I am typing this on my phone at about 20 000 feet, staring out the window at the sea below… we have maybe 15 minutes before we hit the tarmac at Cape Town International Airport.
A young woman next to me keeps pressing her phone against the window trying to capture the view. I am letting out subtle coughs of discomfort. She clearly just won’t get it.
I’ve been in Joburg for a week and I always get these ideas about how big the world is when I travel somewhere new.
Joburg was no exception.
I was there because the SABC invited me to market my book in front of millions of South Africans. There was no proposal or begging. Just an invitation – one week after I published the book.
On the same day I published it I got a radio interview.
When things like that happen it’s tempting to pound your chest and scream from a mountaintop.
But I’ve been sitting with a silent question: where did these opportunities actually come from?
The honest answer is a choice. My choice to finally write the book I’d been thinking about for years.
What I keep coming back to is how much we underestimate the power of choosing. And I don’t just mean with what job to take or where to live: but what interests to pursue, what path to go down, what version of yourself to bet on.
The interesting thing about choosing your own path is what happens when luck follows. It feels different. The luck feels earned… like it belongs to you in a way that luck you stumbled into by accident never quite does.
I know this from the opposite direction too.
In university I studied Marine Biology. Whenever I told people, they’d say “Wow, you’ll never struggle to find a job” and I’d nod while knowing I’d absolutely struggle, because I had zero intention of spending my whole life studying shark mating strategies in a lab.
It wasn’t my choice. I picked it because I didn’t know what I wanted and it sounded impressive when I said it. So when people called me lucky I felt nothing… because the choice wasn’t mine, the luck didn’t feel like it belonged to me either. I couldn’t wait to graduate and get on with actually choosing something.
Compare that to the moments where the choice was mine. For example, the film work I did as a broke student… I was just an extra in movies and ads, nothing glamorous. I stumbled into good money and it felt humbling and earned precisely because I had chosen to try.
The book. The SABC invite that followed… Same feeling every time.
There’s a 1959 song by Elaine Stritch called Are You Having Any Fun? that kept playing in my head on this trip. It’s not a well-known song but the lyrics stop you:
“What you getting out of living?
Who cares for what you’ve got if you’re not having any fun?”
It’s haunting if you’re living a life built around other people’s choices for you. Because who cares about the prestigious job and the salary if none of it was yours to begin with?
I’m not rich yet. But I’ve watched enough interviews with people who are to notice that when asked what wealth actually gave them, the answer is almost always the same: the freedom to choose. What to do. When to do it. With whom.
I think that’s the real thing most people want when they imagine being rich. I believe it’s not just about the cars or the flex, but the options. The ability to say yes to what matters and no to what doesn’t.
We’ve all felt this in small ways already. Foods you ate growing up that you stopped eating the moment you could afford not to. Where you live. Who you spend time with.
Money expands the menu of choices.
But the habit of choosing, of actually deciding rather than drifting into whatever’s available, is something you can start before the money arrives.
I chose to write a book. That one choice opened a door I didn’t even know existed. The SABC didn’t find me because I was waiting to be found. They found me because I had done something – made something – that gave them a reason to look.
The freedom to choose is underrated. But what’s even more underrated is this: when you choose first and luck follows, it doesn’t feel like luck anymore.
It feels like yours.
© Phumzile