Hercules vs Jesus

I just watched the Hercules movie and the more I watched the more I saw comparisons with the Jesus story. I know I might be far reaching here but as I hope to show the similarities are there. One gives man’s view of how the story should be told and the other shows God’s. Before I get into my “breakdown” I think that the similarities that are to be drawn from the two are intentional if not subliminal, then again I do have the tendency to as it were “over deduce”.

Anyway, firstly we see that both Hercules and Jesus are the sons of a supreme God, Zeus being the Chief/Head/Supreme god, which ever floats your boat and Jesus' being God, Yahweh, I cant break it down any further, sorry. In both the movie and the Bible it is implied and mentioned on more than one occasion that the father to both Hercules and Jesus is the God of all. On a similar note we also see in both cases that there is no physical father involved, the movie shows this in a more explicit sense but you get the picture. They both leave you acknowledging beyond the shadow of a doubt that they are the sons of God.

Secondly we see Hercules and Jesus being seen as the salvation and hope for a people in dire need of one. In Jesus case it was in a human sense a freedom from the Romans who had as it were colonized Israel, they were the oppressors. And in Hercules sense it was the king at the time and the king in waiting that were oppressing the people. In walks Hercules and Jesus in their individual narratives and their actions give the people hope and they both garner a following. This is through feats of strength and power and this is the point at which the distinction becomes evident, which is the main reason for me writing this, you didn’t think I was doing a movie review I hope. Hercules comes in with strength and defeats soldiers in flashy shows of strength, he physically defends the poor and the oppressed. Jesus as well performed his miracles, the healing and the feeding of the masses.

The difference being that our thinking of the role of Jesus we expect more of a Hercules than what Jesus did. The people at the time and even us expected him to lead a revolt against the rulers of the day and free them from oppression but instead he preached more than he healed. He spoke not of the rulers of the day and what they did wrong or right, he spoke not of outer change but he spoke of the people’s need of an inner change, he spoke of their need of reconciliation with God to give their lives meaning but unfortunately most did not get the message because they were expecting something more like Hercules.

Thirdly we see the capture. Both Hercules and Jesus were captured by the enemy, in Jesus case it was more of a surrender because he did not need to be held to ransom, he literally handed himself over, did not put up a fight and even healed one of them men who was there to capture him after an altercation with one of his followers. Hercules on the other hand puts up a gallant fight and has to be taken because his followers are threatened, after all we all love a hero who fights hard but is willing to make a sacrifice for the little guy. In their capture they are both flogged openly and there is a cross like symbolism in the movie, I think that’s intentional but that’s just me.

The question posed to both is the same “if you claim to be the son of God, get yourself down from there” at this point in time the people at Jesus crucifixion were waiting for that great show of strength for the thunder and lightning, for the visual effects, if you will, for him to get himself down and give the enemy a hiding like they have never seen or experienced before. Jesus looked up and you can feel the watchers tingling with anticipation giving each other “this is it” look. They were terribly disappointed when all that happened was Jesus saying “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” and lastly “Father into your hands I commit my spirit”. They were terribly disappointed, that’s not why he came but they never got that. Hercules on the other hand fulfilled all the check boxes on our vanity list. Hercules looks up, asks Zeus for power, thunder and lightning plus a lot of visual effects, Hercules pulls off a feat of strength in which he throws rocks about like paper weights that kill some of the enemy and force the rest into retreat. Is it just me or have all the boxes on the human naiveté check list been ticked? Hold onto your boots because there’s one more.

The last fight. This is almost grasping at straws in the Jesus narrative, I’m trying to avoid calling it a story since it actually happened, ask your history teacher children, it actually happened. Hercules first. So Hercules goes back to take down the king and on a secondary agenda get the girl, that’s the final tick on the check list by the way. He gets the people behind him and basically beats the villain black and blue plus he gets the girl yada yada yada, you know the story. Jesus on the other hand comes back to life and I’m almost positive some of the people who saw him when he had resurrected thought “okay, he’s back, now he will take on the Romans and free us” but they had another one coming. He meets with his followers a couple of times, eats some fish and ascends to the heavens, that’s it. You can imagine after he’s feet had gone passed the last clouds some people were waiting for his feet to reappear followed by an army to take down the Romans, they got nothing. Well that’s not really true, they got two angels technically telling “move on, shows over” well not that crudely of course, you can reference you Bible, I’m pretty sure I’m close.

If you compare the two lives Jesus life must look like a complete anti-climax.  It must seem like a movie that is always about to get good but never really does whereas the Hercules story is what we want. The hero who comes in and beats up all the bad guys with all the visual effects and gets the girl. Jesus, no beating up bad guys, except that one time in the temple and I’m pretty sure that would not have been a moment to cheer if you saw it in a movie. For Jesus we see no mischievous breaking of rules, no violent rebellion and no girl getting. Boring right? Wrong! Jesus never came to free us from the dictators of our country’s or the diseases that plague us, sometimes he does but that was not his main aim.

What am I trying to say? I'm glad you asked..

Jesus came to secure our eternity, he came to reconcile us to the God whose anger we will have to face for all eternity if we do not seek his forgiveness. What use is it to us in eternity if we live dictator free and illness free but then spend eternity, which is forever and ever, and for those who still don’t get it, and ever and ever in the eternal suffering that is hell. Now I’m not saying it is a bad thing for us to live dictator and illness free, not in the least, we should ask and pray for such but Jesus main aim was not that. It was that we should have a relationship with God which is the one thing that will keep us joyful in good times and bad, whether sick or in good health, whether rich or poor, hungry or fed, under poor governance or under exceptional governance. Jesus life teaches us that we need not have the comforts, we need only God. The comforts are good but they are not everything. Jesus is everything. So look at his life again and try to look at it for what it was meant to be rather than the fairy tale, like Hercules, that we might want it to be

This Time Last Year

This time last year I was lying down on my bed trying to figure out what went wrong and what next. I was at the end of my first year for the third time in three years at my second University studying the same program, Architecture. I told myself “If you don’t make it through this time your are going to have to do something you don’t like for the rest of your life, like accounts or something businessy”. To say the least it was not one of the highest points of my life.

Down

So there I was seated approximately 5655km away from home in a four man room at my University, the only other person in the room was one Mizyao Nyirongo, a fellow Zambian, and it occurred to me that while I was there tormented on the inside he was in his own world oblivious to what was going on with me. Not that I was crying out for help or anything but the thought that hit me was that I might try to explain my issues to someone  around but the true burden of it all would only be carried by me. In the words of some cynical guy I know, “Don’t tell people your problems, half of them don’t know what to say and the other half don’t care”. I tend to have such conversations in my head by the way, it’s quite chaotic up there.

As you may imagine such lines of thinking are really depressing and it was really getting to me. So I turned on my computer, I was reading a book at the time, possibly one of the Redwall books by Brian Jacques, turned on the browser and started listening to music that did not help my mood, I was listening to Keane which is not a good idea if you are potentially depressed. I kept sinking and sinking in this despair, it was a lonely place. Suddenly in my mind’s eye a light begun to shine at the end of the tunnel, I remembered that I am never truly alone, God is with me. It’s quite weird talking about it but the thought was followed by a realization of all that had happened alongside all the downs. I begun to realize that there were blessings associated with my situation and I begun to count. I had friends and family who were somewhere far away but believed in me even though I did not believe in myself.  I had a God who was looking after me even though I deserved none of his grace. I was in a University that allowed me levels of practice in my field of study that I had been longing for my entire time back home. I was somehow placed in a room with two really decent blokes and a potentially troublesome guy who never spent a single moment in the room, kind of bad for me to be happy about the last part but I was on a roll. It was a good feeling, I turned off the Keane music immediately.

Level

So there I was and it dawned on me that I was given a chance, not just a second but a third. I was given an opportunity and I was to make the most of it. Yeah, I did not know whether I would pass or fail at the end of the semester but who knows for sure so my part was to work hard and do me best. Yeah I had failed before but now was my chance to pass, the past is the past and its purpose is only for reflecting and not dwelling. Yeah, I was in a foreign country and there was no one on the entire island who I had known a month prior to arrival and yet I had somehow found myself in a room with decent guys, I had found myself at a decent bible believing and preaching church in a Muslim country. It was not half bad, not bad at all.

This time last year I was in my room on my bed unsure of the way forward but I was ready to trust God with my future because he did a real standup job getting me to where I was. This time last year I made the decision to do my best in all that I was given and make God and those who believed in me proud. And though at times I have dropped the ball, I will pick myself up each time, dust meself and keep moving forward. This time last year I was ready to take the blind leap not just into the New Year but into the rest of my life and this time this year I find myself on another cliff a little further ahead of the one I was on last year and I’m ready to jump, again

Things are looking pretty good from here

The Awesome Fact with the Terrible Derivative

There are a lot of things that have shocked me in my twenty odd years on planet earth, there are a number still that have appalled me and yet the number that have done both are not so many. The topic of this “speech” is one of the few. It is something that is religious in nature so if you are not religious, I highly recommend you keep on reading and if you are religious I highly recommend you keep on reading. Basically just keep on reading. Back to topic, this awesome fact is one that has been taken to unreasonable extremes by the Charismatic denomination. A lot of you are familiar with it, it goes kind of like this: Some man or woman starts speaking about some topic that no one knows, a lot of the time not even the person who is speaking then they get to a point were in order to justify wanting the unreasonable, unrealistic and often things that would do them no good they talk about how their father, God, is the richest there ever was and will be and how he will give them stuff because they are his children. I do not doubt there is truth in the statement, however I would like to point out the folly in an unnecessarily large amount of thinking on that.

God is the father of all Christians, not Christians by religion but those who are Christians by faith, that is those who have come to understand that they are sinful and that their only hope of any sensible life both in this life and the one after is to put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ, who came to die on the cross for their sins and is now in heaven interceding on their behalf. That is the core of the Christian faith and if you notice we, as humans, are only involved at one level and that is the believing and putting our faith part, for those who zoned out. My point is that the Christian life is God centered and not man centered and this is seen even in the core of it. Now back to him being our Father, it has to be noted that he was not always our father for we are sinful and he cannot stand sin. So something had to be done in order to bring us who were utterly sinful and filthy to him who is holy and precious. When it was done we were then adopted. Now to look at from the point of view of the adopted, which we all should. Why would the king of glory and he who has it all even want us/you/me as his children/child? Its borderline ridiculous. Having been in a family that has had a number of people brought in I know that it takes a while to settle and a frequent question that is asked is “will I ever be loved as much as the true children?” or even “what am I really doing here, I don’t belong” Such questions come because of a realization of unworthiness and yet there we are in the position of favor. One question that comes up in the mind of the ungrateful and the foolish is “how can I milk this of all its got?” and statements like “now that this man is my father I can get anything that I want”. I do know that some of those thoughts come up every once in a while and it is expected but the main thought should not be that of milking the rich man of all his got but an appreciation that though I come from the lowest of the low he still calls me child.

Where God found us is a lot worse than this. Try this to the power infinity, that's still not close enough

The reason why I am appalled by such a reaction to the awesome fact is that not only does it lead a number of people down the wrong route in terms of their thinking pattern, which has the potential to damage a lifetime of service, but it leads to a man centered view of Christianity which is the downfall of so great a thing. The moment we make ourselves the center of our relationship with God we damage and taint it. Everything that has man at its center is dying, everything. If we always think of life as a what can I get from this all or how does this benefit me, or God will give me this much money or this many friends or whatever it is that you most desire apart from him you use God as the means to an end and not the end in himself which is one of the biggest insults you can ever throw at him. You tell him that Yes, you are my father, and yes, you picked me up when I was nothing and deserved nothing but I want you to get me this and that because you can do it and that will make me happy. How selfish of you to displease he who gave so much for you. And there you are talking about how you want a big car and you deserve it because God is your father. Or how you deserve to be the top of your class because God is your father or how you deserve a certain job and will get it because God is your father. You selfish, ungrateful child. I bet if you heard a child talking like that you would smack him/her so hard they would have their facial structure changed, I think I would.

Such thinking is folly and folly is the biggest characteristic of a what?? You guessed right

I have said a lot and at times have digressed but I will end with this. We spend so much time looking at what will get from God when God does not promise us everything first he promises us himself and says he is enough, why can’t we take that? I am not saying do not reach to be the best and have the best but what I am saying is all that is secondary because the time will come when tittle and riches will be no more and all that will remain is you naked before a holy God, then What? Where will your life’s ambitions that were aside from him be? If we look through the bible at a number of people who God used in a mighty way, there are more who did great things for him  who relied and saw in him all that they wanted and needed than those who served him and where painfully rich or popular. There are more petitions of the “more of you God” than the “more of the stuff you can give me God” in the entire bible. Lastly I will say this, God is not his stuff, God is God. The sooner you learn that the better and if you want to learn that to its fullest or get as close as you possible can here are two ways for you to do it. One pick your bible up from wherever you leave it when you are busy doing unnecessary things and read it, you won’t believe how much it can speak. Secondly and equally as important talk to God in prayer, who else better to tell you how awesome he is than God himself. And if you don’t know how to pray look at the first point, you will find great tips on how to get started there.

Anger Is Not The Answer, Its Not Even The Question

In my younger days I was known to have quite the fiery temper, I’m still quite young but you get the picture. My temper would rise faster than steam from a kettle of recently boiled water and my anger would last for quite a while. My older brother, Mwindula, had this trick where he would call me red eyes whenever I was angry and run around just out of arms reach. I would be so exhausted after all the running that I would sleep it off. Not sure if that was his idea but it worked nonetheless.  A day or two ago I had a confrontation that had me really angry and I remember thinking I have not felt this worked up in a very long time. This is not an ode to my temper or a eulogy to it, it is a God please help me deal with it and others can listen in on my thoughts.

Before I would get angry for all sorts of reasons, most of them I don’t remember completely but for those I do I remember they were petty and I am now ashamed of them. That is one trait associated with anger, we are usually ashamed of our actions the following day. If not for the reason we got angry then for our actions because of the anger. The incident that sparked me writing this had me raising my fists for the first time in a long time, I am not proud of myself for the actions of that night and I think when most people who are easily angered look back, they feel some form of shame for either the reason or result of the anger.

Anger makes us destroy things we will need later, sometimes even sooner

The feeling after it is not so good both because you have all this excess energy and have nowhere to take it. Your adrenaline levels are up and they don’t go down in a heartbeat. This state is usually the state that has a lot of us make a number of mistakes we later on regret. These include but are not limited to saying things we should not and should never say and doing things we should not do. It has us make decisions which satisfy us now and yet in the long run are really damaging. A number of people are currently occupying prisons because of a failure to handle this part of their anger. Now I am no expert at handling it, never have been but I am hoping if I can keep me anger in check I will not have to be but I do know this decisions made at this time are usually rash and stupid. So there you are with all this excess energy. What do you? How do you spend it? My father, a smart man, once told me this, granted it is hard to apply but it is solid advice, “energy is energy”, not a direct quote by the way, me memory doesn’t work like that. Anyway he talked about how energy provided by the excess adrenaline rush of anger can be just as productive as all other energy boosts. A number of the greatest pieces of art, whether in painting, poetry, written word, architecture, arts and crafts, you name it, were fueled by a passionate energy such as anger or love. Energy is energy.

Anger is a fire and fire burns. The object that suffers more from the effect of the fire is not the big lump of wood that you want to set alight but the match itself. The match tends to be consumed before the log catches fire and usually a number of matches not just the one. In short holding on to the anger consumes you more than you know it consumes the other. I did say more than you “know” it consumes the other, in short you do not know it is effecting or even affecting the other person. Whether it is or not is not relevant because you holding onto the anger is consuming you and that is not a good thing. Letting go is not easy but it is in your best interest to do so.

Lastly letting go is technically impossible in the same way that we do not just release energy into the air, we work it into something. Think of your anger as actual energy, the energy will not just leave you but has to be put into something or given to someone. Firstly putting it into something. I like to think of it as you having this huge piece of limestone in front of you, with all the energy you have you can produce a beautiful piece that will bring you endless delight in years to come or you can create monstrosity that will injure you countless times in the making and countless times after that. I cant break it down any more than that, sorry. Secondly given to someone. This one is less obvious but is definitely the better choice. You cannot give people energy, its just not possible, not even in Harry Potter, but you can give it to God. There is not scientific explanation for it but he is the only one who can take the pain and hurt that you feel. How he does it beats me but he does a brilliant job of it, trust me it works. All you have to do is surrender, admit you don’t have the answers and look to him for them. The result will shock even you. Me describing the experience will not do it justice. It’s something so phenomenal you have to try it to see the beauty, go ahead try it. Go on…

Seriously, try it sometime. It works

How to say thank you? I cant so I will say Happy Birthday

Mama's boy

Over the years there have been a number of people to whom I would like to express gratitude but very few people, to be precise only one, can be ranked alongside my mother. I am the way I am today as a product of a lot of peoples input but the majority of the good is because of the woman known to the world as Felistas Mbewe but I call her Mum. You must be wondering why all this here and why now, well I’m glad you asked.

1^st December was her birthday and as much as I had plans to create the perfect gift possible by a son who is over a thousand miles away I could not because the university decided to have my midterms at the same time, I don’t think they like me much over here. Studying architecture you tend to have more sleepless nights than the people studying business and to say the least I did not enjoy my sleep during that period. I wanted to touch up a picture of my mum in Photoshop, something like my previous work for that is somewhere on Facebook but I had no time. Since I could not use a picture to tell a thousand words I chose the next best thing, a thousand words.

By the grace of God, I was first introduced to Felistas Mbewe on the 14^th of October 1991 and though I wanted to laugh and smile, the doctor had to slap me to get me to cry and breathe, I still think I did not need the slap. She cradled me till I fell asleep for the first time, I slept like a baby, granted I was a baby but that’s beside the point. My father was also there, still is, but he will get his five minutes another time, this is about Mum.

Since then I have learnt a lot from my mother, sometimes through positive reinforcement and other times she just had to beat the lesson into me, I thank her for both. But the single greatest thing she ever did for me since birthing me is that she is the one who triggered the most significant change in my life. She had the words that through the power of the Holy Spirit led me to a personal knowledge of God. I thank her for that even more than I thank her for the first birth. 

 The rest will get their moment later, for now, Mum and I



I have always been able to talk to her about anything and everything, granted almost everyone likes to say that but for me it was and is true. She has set me back on the right path more times than I care to admit. She has seen me fall and has not given up on me. Yes, yes it could be said that its her job but I subscribe to the pattern of thought that parenting is a dying art, and yet my parents show me that there even though the world of parenting is dark there is light. It gives hope.

There is so much that I would like to say but in all honesty it would mean more to her than it would to you, so I will end my rant on my awesome mother with this. Those who have met her walk around seeing her as Felistas Mbewe and know that he is truly a great woman, not just for who she was but who she is. I’m telling you that you don’t know the half of it and though we don’t always see eye to eye and I let her down on occasions I want you to know that it is one of my main aims in life to make her proud. There is a certain privilege in knowing her as Felistas Mbewe but the greatest privilege is mine and my siblings, we get to call her Mum

It's a couple days late butt I'll still say it. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM!

It Almost Killed Me!

There's actually a reason for all this Coca Cola, you'll see

Lessons learned the hard way are a dime a dozen, and we never see them coming, never! The lesson I learned is that everything is permissible but not everything is beneficial. I know the words, I have known them for years but for some reason I get the feeling this is one lesson I will be learning till my dying day, such is life. But I have delayed telling the story long enough so let me jump right in to it.

Those who know me know that I love me some coca cola. It’s my regular expense. I actually think I have spent more money on coca cola than I have on any single item combined in my life, saying that out loud sounds quite sad, good thing its written not said. Anyway, the past month or so I have been on a fast food eating spree, this was supposed to boost my productivity. I have been putting in a couple of extra hours of work, three to four nights a week, that means I would usually sleep around 3, 4 or 5am, four nights a week. There’s this place that sells Dürüms for 6TL just outside my dormitory, that’s not that bad a price, plus there is a place where you can buy pizza for 12TL and the best news, in hindsight not so good, was that there was a promotion in Lemar, which is the grocery shop on campus, they were handing out two coca cola’s for 6.50TL. Bottom line this was a great time to immerse myself in to all kinds of late night work. Oh yeah and my favourite cup noodles were back in stock at Lemar so to say the least I was a very happy guy.

So the late night “shifts” begun. At the beginning they were an outstanding success. I would work, till 5am and sleep on the couch in the room and be in class at 9am. The couch was literally a steal and practically a gift from God, I blog from the couch, I nap from the couch, I watch football from the couch and I read from the couch. It’s a love story. I would put in a nap late afternoon to evening to get some sleep back. Back to the picture, A friend of mine, Oscar, was also into these “shifts” so we would work till 2 30am, him in his room me in mine, head out to either grab a Dürüm or a pizza, if it was pizza we would do a 6TL split and eat the food for 30 minutes, washed down with a coke, there has never been a point during the whole semester when he and I have not had a coca cola bottle in either of our fridges. In hindsight that has not helped matters. Anyway the first couple of days it was a success as I said, I did my school work, had time for writing, video editing and I would do extracurricular reading. It was the best of times.

A little glimpse into what a discount does to the cheap mind [not my fridge though]

Then my body started to give up. It started with me losing concentration in classes and getting very tired very early. I decided to go a couple of days without the “shift” to get my system back to normal but that didn’t work. I found myself increasingly worn out with no drive to do any work whatsoever. Even my hobbies became tedious. I was not interested in anything. Not food, not school, not even coca cola, granted I was still drinking quite a lot of that. School work suffered quite a lot for a week and a half. I received my slap that brought me back to reality when I got my first ever terrible result during my time here. It felt like I was naked in the cold. I realized then that something had to change but what was it? I needed the “shift” to get back to winning form, but how do I make the system work? Yesterday I was with a friend of mine who is into all things fitness, I will say this again for emphasis, all things fitness, its borderline ridiculous how motivated he is about such stuff. It hit me suddenly that my eating habits were the problem, lord knows where the thought came from, we were not even talking about anything to do with that. I had not been eating at the right times, sometimes not even eating at all. I ran the idea past Trevor, that’s the fitness guy, and it seemed to make sense to him.

After a bit of a pocket reshuffle I managed to get the funds together to get me some fruit and water, I don’t drink that much water, my logic is that there is water in coke but that’s beside the point. I even went for a jog, granted now I feel like a truck ran me over but yeah.. I went for a jog. The point of all of this is that, in a university setup you are your own man. The decisions are yours and the consequences are yours and a lot of people see this in one aspect, that being the decisions are theirs. So they turn away from the system and life that they had known at home and try to be this new person, but the new person is not always better. They like me see things in terms of short term goals and think that will sustain in the long run when in fact short term thinking will rarely get you through the month.

Short term thinking is potentially catastrophic

Everything is permissible, you can decided to abandon school and cling to life or decided to cling to school with reckless abandon. But not everything is beneficial, the way that you choose has its effects on you in the long run and so it is best to look at the effects when weighing a decision. You just might find yourself in a position where all seems doom, gloom and bleak and might think the world is at an end when in actual fact the problem was the decision you made to live the life you live. Life is a product of balance and priority. The system I advise is put God first and balance out the rest.

Note: This is not me saying I’m staying away from coca cola, but I will cut down on it. 5l a week from now on :D

The Heart Behind The Troublesome Roommate

 

A couple of days ago I released my first ever short film, if you have not seen it its okay because reading this will give you the full picture though might not be as interesting. Basically the idea is two guys living together on campus and one is living in a less than desirable way and it is affecting his roommate in a bad way. I just want it to be known that a troublesome roommate can be a person who is overly clean in an OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) kind of way or it can be in a filthy way. It can be in an argumentative way or even in an overly meek way. Bottom line is there are many ways of being a troublesome roommate. 

 

Now it is so easy to think the troublesome roommate is the other guy, after all the only way to see ourselves is through a mirror or another person’s observations. The problem is that when we look through a mirror we tend to focus on our good points, its always a “boy do I look good” situation rather than a “Will me using this much deodorant cause an issue with the guy in my room has the flu or a sensitive nose”. We are naturally selfish not just because of indwelling sin but because, even physically we are always looking at other people, its literally in our makeup. But we do need to come to a realization that our actions affect other people in the same way that their actions affect us, its not just about, he hurt me or she hurt me, its also about I hurt them.

 

Now I have had my fair share of troublesome roommates, mainly because I have been at two universities over a period of four years and only had one roommate who has been in the same room as me for over a year. Now not all my roommates have been bad and apart from maybe one notable exception, who was dreadful, they have been manageable. One thing that hit me during one of these stints with a troublesome roommate is that, maybe there’s something about me that is causing all this. Now I do know that there is personal human responsibility in all this but maybe I had a part to play in all of it. Maybe the things I thought were fine were not fine. Maybe he had trouble telling me what he thought was out of line the same way I at times had trouble telling him. I say at times because I am painfully vocal if given the time of day, and there are quite a lot of hours of day I’ll tell you that.

 

So maybe it was the times when I was playing my sermons out loud, not too loud but loud enough for them, my roommates, to hear. My intention was good but maybe they did not see things my way. Or maybe it was the times I would play my music really loud, because I had the speakers or the louder laptop. Maybe it was the way my friends would show up in the room and make noise every once in a while. Or maybe it was the fact that I did not verbally tell him when something was wrong in the room but showed it in my body language. My point is a lot of things can and do contribute to roommate relations and we must not so headstrong on the fact that the blame is all theirs. Put yourself in their shoes and maybe they will put themselves in yours.

 

But the biggest question is “How do you solve the problem?” That is a difficult one because even though Dr. Phil and Oprah Winfrey will have done shows or done something in their advice columns about this there is not clear cut answer or method. It is trial and error thing. However there are principles that must be followed. These are, firstly, you should be able to talk about the issues that arise with your roommate and not let the tension build up. It is easier to move a single brick than it is to break down a wall. Secondly, you must make the conscious decision to be the bigger man/woman, that means when one party loses the temper you should not. You should be able to reason and take hits for things that you might not be guilty over. Bring yourself low because unless you are planning on courting that person pride is never a good idea, and even then it should be used sparingly. Thirdly and most importantly, because it should be done at all times, look at yourself and try not to do things that would put your roommate in a compromising position. Put yourself in his or her shoes, no one likes to be belittled or made to look like the “black sheep” so don’t make them feel that way in the same way you would not like to feel that way.

My last words would be to past, present and future roommates. I have learnt a lot from the past, from both the good and the bad. And though in all likelihood I was not the best of roommates, I hope you can forgive the shortcomings of mine. The short film is my dedication to you guys, especially the current ones [Faith, Evans and Mpendulo], we look forward to good times ahead. Honorable mention to John “Bode” and Kezala “The Man” Jere