My 100th Hub - a celebratory and personal one

This is my 100th Hub and I am writing an unabashedly celebratory, very personal Hub. I have found writing on this website to be more rewarding than I could have imagined, and the love and support I have received from so many others is just fantastic! My thanks to all my readers - and by the way, this week passed another milestone - my 10000th page read!

Writing has always been a dream for me, a dream of using words in the most powerful way possible to increase knowledge and understanding, both of particular subjects and of and between people.

I do not hold the somewhat naive belief that if people know what is right they will necessarily do what is right.

I do believe that if people are more aware, then they will make more informed choices and be more able to take responsibility for their actions, opinions and beliefs.

The world is a strange place and we people are strange beings. But in the end we are all people, with warts and all, we are wonderfully made. And I celebrate people in everything I write, or at least, that is my intention.

This country I live in and love, South Africa, I celebrate also, because the people make it great. There is a richness here which has nothing to do with gold and diamonds, and everything to do with humanity, the individual lives of ordinary people who are, really so extra-ordinary. Every person with whom I have come into contact in the years of my life, which are not really so many, has left a mark on me, has become part of my being. I carry within the cells of my body the imprint of every person who has touched me and every experience I have had and that is what I want to share with others through my writing, poor though it might be. Because, as we say in South Africa, "umntu ngumuntu ngabantu" - I am a person through other people.

We people, all of us, have a tendency to somehow lose sight of each other because we make our favourite ideology, our favourite religion or spiritual practice, or our culture and traditions, more important than people, and then we get caught up in sometimes vicious contestation around issues which are in fact of far lesser importance than the people.

And it all starts with ourselves. If I am not at peace with my wife, my child, my neighbour, how can I be at peace with others who are far different, at least outwardly, from me?

This is my struggle - to understand myself through self-expression, to get to grips with the issues of difference and sameness, issues of culture and tradition, issues of belief and unbelief. I find these issues quite difficult, and I become rather down about them, about my lack of understanding of self and others. (There's a "should" in there which makes me miserable, and probably miserable to be with, also!)

These 100 Hubs have not been easy for me, I have to confess. It sometimes takes me ages to get them done, far longer than they are worth, I sometimes feel.

I have been writing on HubPages for, my profile page tells me, 16 months. If I look at the readership graph on my profile page I see that it stayed pretty flat for many months as I battled to find time to write and subjects to write about. Then around November last year, I think it was, I started to get into a kind of rhythm and started writing and publishing more or less regularly, and so my readership started to increase, though I fear it is still far lower than that of many other Hubbers who started long after me!

But the value I have gotten from writing here is inestimable. I have learned so much, both about writing and about using the Internet as a medium, and I like to think I have grown as a person through all of this.

One of the best things about HubPages is the comments made by other Hubbers. I have been so blessed by many comments by many wonderful people who have taken the trouble to comment on what I have written. Of course, there have been the strange comments too, from time to time, some of which made me smile and others made me want to cry. Overall, though, the comments have been very good for me, sometimes challenging and sometimes affirming (and these two things are not that far apart, really!).

Another great aspect of HubPages is the people I have gotten to meet here, just wish that I could meet some of them in person.

I have not been too successful in getting my personal friends to sign up here, though! But I have to mention one person who has been my friend for many years here in South Africa and has since left to live and work in the UK. He accepted my invitation to write on HubPages very quickly and has made some very interesting contributions here, both in the form of Hubs and in the form of comments on other people's Hub - take a bow, Russ Baleson, I'm sure you are going to go far on HubPages! And thanks for being the good friend you are to me.

There are also quite a few Hubbers in South Africa - Sixtyorso; Maryke van Rensbu who has recently joined; Susann; the "talkative old codger" Mountain Man; South Africa Trav from Cape Town; Sarejess from the Eastern Cape (ah! a homeboy!); Manfred who might be South African though his profile doesn't say so; rsusan; carinsurac; neels1971; jayme wium; oscarmecp4; teddybear1000 who comes from East London, my home turf; cindyvine the South African expat in China; mrvontas; grumpyjacksa; Just_Rodney; keepitafrican; JaniceFoster; settvcoza; alanb from Margate; and no doubt others that I have not yet come across.

If there are any other South Africans who read this please let me know!

So that's my experience of HubPages and the great opportunities for growth and learning I have found here.

There are too many great people on HubPages to name - if I single out some who have meant a lot to me over the months I have been writing here I would do those I left out an injustice. So please, all who have read my pages or joined my fan club, know that I deeply appreciate your presence. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

For the future I hope to write another 100 Hubs on topics that are close to my heart - music, art, writing, peace and human rights, cooking and gardening.

On that note I am delighted with Paper Moon's Hub for Peace initiative and hope it goes from strength to strength. I have already seen some great Hubs in response to that request.

I will end this longish personal rant with a poem by a wonderful South African poet called Shabbir Banoobhai, a poem which has meant a great deal to me over the years.

here lie justice and freedom

side by side, friends no one could keep apart

stand not too long in their sight

or the heart will break at seeing once more

blood flow where the arteries are severed

and brightness dazzled the sun

the earth has a way of taking back

those who love her most

come, let us go, it is spring again

and the jacarandas are in bloom