See beyond your horizon

it is familiar ground and therefore we are not daring enough to explore beyond the horizon.

What I have learnt from my personal experiences or of some people close to me is that this zone is not as comfortable as we would want to believe. We can live in this world all the days of our lives, yet deep down we simmer with discontentment.
Sometimes we fail to move further away from this world because of societal norms and values. Society puts a limit on us and we subdue ourselves to our circumstances.

Society has policing measures that help regulate and bring sanity to the world. Be that as it may individuals need to be prepared to have a long term vision that goes beyond those limitations.
What is a horizon if one might ask? A horizon is where the earth and the sky seem to meet. To an observer the horizon marks the boundary of the earth and the sky.
It gives the impression that there is nothing beyond and also the feeling of a dead end.

While in actual fact the horizon is not static; it shifts further away as the observer moves closer to it.
This means that there is a whole world out there beyond the horizon that is waiting to be explored. We have places that have been named after this phenomenon – Clouds End or Mutungagore.
Therefore as we acquire more knowledge and our interests and experiences change our horizons are broadened.

There are some people who are so satisfied with what they learnt years ago and sadly are not open to learning new things.
Why am I saying all this? I am trying to create an analogue between the horizon that we see and the various stumbles blocks that we meet in our paths as we try to accomplish something for ourselves.

I have observed that there is a tendency to define the world and the future based on current situations.

I have seen people resign to their situations and come to accept it as their fate. This state however does not give them peace.
Some live as if they are angry at the world or particular people. What they do most of the time is complain and cause problems wherever they are.
An unwillingness to improve themselves can be sensed in such people. They also blame others for what they have turned up to be.

It is therefore not surprising therefore that some people commit suicide. They cannot see beyond their situation because their world would have collapsed on them.
Allow me to digress a bit and say that in this part of the world we do not have many mental institutions like in the West.
We really did not need them because we had a functional and strong extended family system. We also had a people centred culture and therefore people were more accommodating even to strangers.
So people could handle pressure better through help from others, but with the trend towards individualism, we might need to consider ways of helping strengthen coping mechanisms.

There are three groups of people whose perceptions about the horizon differ. One that thinks there is no world beyond the horizon.
Another one knows that there are opportunities beyond the horizon but are too paralysed with fear of the unknown so they would rather not do anything about.
There are yet others who are positive and risk averse so they follow their dreams and get to fulfill their purpose.

One day I watched a snippet of a movie, I missed both the beginning and the end.
From the bit that I saw, a woman who was so swamped with the responsibility of raising four young children.
She struggled to cope such that at times she would turn a deaf ear to the cries for attention and at times would shout at the children even when it was no fault of their own.

Conscious that what she was doing was not right she went to confession to seek God’s forgiveness.
During one such session she poured her heart out and let the priest know that she was overwhelmed and wanted to be leave and be unattached.

I gathered that this woman’s problem was that she had unfulfilled dreams.
She told the priest that she had wanted to be famous, but instead she had ended up raising children and that was not her idea of fame.
I empathised with this woman and realised that her story could be any woman or any person’s story.

I was reminded of the Scripture where Paul urges Timothy to stir up the gift in him . . .
We all have different gifts and great potential to turn not only our lives around but of your world.
Our challenge however is allowing circumstances to dictate and determine our fate.

Yet, I believe we can influence our situation by being active participants and not passive observers.
I must admit that there are days when I operate on auto pilot just moving from one event to the next as they come due to pressure.
An unhealthy situation I think or could it be a coping mechanism designed by the maker to get us through demanding situations.
In my discussions with some sisters I have observed that some women are living unfulfilled lives.

They have big dreams whose achievement is limited by their circumstances.
Some are pulled down starting from the home and made to feel inadequate such that their dreams fail to see daylight.
There are others who feel by having families they have arrived and therefore there is not much for them to do.

A sister told me that she shared with a lady friend her dreams to further her education and was told to leave that to her children.
I believe it is so easy to believe what people close to you say about you.
I am not advocating that women throw away their responsibilities, but should thrive and persevere towards fulfillment of their dreams.

Every person needs a supportive family of friends that encourage them on. In the case of married women the support of a spouse is fundamental.
There is need to recognise that horizons are just glass ceilings that can be broken with determination. Also in my own belief with God everything is possible! – [email protected]