It took me more than 50 years to learn a lesson that would influence my life in many ways. A few years ago I attended a spiritual retreat, hosted by the Brahma Kumaris at their headquarters in India, when I had a rare opportunity to spend some one-on-one time with their leader, Dadi Janki, who is now 103 years old.

Dadi Janki, one of the wisest people I have ever met (and I have been privileged to interact with many wise people), told me that my problem was that I was stressing too much over things that were outside my control.

When I dissected that statement, I realised that most things in life are beyond my control and no matter how hard I huffed and puffed, there are times when I would have no impact.

For instance, if you sit in a traffic jam and are angry that the cars are moving too slowly, it will not make the cars move faster. The best way to deal with this is just to accept your reality and you could save yourself unnecessary stress.

Okay, it is easier said than done and it requires some practice, but I try to live with this lesson in mind most of the time nowadays and I hope to implement it more as I celebrate my 60th year in 2020.

Yes, 60. I never thought I would see 60. It was always so far in the future, but also because both my brothers died soon after they turned 40 and my mother died a few years after she turned 50. I also always thought that I would be old by the time I turned 60 and I still feel so young.

One of the things that I can control is how I interact with society at an intellectual level and how I can contribute to changing people’s perceptions and understanding of our history and our political and economic realities. I can also assist with pointing out inaccuracies that easily get perpetuated by the media in general and social media in particular.

One of these inaccuracies is that the end of 2019 meant the end of a decade and the beginning of 2020 indicated the start of a new decade. This is, of course, not true. A decade is 10 years which means that it ends after the 10th year. In this case, the decade only ends at the end of 2020. It does not sound as sexy, but it is true.

This year is significant for South Africans for many reasons, but I would like to point out one: it is only 10 years away from 2030, the year which was used a guideline by the National Development Plan (NDP) by which time we would have dealt with many of the problems in our society.

The NDP, which was developed by the National Planning Commission chaired by Trevor Manuel with Cyril Ramaphosa as his deputy, was probably unrealistic but it had good intentions and, if we had implemented only half of its recommendations, we would have been a much better society. We still have 10 years in which to try to catch up, but I am afraid it may be too late.

The NDP identified – and we have not dealt with this – the threat to our society posed by the triple challenges of poverty, inequality and joblessness. I think poverty and joblessness are offshoots of inequality and, if we do nothing else until 2030, then we should challenge economic inequality with the same kind of vigour that we challenge apartheid inequalities.

South Africans often proudly proclaim that we overcame apartheid, but we cannot isolate the struggle against racism from the struggle to make our society more equitable. It is a much bigger challenge and one that could easily undo whatever victories we might have won as a country over the past 25 years and a bit. It is something I stress about. It is not something that we can change on our own, but we can do it if we all work together.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday 11 January 2020)