A Tour of Good Hope
Caught up in a never-ending cycle of treating life like a numbers game, perspective arrived when hoarding gave way to seeing
It was becoming painfully obvious to me as of late that I had fallen into the unhealthy habit of letting data, specifically measurement, shape not only my sense of well-being and achievement but also my journey of becoming.
Every day without much relent, grace or mercy, I ran through the motions of a meticulously designed life self-engineered to keep me hyper-efficient, motivated and above all disciplined. An array of numbers, which held varying degrees of significance, accompanied me, chased me really, everywhere I went. They ran my routines. Sometimes overran my sense of belonging, creativity and accomplishment. And without fail managed to ruin a good mood when I came up short and underdelivered.
Underdelivered? Even free and out from under the thumb of corporate KPIs, I was still starting every morning in a dashboard mode. I simply knew no other way. As soon as my eyes popped open, my day sprang to life like an overactive motherboard. Check Whoop Recovery and Sleep scores. Step on the scale. Check Instagram and Substack growth.
And as the day progressed? Monitor calories burned versus calories consumed. Did I drink enough water? How many grams of fiber and protein did I eat? How many different fruits and vegetables did I consume? Did I write enough? Read enough? Meditate long enough?
And just before my eyes closed, I cycled through a different list. How much screen time had I had? Had I spent too much money? Had I put myself to bed in time to win at it all over again tomorrow?
It was getting to be too much. It was numbing and never-ending.
And the irony, by no means lost on me, was I had built this system. This prison of performance. I insist, even now it keeps me healthy, productive and in control. I worry if I stop measuring just one small thing, my newfound creativity and freedom will collapse like a precariously tilted Jenga tower. There are moments when I feel like all I have come to learn is that the price of freedom away from someone else telling me what to do is me telling me what to do.
So then by the time I left for Cape Town at the end of June, I was encroaching upon a new kind of fatigue, a well-intended though self-inflicted and curious sort of burnout. The more I became aware of it, the more I kept replaying a phrase I’d picked up somewhere along the way in my reflections: Youget to. You don’t have to.
Yet here I was, waking up each morning feeling like I had to perform for no one, it seemed, but myself. I was, after all, the one who had built this arbitrary system to hold myself accountable to these arbitrary targets. Last week in Tessera Edition 69, I wrote about algorithms distorting self and creative integrity. In doing so, I believe I opened up Pandora’s box just enough to see who else was asking me to perform. To make the number. To rank, to scale, to grow.
I couldn’t blame Mark Zuckerberg for this one. I had only one person to blame.
Me.
I realized, if I was going to continue to draw from my creative well, I had to recalibrate how I spent my days and how I measured what really mattered. No sooner had I come to that realization than a peculiar thing happened when I found out that the Cape of Good Hope wasn’t the most southern tip of Africa, but rather the second most southern. And then upon further research I found out, too, I wasn’t even going to be standing at the edge of the world as I had imagined it.
I’d already been further south before. Twice. My travels to Christchurch, New Zealand earlier this year took me as far south as I’ve ever been without my ever realizing it. And years before that, a trip with my brothers to Melbourne, Australia bested the southern latitude coordinates of the Cape of Good Hope too.
And yet when I set foot onto the rocky terrain of the Cape of Good Hope, as a misty drizzle tried to hold back heavy, fat raindrops, none of that mattered. No figure, no latitude, no best of mattered, even a little bit, at all.
In the last 30 minutes I had seen wild ostrich, antelope and bontebok. And now here I was gazing out onto an infinite horizon, one too commanding and too expansive to be held by any number. The clouds suddenly burst open. And the only thing that I was counting was the seconds I still had left to stand in peace and gratitude right as I was.
As we drove out of the park, scanning desperately for the caracal and zebra we never did come to find, I felt like I had weathered not only multiple seasons on the tour, but multiple days within a day. Multiple moods and emotions. And of course multiple reasons to be grateful for where travel had always carried me.
I was grateful for the generosity of places, like this one, that made it almost easy to excavate another layer of myself. I was grateful these places encouraged me not to miss the bigger picture before the rigid infrastructure of life got back in the way.
I felt as though I had seen it all that day: clear blue skies, sunshine, rain, fog, even a partial rainbow.
Starting out that morning, I took in bright aqua blue waters broken up only by random white caps and the dark shadows of schools of fish making their way, their getaway, from bigger pods of leaping dolphins.
As for the leaping dolphins? I’ll admit that is what I had been told I saw. I was a hopeless cause. No matter how much coaching Allie, my tour guide, gave me, I couldn’t see anything through the binoculars but my eyelashes flapping back at me.
Hours later, the same ocean looked just as breathtaking but a whole lot more foreboding, grey and tempestuous, as it exploded in rhythmic bursts on Africa’s most southwestern shore.
It was hard to believe any part of the day had been real.
A colony of penguins raising their young within arm’s reach. A baboon crossing the road with a baby clinging to her neck. The day’s catch stretched out curing in the sun over a modest haul in a modest fish market. A seal sunbathing on the mossy stone wall of Kalk Bay pier.
Fishermen fishing for their meal, not for sport. Million-dollar vacation homes and five-star resorts hoarding priceless views. Selfie-sticks hoarding priceless views. No-drones-allowed signs preventing the hoarding of priceless views.
At one point we slowed down to look out across False Bay’s waters, knowing the placid surface concealed Africa’s giant seaforest swaying unseen and deep underneath. The filming location of one of my favorite documentaries, My Octopus Teacher.
More snapshots of the day cycled past me. Penguins stabbing at washed-ashore garbage. Vineyards stretched out for miles around the dry main boulevard of Fish Hoek town. Tour guides greeting each other warmly, slapping each other on the backs as young African girls sang for their mini-tour buses of tourists. Tourists who gathered hungry and impatient outside overpriced penguin-themed gelato shops and stuffed-to-the-gills souvenir stands.
Unparalleled beauty was intertwined with harrowing drives along Chapman’s Peak. Noordhoek Farm Village, a foodies’ oasis, popped up out of almost nowhere, flush with tapas, juice bars and coffee shops. Just across town, out-of-work refugees held up paintbrushes and tools identifying their trade, and waited to get picked up and underpaid just so they could try and feed their families that night.
It all made my brain hurt. It made my heart break. I rubbed my eyes, scratched my head, dug my fingernails into the sides of my seat as cliffside roads careened, twisting and turning, cutting obliviously through it all: the divides, injustices, ironies and absolute jaw-dropping vistas.
I had never paid an emotional toll like this to see such beauty. When I fell asleep at night, I felt it weigh me down, transforming my comfy, lux bedding into a pit of ethical quicksand. I was reminded of it, as much as I tried to brush it aside, when I sat on pristine patios under the warm African winter sun sipping bubbles, sometimes pink and sometimes golden, narrowing down starter courses from main courses, and window shopping boutiques and galleries. It drained me slowly, nonetheless, no matter how much I paid to fend it off.
And so I’m back to thinking about data and performance again. The numerical differences between the have and the have-nots. The number of times I’ve personally chosen to think about the difference and simply dismiss it.
But I know deep down the numbers have so much more to say than that. My time here has punctuated the difference between the have-more-than-enoughs and the have-barely-anything-at-alls.
There was outstanding reconciliation yet to be figured and resolved. For I was the one who chose to stand at the edge of this magnificent continent and gaze out away from its shore. Choosing to focus on the beauty of an elusive horizon instead of turning back to see and bear witness to its beautiful, devastating complexity.
This morning, I stepped out to get a coffee in Stellenbosch’s quaint downtown. As I was narrowing down my order, I saw one of my favorites, a Pastel de Nata, a Portuguese egg tart in the pastry case. So I enjoyed the unexpected treat from one of the tables in front of the café’s walk-up window.
When I had taken the last bite and licked my fingers clean, I decided to walk the long way home and check out a different bakery. They were having a two-for-one special on danishes. So I bought two: a raisin and a custard. The man behind the counter offered to heat one of the danishes up. I didn’t hesitate. Yes, please.
Then I spied a third bakery just a few doors down. When I crossed its threshold, it was irresistibly warm and cozy. A space heater flooded the front of its storefront with more heat than I had felt since getting to chilly South Africa. I bought a bottle of water and a salami sandwich to have for lunch.
I was now heading back to my Airbnb with a Pastel de Nata in my stomach, two danishes and one salami sandwich in one hand, a bottle of water tucked under my arm and a latte in the other hand. A homeless person caught me by surprise mid-daydream. He asked me for money and I politely said I didn’t have any.
I continued on, rounding the corner to browse the product in the window of a hair salon. I wondered if I might be able to get my metal detox treatment here cheaper than I could back home. Hands full, I made a mental note to come back and check.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about the homeless man. I thought about how on two other occasions in Cape Town I had happily turned over whatever leftovers I carried to the men in need who had approached me. My stomach turned as I thought about the circumstances this time.
This time, I hoarded what I had and I was already full.
I wanted that warm raisin danish with the rest of my latte when I got back to my Airbnb. I wanted that salami sandwich for lunch. And I wanted to try that custard danish the next morning with my first cup of coffee after I woke up.
I flashed back to him digging through the garbage as I walked away. A Pastel de Nata in my stomach, two danishes and one salami sandwich in one hand, a bottle of water tucked under my arm and a still-warm latte in the other hand.
Suddenly that single familiar phrase took on a very different meaning.
There was only one number that mattered to me right now. Making sure this was the last time I ever looked the wrong way. The last time I ever said no to someone who needed me to say yes. Ever again.
You get to. You don’t have to.
