CULT VALUE

I've been trying to figure out which aspect of my life I should focus on in this blog, and yesterday I decided it had to be the writing of my thesis. It's a turning-point of sorts, the culmination of a process of transformation, and above all it affects every other aspect of my life. So that's what this blog is about. On a wider scale, though, this blog is about being determined and achieving something against the odds. Once, when I was still living Stateside, I asked some of the people closest to me to come up with the one word they felt best described how they viewed me. Most of them I hadn't known for more than a few years, and so they tended to agree on the one term--visionary or something of that nature. I guessed it summed up for them the aspect of myself that they had access to at that time, and I felt there was some truth in it. In a sense, it was expected, and I also felt flattered by it. But my sister surprised me. She said, "Determined. It just came to me. When I think Manajua I think determined". I wasn't thrilled. There's something single-mindedly ruthless about the word. Determined people are selfish people, right? They don't care who they mow down in their inner-demon-driven quest to succeed... But, I had to refelct on this, because my sister has known me for her whole life, and well, she loves me.

I could see what she meant if I thought about it from a different perspective. Take the word determination. Break it into two parts - de and termination - and you realize that it means to stop a process of stopping, to get something moving that has been prevented from forward motion, to revitalize. Determination is not simply momentum for its own sake, its task is to break through the barriers.

I thought of this again last night watching the final episode of 'Last Man Standing', which I've enjoyed so much. Wole won the final event, and therefore the title, with a display of sheer brute determination. A gruelling two-day canoe race across open water was the king-making challenge, and everybody suffered. The two teamplayers (rugby player Jarvis and soccer player Joey) quit near the start. This event favoured the self-reliant only. Anyway, just when it looked like Wole had the race in the bag his canoe ran aground on a coral bank in the shallow waters close to the shore. With Murray (the race favourite) just 100 yards or so behind, Wole was well and truly stuck and he was very very very tired. We watched the big man floundering in the water with arms of lead. He was at the end of his forces. But with bare feet ripped by razor-sharp oral he pushed the craft towards the fre-flowing water. At one point we saw him fall, and he gave up (sacrificed) a chunk of flesh to the reef. I cannot imagine how that must have it. Watching him struggle was mesmerizing, but painful and stomach-turning at the same time. We wanted him to stop, for the unwinnable battle to be over. But then -somehow- Wole managed to get the canoe into a channel, and he was off. The inertia had been broken. He rowed home to victory--bleeding but victorious. He really wanted to win.

What's interesting about this story though, apart from Wole's superhuman effort at the end, is actually what happened at the start of the race. Apart from Jarvis and Joey, both Ed and Wole had been battered by waves and had to struggle to regain control. As I said J and J both gave up (I think they were mainly concerned about becoming sharkfood!), and Ed managed to get back into the race after an hour-long (?) struggle, which just left Wole. He just wasn't able to get his canoe the right way up with him onboard. It was a local who came to his rescue, and made both the race -and his final heroic struggle- possible. A wonderful allegory of that book I just finished 'The Outliers'. Someone has to make your struggle possible in the first place, and determination can sometimes be how you repay the favour they (and the universe) have shown you.

Let's see how many words of my first chapter I can grind out today...