“Carpet Rides” (Post 47)

Yesterday I had the pleasure or privilege to be on a repatriation flight from Saudi Arabia to South Africa. After two months of government negotiations and many small obstacles that various departments and people had to overcome, excited South Africans filled the Saudia plane. We paid for our extra baggage, because for many of us, it was the final exit. We departed and flew into the blue. I sat next to a good friend and we spoke about many things, including our aspirations for the future – as if we as human can fully determine that – and before we knew it, the almost seven hour flight was over and the skillful captain landed the plane effortlessly; many people did not even notice that we had landed. It was a soft landing indeed. All over the world we have been trying to add colour to our current lockdown “interiors”; we dream and plan our lives ahead with very little information regarding the future and the nature of the new normal that awaits us. Our unique selves, with their dreams and talents are all we have in a time of isolation and we feel slightly confined (and incomplete), especially when the memories of being with friends and family around a restaurant table seem so distant. We sigh and wish we could fly on a magical carpet to where life is rich with meaningful interactions (if we are extroverts).

In the meantime, we can dream with our hands and heads as we create the “carpet” (our action plan?) with which we will escape confinement and even dodge the new normal. We are hardly ever given the big picture and we see but the next step head. Often, we are not sure if we can actually see the outlines or if we simply imagine the outlines, because they seem vague, but we can only paint the mere portion in our daily view. (Can you imagine how we would have complained if we were given all the directions for our journeys ahead in detail? Heaven would not have had enough telephones or answering machines to handle our complaints regarding our demands to have our carpet designs explained to us.) I am thinking of that proverb now that says: A stitch in time saves nine.

As humans we have become very rushed with all our take-away solutions, but our lives and our visions demand an attention to detail from us, that will deliver a beautiful carpet much later, when all the work is done. Let us keep on creating a stitch at a time and one day when we see the colours of our magical carpet design emerge, we will have a treasure that can transport us. Let us encourage each other to create with that little bit of “magic” we have control over, our talents, so that we could possibly have a soft landing somewhere one day; perhaps it will be so normal, we may not even notice it. Let us work on our carpets today, because they can make us fly.