MUTSA

We have walked some way, you and I. It’s week 7 already, and yet it feels as if we have only begun to understand each other only recently. Very soon I will know your favourite Black Eyed Peas member and how many sugars you take in your tea, and perhaps you will learn my name. It is a wonderful thing, understanding, that is. It is necessary for the dialogue that Stall 13 hopes to encourage. Life is just constant, organic expression looking for realization. The ego demands recognition and as frustrating as it is to shout into the void, it is a most fulfilling thing to have someone shout back. But this is not as simple as it sounds – fear has crept into our hearts, so much so that a simple shout seems to be beyond us. In fact, it appears that even when we do muster the courage to scream who we are, we would rather hear an echo of our being rather than a response to our claims.

“Let me explain.” – Kevin Hart

The need for validation is killing us. The entire foundation of a community rests on the strength of its diversity, and diversity is a kaleidoscope of varying shades of individual expression. How then, my friends (and marmalade fans), can we achieve individuality when we actively work to not only stifle our expression, but that of others around us, particularly when they are saying things that are not complimentary to us?

This is supposed to be the age of self-expression; a manifestation of the freedoms that people have fought and died for, and we have not done well in honouring the sacrifices that have been made in our name. Even looking beyond the societal suppression of those who have been deemed ‘undesirables’, on a personal level, we are fast losing that very necessary ability to be able to say who we are and what we are about. How free can we really claim to be if we cannot even be honest with ourselves?

What then, my friends (and cabbage lovers)? The answer is courage. Anything worth doing requires an extra effort, and this is no different. The foundational value to any kind of progressive society is freedom, and the first enemy we must overcome is ourselves. As we grow up we are discouraged from shouting, from saying what it is that rests in our hearts, out of propriety and such other things, but we must abandon such conditioning.

And now we delve deeper into the very nature of the freedom we are pursuing, for we must study the condition of what it is we purport to chase. The tradespeople of Stall 13 have many thoughts and opinions, from the strength of John Cena’s performance in ‘The Marine’, to just how malevolent Twitter is, and we all agree – the cost of a freedom that requires a personal responsibility from each member of society in enforcing it is worth the purchase. If you are in a position to speak freely and you do not work to make it so for those around you, regardless of how unsavoury you deem their views, then you practice a most boring hypocrisy.

We must be more. Our hearts can only truly connect, and we can only understand each other when we each speak our truth and are receptive to everyone else’s. Any less, and we are only paddling in pointless circles in the baby pool. Love.