The Golden Tears: Discover Yourself

By Noluvuyo Victoria Mabophe

The Golden Tears is based on lifes realities. It is mainly about how people lose their happiness through losing themselves as individuals and how discovering your true self can bring happiness back. The story is adapted from general life situations. The main character is one of those lucky individuals who manage to turn their unhappy lives around and become very happy at the end of the day. Using the characters turnaround, The Golden Tears provides prevention of derailment in general. Pieces of advice are sent to the youth and to the community at large. The Golden Tears, therefore, is structured to introduce people to happy life obstructions; it provides the effects of letting yourself be distracted, followed by how you can turn things around. This is where the individual, as himself or herself, counts the most, as knowledge of oneself is required for any road to success to be possible. In the last part, one who manages to discover himself or herself becomes a hero who walks a memorable journey to happiness, where true freedom may be enjoyed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jun 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524679484

Noluvuyo Victoria Mabophe

Noluvuyo Mabophe, known by some as Victoria, is a Director of her business concern in Johannesburg; Frainah’s Consulting and Projects (Pty) Ltd. Born in the 70’s in Bizana, Transkei; she did all her schooling up to matric in her rural and remote surroundings. In 1989, she went to USA to study at Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts. A year later, she joined Grinnell College in Iowa. That is where she received her Tertiary Education in 1994; with a major in Economics and a Concentration in Gender and Women’s Studies. She came back to South Africa and was offered a job as teacher. Later, she joined forces with the community, Department of Education and Sponsors to establish the first high school in her area. Victoria became the first educator and the first manager for Cangci Comprehensive Technical High School, the school that they founded. Victoria also has six years’ experience in finance. For the past nine years, she has been in the consulting game, development and deployment of HR Management Systems, as well as Project Management. Victoria has furthered her studies with courses on Cost and Management Accounting at the Technikon SA, plus a Certificate in Human Resources Management from UNISA.

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© 2017 Noluvuyo Victoria Mabophe. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

The author has tried to recreate events, locales and conversations from her memories of them. In order to maintain their anonymity in some instances, the author has changed the names of individuals and places. Some identifying characteristics have changed and also details such as physical properties, occupations and places of residence. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Published by AuthorHouse    05/23/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5246-7949-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-7950-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-7948-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017908246

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The Golden Tears is dedicated to Despair.

Despair, you must prepare to rest in poly pieces as Self-Lovers rise in numbers to rule their lives.

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1.   What a Journey!

2.   Derailing

3.   A Gate to Freedom

4.   Toxic Cans of Worms

5.   Mental Paralysis

6.   The Golden Tears

7.   Important Discovery with a Choice

8.   The Bridge

9.   Claiming Back Freedom

10.   Road to Freedom

11.   The Final Lap

12.   True Freedom

Preface

T he belief that everyone is intelligent enough to at least guard against losing his or her happiness has made me wonder why so many people are unhappy in the world. Then I realized that it is not intelligence from nowhere that is vital but intelligence that is based on fully understanding and knowing oneself that is most crucial in building a healthy, happy state of an individual. Knowing yourself is the strongest foundation in building your happy self. Not knowing yourself, on the other hand, will make you more vulnerable to life obstacles and therefore blindfold you in order to steal your happiness. A person who is blindfolded by self-confusion can easily be consumed by greed, anger, carelessness, laziness, and the like; all these are elements of distraction on the path to happiness.

Further, if you are not sure who you are, you will be vulnerable to complexities of your own society and your own mixed feelings, and if you are a lost soul, these will subject you to endless tests which will persist until you fall. As you fall, it becomes hard to get up most of the time. However, if you know yourself and you know your capabilities, you can be in a position to fix your life and get back to your true happiness, which is nothing but your true freedom. (This is only if you do not get killed while you are on the wrong life path, or if you do not become mentally or physically incapacitated or locked up in jail for life. Unfortunately, these can be points of no return to true freedom and true happiness.)

During my own life journey, I have noticed that it is very easy to become a lost soul as a person if you fail to effectively preserve yourself in the tight circle of life partnership, i.e. people around you, the society, and you yourself. I have also noticed that before the society and people corrupt us, we corrupt ourselves by forgetting who we are, chasing goals that are not ours, and ending up changing into monsters without human traits as we try to be who we are not. As these angry and inhuman monsters, we fail to make ourselves happy and end up being a threat to the society and to ourselves. We become cruel, harsh, brutal, and vicious, finding it normal to hurt others. We just forget one thing: that at the end of day we are the ones who will be hurt the most. The Golden Tears is therefore a cry to the nation to recover and get back to the right path. It is a signal to the youth to watch out for obstacles and avoid derailing as they travel carelessly and immaturely on their life paths. It is a call of hope to those who are miserable because they have ignored their good purposes and derailed in the process. The Golden Tears is the provision of strength to the weak and the provision of faith that it is not over if you can rediscover yourself and get back to the life path.

The Golden Tears suggests that knowing yourself from a young age will enable you to prepare for your freedom in a correct manner. You will know what will be good for you and what will land you in trouble. You will be able to analyse situations around you and distinguish opportunities from hidden life obstacles. For an adult, The Golden Tears provides hope that after all the pain you have endured in life, you can still be happy, even if your breakthrough is still very painful as well. Like the character in the story, sometimes you need to face a painful reality and understand how you landed in misery in order to find a way out of it. Further, your understanding of what you have become – a lost soul – and the willingness to recover your true self without attaching any blame to anyone except yourself is the subtitle’s message: Discover Yourself – an Honest Gate to Your Happiness and Freedom. The Golden Tears is meant to inspire those who think they are failures to re-evaluate themselves, recheck their capabilities, and reinvent themselves. It is meant to make people stop being intimidated in any manner and be comfortable in their own skin – to get out there in life and prepare to claim back their happiness and freedom in a civilized and acceptable manner.

This is a story that is based on witnessed real-life situations – situations that could also occur anywhere and anytime, as well as situations that mostly cause a lot of pain to some individuals. Among such situations are detrimental thoughts of children growing up in single-parent households, hardships faced by women as breadwinners in many families, stigmas attached to cultures and traditions, and ungratefulness and greed among some people in general. When one gets the intended message from The Golden Tears, the end result should be self-evaluation and ensuring that the person is being his or her true self. If one finds himself or herself miserable after everything that he or she has done to be happy, that means the life journey has been travelled on the wrong road. In this situation, The Golden Tears provides a right path to follow, starting with a task of rediscovering self as an immediate action which should put people in a position to realize the biggest mistake that they have been making: leaving their own spirits behind in the quest for happiness, thus pushing themselves into the wrong den of self-created misery, with the aid of general life obstructions, of course.

The Golden Tears: Discover Yourself – an Honest Gate to Your Happiness and Freedom is a story of life realities, a story of hope, and a story of victory. It is a guide to true happiness, the ultimate freedom.

Acknowledgements

N othing has contributed more to the writing of this book than my inner self. I am most grateful to the peaceful state of my mind that has enabled me to reason and reconstruct what could determine a better future for my readers.

Further, I must not overlook the two women who were my mentors, who have both passed on. These women paved my good life path and weaved the ropes of life for me to cling to. They are my mother, FrainahMabophe, and my grandmother, Noldah Mabophe. May their souls rest in peace, as the foundation they built for my life holds my true destiny.

How can I forget the role played by my educators? Deerfield Academy and Grinnell College, together with all my host families in Massachusetts and Iowa: Bill and Karson Aubuchon, Jeannette Tisdale, Dr Lawrence and Carol Hunsicker, and other community members who assisted international students like me. They fortified the walls of my castle through funding and supporting my education in one way or another. With much appreciation, this book is a return on the investment by those who committed their resources to a stranger, with no intentions or expectations of realizing any gains. Thank you.

Introduction

L ists of disabilities and impairments are always incomplete. Lack of self-knowledge is never included, and therefore, all lost souls see themselves as normal. Yet they are just as disabled as many of us who can locate ourselves on the stigmatized list of incapable people. Yes, we are blind because we have lost sight and cannot see literally, but the sighted lost souls are just like us because their sight does not benefit them in any way. They still do not see where they are going. They are walking blindfolded towards what they believe to be their happiness without any indication that they will ever get to it.

We might have no hands and no feet, meaning we have limitations on what we can do and where we can go, but the lost souls are also incapacitated as well. If they do anything with their hands, it has no value in their lives, as they mainly do wrong things. Their feet bring no joy to their lives either, as they normally walk towards trouble. I can count many things on the disability list, but lacking knowledge about the negative effects of anger is not among them. Laziness is also not counted as some disability either. And although disabilities and impairments have some stigmas attached to them, lack of self-knowledge has no stigma, yet it is the most incapacitating disability since it is hidden within you, a parasite that eats up any chance of your true freedom.

If a disability amounts to a life hindrance that needs to be properly managed, putting lack of self-knowledge on top of the list would help people guard it from destroying their dreams. They would continuously search themselves, evaluating if they are still their true selves or not, and push to rediscover themselves if they are derailing. Of course, no one needs to be disabled when prevention is possible. People would keep from being among those who are undermined and sidelined, as this happens to anyone that is known as being disabled in our societies. But because lack of self-knowledge is not recognized as a disability, something seen by society as undesirable, some people are comfortable living as lost souls. As a result, many intelligent, skilled, healthy, and energetic people still derail and end up tasting the sourness of life.

This is what happened to June Zizi. Lack of self-knowledge pushed her off the trail, and she got lost. She did not know who she was and kept following others instead of living her own life and within her means. June’s intelligence could not generate any happiness for her, as it was kidnapped and locked away in a dark cell by her own ignorance and unproductive thoughts. Her happiness was then finally stolen when she gave up who she was in order to fit into the society. June got so lost in life that she became one of the unhappiest people in the world.

It was easy for her to get lost because she did not know that she was born with obstacles already waiting to derail her in life. She did not know that possibly half of the community around her would accept her, while the other half would be poised on a mission to judge, undermine, hate, and become nasty to her for no apparent reason. Neither did she know that a society and its members could have such strong powers of derailing people from getting to happiness. Without being told, she had no way of knowing that standards that are set in a society do end up being discriminatory and oppressive to some people. She wouldn’t naturally know that even attire is sometimes classified into standards of fashion, and a price tag is attached to it to make it possible to spot those who are unable to afford it (the poor), so as to sideline them.

Little did she know that even respect anymore is seldom really earned but rather is conferred on people in certain positions or those with a certain economic status. June was not aware at first that cultures and traditions are also classified, with Africans who have adopted Western traditions given a higher status in some areas than those who still adhere to their own. How could she have known about superiority and inferiority of languages? The language one speaks is also graded against unseen scales. The way you speak a foreign language also exposes you to dismissal if you do not speak it the way the classifiers do, and some local languages are inferior because those who classify are unable to speak them.

June had started her journey with misunderstandings of many role players