There is no ways you can make it
on this ocean called planet Earth
without that boat called self.
It’s a sail ship...
spirit sails it.
Where it goes, you cannot know.
The only compass you have on this boat is your heart.
My mom told me a lot to always think about tomorrow.
And it was something that she lived.
Living in a state of fear where you believe that it’s the last tomato
so I must cut it in half
so that I can have again tomorrow.
I grew up in a very poor area where people didn’t have much.
The fridge would be full one week in a month.
And then the rest of the three weeks there’s a bottle of water
and mayonnaise that’s been left over for the past three months.
But I ate every day.
She would give even though she didn’t have.
She would make it happen.
I can’t be thankful enough.
When I was growing up, it was explained to me what my name means,
Mthunzi Gamama.
It means ‘moms place of rest’.
So my purpose for my name is
one who must grow up and then look after my mom.
At around age eleven
was the time when I started feeling the pressures
of society’s expectations, my mom’s expectations.
How you feel, that’s not a question that we ask where we’re from.
You must find a vocation that brings in the most income boy
or else you are a waste of opportunity.
I had always known that the expectations that people have of me,
they were going to get disappointed.
Because I was not going to be a doctor.
I was not going to be an accountant.
I knew those were not the options for me.
Right now my mom and I aren’t talking.
And the reason for that... sorry man...
The reason for that is because of the person I have chosen to be.
She has known me her whole life.
She had thought she knew me.
Me too. I thought I knew me too.
And then I got to a point where I realised that I was
going deeper and deeper into learning me.
I had misled myself a lot
and made decisions that were not loving to me.
It hurts because she’s holding onto
what she thinks she knows about me.
And that is no longer here.
I read somewhere a simple line that said
‘On the other side of your fear is the life that you want.’
And I think that this is just that.
It’s time to put the fear down
and to pick up the heart and light it up
and follow where it goes.
I have come to a place where
I have removed all those layers of these opinions
to come to this bareness...
this absolute bare reality of who I am.
For the first time in my life I don’t have this
voice of authority that I need to answer to
before I make a decision.
And this sort of freedom is so great for my kids and for myself.
For my kids, what I hope for
is for them to have the confidence
to make the decisions that make them happy.
The freedom to follow your heart... unapologetically.
To know that whatever it is that you’re going to do
will work for as long as you put your energy and your heart into it.
You’re just here to follow your heart.
And to do that... whatever that is.
I hope one day that my mom gets to see
the light that she brought into this world.
I have forgiven my mom for
not understanding who I am... what I am.
You have to forgive because people are going to hurt you.
People are going to come and do something that’s going to
make you not believe in love,
make you not believe in security.
Things like that are going to happen on Earth.
And you’re going to have to forgive some very hard things.
You can’t be happy unless you have forgiven.
Forgiveness and happiness are the same thing.
If I could have one gift for every human being on this earth
it would be a piece of happiness.
Where happiness happens is what a human being is.
It’s a quality of beingness that is
above the murmur of worry or uncertainty.
I’d wish a person to wake up and
with all the unknowns that this mystery is,
still be blown away by the amount of absolute lovingness
that comes from being on this planet.
That they find for themselves the courage to jump,
to run into the unknown.
(Why are you not scared? Why do you trust?)
Because I am love.
Love has got nothing to be scared of.
And I trust because I have been given a reason to trust...
by love.
And if you follow your heart, everything is fine.