Coping capacity in life's challenges

I'll use the names Eve and Adam and Ruth for this blog post, based on a WhatsApp interchange with someone caring for someone in need...

Good morning, Eve. How are things going now for you and for Adam? Is he receiving the medication and guidance that he needs? Are you receiving what you need? 

Well, maybe the first Eve did not have a friend to send her a message on WhatsApp - who taught the original Adam and Eve any of the things that they needed to know to face the challenges of being first parents? Who taught them to change nappies, what foods were safe to eat, and so many things that they needed to know?

Sometimes our wilderness is rather bleak, like this scene in the Northern Cape

with Sally and me travelling from Nieuwoudtville to Augrabies Falls

I asked a friend if he might have a long - or short-term opportunity for Adam in motor mechanical work. I pointed out that Adam could contribute meaningfully in motor mechanics, and could also help in Information Technology related things that are a real part of any business in 2026. 

This led to sharing thoughts with Eve, and her and Adam's family members that are supporting him in a very difficult season in his life.

More between Nieuwoudtville and Augrabies Falls

Each and every one of us is likely to face seasons in life when we are impacted by hurricanes, floods, droughts, illnesses, or other challenges. We might desire to change employment, change careers, or anything that will lessen the clouds that are hanging over us, or take us far away from where those clouds are likely to be now or in the future! We just need a change!

I've asked the IT department at Kirstenbosch, but I haven't had any response. I've asked two friends if they have opportunities for him in their IT work. Networking is not just cabling, but also describes making acquaintances in business to help exploring possibilities and potential collaborations.  

Strength to you as you help your brother in his time of serious need, and may he co-operate and do his part.  You are coaches helping him to accomplish what he wants to accomplish, but there will be times that he is not able to focus on - or remember - or believe - the good things that he actually wants to achieve.

Then we got to enjoy Augrabies Falls, water flowing
that had simply been held up in the sky by the Almighty

We visited waterfalls near Nieuwoudtville 

You can imagine how it hurts Ruth that her mental illnesses have taken away her ability to practice medicine and use her wonderful gift. But she was blessed for more than twenty years to be able to help in healing and blessing the lives of others. Times and seasons can change, and life can become really tough. But just because someone is underground in a mine and cannot see the sun shining, the sun is still shining delightfully. I can see it right now - well, at least I can see that light is coming through a window that suggests that the sun did rise this morning. 😉🤔😅

Some vegetation in the Robertson-Montagu area.

Sometimes it is necessary to have an involuntary admission to a mental institution like Valkenberg or Stikland. Ruth had that in Stikland, another family member had that at Valkenberg - more voluntary than involuntary, a friend's son had that in Tygerberg Hospital. It is not a desirable thing, but it can be a blessing to the patient and to the loved ones.

Imperfect people like me, your Pa and Adam, create imperfect apps like WhatsApp that are used by imperfect people all around the world and then gremlins are also around and bugs creep in and fiddle. But those apps do enough that is wonderful that we put up with the less than wonderful 😉

Sometimes our life might feel like a desert. I loved my time in the Namib Desert, seeing how much delightful life there is in the desert - spiders, geckos, gemsbok, springbok, hyaenas, grass seed that blends in with the bounteous sand until after the rain when it germinates and makes the desert look like a green meadow. The grass then flowers and seeds, and then it dries out and becomes detritus that blows around and is food for beetles, birds, mice, and many animals, and the seeds blow around with the grains of sand and wait for the next rains. 

I've asked Aunty Judy and Uncle Ron if they recall anything about a challenge that Granny Sippy had with depression. Your Mom had challenges. There seems to be an increasing frequency in the occurrence of many challenges in the 2020s, either presence, awareness, detection, or something. Such challenges have been around for thousands of years. I am fascinated by how King Saul might well have had bipolar disorder. Many great world leaders or notable people have had mental or psychological disorders. But the frequency of presence, or detection and diagnosis, certainly seems to be increasing for many issues. I think that I may well have had some disorder, but I probably still have... like ADD, ADHD, ASD (autism spectrum disorder), Asperger's Syndrome, or something 'out of the ordinary' 🤔😰🥴😂 or am I just a weirdo 🤔

Some vegetation in the Agulhas-Overberg region.

It reminds me of an insight that I gained in a workshop that I attended at United Nations in Italy. They were teaching about climate change and its impacts in the developing world. They said that averages would not change dramatically, but we would see an increase in intensity and frequency of extreme events. I certainly have been aware of that in the years since 2002 when they said that. They were encouraging working on 'coping capacity'. That year, people in Mozambique were devastated by floods along the Limpopo River. But they pointed out that most of Bangladesh is less than 10m above sea level and on a river delta that floods every year and everyone living there loses everything, so they don't invest in TVs and things that will be devastating. 

Another insight that came to me was how we were taught so much about food storage, preparing for bad times, increasing our coping capacity. You remember the wheat, wheat grinder, and all that your parents had in your home ☺️

One important coping capacity in our time is coping with mental challenges that seem to be increasing in frequency and intensity, just like extreme climate events.

Eve: "Yup. But some of us make a conscious effort every single day to be the best we can be, and others don't bother and don't care about their impact on other people"

Yes, indeed. But sometimes it is not that person that is negligent, but a disability that is holding them back, retarding them, hindering them, impacting on them. It is easy to see if someone is in a wheelchair that they have some disability. But some people have very real disabilities that cannot be seen. Only trained professionals like cardiac surgeons or neurologists or psychiatrists can detect and diagnose those invisible disabilities. 

I have had to learn to trust their diagnosis and help Ruth to keep in as good 'shape' as she can by using meds that slow her down, prevent her from being able to practice as a doctor, but give her 'mobility' that she really did not have when she was having a hypomanic or depressive stage of bipolar, or when she has a seizure or hallucination due to her Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. She did not choose either, it was not her fault that she inherited those genes that caused her as a matric student to not get the sleep that she needed and to burn through matric in a hypomanic state and then crash in a depressed state. 

Those episodes were not dramatic then, and she and her colleagues did not diagnose her disorder! As she got older, those episodes caused more and more damage to her brain and so now she is far worse than she would have been if she had received medication earlier in life. She had many wonderful years, but those came to an end - a horrible end. Yes, she was suicidal on several occasions. She did some things that Ruth would never do, going off driving up the West Coast and not having any idea where she was going and what she would do, or why she was going off on her own. That was not her choosing, but her malfunctioning brain making her body do things that she would not do. She might have been at a lower percentage performance level for decades if she were having medication, but might still be able to treat patients and prescribe medication if she had been receiving the preventative maintenance that she needed. 

Blessings on you as you help your brother to cope with this nightmare season that he is experiencing. Sometimes it is really best to hand him over to trained professionals in a hospital to care for him and help him to get to a stable state, and then to regularly have them help to keep him in as stable a state as he can be in for the rest of his life. He does not seem to need a wheelchair, but spectacles, hearing aids, heart pumps, knee replacements, medication, and other treatments and interventions help many people to be far more capable than they would otherwise be.

One thing that I often share is that in the last few years in my work, Performance Evaluations were introduced in the Public Service. Every six months we would meet with our supervisor and evaluate ourselves, and they would then agree or modify our evaluation and report it to their supervisors and submit it to the HR department. My boss, who was at Director level, and I at Deputy Director level at the time, told me during one of those assessments that the CEO, his director, had told him that he was not expected to be at 5 all of the time. The expected level of 1 to 5 was 3. If someone had 2, then training and correcting were needed. If he was at 1, then discipline and warning, potential dismissal were needed. If at 4, credit and congratulations were appropriate. If at 5, then merit, salary level increase, and sometimes promotion in rank were appropriate. 

But to try and be 4 or 5 at everything would lead to burnout and the person could not be expected to keep it up. Of course, the more one learned and advanced, the more was expected, but then a good performance evaluation was rewarded by moving up the ranks. Then the next assessment would be in the higher rank. More was expected from scientists or accountants or IT systems analysts than from gardeners or cleaners or security guards. It is saddening to me that some people never tried to advance beyond gardener level in all of their 45 years at Kirstenbosch. But I cannot judge them. If they were excellent gardeners, they were extremely valuable. If they were just mundane gardeners for 45 years, then that would be kind of disappointing. 

Granny Sippy often said "The world needs streetsweepers, but, more importantly, the world needs excellent streetsweepers." That has been a meaningful concept for me all of my life. One one occasion, I was pondering this and wondered 'What if every citizen in Cape Town was responsible and never littered?' The Spirit whispered moeniwarrienie, the trees will always drop leaves and there will be space for excellent streetsweepers. But, there will almost certainly be times that an excellent streetsweeper is sick or less than well enough to be their normal selves. We need to then be compassionate and try to help them to become what we know that they would want to become again. I was fortunate to be sent on a coaching course at one stage - the focus of that was helping others in our team to be what they wanted to be, but needed encouragement, support, and so forth to achieve their own goals. It is important to bear in mind that a coach helps someone to achieve their own goals, and not those of the coach.

And then, of course, there is the delightful view of Table Mountain from across Table Bay.

Ekpraatteveel 😉 Enough for now. 

I would love to take you to Kirstenbosch for you to enjoy some re-creating in what Grandpa Ken loved to call a little bit of the garden of Eden that has remained intact. Even if you just go and walk ten paces into the garden and sit in the shade and sleep or read or have a picnic, it is a wonderful place to be for ten minutes or for ten hours. The offer is always there. I love to have the privilege of taking up to five family and friends in with me. Then, they do not have to be in my presence once they are inside the gate - I just hope that they will not misbehave 😉 and break any of the rules of the garden 😂☹️😖😭🤔