May 5, 2025

Flight diverted

by Rod Smith

After landing from Washington DC we — a packed A300 — left Brussels for Bujumbura almost on time.

Under an hour from the capital of Burundi, the captain suspended food service, the last go-round of coffee or tea and soggy bread rolls of the nine hour flight.

The plane had rocked a little here and there, but apparently seeing something only visible on the flight deck, the captain told the flight attendants to take their seats. A few weightless moments followed which got the passengers a little unsettled – think roller-coaster at Kings Island – but when the plane jolted and an overhead bin or two opened and some guy heading from the restroom lost balance and fell into a row of seated passengers as we swayed side-to-side and dipped here and there the spread of anxiety was palpable.

It was soon over and really wasn’t too intense of a storm. I’d already given the turbulence 4 out 10, maybe 5, on my turbulence scale and so I was quite surprised when the pilot announced we’d be ditching – my word not his – our scheduled landing in Bujumbura (my destination) and head for Entebbe, Uganda, to get a minor repair to the damage the aircraft’s systems was reporting.

“Flight attendants prepare for landing,” he said next, and we almost did.

I am unsure if the wheels touched ground or not but when the captain or someone in the tower changed our plans and the Airbus accelerated and expedited a sharp upwards turn the force pushing us into our seats was jolly impressive. The dignified long-haul people-carrier showed off a little, more than flexed a muscle.

“The change in plans to land had nothing to do with the storm damage,” the captain said, “it was cross winds. We are going to another runway. Different angle. We will be on the ground in a few minutes.”

It’s quite common in many parts of the word for passengers to applaud when a plane touches ground.

This time it was thunderous.

The nick on the windshield, I later heard about what was damaged, grounded the Brussels-bound outgoing flight and so we were all ferried with our baggage to The Imperial Beach Resort.

This is my second night in this gorgeous
Ugandan resort.

The food is wonderful.

All is well.

The airline is picking up the tab.

I”d much rather be teaching in Bujumbura.

Tomorrow’s another day.

I guess it was more than a nick……!
May 3, 2025

Some families…..

by Rod Smith

You’ve got the love families……

Some select a victim, a scapegoat, to shoulder all the woes that have little or nothing to do with the chosen one. Some families choose a hero to make themselves feel better, recognized, even famous. 

Some families walk in lockstep without questioning direction or pace or destination.  In some families people run in so many directions it’s hard to identify who may or may not belong. 

Some parents have a plan for just about everything. They regard childhood as a walk through stages of training and preparation for adulthood. Some children just get older.

Some families have fun and enjoy laughter and honor each other’s humor. They listen to each other’s jokes and stories be they often repeated. Some families settle for scoffing and sarcasm as if putting each other down is the only expression of “humor” they know.

Some families talk about everything where no topic is taboo and there are usually willing listeners.  Some families have long understood and avoided the landmine material beneath the surface and know how to always avoid it.

Some families (unknowingly) appoint a spokesperson to manage the family story. Some decide no one will ever hear it — not even those in the family.

FYI: I’m in Bujumbura this week…..
May 1, 2025

Experts

by Rod Smith

I challenge my adult clients to focus only on their own behavior and their own thinking. 

Many conversations reveal people to be experts in what their significant others will, won’t do, or will or won’t say under a myriad of circumstances then offer a blank stare when asked about their own behaviors. This unhealthy focus on others leads to thinking for others, too. 

And, it can all look and sound so loving.

I encourage a shift in discipline – to become an expert in one’s own behavior and to think for oneself or to get out of other people’s heads. 

This is not selfish. 

Consider how selfish it really is to focus on the behavior of others and to think it is necessary to think for others. Consider how self-aware and considerate it is to monitor our own behavior and to trust others to be capable of thinking for themselves.

Being an expert in another can be annoying. 

Thinking for another can be quite amusing.

“You are hungry. You need the loo. You are always so difficult. You must be cold, wear this,” I heard one spouse say to another. 

Then she’ll complain he has no life in him.

April 29, 2025

Tread gently

by Rod Smith

Involuntary emotional primal reactions for self protection of fight, flight, freeze, fawn serve people well under limited circumstances like wars or violence or physical invasions. These reactions, designed to self-protect, are usually unhelpful if they leak into or invade our day-to-day relationships. 

When faced with an enemy, a threat, a danger (real or perceived) humans will react to protect. The reaction evoked will require no thinking, it will be immediate and one of or a combination of:

Fight – eliminate the threat. 

Flight – flee the threat, get away. 

Freeze – be immobilized by the threat. 

Fawn – give excessive attention to the threat to seek approval, therefore escape.

Humans are somewhat complicated and what was intended for survival can get in the way of “thrival” (to thrive – this is my word, I just made it up) if “on the inside” we are fighting, fleeing, freezing, fawning, when there is no threat and self-protection is is unnecessary. The child whose environment demands all four to survive – they usually and necessarily travel in packs – may have a tough time escaping these primal reactions when they are no longer necessary. When involuntary emotional reactions are “habitual” or the default for children, it’s easy to see how it is that the adults who emerge may be difficult to reach and to know.   

April 28, 2025

“Friendship” trap

by Rod Smith

Adam, Bob, and Charlie are friends who work together. 

When Adam gets anxious, he focuses on colleague Bob, who according to Adam, is hard to work with. 

Adam asks Charlie for a private conversation. This gives Charlie a good feeling. He feels important, included. He really is one of the guys! 

When they meet Adam commiserates, even seeks prayer for what to do about Bob. Charlie feels helpful because he gives Adam the chance to get things off his chest – and we all need that. 

Adam feels very good about it too. He  says “God sent you, Charlie” and Charlie feels pleased that God is finally “using him.” 

One problem (of several) is Adam wants Charlie on Adam’s side. If Charlie plays along and allows Adam to use him to avoid talking to Bob, Charlie will see that Adam has shown little or no respect to his colleagues.    

It may take a while for Adam and Charlie to learn that nothing will change between Adam and Bob until Adam and Bob talk to each other about each other. Charlie, in the meantime may start noticing just how difficult Bob really is, even though it had not crossed his mind before. While he may have not had quite the welcome from Adam, Adam, Bob, and Charlie would have been a tad better off had Charlie suggested Adam talk to Bob rather than talk about him.

April 27, 2025

The Continuum

by Rod Smith

Mental and emotional health is seldom all or nothing. 

Functioning can be high or low and many places in between. Like physical health, it can vary, even day-to-day. Few people are on top of their game every day, month in and month out. 

There is a rhythm to fitness, mental and physical. 

There are days I feel up and days I feel down.

This does not make me unstable. 

It makes me human. 

But, if, when I am up and my ups are disturbing to others and costly to myself and my family, even dangerous, then my ups may indeed indicate something deeper and I am probably in need of professional help. 

When I am down it may be time to rest or time for a change of diet or change of pace. 

The fix may be known and easy.

But, if I am so down that I cannot get myself out of bed and get myself to work for days or even weeks at a time and my employment is threatened, it certainly suggests it is time for me to seek help.

It’s all about levels of functioning. Mental health issues are only an issue when they disturb functioning, cost us our relationships, or lead to destructive behaviors.

Welcome to the continuum.

My book….. available on Amazon.
April 24, 2025

It may take years, but……

by Rod Smith

Every interpersonal overreaction, poor attitude, expression of anger will have an equal and opposite reaction. This will be most intensely known with people closest to you. If you have a desire to control, manipulate, or maneuver another person, no matter how much love there is purported to be, people will fight back. People are designed for freedom and attempts to restrict it will ultimately stir rebellion (it may take years) within the victim.

The person who most wants whatever from another person (insert a desire: time, extended conversations, sex, a beach walk, loan, a long chat over coffee) places the potential giver in a position of power. This is part of the reason pleading and begging is so unattractive.

The stronger, more mature person of any relationship will be the one who seeks forgiveness and reconciliation when a relationship is derailed. While the focus is who is right or wrong and who needs to apologize first and who started whatever, the people are not ready for reconciliation.

Mutual attraction is about matched levels of maturity and immaturity. People of dissimilar levels of maturity will hardly notice each other. Equally needy people will attract each other like powerful magnets and the attraction will feel like a match made in heaven – at least at first.  

April 22, 2025

Anxiety

by Rod Smith

Some forms of anxiety are helpful and life-saving. 

It’s why we use seatbelts, stop at redlights, read warning labels on medicines and avoid poisons. It is why we obey signs that say “Don’t Feed The Monkeys” and “Watch Out For Snakes.” “Soft” anxiety can be the emotional glue that keeps things going if we are aware of it or not. 

It keeps you and me safe and aware and alive. 

Anxiety can be acute or situational or “time-limited.” 

This is when we deal with the threat – real or perceived – and our anxiety is immediately reduced. 

If a truck is speeding toward you or me, anxiety will spike and we jump out of the way (we have an involuntary reaction). The truck misses us and our levels of anxiety return to “normal” and we go on our way. 

Acute anxiety keeps us safe and aware and alive. 

Anxiety can also be chronic. 

This is when we worry about having nothing to worry about. It’s the slow-cooking back-drop of worry about finance or health or the future. It is when we worry about our adult or young children or about another World War. 

It’s chronic anxiety that can give rise to symptomatic behavior and lead to physical ill health. Chronic anxiety drowns thinking, distorts perception, messes with our hearing and can be completely debilitating.

People with chronic anxiety would do well to seek professional help.  

Not much anxiety here……!
April 21, 2025

Did you know my dad?

by Rod Smith

Dad owned the tearoom near the top of Blackburn Road next to the Dutch Reformed Church up the road from Park Hill Soccer Club.

You may or not have known him by name but you may have been a woman in need of milk for her baby. He would have given it to you “under the counter” as if defying the boss which, of course, was himself. When you tried to pay he may have whispered “take the milk, my dear. No baby should go without food. Keep your money for something else the baby needs.”

Or, you may have wandered into the shop and said you had no place to stay for a while and he may have said “we have plenty of room here” and given you a bed for a week, a month, even longer.

Perhaps you knew him because you faced addiction to alcohol and he was your Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor and he said “just for today” to you and told you he’d decided he’d no longer drink “just for today” until his pledge spanned decades of sobriety.

Did you know my dad?

You may not have known him by name but perhaps you went to his tearoom where he served bread, milk, kindness and good humor and wrapped the goods with the feeling that you were known, you belonged, you were important.

161 Blackburn Road, Red Hill, Durban
April 20, 2025

“Am I of sound mental health?” asks a reader…..

by Rod Smith

Here is my incomplete, imperfect response….

It’s all about ZOOM……..

Do you, and are you able to, zoom in and zoom out? 

If you are able to zoom out – see the larger and objective picture of what it means to be you – and zoom in – to take care of immediate day-to-day matters – you’re probably doing rather well.  

Do you, and are you able to zoom back and zoom ahead? 

If you are able to zoom back and consider how your past has shaped you and zoom ahead and enjoy your hopes and dreams for your future – you are surely doing well. 

It’s becoming stuck in one or the other – usually the past, or the future – and making the present unmanageable things can become problematic. Appreciating how the past and a vision for the future simultaneously significantly give shape to the immediate suggests wholeness and wellness. 

Do you, are you able to zoom deeply within? 

If you are able to search your inner-core – head, heart, soul, motivations – and then with humility and thanks, encounter and acknowledge your beauty, you are doing well. If you are able to embrace your inner-person despite your flaws and failures, and allow yourself to encourage others even when you yourself are under trying circumstances – I’d suggest you are of sound mind. 

Do you, and are you able to zoom in on others?

If you are able to focus on the people with whom you share life – day-to-day platonic kindnesses – and the people whom you deeply love, and really listen to them – and you are able to appreciate their uniqueness, their beauty, and permit everything about them – both groups – to teach you what you don’t know about love and self-awareness – you are in tip-top mental health.    

I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world. 

—- Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)