Sunny Banana
YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/@sanibonani-y2g?si=09LymOLYjP7sE3cY
I am a school chaplain and the content is intended to encourage curiosity about Faith and it's impact on day to day life
The Sunny Banana, is a play upon the Zulu greeting, Sanibonani, meaning I see you.
As tech wrenches us from real life, we are not seeing each other. The Greek word 'idea' means to see. It is as if we have lost the idea of what it means to be human; social, communal, relational. The same word, to see, in Old English is 'seon' which has connotations of understanding.
Let's start seeing each other again, listening, respecting, and understanding each other and ourselves. After all, we are people through other people.
Sunny Banana
Stop Chasing Ghosts: A Guide to Genuine Happiness
Bede's Alumni, Sam Bickersteth (2020) shares what leads to good mental health
what is your message to the teenagers out there? Um, about what? What constitutes good? Good mental health and and happiness? Could you say in a word?
Speaker 2:goodness. Um, small question, sorry, um, um. I think I could say it negatively in the sense of what causes unhappiness and unfulfillment is a sense of, as it were, going halfway as a human being, of attempting to find that sense of fulfillment in something that just won't cut it because it's not the full picture. In chasing those things, basically, religious traditions everywhere will tell you every material thing, everything that really exists in this world is finite, and so believing that you will find a sense of happiness or fulfillment from the attainment of any particular goal is bound to make you miserable. Either you don't attain that goal and you're upset because you think that's what's going to make you happy. Or you do attain that goal and then you're upset because it doesn't make you happy. And it can take a number of sufferings and a number of grievances and disappointments for you to realize that. But but that's also part of life and that's well attested in different traditions is that you know it's only once you lose everything that you realise that you didn't need all those things that you were chasing. It's only in the belly of the whale that you suddenly know how to cry out for God truly, and what I think religion has done for me, and what it does for most people is it provides you with an index of meaning such that everything that you do is not just chasing phantasms and chasing ghosts, you're not just following whatever you see because you hope it might fill you up. It recognises that you, however you may feel about it are always already pursuing fulfilment In the smallest desires you have, from the desire for a cup of tea to a desire to achieve you know, get the best job in the world or whatever you'd like some lifelong goal. All of this is an attempt at wholeness, and if you can recognise that you're pursuing this already, then you manage to cultivate a sense of detachment from those things. That means they really appear to you much more like play. It's as though you're doing something because you enjoy it, not because you feel like you have to. Because you feel the pressure and the necessity I have to get good grades, I have to get a girlfriend before this age. I have to because you feel the pressure and the necessity. I have to get good grades, I have to get a girlfriend before this age, I have to do this and that and that sense of pressure is is unbearable and it makes you unhappy.
Speaker 2:A real fulfillment, real happiness, comes from acceptance. Accepting things as they are and accepting things as they come and go and that really is the wisdom of so many different traditions is one of acceptance, of a calm, equanimity and relationship to life. It is recognizing that whatever you may find or encounter, you can find good things, but they shouldn't be your ultimate goal. The ultimate goal in theistic traditions, we'd say, is God. In, for example, buddhism, you'd say, is realization of the emptiness of things. In other traditions, you might say it's yourself. In any case, not chasing ghosts is what I'd say is recognizing that when you suffer, that maybe that's something being communicated to you, that maybe that's something being communicated to you and that there's a profounder and deeper truth, a more cohesive and more desirable truth waiting within you, already just hoping to be realised.
Speaker 1:Beautiful, beautiful. Thank you, sam. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for being on. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for being on the Sunny Banana and your time. I've found that very edifying and wonderful to speak to a student that I once worked with, worked with as a chaplain. We wish you all the best. Are you going to choose? You have to decide between Oxford and Cambridge.
Speaker 2:You're waiting on funding yes, I, I mean I'm I'm leaning very strongly toward cambridge. I'd love it here and I'd love to stay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but yeah my only claim to cambridge is not academic, but I played for the town in rugby, so I would also go for cambridge because I love it there. Well, there you go. That's my decision, mate. There we go, great. And as I say to my guests, I say Sani bunani, I see you.