Almost three years ago my dad suffered a heart attack that necessitated a quadruple bypass. Of course I was concerned, but three days later he was ready to meet with friends and was scheduled to return home within two more days.
During his last night in hospital, on his way to the bathroom, he suffered a rupture in his large intestine. He collapsed, went back into surgery and my perspective on life-death would never be the same.
Fortuitously, during this time, I stumbled upon an emboldening interview with Frank Ostaseski and like my friend Matthias, I also read his book, The Five Invitations: What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully. Frank is a Buddhist teacher, founder of the San Francisco Zen Hospice Centre and a leading voice in end-of-life care.
Frank helped me gain insight into the significance of what the Zen Buddhist refers to as shoji, which translates as “birth-death”. That hyphen, the “-“, represents the precarious link between life and death.
The moment that death arrives for us is also the moment that we depart. If at that moment we are departed, meaning, we are no longer conscious to experience the fullness of ‘death’, then we can never ‘know’ the fullness of death. We can only anticipate its arrival, but never know it completely.
This anticipation lives with us in every moment and the idea of death, the idea that one day all things will end, is the Great Teacher of life. “She helps us discover what matters most,” says Frank Ostaseski. And “Death makes a mockery of almost everything else we spend our lives doing,” says Sam Harris.
I am one of the privileged few to have an education. I graduated as an engineer in 2002, but two years later I discovered my passion for filmmaking and pursued a new career. Fuck, I had no idea how tall this mountain would be. I took so many detours down the path of self-doubt.
But there was one particular human being who never stopped supporting or believing in me. I don’t think he always understood or agreed with my choices—probably more often than not, but one day when I get to stand in front of my peers, and perhaps the world to say ‘Thank you’, the first person on my list would be the man in the photo above.
When my dad came out of surgery, he had his own mountain to climb, back to life, back to his wife, back to his son, his daughter and his first grandchild. For almost a year we lived with the prospect that he might not make it. But he persisted and he made it to his summit.
I am yet to make it to mine. Or at least to the first lookout point. Five years ago I was moving forward in a meaningful way, but then I got distracted and amongst other things, the ‘Start Up’ bug bit me and I pursued the billionaire lottery with a clever ‘tech’ idea. Then my dad went into hospital and the Great Teacher came to visit me. Slowly but surely, I recognized the forest for the trees. I was walking down yet another dark, winding road of self-doubt.
Even if I become a tech billionaire, but I haven’t made a film, I would still feel like a failure. Whether it’s true or not, that’s my story.
I just returned from Africa’s largest film festival, the Durban International Film Festival where I pitched to film producers the story of a remarkable human being who grew up with no privilege, an absent and violent dad, with all the odds stacked against him, and today lives a meaningful life, with humbleness and empathy respected by his peers, helps mend the fabric of Madiba’s rainbow nation and most importantly, he is my friend.
I embarked on this project officially in January of this year after we signed the option agreement. Do not hold your breath, it might still be a couple of years before the project sees the light of day, but I am back, climbing the mountain the Great Teacher prepared for me.
“To imagine that at the time of our dying we will have the physical strength, emotional stability, and mental clarity to do the work of a lifetime is a ridiculous gamble.”