There’s something about the word “golden” that doesn’t just describe a color, it casts a glow. A kind of soft, luminous aura that can cling to moments, objects, people, and memories alike. You hear it, and you don’t think of a dull metal bar. You think of sunlight streaming through a curtain in late afternoon. You think of a child’s laughter from the backseat of a dusty car, windows rolled down on the N1. You think of a second chance that arrived just in time, or a season in your life that was too good, too fleeting, too full of love to ever happen again.
Gold itself is tangible, measurable, sold by the ounce, stored in vaults, pressed into coins. But golden? That’s harder to pin down. It lives in language, in mood, in memory. It’s something you feel more than you hold. And in South Africa, a place where gold has defined our geography, our economy, our very soil, the word golden carries a hundred different stories.
The Golden Boy
Start with the obvious. If someone says a child has golden hair, you picture something sun-kissed and soft, not literal metallic strands. That boy could be on a farm outside Kroonstad, his face freckled from too much summer, wheat brushing his shoulders as he races his shadow. Or maybe he’s in Mitchells Plain, dancing in a school play, spotlight bouncing off a spray-painted crown and a borrowed cape. Golden means something bright and young and full of potential, a future not yet tarnished.
And that idea seeps into our culture. The “golden boy” in sport or politics or music, he’s not just good, he’s supposed to be destined. There’s a sense of fate in it, as though some unseen force anointed him while others watched. But golden can also be fragile. Shiny things crack. And the same crown that sparkled yesterday can feel heavy tomorrow. Ask any former child star. Ask any aging athlete with one last match in him. Being golden doesn’t always mean being safe.
Golden Fields, Real and Remembered
In the South African highveld, there’s a certain kind of sunset that makes the world glow. The fields, dry, brittle, shoulder-high, catch fire in the low light. Not real fire, but something more cinematic. Golden fields are a photographer’s dream, sure, but for the people who live near them, they’re also memory triggers. The smell of sunburnt soil. The hum of insects. The promise of harvest or the ache of drought.
“Golden fields” are also the kind of phrase you hear in old songs, in poems, in funeral speeches. They suggest nostalgia, not just for a place, but for a time when things felt simpler. A time before loadshedding. Before lockdowns. Before goodbyes piled up faster than hellos.
In this way, golden becomes code for what we’ve lost. Or maybe for what we hope to get back, even if we know we never will.
Golden Chances and Gut Feelings
Then there’s the “golden opportunity.” That elusive, slippery thing you’re told only comes once. It could be a job offer, a break in traffic, a stranger’s smile across a room. You don’t always see it coming. And you don’t always realize what it was until long after it’s passed.
In South Africa, golden opportunities come dressed in hustle. The girl selling snoek at the robots with a baby on her back isn’t waiting for one, she’s making one. The university student who taught himself Python from a second-hand phone isn’t blessed, he’s relentless. The myth that golden chances just fall from the sky belongs to fairy tales and textbooks. Here, if something glitters, it probably came from sweat.
But still, when we speak of a “golden time,” we mean a moment when everything felt aligned. Even if just for an hour. Maybe you and your cousins were still kids, riding bicycles until your legs ached. Maybe your parents were still together. Maybe petrol was still under R10 a litre. These weren’t just good days, they were golden. They shimmer now, even in memory.
The Golden Thread
Across cultures, golden things are rarely just decorative. They’re spiritual. Symbolic. Holy. In Xhosa and Zulu beadwork, touches of gold signal power, wealth, sometimes royalty. In Indian weddings, gold isn’t just an ornament, it’s a blessing. In old European myths, golden apples, golden geese, golden rings, they always meant something more.
Even in our language, gold is sacred. We say “heart of gold” to describe someone kind to the bone. We call the best song the “golden oldie.” The perfect hour of light is the “golden hour.” And when someone passes away, we don’t just say they died, we say they’ve gone to a better place, a golden place, depending on what you believe. Gold, it seems, is our way of marking the things too important to fade.
So, What Is Something That’s Golden?
It’s a color, a memory, a time, a feeling. It’s your grandmother’s laughter during Christmas lunch when the power cut mid-meal but nobody cared. It’s the moment your partner said “yes,” or the night you slept in your car just to chase a dream. It’s the dog-eared photo on your fridge. The voice note you’ve never deleted. The field you drive past every June and think, “Wow, I forgot how beautiful this stretch is.”
Golden is not always glamorous. It’s not always bright. Sometimes, it’s quiet. Sometimes it’s what holds you together when everything else is falling apart. In a world where we’re told to chase the next shiny thing, maybe the real golden moments are the ones we almost miss. The ordinary ones. The honest ones. The ones that ask nothing of us except to notice.
And when we do, even just for a moment, we glow.
