Gathering of the goddesses

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Three places I'm not...

 
We ain't where we wanna be
We ain't where we're gonna be
But thank you, Jesus,
We ain't where we used t'be.(apocryphal African-American spiritual)

Thomas Edison failed 9998 times before the Eureka moment. He said it wasn't failure...it was all new information and 9998 ways of how NOT to invent electrical light.

What few people understand is that the prevailing paradignm of light in his era came from thinking only in the metaphor of fire....candles, paraffin etc...he had to completely break that pattern of thinking to create a new method of making light...it wasnt a tweak of existing beliefs!

So it is sometimes with our own lives too...our thinking is what can keep us trapped where we are, and old or out-of-step thinking and wishes preclude us from totally different possibilities...possibilities that can illuminate our lives and fill it with infinite light if only we were prepared to let go of attachment to our beliefs.

I am a bit vague and abstract here...its deliberately so...these words are merely for reflection...not a story. I know what some of my dearly-attached beliefs are...do you? As they say in the 12-step doctrines...awareness is step1 of letting go!

I use the lyrics of one of my favourite songs by Josh Groban, used by Cirque du Soleil for their show Quiddam, as a beacon to remind and inspire me when I feel fear. Its called "Let me fall" The person I will grow into once I let go of what I'm holding onto, or once I take that leap to cross my fear, will catch me...but...I HAVE to let go and take the leap!

Let me fall
Let me climb
There's a moment when fear
And dreams must collide

Someone I am
Is waiting for courage
The one I want
The one I will become
Will catch me

So let me fall
If I must fall
I won't heed your warnings
I won't hear them

Let me fall
If I fall
Though the phoenix may
Or may not rise

I will dance so freely
Holding on to no one
You can hold me only
If you too will fall
Away from all these
Useless fears and chains

Someone I am
Is waiting for my courage
The one I want
The one I will become
Will catch me

So let me fall
If I must fall
I won't heed your warnings
I won't hear

Let me fall
If I fall
There's no reason
To miss this one chance
This perfect moment
Just let me fall 

breakthrough technology!

  Its been a while...I know...but sorry, its raining cats and dogs! Its raining ideas and opportunities! And its raining men! Hallelujah! (Actually...its a nightmare juggling so many balls!)

Today's headline is about something I am REALLY excited about because I love learning so much, and when I learn something, I have a compelling (if sometimes mis-guided) desire to immediately pass it on!

You know how serendipity works...and that other wonderful New Age word: SYNCHRONYCITY? well...its corporate speak for the nature in which stuff just unexpectedly comes together and tap you on the shoulder to see what you couldn't see before!

It seems to me there is a new "global warming" of sorts in education...a return to basics to teach...connect....transfer knowledge...its called "making the invisible visible"...its cutting edge technology in the corporate and educational world....picked up by Harvard's Faculty of Education from studies in Italy among children.

The technology? Drawing, talking through pictures and a revisiting of the visual arts....remarkably like our earliest forebears did on cave walls!!!! (Last year it was story-telling...yes, I kid you not!)

These things are BFOs...BLINDING FLASHES OF THE OBVIOUS...but, in our complex and large hi-tech, high-rise towers of knowledge, we seem to have perfected the art of alienation from truth and meaning...our employees working with only small pieces of vast global puzzles and our leaders lightyears removed from customers, yet steering the ship with only one source of information: numbers!

Hooray for a return to rock-painting...after all, they have endured for eons....wonder if this blog format and code that created it will last beyond 2010 before its unreadable?

 

My father who is in heaven...

   Isn't it funny how, when someone you love, dies, even the most agnostic choose to believe they are in heaven and not in nothingness? Why is this so? I shall have to ponder this more deeply...but not at 1:38 am.

I wanted to simply remember my father on Father's Day...and say sorry for all the socks he got on days such as these. Socks are the ultimate cop-out, along with hankies and jocks.
Its unlikely that I will make anyone a father again, but hypothetically speaking, should it happen, I solemnly swear that I will not give him hankies, socks or jocks ever for a celebratory event (unless they are seriously funny and NOT the main course!)

What would I give you Dad...if you were here? I'd give you time. I'd simply sit with you in your quiet way, and hold your hand. Wish away the things that got in the way.

I'd retell to my children the stories you made up for us, our favourite being "Piet Pompies + Hanswors" - two simpletons from the circus who stowed away on a train from Johannesburg to Cape Town to go and see the sea for the first time- and all their misdaventures from being discovered and thrown off in the middle of the night in the Karoo...jackals wailing in the distance...crickets chirping, farm dogs barking and the icy winter wind biting into their shivering, quivering bums as they argued about whereto next...

That story wasn't written down ever- it was all in your head. You varied it, added new twists and adventures to keep us intrigued and laughing, but 40 odd years on, I still remember it in minute detail...perhaps it was you who awoke my wanderlust with all those adventures and misadventures?

Of all the things I remember about you, some stand out more as I get older, live longer, grow wiser (hopefully!). They are
Tolerance: I can't think of a time when you would criticise or judge others. You may have thought these things, but, you kept them to yourself. I haven't met many people who can truly claim tolerance as a value. Nor forgivenness- and you had that in abundance too.
Generosity: No matter what, through tough times and good times, you always shared, gave, found something for those who didn't have.
Confidence: A secret shared with you was as good as written on a piece of paper and burnt to ashes in a fire. You took many to your grave. Sometimes I wish you didnt. Too much weight can weigh you down.

The words that a father speaks to his children in the privacy of home are not heard by the world, but, as in whispering galleries, they are clearly heard at the end, and by posterity.

And finally, another acknowledgement of the importance of fathers, for raising little people into balanced adults by renowned American feminist Gloria Steinem

"Most (American) children suffer too much mother and too little father"
And, the fathers suffer too...its so good to see this changing especially among GEN Y. Ninety three cheers for Dads who reject overdemanding careers so they can enjoy parenting their kids too, and may there be lots more of it.

Revisiting blogpost of 1 July- a forgotten art

I bumped into this today on "listening" - good follow-up to something I wrote about on 1 July. Its from the blog of Stephen Shapiro, an ex partner in Accenture and given that background, oddly the author of a book called "Goal-free Living."

Stuff about Spring

  This is my 44th Spring, not that I can remember much about the preceeding 43, except one year when I went on holidays to Cape Town and surrounds to be totally charmed by the carpets of native wildflowers. God's tapestries!

Though my head and my heart is full of things I want to write about(because its been a reflective week), I am not quite ready to spit it out on screen! (Yukky...that analogy doesnt quite work with modern technology, does it?)

But, I thought this glorious 1st day of Spring deserves to be acknowledged...not only for the warmth and beauty of the day itself, but the promise that it represents. The promise of regeneration, freshness, youth, hope.

I wonder if this Spring will be memorable? Memorable in a happy sense, not memorable like in planes flying into buildings.

I also want to thank people who read this blog, who barely know me except through these writings, and thus have come to know me well, and gives back to me in countless ways that they may not even understand. Its very special.

Some marvel that my writing is so straight from the heart...others find some discomfort with aspects of it and say so, and some ask me why I write?

I honestly haven't given much rational consideration to that. I write because I can. Because it orders my thoughts. Because I love it. Because the voices in my head wont stop until I do. Because I need to talk to someone after the homework has been checked, the lunch boxes packed, the bedtime stories read and the cubs are tucked snugly in the cot. Because I have a need to share.

Neither man nor woman was created to be alone. You know? Spring stuff? Birds and bees and pollen and stuff...?