Burn Out - Where there’s smoke.

 

Not the hottest picture of me - ironically. The kind of picture you send to the family Whatsapp chat group for a laugh. I was actually feeling very hot when this picture was taken and I am responsible for the massive blaze behind me.

 I call it ‘My 2020 - a very short photoessay.’

I have pyromaniac blood in my genes which is fortunate because Stockils get to legally burn huge swathes of land every year at the end of winter in the name of fire breaking. It is the season we most look forward to and a great deal of latent military planning comes to the fore in preparation for a big burn. It’s a pity there are laws that stop fire breaking from taking place over weekends because it literally is a family hobby. 

Fortunately we are home for the long weekend and so last night in the twilight I stood on the hill overlooking the span of the Drakensberg mountains and listened to the cries of jackals and fiery necked nightjars and watched as my firebreak got rid of the last spiky brown shards of what we can all agree has been an incredibly long winter. 

Again in an ironic twist leveled at the above picture I have come to realize this week that I am suffering from a slight twinge of burnout. 

And I don’t think I’m alone here. Some of my most robust, devil-may-care friends have emerged from the lockdown a lot more pensive, far more exhausted and a little bit frayed around the edges. 

For me this year has been immeasurably hard because of the people I generally spend all my time with - teenage boys. I am going to make the sweeping generalization that boys in particular chip away at the awkwardness of their teenage years until the moment that they reach the pinnacle of everything they think they have been waiting for - matric. The moment when your grade finally gets to rule the rugby field, the cricket pitch, the stage, the choir, the leadership and in our case - the grass.

The matric year is the culmination of four hormone fueled years of plotting, dreaming and aspiring. 

And this year it got cancelled. 

And the parents and teachers of these dreamers were left to try and hold it all together while their special little worlds fell apart. 

It has been incredibly exhausting. 

I feel like I’ve had to deliver the ‘Any Given Sunday’ monologue - and adaptions thereof - every day for the past six months. Motivating people whose dreams have been crushed while they quietly asphyxiate behind a mask is no easy task.  

The true grit of some has come to the surface while others have floundered without a first team rugby match success to steer them through a very long academic day. 

But at the end of the day Darren we have to get these kids matriculated and out into the big world - sometimes kicking and screaming. And we have to make sure they don’t catch this blasted virus during their final exams otherwise they will have yet another year of their lives placed on hold. 

Which is hard when all teenager boys want to do is tackle, make music, laugh freely, celebrate being legal, romance (or at least dream of it), suck the marrow. Oh Captain My Captain. And so on. It’s like reigning in a pack of greyhounds - which is appropriate given that it is my school’s mascot. And I find it very draining.

But my current level of fatigue is but one drop in a very burnt out ocean. Every single human has taken strain as a flippen fever has robbed us of so much. A fire has swept over our schools, our communities, our families, our world and we are now standing in the haze of its aftermath trying to see through the smoke. From the micro to the macroscopic things have been obliterated.

We don’t know why our world has had to burn itself up with fever but there are certainly lessons to be learnt from our struggles. If we fail to take on board the lessons we have learnt from this - whether it be about finances, parenting, our jobs, our marriages, our government - then what is the point? 

I am a teacher. And with a stretch of my chosen metaphor my job is to light sparks. Sometimes I will never see the fires they create but every now and then I do and it is those moments that I live for. I don’t know if what I am saying daily to my broken matrics during this pandemic is even registering but maybe one day it will. I hope some seeds have been planted.

This morning I woke up to a crisp Berg moment. The kind I live for and long for when I’m anywhere else on the planet. Across the river I could see the burnt scar of yesterday’s pyrotechnics. I did a very thorough job. 

And so as the last wisps of smoke snake their way up from between the trees I know that deep underground regeneration is already taking place. Seeds are activating, new shoots are preparing to burst up. Life is rebooting. 

We need to rest, take stock, let the old stuff burn, start fresh. Let the fever break.