When the World Closes, Stay Open
The world teaches us to harden. The Sovereign Self asks us to remember to remain open.
I have been sitting with this for a few days.
There is something happening in South Africa right now that many of us can feel, even if we are not always speaking about it directly. You hear it in conversations with friends, around the braai fire, at the petrol station, in the supermarket queue, and in the way people talk about work, money, crime, politics, business, and the future.
Something feels tight.
People are under pressure. Real pressure. A man loses his job and quietly wonders how he is going to provide for his family. A business owner lies awake at 2am trying to make the numbers work. A young graduate sends out CV after CV and hears nothing back.
Parents are trying to stretch money that no longer stretches. Families are carrying debt they don’t want to talk about. Many people are living far closer to the edge than they appear to be.
And when enough people feel afraid for long enough, something begins to happen. We close. Not because we are bad people, but because we are scared people.
When life feels uncertain, we become more guarded. More suspicious. More territorial. More reactive. Our language begins to change. Our patience shortens. Our compassion narrows. We start looking for someone to blame.
This is where it becomes dangerous, because fear always wants a target. When economic pressure increases, when jobs feel scarce, when people are tired and angry and frightened, the old story begins to rise again: us and them, local and foreign, insider and outsider, belonging and not belonging.
We have seen this before. Xenophobia does not grow in a vacuum. It grows where fear, poverty, frustration, and helplessness have not been held with enough care.
And I understand the fear. I really do. People are worried. People are tired. People want to protect their families. People want to feel safe. People want dignity. People want work. People want some sense that tomorrow will be manageable.
But here is the thing I keep coming back to. There is a difference between protecting ourselves and closing ourselves.
Protection can be wise. Boundaries can be necessary. Discernment matters. But closing is something else. Closing is when the heart begins to harden. Closing is when we stop seeing another human being and only see a threat. Closing is when fear begins to make our decisions for us. Closing is when we slowly become someone we would not have recognised in easier times.
Perhaps that is the real test of difficult seasons. Not whether we feel afraid. Of course we feel afraid sometimes. The deeper question is: what does fear turn us into?
Does it make us more awake, more honest, more courageous, more rooted? Or does it make us smaller, harder, colder, more divided?
I don’t think staying open means pretending everything is fine. It does not mean being naïve. It does not mean allowing ourselves to be walked over. It does not mean ignoring crime, poverty, corruption, unemployment, or the very real struggles people are facing every day.
Staying open means something quieter and much harder. It means refusing to let fear take over the whole house. It means keeping enough space inside ourselves to remain human. It means being able to say, “I am worried,” without turning that worry into hatred. It means being able to say, “This is hard,” without needing someone else to become the enemy.
It means protecting what matters without losing the tenderness that makes life worth protecting in the first place. Because if we close completely, what are we actually saving?
A closed heart may feel safer for a while, but it becomes a lonely place to live. Maybe this is what many of us are feeling at the moment. Not only financial pressure. Not only uncertainty. Not only frustration. But the exhaustion of being constantly braced.
Always scanning. Always defending. Always preparing for what might go wrong next.
That way of living takes something from us. It takes our softness. Our humour. Our generosity. Our ability to sit with one another and remember that we are still human beings before we are opinions, identities, fears, or positions.
So perhaps the invitation is not grand. Perhaps it begins very simply.
Before we react, we pause. Before we blame, we breathe. Before we repeat the angry thing, we ask whether it is true — and whether it is useful. Before we allow fear to make another person less human in our eyes, we come back to ourselves.
Before we close completely, we soften by one degree.
One degree is enough. One honest breath is enough. One moment of choosing not to become cruel is enough.
The world may continue to offer us reasons to close. There will be many. Some will even sound convincing. But still, we have a choice.
We can protect ourselves without hardening. We can tell the truth without hatred. We can hold boundaries without losing compassion. We can face reality without letting reality turn us into stone.
Maybe that is the quiet work now. Around our tables, in our families, in our businesses, in our communities, in the conversations we choose to have, and the ones we choose not to inflame.
When the world closes, stay open.
Not wide open to everything. Not foolishly open. Not performatively open.
But open enough for life to keep reaching us. Open enough to remember who we are. Open enough to remain human.
If this reflection speaks to something you are feeling, you are warmly invited to visit The Sovereign Self — a quiet space for presence, inner authority, and the return to a more grounded way of being.
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