Wildlife Beyond the Lens

IIt’s not Sunday. It’s not even Monday. It’s Saturday, and that somehow feels more offensive. 

There’s no dramatic thunderstorm, no symbolic sunrise, no coffee brewing while I gaze wistfully into the distance. Just me, a buzzing head full of white noise, and the faint hum of a city I never wanted to return to.

The month has been chaos. Not the kind of chaos that ignites epiphanies or makes for good storytelling. The other kind—the flat, grey, all-consuming kind where you lose track of what day it is, what you were thinking, or why you walked into a room. 

I’ve kept busy. Pathologically so. Because busy means I’m not thinking, and when I start thinking, I remember. 

Apparently, that’s the problem. “You’re too busy.” 

Right. In the 1800s, that was called surviving. In nature, it still is. When a leopard gets complacent, it starves. When a lion lies still too long, it dies. They don’t take breaks to “self-regulate” or “disconnect.” They just keep moving. 

And so do I. 

A while back, I met someone. Someone who, for a rare, flickering moment, felt like alignment. Like maybe the axis shifted and someone else was finally walking parallel to mine. He had his life, I had mine, but there was a thread between us—a mutual understanding, or so I thought, that purpose came first, and love would adapt. 

I was wrong. 

The message came like all the others do: “This long-distance thing isn’t working for me.” 

Cue déjà vu. Cue the spiral. Cue me wondering if I’m the problem—again. 

Spoiler: I am. But not for the reasons you might think. 

I’m not wired for the new brand of love—the one that needs constant connection, instant replies, emotional availability on tap. I offer something older, something quieter. Loyalty like a matriarch elephant, steady as a migrating wildebeest. I don’t need to be entertained; I need to be believed in. 

And here’s the kicker: I thought I had that. I really, genuinely did. 

I thought we’d spend our separate days building our futures, and then, in some slower chapter of life, we’d converge and rest. Like old lions under a shepherd’s tree. That was the dream. 

But dreams, as always, tend to ignore reality’s small print. 

Now I’m left picking apart what this loss means. Not just the end of a relationship. The end of belief—that even when you bring your whole self to the table, someone might still decide it’s not enough. 

And that, right there, is where the madness starts. 

Because if you keep doing the same thing, with the same intention, hoping for a different outcome—doesn’t that make you clinically insane? 

I think I’ve finally crossed the threshold. 

You know, people love to call animals “unpredictable.” 

“Watch out for elephants, they can turn at any moment.” 

“Lions are moody, they’re dangerous.” 

But here’s the truth: nothing in nature is ever truly unpredictable. There’s always a warning. 

Always. 

Maybe it’s a subtle flick of a tail, a slight head shake, the tightening of muscles just before the charge. But if you know what you’re looking for, the signs are always there. 

And I’ve gotten good at reading those signs. 

I pride myself on it. 

But humans? 

Humans will smile while planning their exit. They’ll make plans with you in the morning and ghost you by night. They’ll tell you they love you while already preparing a clean getaway. 

No signs. No warnings. Just silence. Just absence. 

Maybe I’m just shit at reading humans. Or maybe humans have stopped playing by any of the rules nature gave us. 

Maybe we’ve evolved into something unnatural. 

And work? Work’s a jungle too—but not the kind you train for. 

I’ve learned that if you’re honest—sometimes too honest—people will label you difficult, combative, even arrogant. 

They’ll say you “don’t play nice,” when all you did was refuse to dance around a lie. 

And yet, somehow, there are people—actual grown, functioning adults—who will lie so often, so convincingly, they start believing themselves. 

Now that’s something that shouldn’t be possible. 

Your lizard brain is supposed to stop you. That ancient chunk of survival instinct should go, “Hey, this is dangerous. This is nonsense. This isn’t true.” 

But humans have managed to override even that. 

They’ll defy the most basic laws of nature and rewrite their own realities in broad daylight, without flinching. 

No animal does that. No lion convinces himself he’s a gazelle. No elephant gaslights another into forgetting where the waterhole is. 

But people? 

People live in delusion, and they call it progress. 

It’s terrifying, really. 

And maybe that’s the scariest truth I’ve learned lately. 

That the more time I spend in nature, the less I understand the species I belong to. 

Still—I move. I hunt. I wake up. 

Because that’s what the lion does.  That’s what I do. 

But not today. 

Today, I just needed to write. 

Deeper Dive into Thought Process:

When I step back—on one of those rare quiet days when the air is still and the noise has settled—I sometimes catch a glimpse of the whole damn thing. All of it. The frustrations, the push-throughs, the cracked edges and stitched seams. And weirdly, I feel proud. Not the kind of pride you brag about at the pub, but a solemn kind—the kind that makes you straighten your own collar before walking into the storm again.

It’s in those moments of pause when everything slows down and the whirlwind of constant motion comes to a halt. In those moments, I realize how much I’ve been carrying. The day-to-day burdens, the emotional weight that we sometimes forget is even there until it’s all quiet. But even then, I realize I’ve made it this far despite everything. I didn’t crumble. I didn’t fall apart. There’s a quiet strength in that. 

I am who I am. A relic, maybe. A throwback. A man out of sync with the generation I’ve been lumped into. Service, duty, responsibility—these aren’t words for me, they’re bones.

I’ve always felt like I’m out of sync with the world around me. Not because I’m better than anyone, but because I don’t fit the mold. The world, especially the younger generation, is shifting toward something I can’t quite follow. The longevity and values I hold—those things that others might dismiss as old-fashioned—are embedded in my DNA. There’s an almost primal connection to service and responsibility for others that is second nature to me. The disconnection I feel is realizing that not everyone operates by these principles anymore.

But I won’t lie, something is missing. That deep longing to hand over the full weight of my heart to someone. Not just a version of me that’s palatable or easy to hold, but all of me. The fire, the scars, the obsession with meaning. And here’s the rub: the very thing that fills me—the bush, the solitude, the service—makes me nearly impossible to keep.

There’s always a deep craving for something I can’t quite grasp. I want to share the totality of myself—the raw, flawed version of me. But I know that the things that make me who I am—the wild, the solitude, the quiet moments of reflection—are also the things that create a distance between me and others. I become too much for some. They can’t keep up with the quiet intensity I carry. 

No one wants this life. Take me out of it, and sure, I’ll adapt. Give me a neat apartment and a desk job in Cape Town and I’ll be charming for two years. But then comes the resentment. Quiet at first, like a radio too soft to matter. Then loud, like fists on walls.

The truth is, I’ve been caught between two worlds for as long as I can remember. There’s the world of stability, the one everyone says I should want—the life in the city, the comfort of routine, the daily grind. But every time I’ve dipped my toes into that world, it’s always been temporary. At first, it’s easy to adapt, but after a while, the resentment builds. It eats at you, like a slow-growing infection, until you can’t stand it anymore. The stillness of city life suffocates me. It’s not my rhythm. 

What really guts me isn’t just the cycle. It’s the slow realisation that maybe, just maybe, this is all there is. A pattern wrapped in purpose, haunted by a want that may never find its mirror.

This feeling of emptiness when everything seems to be repeating itself—same patterns, same mistakes, same desires—is what truly hurts. I fear that this—the monotony and chaos—might be all there is. There’s something bittersweet about the realization that the longing for something more might never find its answer. And in that uncertainty, I find myself questioning everything I’ve done, wondering if I’ll ever truly find the alignment I seek.