Realising people’s purpose in your life

Octavia Tsibes
a fellow peer give a lecture about the gift we are meant to be to one another.

His words confirmed a reality I have come to cherish in my own life. Throughout our ordinary days, we are surrounded by other women and men who are gifts not just as parts of the crowd, competitors for grades and distinctions, not simply someone to follow on Twitter and not someone to avoid when someone more interesting comes along at a party.

The idea that other people in my life are gifts fascinates me. If I look back over the years, I see all the people who have populated my history not as a cast of characters but as good people who taught me how to understand life.

I see them as people who taught me how to support others, how to laugh through my tears and sorrows, how to extend myself in compassion and care and how to forgive and be forgiven.

I thought of the depth of meaning in Jesus’s parables about the treasure hidden in a field and about the really fine pearl lodged in the depths of the sea.

I have come to appreciate that our souls are the field and that our hearts are the deep sea of recollection and memory.

Taking time to seek the treasure that other people have brought into our lives and to level the depths of the mysterious ways that others have taught us who we are, what we really love, what we value and what dreams we reverence, that is graced time.

I know that I have become more sensitive to the importance of remembering and admiring the way people have taught me about God, the Gospel, religious experience and the choices that make us just and committed to a world of peace and reconciliation.

Education is not only about information, data, skills and technical competencies.

It is also about discovering your own narrative in life and the ethical and religious influences that have inspired, challenged and empowered you to claim your own identity and confirm your own deepest desires.

Yes, there has to be a certain sense of performing in academic life, that is, you must meet the expectations and engage the demands of a discipline, professor, mentor, boss, culture and a system.

There is a part of education that consists of coping with the protocol of making your way through a system.

True, some people make their way by confronting the system, and their narratives can become dominated by a sense of protest and rebellion. Sometimes, that is a good reaction.

But in the long tow, it can and too often does become an exhausting way of living. Constant rebellion evolves into continuous anger, a desire for searching out “the enemy.”

On the other hand, others submit, they give into the system, lose their self-identity and become whatever will fit.

Submission as a coping mechanism can easily slip into self-deceit and buried dreams. In our lives there are honourable, creative and nurturing people who teach us how to live so that we avoid the extremes of anger and frustration.

We hope many of them will be our teachers and advisers and others are our parents and family members or others will be in our residence halls, on our teams or part of our social life.

Years ago, I attended a workshop with the Regional Psychosocial Support Initiative (REPSSI).I spoke to one of the attendees on how young adults make life choices that integrate both competence and service.

She spoke of finding ways to facilitate such decisions. In time, she said she came to appreciate the power of narrative, not just for the students but also for their older mentors, faculty and staff.

She said nothing was more effective in assembling these narratives than identifying and appreciating the impact that other people have on the lives of young and older people.

She then came up with key questions: “Who are the people who taught you how you want to live?” and “Why do you remember them?”

Fundamentally, we hope that Namibia will be a place where you can answer these questions by celebrating the treasures and gifts in life that are simply other people.