When doing your best gets you in trouble

DO YOU know those times when you try to do your best but still get into trouble? Seriously ... how was I supposed to know there was a better Afrikaans word for “lizard”?

Having only learned a few Afrikaans words, and all just in the year before starting my Primary School career, my vocabulary was limited and dodgy at best.

I would try to communicate with my Afrikaans friends, but mostly through gestures and semaphore flags – my Afrikaans was THAT bad.

And knowing full well that I suffered with that language handicap, my parents nonetheless sent me off to school one day. I suspect that they did it, not because I was ready for school, but they needed the peanut butter to last at home.

Now, surviving primary school in the early to mid-70s wasn’t for the weak. Teachers were stern, strict, and scary – especially Afrikaans teachers. I was always on my best behaviour in Afrikaans class, doing my homework when I remembered, but I forgot a lot because playing outside was more fun.

One day, the teacher stuck a picture of a lizard on the board and asked us to name it in Afrikaans. My hand shot up, and I confidently blurted out the only Afrikaans word I knew for lizard: “Geikie!”

The class roared with laughter, and the teacher’s sideways glare made me realise I’d earned myself some “cuts” – the delightful term for a caning.

I was reminded of the cuts I received for referring to matches as “meikie stokke”.

Through Teacher’s clenched teeth, I heard the word “akkedis” for the first time. Decades later, I learned that “geikie” means gecko, not lizard.

The lesson? Even when you try your best, you can still get into trouble.

These days, adults don’t get cuts, but we often get punished for trying our best.

A dear friend of mine loves to share encouraging messages, and recently, he sent me this gem: “Fear mismanaged, leads to sin. Sin leads to hiding. Since we’ve all sinned, we all hide, not in bushes, but in eighty-hour workweeks, temper tantrums, and religious busyness. We avoid contact with God.”

That shook me.

Think about it. Ask anyone with a job how they’re doing, and the answer is always: “I’m so busy!”

Since Covid, work pressure has surged. Remote work blurred boundaries, workloads increased, and economic uncertainty fueled job insecurity. Additionally, technology has intensified expectations for constant connectivity, while the relentless push for productivity has brought tighter deadlines and increased performance tracking, leaving many overwhelmed.

Is it any wonder people are frustrated and irritable? 

I saw a post last week that summed it up perfectly: “If you keep people exhausted and distracted, they won’t organise. If you keep them struggling and divided, they won’t resist. The system isn’t broken, it’s working as designed.”

Personally, I don’t like the sound of that!