Convention is the way in which ingenuity is corralled. Doing what others expect is too often not doing what we need to do to succeed.
We conform, we try to be good people, we’re nice and wonder why our spirit battles to breathe.
It’s only when we do what we need to do and bugger what anyone thinks that we find the means to access our real potential and begin creating miracles in our lives and those of others.
I live in an old, pretty neighbourhood, most of the neighbours know each other, it’s a bit like being in a family, you don’t necessarily like everyone but you’re fated to live in close proximity, so you get on. But some of us have been lucky enough to find that within a short walk is someone whose company we really enjoy and so friendships have been formed.
I’m having lunch with one of those people on Friday and I’m sharing his story with you, which I’ve included in my latest book, Committed to Me, because it is a classic story of inspiration and how the best South Africans take situations and make them remarkable.
As we head toward elections that have many of us filled with despair consider the lessons his experience give us.
Francois is a tall, attractive man with an openness and sincerity that draws people to him. At the age of 34, he was an exceptionally successful money market trader and econometrician who lived a golden life. He’d graduated from school and university with multiple distinctions, met and married a woman who was also his best friend, had a beautiful daughter and a brilliant career.
Then, one hazy afternoon while driving home from work, his life changed. He stopped at a traffic light. His window was broken, the doors wrenched open and as he was pulled from the vehicle he sustained two deep stab wounds in his leg, severing muscles and an artery. The four attackers ran off with his cellphone, wallet with a small amount of money and his car keys, but left the car.
“It started to drizzle,” he remembers. “I collapsed on the pavement, I had chinos on and they were red. I put my legs up on the wall and made a tourniquet to try and stop the bleeding. Within thirty seconds there were thirty people around me. They were all black, very poor, very concerned individuals, and they were saying, ‘Don’t worry they won’t hurt you we are here’.”
“I phoned my office and told my boss, ‘I have been stabbed, it’s rush hour, an ambulance will fight through the traffic, I need you to fetch me’. In less than ten minutes he and another colleague arrived and drove fast to the hospital with their hazards on and going over pavements. I lay in that car and everything passed in front of me, my whole life. I am religious and a Christian and I prayed, but I also had a certain calm.”
Francois was in intensive care for three days then had to convalesce at home for about a month.
“I went back to work and struggled with concentration. I was on antidepressants for two months, then threw them away. The attack had a massive impact on my life and on the way I view things. I couldn’t sleep with my wife in bed because my leg was so sensitive. Sleeping on the floor is degrading yet therapeutic; I felt that this was the level to which I had been beaten down emotionally, to a hard and cold place. I saw myself as the one the family depended on. I was set on being the best guy at the office, the hardest worker, most innovative, most caring, but after the incident I felt emotionally blunt. I began questioning my focus.”
To the concern of his colleagues and some of his friends, he stopped working. His wife, supported him.
“I told my colleagues that emotionally I was unstable. One guy said, ‘Don’t get too depressed’. I said, ‘I am trawling the bottom, I am switching the lights off, I am going to hibernate. I need it’.”
“You have to make the decision to live, and you have to make it every day, make it over and over again. You have to confront your fears. I find it a very big struggle in today’s modern life to balance family, work and personal time, but I’m learning how to do it.”
He spent a lot of time with his daughter, reading or listening to audio books. “I drive into traffic so I can get stuck and listen,” he says. These days, every week he and his wife play two hours of golf before work. His marriage has become richer, more nuanced.
“I realised that the way I was going, I was going to be the guy who was going to have a heart attack on the trading floor. I needed to give myself personal time. The fact that the attackers came into the car and touched me and stabbed me violated me completely.
A hidden blessing came from the community Francois and his family moved into. He says: “In the community we moved into people are older, the trees are mature and established and there is a perception that people care. A day after we moved in a neighbour walked over and his wife baked us a cake. I said to my wife that if the only good thing that happens here is that a neighbour brings us a cake that makes moving here worthwhile.”
“We all need to feel wanted — to belong. When we moved in the person next door hadn’t mown his lawn. There was a little swing made of iron, just left there. The trees had grown through it. He looked as though he had given up on life. He is very neat but doesn’t speak and goes to work in a battered car. I and a helper cleaned up his yard, and the most wonderful thing happened. He bought a hosepipe and now waters his plants. His old post box was broken and I threw it away. He bought a new one and installed it. It’s the most beautiful post box.”
And so a man who thought he needed a miracle to live instinctively began creating miracles for others and giving them reason to live.
What a toching story. Francois is an inspiration. I work for an NGO IN Khayelitsha and you cannot even begin to imagine how poor people suffer because of crime. They can’t even afford good medical care. They are despondent. Some little girls are sexually molested because their moms can’t look after them as they (the moms) have to go and look after more well off kids in the suburbs just to put bread on the table. I wish the priviledged classes would have some humanity and show compassion to the suffering of poor South Africans. We must not only reserve our sypmathy for when one of our own has gone through difficulty. The sooner we narrow the gap between the rich and poor the lesser the crime situation. Violence comes from the anger and the feeling that people don’t give a damn. the attacker usually doesn’t care how the person they are attacking is feeling because they figure that their being condemned to poverty, unemployment and other difficulties is in itself a form of violence. So why should that not be punished?, they ask themselves. What is inexplicable is therefore not why crime in South Africa is of such a disturbingly violent nature but why is it that the poor are the ones who suffer the most.
And, in one fell swoop, we have, like a light shining through the dark clutter of the garbage spewed forth about forgiveness by certain of our politicians, a clarion example of precisely what was meant when someone first commended the practice of turning the other cheek.
And no amount of sophistry from either side of the faith divide will dim this story, nor its lesson to us.
Can’t wait for the book, because it seems to contain more of the ingenious raging against bad things which made the story of your experience and reaction so compelling in the first place.
Thanks Charlene, this story re-inforces my personal belief that all people are inherently good, it’s only when they are under pressure or fearful that they turn nasty. When I deal with people on one-to-one I have found that even innocent stereotypes can be mutually appreciated. It’s unfortunate that sometimes we get the urge to validate ourselves to others by undermining those who seem different from us.
Great – thanks Charlene!
People can only really grow when they have hit rock bottom.
Thanks for sharing this story.
Give Francois my sincere wishes to a full recovery in the direction he might have found for himself.
Let us know what happened over lunch. Hope you can poke a little fun, a sure sign of mental recovery (in my books anyway).
You’ve just made my day. We’ve got to hear more ofthis.
Last year, my dad was murdered in an armed robbery – in front of my mum.Recently someone wrote an article, referring to my elderly mother: “I know people who have coped courageously with the violent deaths of loved ones and never wasted a thought on revenge or blame. They know instinctively how to let in the light.”
I can’t tell you what a proud son I am!
Thanks, Charlene!
Dearest Al,
This big warm hug
( xxxxxxxxxxxx)
is for you and your mom, long may your spirits and your positive example motivate us all
Charlene
This story confirms how fragile life is, how soon everything can change, and how we need to really note who is travelling with us. Thanks
Charlene