A good map shows you where you are.

All Artwork in this series by @noahsartandline

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that
one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye” Antoine de
Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Secrets aren’t always bad things. Sometimes they are treasures, waiting to be unearthed, discovered, and claimed. You and I are treasures. You are more valuable than you could possibly know. Learning that this is true can take our whole lives. My name is Nathan and it’s taken me years to heal. To know that my life is valuable and to see ‘rightly’ again. Not with my eyes – with my heart.

When you think on your own life do you feel valuable?

I’m sitting with my computer at our dining room table. The table that we gather around most days as a family is actually an old school teacher’s desk. You know those big ones that can easily seat eight people, but that was only designed for the frowning teacher and the nervous pupil on the other side. I call it ‘government issue furniture’. Remnants of a past South Africa that I’m not proud of. We cheered the table up several years ago and painted the top. We put roller-wheels on the legs and now it has been the center point for meals, parties, conversations about life, love, death, and much dreaming. The table is helping me gather my dreams again.

The house is quiet and void of any recent memories because we only moved in seven days ago before we left for the ocean. Now, I’m back here alone. Sipping this coffee helps a little. (Ha! Imagine if coffee could actually comfort you. Each sip like a whisper in your ear, ‘I’m here for you’. Weird? Maybe that’s why it was sold as an adult-men-only drink long ago in the Middle Eastern streets. It is a pick-me-up. Thank you God for coffee beans and that goat herd that first started chewing on the delicious red berries centuries ago).

There’s an open window behind me, letting in a cool summer evening breeze – mixing a sweet balmy scent with the nutty aroma of roasted coffee beans. It’s Saturday night and I’m wondering why I’m here and my family is over a thousand kilometers away on a gorgeous stretch of coastline. At least the last time I messaged Jo that’s where they were. Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve had these ‘end-times’ fears that somehow everyone I love would be raptured into the great mansion in the sky and this poor little kid would be left behind. I was given these comics as a child about how the world would end and those left behind would sing, ‘I wish we’d all been ready’. I’m sure their hearts were good but my goodness people! Talk about fearmongering. I’m having one of those eschatological panic attacks now because Jo hasn’t replied to my afternoon’s WhatsApp messages.

Oh come on, don’t tell me you don’t have some kind of FOMO attack from time to time?

We aren't all that different from each other, are we?

I’m writing this in Johannesburg, while my family is still in East London having an amazing holiday. We have lived all over but for a season have been in Egoli – Zulu for ‘The Place of Gold.’ We were together but I came back to prep and start writing. How else do you describe what I’m doing? Sometimes it feels as though I’ve got my heart on a surgeon’s table. I wish I could just put wrapping paper over the year and make it look like that gift that I always wanted to get.

How has your 2022 started?