There is always, always hope.

With all the doom and gloom that pervades our daily lives and the negativity that appears to abound on all social media platforms – it is wise to remember that there is always hope.

Here in this beautiful country that I am proud to call home – there is hope. But somehow the media, press and I sadly have to say the majority of the population focus on all the negative aspects of our daily lives.  I am not trying to say that everyone should walk around with rose tinted glasses on and that this is paradise – no – we have our problems and some serious ones.  The behaviour of all our political parties provide a lot of ammunition for the naysayers, which makes deciding which devil to choose to run/manage our country a truly difficult one. But I digress as today this is about hope.

Yesterday I had the privilege of going to the local school to watch my grandson play in an inter school cricket match and it was while I was sitting there on those hard grandstand seats, trying to stay focused on twenty odd 10 year old youngsters, playing the gentleman’s game of cricket, when I started to partake in my favourite pastime – people watching.

In this multi racial rainbow cauldron of South Africa, where we are bombarded with daily tales of racial discord, these youngsters showed none of it. The ratio of white to black was I would estimate, about 2:10 – which is a true reflection of our society.  Here on this single field there was no discord, no ugliness, the children did not see colour and everyone was treated equal. Friends were friends. And these youngsters are the future of our country. On watching an openly gay young man and his interaction with his peers, there was no judgement and it was heart-warming to see. (These are just observations of a granny sitting watching and he may get teased and bullied – but here on this sunny afternoon of extra mural activities at the school, none of this was present).  These students showed tolerance which can be a lesson for many of the older generation. There is hope.

Even amongst the parents of which there was a coloured grandfather, a young black mom, who was there supporting her 10 year old daughter who was also on the cricket team and a white Afrikaans dad supporting his son and giving him and the rest of the team coaching tips from the sidelines.  This is also a true reflection of daily life in this country of ours – where the majority of people are happy to live their daily lives side by side.  We are all people, with the same wants.

So my advice to anyone, if you are feeling like that this country of ours is on a downward spiral as the media reports , just go and visit a local school and watch the youngsters and you will see first hand that there is always hope.  It starts small, but if we could keep this tolerance alive in our youth – we can have hope.