taught me how people think, how they react, how they communicate, how they treat people when they are happy, how they treat people when they are frustrated and how quickly a person’s character can reveal itself when they believe nobody is watching. There are things that experience has taught me that my degree has not taught me yet. I no longer see that workplace as somewhere I go simply to make a few coins so that I can buy the things I want. I see it as an opportunity to expose myself to people and situations that I may never have encountered otherwise.

Maybe one day a lawyer will walk through that door. I will be the person serving him or her, and then we have a conversation about the Constitution, Criminal Law or something completely unrelated, and then that conversation will lead somewhere. Maybe it will not, but the point is that I have placed myself on the dance floor of opportunities. I have given life somewhere to meet me. How do I expect to get a job if I never send out a CV? How do I expect an opportunity to find me if I never make myself available for one? Sometimes you have to dress up, make copies of your CV, walk into places and ask. Even when they tell you they are not hiring, you can still say, “I understand that you are not currently hiring, but if there comes a time when you need someone, here is my CV. You can give me a call, and I will be available.” There is humility in that. There is also courage in it. You cannot be afraid of being seen trying.

A few weeks ago, I asked a question in my subscriber chat. It was a simple question that we ask or hear daily: “How are you doing?'“. A lot of them spoke about how their gap year was taking a toll on them, and reading those responses took me back to myself. I remembered what it felt like to watch people being shown around campus while I was somewhere else trying to understand what had happened to my own plans. I remember wishing I could have written a full paragraph to every single one of those people, telling them that they were not behind. I wish I could have told them that taking a different route does not mean that you will never reach the same destination. Sometimes the path to the seat you want is not the traditional one. Sometimes the road to becoming a doctor, a politician, a lawyer, a teacher, a police officer or anything else will look completely different from what you imagined when you were younger.

I think we need to stop treating life like there is only one acceptable route to success. Some people will take three years to finish something that takes somebody else four. Some people will take a gap year. Some people will change degrees. Some people will work before going to university. Some people will graduate and still struggle to find work. Some people will study one thing and end up doing something completely different. None of those things automatically mean that somebody has failed. Sometimes your path is simply different, or you have to go somewhere you never imagined going before you can arrive somewhere you always dreamed about. The problem is that we have become so obsessed with arriving that we have forgotten that there is also a life happening while we are on the way.

That is why I keep coming back to the word change. Change is inevitable. Whether we like it or not, we are constantly becoming different versions of ourselves. The person who entered university is not the same person who is writing this. The person who received those rejection letters is not the same person who now goes to work. The person who once compared his life to everyone around him is slowly learning how to appreciate his own timing. The person who thought a delay meant failure is beginning to understand that some delays teach you things that arriving early never could. I am not saying that I have figured it all out. I am saying that I have started paying attention to what life is trying to teach me.

I have also started to understand why being open to opportunities matters so much. Sometimes we reject opportunities because they do not look impressive enough. Sometimes pride convinces us that a certain job is beneath us. Sometimes we think that because we have a degree, we should not have to start somewhere else. But there is dignity in work. A teacher is important. A flight attendant is important. A cashier is important. A stock taker is important. A waiter is important. A cleaner is important. Every person who wakes up and contributes something to this world has value. I think social media has done something strange to us. It has created standards that make people ashamed of ordinary work. Everybody wants to look successful, but very few people want to be seen struggling towards success. Everybody wants the destination, but nobody wants to be seen walking through the uncomfortable parts of the journey.

A friend of mine once told me about one of their colleagues. She is a graduate from one of the top three institutions in the country for engineering, yet she works at the restaurant as a waiter. What stayed with me was not the fact that she had a degree and was working somewhere unrelated to it. What stayed with me was how humble she was about it. She told my friend that this is life and that sometimes you have to humble yourself. That conversation stayed with me because it reminded me that education is not a guarantee that life will follow the plan you created. You can have a degree and still need to start again. You can have qualifications and still be rejected. You can be talented and still have to wait. You can work hard and still experience setbacks. None of that takes away from who you are.

In the world we live in, nothing is certain except death. Industries change. Technology changes. People change. Circumstances change. The things we think will always be there can disappear. The things we never thought would happen can happen overnight. One day you can be convinced that your future is going to look one way, and the next day you are forced to reconsider everything. That used to scare me. Now, I think I am learning to embrace it. Not because uncertainty is easy, but because resisting change does not stop it from happening. If anything, it makes the transition harder. I would rather learn how to move with life than spend my entire life trying to force life to stay the same.

Do not look down on someone studying art because you think their degree is not serious. Do not look down on someone studying teaching, especially foundation phase, because you think they are not doing enough. Think about where you are today. Before you became a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer or whatever it is that you are becoming, somebody taught you how to read, write, and count. Somebody helped build the foundation that eventually allowed you to pursue whatever you are pursuing now. Every profession has a place in this world. Every person has something to contribute. We need to stop measuring people’s worth according to how impressive their titles sound.

Maybe that is what this season of my life has been trying to teach me. I thought I was being delayed when I was actually being redirected. I thought I was falling behind when I was actually learning how to move differently. I thought rejection meant that I was not good enough when sometimes it simply meant that a particular door was not mine. I thought working somewhere outside of my field meant that I was moving away from my future when it was actually teaching me lessons that I may carry into that future. I thought success was about reaching the destination as quickly as possible. Now I am beginning to understand that sometimes the person you become on the way there matters more than how quickly you arrive.

And maybe that is the biggest change of all. I am no longer as interested in becoming the person everybody thinks I should become. I am more interested in becoming someone I can respect when I am alone with myself. I want to look back at the different versions of me and understand that each one was trying to survive something, learn something or become something. I don’t want to hate the version of me who got distracted. I don’t want to hate the version of me who failed. I don’t want to hate the version of me who compared himself to his friends. I don’t want to hate the version of me who struggled to get out of bed, who called his mother late at night, who wondered whether life would ever make sense. That person was still me. He just didn’t know yet what I know now.

I think I finally understand that change is not the enemy. Sometimes change is the thing that saves you from becoming comfortable with a life that was never meant for you. Sometimes the person you become after disappointment is more prepared for life than the person who never experienced it. Sometimes losing the plan teaches you how to build another one. Sometimes being forced to start again teaches you that starting again is not the same thing as starting from nothing. You carry everything you learned with you. You carry the rejection. You carry the disappointment. You carry the lessons. You carry the people who helped you. You carry the people who left. You carry the moments that broke you and the moments that reminded you that you could still stand.

So, to anyone reading this who feels like they are behind, I hope you understand something I am still learning myself. Your timeline is not a verdict on your future. Just because somebody got there before you does not mean that you will never get there. Just because somebody rejected you today does not mean they will reject you tomorrow. Just because you are working somewhere you never imagined working does not mean you will be there forever. Put yourself on the dance floor of opportunities. Apply. Ask. Try again. Walk into that place. Send that CV. Make that call. Take that opportunity. Be humble enough to start somewhere you did not expect to start. You never know what conversation, person or opportunity might be waiting for you in a place you almost decided was not worth entering.

I don’t know what the next version of my life looks like. That used to bother me more than it does now. I used to think I needed to know exactly where I was going before I could move. Now I am learning that sometimes you only need enough courage to take the next step. I am still a law student. I am still figuring out my career. I am still learning how to handle disappointment. I am still learning how to stop comparing my journey to everyone else’s. I am still learning how to trust that my life does not have to look impressive every day for it to still be meaningful. There are still things I want. There are still places I want to go. There are still versions of myself that I have not met yet.

Life might change again tomorrow; maybe another rejection will come, or another opportunity will come from somewhere I never expected. Maybe I will have to start over again. Maybe I will change my mind about something I once thought I wanted forever. I think I am finally okay with that. There is something freeing about knowing that I do not have to have everything figured out. I just have to remain open enough to learn from whatever comes next. Because if there is one thing this season of my life has taught me, it is that change does not always mean that you are losing yourself. Sometimes it means you are finally becoming someone new.

So, to whom it may concern, I think I am changing. Not into someone who has everything figured out. Not into someone who has finally won. Not into someone who no longer struggles. I am simply becoming someone who understands that life will keep moving whether I am ready or not, and perhaps the best thing I can do is move with it. I have learned that failure can teach you. Rejection can redirect you. Waiting can prepare you. Humility can expose you to places you never expected to enter, and sometimes the road that takes you somewhere you never wanted to be is the same road that introduces you to a version of yourself you never knew existed.

For now, I think that is enough. I think I have said what I needed to say about this version of my life. I think I have spent enough time looking backwards, trying to understand why certain things happened the way they did. Maybe there is no perfect explanation. Maybe some things only make sense when you are far enough away from them to see the bigger picture. I am not going to pretend that I know what happens next. I am not going to pretend that everything suddenly makes sense because it doesn’t. But I am grateful for the changes. Even the ones I hated. Especially the ones I hated. Because somewhere between the rejection letters, the gap year, the late-night conversations, the applications, the job, the classroom, the restaurant and all the uncertainty in between, I became someone who is no longer afraid of the fact that life can change.

And maybe one day I will look back at this version of myself the same way I look back at the others, and smile at the things I thought were permanent. Maybe I will laugh at the things I thought would break me and realise that this was not the end of anything at all; it was simply another version of me learning how to leave the water, sit on the shore, catch my breath and look towards whatever comes next…