Are you ever disappointed in your sons? Do they ever let you down, are you ever angry with them? You write about them as if they’re perfect.

My sons are far from perfect. I’m far from perfect as a man and as a dad. I trust I have not given the overriding impression that we have an idyllic family. We don’t. As imperfect as my sons may be, I regard them as being close to perfect in my eyes. It’s the way I see them. It’s the way I choose to see them. My sons’ imperfections pale next to mine at their respective ages. They are both open and transparent with me in ways I never was with my own parents.

Do they ever disappoint me? Yes, but it is usually very short-lived. I’m usually quick to see that sometimes my expectations are unrealistic. Do I make excuses for them? Of course, I love them. I am blind to many of their faults and thank goodness they’re blind many of mine. Do I ever get angry with them? Far more than I’d like to admit. But it is almost always because I’m projecting something from my history onto their fairly innocent lives.

Everything begins inside. Every act of benevolence, of mercy, human kindness, begins within whomever generates it. The head, heart, mind, the soul of the person conceiving it is where it begins. Then it can be developed and shared with others until it grows and even become a movement.

Destruction also begins inside. Deceitful plans, selfishness, begin on the inside. Such motivations may be born in desperation, hunger, jealousy, selfishness, or lust; nonetheless they come from within.

Many poor people will not cheat and desperate people who do not feed the desperation with immoral actions. The soul, that powerful combination of heart, mind, spirit is the rudder, that steers the ship. The inside, the inner person, is essential in directing a person’s life, and should not be ignored or denied.

When I avoid the messages from within, and walk towards that which I know is unhealthy for me, I’m deploying my own destructive ends. When my inner person says “yes” to destructive things, I know I’m creating a pathway to my own dis-ease and downfall. When I acknowledge the dangers thoughts and motivations lurking within me, and pay heed to the warning lights, I save myself from an awful lot of pain and anguish, and pain and anguish for others, too.

“Return to no person evil for evil,” words penned by an ancient Saint, are as cutting and relevant as they ever were. 

“Cutting” because they can stop evil in its tracks, halt its progression. Relevant because we are all, at least anyone with a smidgen of insight and a dash of humility, will admit we are faced with evil options (self-centeredness, self-gratifying motives, win at all costs attitudes, dog eat dog philosophies) with regularity.

To be so is so “normalized” it’s even taught in leadership schools and business schools. Retaliation and vengeance, may be common, even instinctive, but are usually unhelpful if any healing is to occur.

They are agents of escalation.

Refusing to honor evil with a return act of evil is likely to be an agent of de-escalation.

“Return to no person evil for evil” has astounding power. It empowers victims and robs evil of its momentum.

Where and when will this craziness end? None of us knows. How will it end? None of us knows. I can only hope that vastly different challenges we all face will end with growth for you and for me because we walked the dangerous road of refusing to play tit-for-tat.

Good morning, please, tell me something beautiful. Tell me of private acts of kindness you witnessed. Good afternoon. Tell me something uplifting, about a moment you saw “unlikely” happiness. Good evening, let me tell you about the goodness that surrounded our lives today?

When I, your distant columnist (Siri tells me I am 14,225K from Durban’s city hall), try to promote such dialogue, I am not suggesting blindness to your difficulties or that I deny the challenges I face.

Difficulties are obvious, glaring, they are in our faces.

The beautiful, uplifting, the goodness surrounding you and me are often subtle; working, creating, and loving, beneath the surface. The bully is easy to see. He or she is unmistakable, completely lacking in creativity and subtlety. The humble often does his or her work from a hidden place. Beauty is often created in private, shared only with those who are very close. Kindness is often most tangible in one-to-one encounters, known only to the giver and only sometimes to the receiver. Tell me your beautiful stories, please. I long to hear. Tell me about the goodness that surrounds you, gives you hope for tomorrow. Good morning, good afternoon, good night – whenever you are reading. It’s a good day because none of us is alone.

Be careful when you inflict evil upon South Africans. They will almost always unite across every conceivable barrier and return your evil with graciousness and kindness that will sizzle the goals of your dark motives.

Watch out when “Boer maak a plan” and “Ubuntu” combine. The tenacious combination that will explode into widespread love and success. These two concepts (inventiveness under pressure and working together for the communal good) come from extremes, sometimes enemies, but will unite and come for you and accost you with so much kindness that you will come to regret your unimaginative evil (it always is) and wish you’d seen what they already know: good defeats evil every time.

The majority of South Africans are unusual that way, they go into retreat after an attack but it should not be confused with defeat. They are planning, uniting, then they will share, serve, clean, sing, pray and dance in the streets and grace will prevail.

Choirs will sing in the most devastated areas. Meals will be prepared for the very people who destroyed and looted. There’ll be widespread repentance and resilient love will emerge from this horrible circumstance. You watch, this looting and destruction, will turn into love and rebuilding and the plans of the disruptors will be successfully derailed.

Fall on your knees: you may have noticed with a sigh of relief or an edge of frustration you are one of a kind. There is no one quite like you, not even close. Your profile may reveal familial similarities but you are unique and you know it.

You draw connections, see parallels in ways you know are a little crazy. Words, music, aromas, one-liners, associate across decades and you resort to momentary introspective giggles because sharing whatever you just thought or saw or felt would take too long to explain and it would be meaningless to anyone else breathing.

On top of that your head is full of what ifs, not regrets, but possibilities, hopes, aspirations. Periodically you think you’re going to burst with ideas, love, passion, when you sneak a glimpse of how beautiful the people in your life really are and how much talent they ferry around everyday.

There are creeping regrets. You have to fight them off like an invasive species. But, truth is, they earned their place but some have overstayed their welcome.

Fall on your knees in thanksgiving. There is only one of you.

In times of disruption and stress the really important things become vividly clear and what is not has a way of dropping from our individual and group awareness. 

The new and expensive kitchen countertops become what they ought to be, a backdrop to vital conversations. The new car, the one you wanted to keep spotless, becomes a means to ferry food to neighbors. The Wifi speed ceases to be about gaming or Netflix, but a means to efficiently update family and friends around the world about your safety and wellbeing.

Going to school, being present in a classroom, having a teacher live in front of your children becomes a pleasurable thought, something for which your children and you may now ache. 

The Spar sign you spy on the way to search for a tank of petrol is a warm reminder of how things used to be, just a few days ago.

But, things will come together. Order will be restored. Good outweighs evil with surprising regularity all throughout history.Rebuild, replace, restore; restore, replace, rebuild. Good outweighs evil with surprising regularity all throughout history.

I’m sure you’re feeling anxious today. If not anxious for yourself, perhaps for your children, grandchildren, great grandchildren. You’re worried about what’s happening today and what will happen in the future if all this chaos can occur today. Perhaps you’re feeling fearful today, wondering if normalcy will ever be restored, if widespread civil decency will ever once more prevail.

The thought and the question you find hard to expel may be “will things ever return to order?” I’m sure you’ve wondered how a place with such natural beauty of sea, clear skies, subtropical plants and beauty, and, more often than not, such incredible weather, can be accosted with such random and indiscriminate horror.

I will tell you, dear reader, that from my safe distance it’s understandably easy for you to dismiss my expressions of empathy and want to see through them.

Truth is I’ve had a sleepless night (almost, at least). There is a clinical definition for the guilt I’m feeling from this safe distance while family and friends and readers are threatened and, yes, I’m feeling it and feeling it powerfully.

May grace be yours in the midst of all you are having to endure.

A significant problem with disdain, contempt, rejection, or downright hate, is that it impacts the source more than it (usually) does the victim.

If you (or I, of course) harbor negative thoughts and feelings toward a former spouse, in-laws, parents, or neighbors, anyone for that matter, we poison our own wells. We damage ourselves, and the self-damage usually outshines the impact on our victims.

Hate (or contempt or disdain – people usually like to avoid the word hate with “softer” terms) even though that’s what it is:

• Poisons our view on the world and on all other people, even those we love.

• Even the beautiful things and beautiful experiences are contaminated if we harbor hate for even one person.

• Hate has trouble being contained and its power infects everything we do and see and experience.

• Hate, like all viruses, has no boundaries, and so it indiscriminately invades and spoils even where it’s uninvited.

• Makes us cynical and we become cynical for so long it becomes a way of life, making us contemptuous of those who are hopeful and of those who express optimism.

Love, forgiveness, grace, and goodness are better than hate – yet hate has quite a following.

Grace, goodness, kindness will lift our spirits and open a world of fresh and wonderful possibilities.

Love is courageous and creative. It’s always the best option.

Parenting has tried very hard to teach me a few valuable lessons. Although sometimes a slow learner, and some crucial principles have demanded refresher courses, I think the lessons are transferable to all relationships:

• Identifying and stopping when I’m projecting my history, fears, frailties, failures and temptations onto their motives and behaviors.

• Knowing when to stop talking, when words, shared thoughts and ideas, have turned into chasing, demanding, hunting and “suggestions” have transformed into strong-arm tactics.

• Knowing when my actions, as loving as they may appear, promote laziness or unnecessary dependence.

• Knowing when to stop thinking, anticipating for each of my sons when they are quite capable of planning and organizing themselves and understanding that if they are not, my doing it for them is hardly helpful if they are to ever develop these very necessary skills.

• Knowing anxiety and love are not the same thing and are easily, often painfully confused as they can feel so much alike. 

• Parenting ends; while I will always be their dad, they are no longer little boys who need oversight and my watchful eye. They are men in their own right, both fully capable of life with me and without me. If this is not so, I have truly failed as a dad, and they, as men.