My business is words, their meanings and the power they have to help us rise above tribulation as well as celebrate achievements.
My word for this week is “malaise”. It is of French origin and describes a general feeling of discomfort, illness or unease whose exact cause is difficult to identify. When using it in a sentence, we could refer to “a general air of malaise“.
I have had my annual check-up, and according to a physician who checked me out last week, I came out with a clean bill of health. His words were: ”You are in excellent shape for an 84-year-old.” This blessing I ascribe to a loving and merciful and powerful God of my understanding.
Why am I talking about an enigmatic situation like “malaise”. We might start with synonyms for this condition, which could, as you will see, affect the body and the soul. Synonyms include uneasiness, melancholy, despondency, dejection, disquiet, trouble, anxiety, lassitude, listlessness, enervation, debility, ennui and the German word Weltschmerz.
There are countless more, but each differs in slight nuance, depending on the circumstances. What is clear is that it is not a condition that requires medication, hospitalisation, surgery or counselling. It is a weird feeling that can’t kill you and you cannot pass it on.
Why am I touting it? I do so because of the misdirection I wrote about last week. I write because a man for whom I have respect defends the book by former Eskom CEO André de Ruyter, Truth to Power.
I posit this sense of helplessness because, despite commissions and investigations and revelations and plain red-handed discovery, we are no nearer to achieving the country for which we voted in 1994.
But don’t think that I am going to catalogue what is wrong. That is easy. What is wrong? Everything. I recall vaguely a diatribe by the superb Al Pacino in a film where he publicly lambastes the lack of justice in a society where blacks could be shot with impunity. He screams that the city is wrong, the police are wrong, the schools are wrong, the president is wrong, God is wrong!
I would not dare cock a snook at God. Rather, I’d suggest that a remedy might reside in acknowledging God, and if you turn to Him, He might just have an answer. But I am a columnist, not a preacher. I am not moralist, although I tout the notion that maybe what we need is the worldwide movement called Moral Rearmament that circulated the globe some years ago.
On a personal level, I ask for no miracle other than the rediscovery of the self and the miracle that each of us is. As the sweater of my last grandchild said proudly years ago at two years old: “When God made me, He was showing off.” I have no silver bullet. I espouse the philosophy that to be widely read is a good beginning.
I urge people to explore their staggering potential that is reeling under the weight of indifference, non-accountability, invisibility of the rulers, non-disclosure of agendas and the blatant avoidance of prosecution in the face of an Everest of evidence of malfeasance, skulduggery, buggering, whanking, horse-trading and gerrymandering that pass for governance in this neck of the woods.
It’s a crying shame that men are given jobs of cleaning the stable, observe the ordure for a while, resign and collect a golden handshake, then publish a book that guarantees another fat cheque. As the song goes, the rich get rich and the poor get children.
The banks are amassing millions in ripping off the recently empowered, with generous plastic facilities which grow to the point of terminal velocity, then they pounce. The elderly sell their homes to their children. The institutions for the care of the aged are reaping funds created by dire necessity. The medical profession has lost (or is busy losing) its sacred vow of benevolence and healing.
But I have said enough. Now we must all together say: Enough!
* Alex Tabisher.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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