Round and round the circle / Completing the charm / So, the knot be unknotted / the cross be uncrossed / the crooked be made straight / And the curse be ended” wrote TS Eliot in his poem, Family Reunion. In case you were expecting the lines to rhyme, the poem is blank verse poetry – it consists of unrhymed lines.

Eliot’s poem relates to ‘incompletion’. It reminds me of one of the many infamous quotes attributable to the famed actress and socialite, Zsa Zsa Gabor: “A man is incomplete until he has married, then he’s finished.” Less humorous, but more to the point is a quote attributed to Isaac Asimov, a prolific writer who wrote and edited more than 500 books: “Theories are not so much wrong as incomplete.”

Incompletion reminds me of that unattributable slogan: “Procrastinators . . . unite tomorrow”. But, surely, not all incompletion can be solely attributed to procrastination, although, as with procrastination, an uncompleted task is a contributor to stress. If you are not convinced, why not take the behavioural experimental challenge posed by www.mentalhelp.net, and, for one hour, one day or one week, do not complete any task. As part of the experiment, observe how you feel. Spoil alert: you will likely experience increased discomfort, dissatisfaction and/or distress.

The reason is profoundly simple. In the late 1920s, a Russian psychologist named Bluma Zeigarnik gave 138 children simple tasks to do, and subsequently interrupted half of the group midway through the tasks, while letting the remainder to complete the tasks. An hour after the completion of the tasks, only 12% of the children could recall the completed tasks, while 80% recalled the interrupted (uncompleted) tasks. Her findings were confirmed in subsequent studies involving people of all ages.

This gave rise to the Zeigarnik effect, which, simply, states that people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed ones.

This made me think about the tasks, more specifically the economic and socioeconomic tasks, of the South African government. Do we, as South Africans, still recall the tasks that government actually completed? In keeping with the earlier challenge in the column, think about it, and then write down the economic and socioeconomic tasks that government has completed. Do not restrict yourself to a date and/or time.

It is time for South Africans, as a collective, to be reminded of government’s uninterrupted, completed tasks. The mention of these tasks should not be simply discounted and consigned to “past glories”, but rather acknowledged as completed.

South Africa has seemingly wandered, intentionally or unintentionally, into a perpetual spiral of demoralising economic perception. The gravest danger is that the perception becomes the reality.

In the instance of perpetual bad news, it is easy to dwell on the failure, but this behaviour is not conducive to the tasks that need to be completed. Cognisant of the Zeigarnik effect, government would serve South Africans’ interest by ensuring that their economic and socioeconomic tasks are not only clearly defined, but that these tasks are completed. There is the seeming desire to constantly redefine the tasks, rather than to complete the tasks, and by doing so, making the uncompleted tasks less memorable.

In Memoriam While appreciating that it is not the custom of the column to provide more than an opinion, though personal in nature, I write this column at a time of immense personal sadness. Only hours before sitting down to write this piece, I lost one of my most faithful and loyal readers. That is not to say that he agreed with all that I wrote, as many a debate ensued. But he did what all writers pray for – that what they write is read and their opinions are considered and debated. Take care, dad, I count the days when our debates will resume. And, as my sands of time slip by, I will cherish the time that we had.