Elevator Problems in Sea Point

“Stop trying to control my life…”

An awkward silence intruded the elevator.

Myself and my roommate were doing grocery shopping when we heard two elderly people — who were clearly retired, wealthy Sea Point residents — having an argument. Wasn’t much of an argument. It was more a we’ve been married for 40+ years and do this all the time type of argument.

If you look around, and become aware, you will notice this sort of behaviour everywhere. It’s more apparent in affluent suburbs. Sea Point definitely fits that list. Vastly different from the bohemian-like Observatory where I've lived for the past two years.

Your problems — unless viewed through the telescopic lens of understanding — will manifest themselves into different areas of your life. It’s like hedonic adaptation. You think that if you get X or Y you will be happy. Then you get X or Y, reach your new baseline, and sure as shit, within a couple of days or months (or hours), you are comparing your baseline to what you now have. Soon, you are in search of something better.

If you trace the elderly mans ‘problem’ — i.e he doesn’t want his wife to control his life — back to its roots, it probably has nothing to do with his wife. He probably had an over-controlling mother/father. He then made it his life’s mission to be free from control. It worked. He got rich. He got a nice house. He got a nice car. The only thing he failed to get was happiness and fulfilment.

It’s painful to see people with more money than you and I can imagine unhappy. I believe one solution is to continue to work on yourself. More specifically: work on the story you tell yourself. And work on the root cause of your problem. The stuff you see on the surface (“don’t control my life”) is often linked to the root.

I once read somewhere that the quality of your life is the quality of your emotional state — the story you tell yourself on a continual basis. When you have a story that feeds itself and helps you grow, you find everything you do hitched in that story — for good or bad. When it’s good, and when challenges arise, you just perceive the challenge as a step that is taking you in the right direction.

Proost.

Joshy @ Sea Point, Cape Town.