BE A ❛SMALL GOD❜

It’s a truism that helping other people makes you feel good too, but figuring out how to apply your talents isn’t always easy.

- LESLEY STONES

At 3am mybrain wasstill racing.I’d spent all night– well, all year really – feeling useless and wondering how I could use my skills, time or resources to do more good in this messed-up world. I should give Owen some money, my restless brain decided.

Owen Chisvo is a beader in my neighbourhood, and such a lovely guy that I once wrote about him for a magazine. He was so proud of the article that he pinned it to the tree he sits under. My words brought new customers to find him, and I glowed with pleasure. But nobody is buying beaded ornaments now. When I pressed some money into Owen’s hand, he said he could buy food and pay his rent in Hillbrow. ‘I’ve been touched by God,’ he said.

As an atheist that made me smile, but I felt as blessed as Owen. Doing good for someone else was wonderful. I felt like a small god.

Like many people, I often feel underused and helpless, as though I’m just sitting here having an existential crisis while others are changing the world. I calmed down when I realised that writing about people or things worth supporting is powerful in itself. So I wrote about Owen again on social media, hoping my words would inspire people to support their own local craftspeople.

Whatever your talent is, there’s probably a way you can use it to benefit others – maybe not to change the world, but to make someone else’s world a little more comfortable.