I remember when my friend, who is a holistic therapist and a spiritual life coach, told me about the “dream box”. This box was something like a small world that was supposed to encourage us and enrich us internally in difficult moments. She recommended making a box by hand and painting it in our favorite patterns, or just buying the carton box that we like the most. Our task is to put our treasures inside, which is all that makes us feel happy. It could be a doll we got from our best childhood friend. It can be a ring, a diary, a dried flower or a pebble. One thing or several. The choice is ours and good if we follow the voice of the heart. When we open them, we move to a fairy-tale world, which is only ours. In it we don’t have to pretend to be anyone, we are safe. We feel comfortable.
In my box I’ve kept photos from South Africa, taken in the early 90s.
At the age of 6 I flew there with my mother and brother, because my dad had flown to South Africa a few years earlier. He started working in Vanderbijlpark, near the province of Gauteng. What I saw on the spot exceeded my childhood idea of the world. Splendid landscapes, nature, diverse people, animals. Delightful houses with swimming pools like from American movies. And these colors.
I remember I miss my home country at this time. I don’t know why, because it was gray and sad there. I didn’t have many friends, the only thing that could really make me feel nostalgic was my room.
I have made all my friendships in South Africa. I didn’t know the language, but somehow I was having a great time with the neighborhood kids. However, sometimes I closed my eyes and imagined that at that moment I was back in my room filled with toys.
We came home in the middle of winter and after entering the apartment, the first thing I started doing was kissing the walls. But happiness didn’t take a long time. Within a few months, I started to remember…Africa. More and more often. I couldn’t find myself in kindergarten, among my peers. I had no appetite, I didn’t feel like anything. In Africa, I was drawing all the time, creating plasticine houses. I was an artist! Now, I didn’t feel like it, I couldn’t focus on anything. Despite everything, I tried to adapt as good as possible to the world around me. The feeling of being lost persisted, but the memories of South Africa are more and more blurred.
Years later, there was a breakthrough. I was having a really bad moment in my life. I felt dissatisfied with what I was doing. I felt I needed a change, something different. I didn’t know what exactly then, but in retrospect I can say that it was about something like going back to the roots, to the family from a distant place on earth.
A month later, I was on a plane to Jo’Burg. This time alone.
And a few years later, again.
With each return I felt at home.
In the right place.
Everything amazes me and I feel at ease.
As time is not linear for me but cyclical, so I see it as a never-ending work that is in a constant process of arising and ending.