Everybody Needs Somebody Sometime

1. The roses were white. When I was still active in corporate training during the period 2007-2012, I once was in Durban (South Africa) to present a workshop over a few days on Occupational Health & Safety to a number of employees from a well-known company engaged in the countrywide production of dairy milk and cheese.

   My firm had arranged for me to be billeted in a guest-house in Cowie’s Hill, a posh suburb strategically located along the famous Comrades Marathon route, the world’s largest and oldest ultra-marathon race between Durban and Pietermaritzburg in the Kwazulu-Natal pro-vince with a gruelling distance of approximately 87km (the ‘up race’) or 90km (the ‘down race’). “The 2019 race was capped at 25 000 runners.” [Wikipedia]. Vic Clapham was the founder of the marathon (1921) and it was won by Wally Hayward five times and by Bruce Fordyce a record nine times.

   Be that as it may, Cowie’s Hill is, like the many other suburbs in the area, located in a picturesque subtropical paradise overgrown with indigenous trees and plants, all kinds of palms, botanical wonders and some of the loveliest residential gardens in Durban eclipsed perhaps only by the upmarket suburb of Kloof (to rhyme with ‘roof’).

2. The reality of human frailty aptly demonstrated. At the guesthouse breakfast was served at 7am on a patio fringed by a charming row of Avon (‘Groundcover’ and shrubby) white roses in full bloom, and, having arrived somewhat early, the patrons were standing around on this patio sipping orange juice, getting acquainted and chatting away about the events of the day while waiting for the tables to be laid.

   Now, I must have wandered too close to the edge of the patio (about one metre high) and not barricaded by a handrail of any sort, of course a serious oversight by the owner of the facility. At some point I inadvertently proceeded to miss my step and to find myself catapulted head over heels onto the row of rose-bushes fringing the patio. There I lay, spread out on my back like a beached whale on the row of rose-bushes with thorns from all sides harassing me with every subtle movement I endeavoured to make to save myself or ‘alleviate my plight’.   

   It was a hopeless case, and within seconds the rest of the shocked patrons, momentarily paralyzed, were upon me to extricate me from where I appeared to lay prostrate like an Indian mystic engaged in some popcorn version of transcendental meditation. In all of my adult life I had never been that helpless before and it has left me quite shaken, humiliated and silently outraged by the guesthouse’s lack of foresight in this regard as well as by my own lack of professional vigilance as a corporate trainer in health & safety.  

3. The object lesson learned. No man is an island, and no matter how gifted, talented, qualified or self-sufficient, everybody will need somebody sometime. Eve was created for Adam as a ‘help’ and a ‘mate’; the Bible clearly teaches:  

   “Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour.  For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.  Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone?  And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. [Ecclesiastes4:9-12].

4. The Great White Throne Judgment. At the end of the age there will come a moment when, as the Bible says:

   “And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.” [Revelation20:11-12].

   On that day no one will be spared by his fame, political connections, talents, gifts, eloquence, intellect or great learning … those who stand there will be standing there as naked and helpless as the day they were born. The priceless invitation to divine help from God, however, still stands:

   “I [JESUS] counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.” [Revelation3:18].

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