My oldest son played his first cricket match on Wednesday. This was pretty marvellous to watch and made my ‘dad the taxi driver’ role, quite worthwhile. The competitive spirit of a bunch of six year olds waving the old willow around was a sight to behold! Cricket at this level is rather similar to Action Cricket. Each boy gets to bowl and face six balls. Losing your wicket when batting costs your team a couple of runs but you get to keep on batting. If you can picture a group of small short boys surrounding a pair of wickets throwing balls at each other, you almost have it. Where dropped catches, mis-fields and fresh air swooshes are the norm, catches, direct hits and cover drives are thoroughly enjoyed!

The cricket was a wonderful catalyst to some interesting discussions. The boys played against a team from a neighbouring community. In this community, one bedroom houses fight for space amongst garden shacks and blocks of flats. Each building had coughed up bright coloured clothing that clung to every available railing. Rubbish collected in corners and stuck to fences like new age climbing roses. This was not like home at all! There were no large manicured lawns with bright cheerful gardens. There were no maids to pester and nag and order about. There were no swimming pools or electronic toys or bicycles with streamers. It could be that the people who manicured those lawns and cleaned those pools and scrubbed those houses were too tired to do their own when they got back home here!

This was our boys first experience that all life is not as easy and simple and as wonderful as their sheltered ones had led them to believe. It was also something not easily assumed into the six year old lifestyle where life revolves around self at the exclusion of others. My child commented on the state of the fields and amount of litter, wondering why nobody had bothered to clean it all up. Another child commented on the unfairness of having to play against a team that did not even wear a uniform!

The simple fact was that this match was a meeting of two very different sets of children, one privileged and one underprivileged. The spirit of both teams was highly competitive, the handstands were awesome, the enthusiasm great and the result extremely tight. It brought home again the amazing leveller that is the sports field! What a wonderful place for these privileged boys to realise that people are people no matter how different they may look or seem. That every single one of us in unique and have wonderful things hidden within us that can be offered to the world. That with a little tolerance and understanding there is a world full of beautiful and moving experiences to be shared and enjoyed. That money is not the great measure of worth and that this yardstick is horribly flawed.

I too came to realise the great irony of my own life. My wife and I have gone to great lengths to send our son to this elite and brilliant school, where he can get a phenomenal education in how to succeed in this world of ours. This world which is so focussed on money and power and prestige. On the other hand this is the same capitalistic world that I have just left because of its self centred lack of values and single minded pursuit for material gain. It is the same world in which I am trying to encourage others to follow a different path, a path that looks to the common good. And so as my son rubs shoulders on a daily basis with children whose parents are mainly focussed on the material value in life, I am going to have to fight to counterbalance his life with my own alternative views. Hopefully, both of my sons will receive the skills to succeed in this world as well as a deep understanding of the real value of life. I hope that they will choose to use those skills to make a meaningful difference!

I had to laugh at a mother who was so flustered at being in this area that she was ready to leave for home as soon as she arrived. It would seem that old racist habits still surface in some with a terrible fear of the poor. I refrained from suggesting that she could alleviate a lot of fear in the future if she left her designer bag, sunglasses and shoes, the Range Rover and about a kilogram of real jewellery at home!

My life is pretty surreal at the moment. I feel like I am watching all of the participants of a whole host of plays. All of the actors seem to be wonderful people and all allow me to join them on stage and watch them as they perform. This is rather a mystical space as I have no right to be there and some of these plays are deeply personal and moving. There are some brilliant actors, and their performances are faultless and believable. Other actors are not so good and their true self lies close to the surface.

Some are busy with plays that I have previously had a role in myself. Those are the most interesting plays, not because I know the role or the outcome, as it changes all the time, but more because I have a new point of view. I am now an observer and not a participant and this makes all of the difference. All of a sudden I can see things that were previously hidden to me. Things like the stress that people experience on a daily basis. When you have none of your own, it is rather obvious in those around you. This is also the stress that I used to carry as an overwhelming burden that used to keep me bowed low to the ground. Perhaps that is why I could not notice the same thing in everyone around me, I was too busy just trying to keep my balance and see my way ahead.

The other key thing that I see these days are the interactions between people. We, people are a funny lot. There is so much information that passes between people all of the time. For myself, the observer in the play, there is so much I get to see that nobody even knows that they are sharing. What a privilege and a wonderful way to learn all about people. How they get on with each other, who is on top of things, who is valued and who not, and who is frustrated and annoyed and happy and wanting to leave. All of these things are there as clear as daylight imprinted onto every personal interaction and yet for most of us they are invisible. I have to say that I am having a fine time!

There are some new plays that are coming soon to my life. I am excited by the interesting possibilities that they offer but am also wary about losing my new found insight. I hope to find some way to anchor the role of impartial observer into these plays whilst finding a way to be a part of the play too.

In the play I wondered into yesterday, the actors were highly stressed and looking to get through the week as fast as possible. This play was all about a children’s party for the Top Billing magazine. My mentor’s role was to picture food and decor in a way that made it decadent and sumptuous. It was great to watch my mentor at work, keeping the client happy and taking pictures in far from brilliant conditions. There is so much for me to learn! I will be watching Peter later in the week in a show all about framing and I will walk away with my long unframed pictures framed by me. I will also watch him in action in the embroidery world, I am sure that this will be reminiscent of the Rocky Horror Picture Show!!!!

In my own play at home, there has been a wonderful reversal of roles. My wife caught a plane this morning on a business trip to Johannesburg. I still feel suspiciously happy that it is not me on the plane! For the first time, she is the one that gets to do the business and visit with friends and family while away. I am extremely happy for her as well as my good fortune to spend some quality time with my children! Ah yes, my super dad role!

I am off to play another role, that one where I pretend I am a taxi driver and shuttle my children all over the place. I know my wife is good at this one and I seem to remember my mom training hard too!!!

I spent the afternoon on Friday watching a championship gala at my son’s school. Kids gave it their all from six year olds to the grade sevens. It was interesting to watch the passion, the energy and the camaraderie. Other than that I was rather bored. What was more interesting was the parochial support provided by parents. Obviously parents shouted for their own children but they also shouted for other children that they knew. The parents got really excited and certainly seemed to share the frustrations and joys of their offspring. I was unsure who to shout for. Not knowing any of the children older than six, that left me in a bit of a quandary. What on earth do you use as your logic to decide which child will get your support over others? Or should I be supporting the underdogs? Big questions for a Friday!

One thing that struck home is that this is all very great preparation for the big world out there. There can be only one winner. Second may as well be last, etc. The world, starting in school, makes very definite distinctions as to who is better and who not. The distinctions are based on competitions that vary from swimming to spelling. In the big world these distinctions are most important as they define who will be successful and who not.

For the children that win, I suppose it is easy to see that we are teaching them all the benefits of competing. If you win, you get a trophy, you get wonderful recognition and you learn that this makes you feel very good about yourself. These are all wonderful attributes for cowing our children into the model that makes business work in society. In other words, they fit right in and are only too happy to be climbing the corporate ladder.

For the rest, I suppose that they know they have to work harder in order to be the best. They will need to refocus their efforts and try again. For most of them winning will still remain the primary objective. They too will fit into the corporate model beautifully, except they will know what it feels like to put in the work and be sidelined without any of the glory.

From a religious point of view, we know that in order to inherit the Kingdom of God, we need to be like children. In a book called Jesus Today, by Albert Nolan, it is stated that in order to be like a child, the qualities that we require are humility, childlike trust in God, a sense of wonder, playfulness and joy! That makes perfect sense to me and yet I wondered if I as a parent encourage these attributes or try to get my children to grow out of them.

Humility is a difficult character trait to teach, if not impossible. It is more a state of being when we know we don’t need to compete or compare ourselves to others as those comparisons are irrelevant. Yet the school and I encourage my children to win at every opportunity and to be the best (not necessarily their best). A childlike sense of trust in God is exceedingly difficult to encourage as it certainly seems like it does not have a place in the world today. Individualism is the way of the world, it is all about me and how great I am. Encouraging a sense of wonder, playfulness and joy is the easy part although this also takes some effort.

I suppose the bigger question is do we want our children to succeed in the world as we know it or do we want them to grow up with a deep love of God? The two don’t seem to be exactly in tune with each other....

On the other hand is it important for all of us to ‘grow up’ and compete in the world and later relearn the key qualities of a child in order to build and strengthen our relationship with God?

Is there a way that I can provide my children with both?

Today brought home the wonderful power of the mind, again! I think I am pretty dof in that I have to learn the same lessons again and again. I have ranted here in the past about the importance of goals that are realistic, achievable and yet a stretch. For the last ten years (or perhaps all of my life), I have wanted to run a sub 20 minute five kilometre run. The closest I have gotten is to just break 21 minutes.

Last week I was reading the Runner’s World Magazine and read with great interest about an Ethiopian, Haile Gebrselassie, who has become the first man to run a marathon in under two hours and five minutes twice. He recently smashed the world record and just missed out on breaking it again in his last race. Now the thing that really interested me is that in order to run that time he would have had to run for 42km at 2 minutes 57 seconds per kilometre. This means that he runs at faster than 20 kph. This man is a machine!!

Here I was thinking that a sub four minute five kilometre run was pretty good. Suddenly a bright light dawned in my skull and I realised that actually it is nowhere good enough. So mentally I shifted my goal posts. I thought that I must be able to run far faster than I am and so I set my new time to achieve as five kilometres in less than 19 minutes. A paltry 3 minutes 48 seconds a kilometre.

OK, so there are plenty of numbers in my writing so far but please stay with me. I have had a cold this last week and so have been really frustrated by my inability to get out onto the road with this new found goal and insight. By this morning, I was going to run, cold or not! Out I went and ran six kilometres at 4:00 per kilometre. This is something I have never been able to do and yet this morning with no training and a handy cold, I was able to run my best time in my life!!

The point about all of this running jargon and the nifty calculations is that we set our own limits. How sad and silly that we constrain ourselves when we could just push our barriers a little further away and then surpass what we thought was unachievable. My head is still spinning as the 4 minutes per kilometre thing was a utopian goal for me, one I did not really think I would ever achieve. Just realising that it was a pretty easy goal snapped something in my brain and allowed me to go out an achieve it. As I have blogged before – success in our endeavours comes mainly from our attitude! A lesson that I have re-learnt, again! I have my 19 minute goal in my sights and cannot wait to move those goal posts again!

So go and take one of your impossible goals, make it even tougher and then go out and surprise yourself!

Today was another of those frustrated stuck at the bottom of the wall days. So frustrated was I that I took it out on my lawn as I cut it down to size. One of the pieces of advice that I have received over the last couple of weeks was not to get uptight about things like my garden but rather to plough on through with what I am doing. Hmmm it was easy to agree to a couple of weeks ago. Not so easy to implement this morning. The grass certainly received my frustration with grace and had the decency to look pretty afterward!

I am not sure why I am uptight as I did manage to get through four typed pages but it was all hard work! I suppose that I am a bit of an idiot if I think that it will all be fun and easy! Then again there are so many tempting things to be busy with like stepping into my running shoes and taking them for a trot, or smashing some waves with my surfboard or even watching my son swim in a gala. There are plenty of more exciting things to be doing but at some stage I need to wake up and understand that this is a responsibility to myself that needs to be discharged. I will write and I will write well. Perhaps that will even be my new mantra as I meditate on my writing with my palms pressed together and a lopsided grin on my face as I sit in the lotus position!

I was going to include a couple of paragraphs of todays writing but perhaps in the morrow. For now know that even those out there whose lives seem to be filled with fun and freedom sometimes also struggle with getting down to work. So if you are huddled up close to your PC in your office, smile, take three deep breaths and have some fun with whatever you are doing!! I am certainly going to try!

Once again this morning has posed some creatively difficult challenges. I am learning how easy it is to get to the wall and how difficult it can be to push on through it. I have a far better understanding that I too am a brilliant procrastinator!! And yet I have no excuse, I have even had a morning surf. Speaking about my morning surf, I am trying a new technique – immersion, or at least this is what I am calling it. We sent my youngest son for swimming lessons in December for a solid two weeks. The difference in his confidence and abilities was remarkable. From a child that could not swim we suddenly had a child that could swim lengths unassisted at the age of three. My theory is if I could surf for two solid weeks, I too will have a step change in my abilities and confidence. I will keep you posted and you can count on my immersion being somewhat fun!

Another reason why the wall is so surprising is that we had a lovely weekend away. We went camping together with three other couples. Perhaps I am far too relaxed this morning and that I why I am unable to string any words together!

We camped at this beautiful little place outside of a town called Rawsonville. This is an area where the principle activity is the growing of grapes and pears. Imagine a countryside covered in vines. This is the time of year when the vines are dark green in colour and adorned with leaves. Our campsite was nestled in the mountains that crowd this part of the world. Access is by a picture skew dirt road that follows a lovely clear mountain stream up a ravine. We passed the wine farm and continued up into the mountains. At times the dirt road was only one lane wide with a steep fall off on the one side. I wondered who would need to give way if I encountered anyone else on the road, but did not get to find out. Further into the mountains, we discovered our campsite. It was rather not what we were expecting. To our pleasant surprise the camping area was covered in beautiful green grass. It had a little embankment which flattened out on the way to the river. The river was perfectly clear with a tinge of sepia. And it was all ours, not another camper in site.

With the gurgle of the stream and the shouts of playful children, I dozed off not once but twice! There is a certain peacefulness about camping. Time seems far more languid than normal and there seems to be so much more of it. I suppose it is because one is forced to rest, there is not much else to do. Much to my children’s chagrin, we departed on Sunday evening, certainly ready to return again!

Now with my procrastination at bay for the time being, I am about to charge back into my life!

Today my blog is very simple. I would like to say THANKS to all of those people out there who care!! There seem to be so few of them in the world that it is refreshing to find them. If you are one of them, please keep that attitude. If not, it is time to change.

A little caring goes a long way, especially in the workplace. And it need not be big things, just a pat on the back, a thanks, a how is your family, etc.

Caring often means that you need to go out of your way in order to help somebody else. And for your trouble, you often get nothing back. But that is exactly the joy of caring is that it is done not expecting any reward! I honestly believe that opportunties surround us in multitudes. Our problem is that we live our lives at top speed. It is only in slowing down that we see all of these opportunities that are often hidden by our haste.

To my photgraphic mentor - THANKS - your generosity and caring is much appreciated. To the rest of you, click onto this link to his site to see what he gets up to!

www.peterrimell.co.za

I found myself drawn to paper that I found published on the net. It is titled ‘Why Capitalism is Good for the Soul’ by Peter Saunders. Peter Saunders is the Social Research Director at The Centre for Independent Studies in Australia. He argues pretty emphatically that capitalism has been good for mankind and certainly far better than any other market organisational system. I take his point, I think we have seen the fall of just about every other system. Capitalism is certainly the one that has outlasted and outwitted. As far as Saunders is concerned capitalism allows us to construct happy and worthwhile lives for ourselves and this is all that we can reasonably expect of any society. He says that no socio economic system can guarantee a good life. He asserts that capitalism allows us to feed and shelter ourselves and provide for our basic needs as well as for technological growth.

I have to say that he makes wonderful and clear points about why capitalism has been good for us. I cannot argue with most of them at all. I would however say that the title of the article is a misnomer as it does not argue why capitalism is good for soul but rather for the satisfying of human need. Soul, it would seem does not come into the debate at all!

There is another chap in Australia called Dr. Clive Hamilton. Hamilton is an environmentalist and was also the Executive Director of The Australia Institute over the last 14 years. He has exactly the opposite viewpoint. To quote Saunders about Hamilton’s views:

'His message, aimed mainly at a disaffected intellectual middle class, is that we have become preoccupied with the pursuit of wealth and are increasingly unhappy and unfulfilled as a result of our materialistic lifestyles. Clive believes we have broken our ‘magical relationship with the natural environment,’ and that the pursuit of money is getting in the way of our ability to reconnect with our ‘true’ selves.'

Obviously I relate well to the views of Hamilton. I found an article written by him in 2004 for the Sydney Morning Herald;

‘But there is cause for hope. Not far beneath the surface most Australians have a gnawing doubt about the value of a money-driven life. A Newspoll survey also found that 83 per cent of Australians believe that our society is "too materialistic - that is too much emphasis on money and not enough on the things that really matter".

For they suspect that the money society is at the root of the decline in values - the disposable relationships, instant gratification, moral laxity, selfishness, corporate greed and the loss of civic culture.’

Thats pretty strong verbage! Hamilton also quotes a survey that was completed by the Australia Institute in 2002 that found that 23% of Australians between the ages of 30 and 60 have taken a cut in their income to get more control of their lives, spend more time with friends and family, or achieve greater personal fulfilment. He calls this group of people downshifters.

I was a little disturbed to see this fact. I mean, here I am only the second person that I know of in my last eleven years to make this change only to find out that 23% of the Australian population has already made this same change. More than that this group of people even have a name to describe them!

I think that it is utterly fantastic that there is such a growing consciousness of the fact that money cannot be everything in our life. I am concerned that in my country we still know almost nothing about it.

I had a farewell dinner last night with my old boss and his team. It was pretty surreal to be reunited with the bunch of them after 8 weeks of being away. People were pretty intrigued as to what I have been up to (I suppose they should read my blog more!) Generally they could not understand what I spend my time doing every day. Me either, as I have little to show for my 8 weeks. I was asked an interesting question though – are you spending time in thought. I was a little blown away by the question and so I spent some time thinking about an answer. I thought for a long time as I really needed to increase my average!!

I certainly have spent a lot of time in thought but in very different ways to the way I used to use my brain. It is now focussed on creative endeavours like writing, and blogging, and photography. It has not been used at all along the lines that it used to be used. Even so, this piece of grey matter has been a busy piece of apparatus!

The thinking question got me thinking that I needed to spend more time thinking. And so I went on an artists date this morning. It was fantastic. Just me doing something that I really enjoy, with the principle aim of relaxing mind and body. I took a five minute drive up to the nature reserve. There I stepped out of my car into another world. A short walk and I was in a pine forest. The fragrance of the pine needles was strong and mind altering. The light was dappled and the world was quiet. I sat on a tree stump surrounded by massive trees and then I sat some more. None of them fell over and I tried to wait until they talked to me. It was a soul refreshing experience.

My normal operating process is to rush in and conquer the task at hand. This morning I just sat on my stump and observed. And only when the time felt right, did I pull out my camera and slowly clean my lenses. When they were perfect, only then was I ready to shoot.

I am now invigorated. My creative juices have been replenished. My soul is shiny and bright. Chapter six lies ahead of me but perhaps it will be less daunting. Perhaps I will move straight on to chapter seven!

Do yourself a favour and make some time no matter how difficult that maybe. Then go and sit on a rock, or contemplate the ocean, or smell the pine needles. Inhale life, breathe inspiration and shock the world with your new found vigour and enthusiasm!

Have you noticed how people define themselves by the kind of work that they do. Just about every official form you complete requires an occupation. I wonder what on earth officials do with this piece of information. Is this a trick question to catch out unsuspecting criminals when they fill in robber or safe cracker? Even the forms at passport control require an occupation. Do you think that the officials at a border would laugh if I filled in dad? It would seem that society is obsessed with the question of what we do.

Some occupations have more prestige and status than others. Certainly teachers and nurses must be at the bottom of the pile as this is how we reward them. I find it hard to believe that a teacher as one of the most influential persons in my children’s lives is treated as if their role is society is one of the least.

We have cleverly devised the use of grand titles to define our status in society. I read a book this weekend about Ireland. It was interesting to see how the author portrayed the characters through the centuries as initially desiring land. Then came wealth followed by an obsession with class and titles. It is clear that this is still in evidence today. Whilst we do not come into contact with many Earls and Lords, a grand business title now gives one the same amount of prestige.

I find myself in a quandary. I have no title! The question I ask myself is, do I crave the status and prestige linked to an important title and position in society?

Is it possible that this need comes back to my own emotional intelligence? That if within myself I am happy and satisfied, I will not need this external recognition and prestige from others. If this is no longer a need I have, surely I can focus on the things that are really important to me like being a father and a husband.

I also think that the priorities of your life are clearly conveyed by how you answer the question; what do you do? If you define yourself by your job or title, then that must be the thing that takes first place in your life. I think that it is time for a change. What if more people defined themselves as fathers instead of directors of large corporations? Would this have an impact on the relative importance that we give to fatherhood, or motherhood, as opposed to our occupations?

So if you ask me what I do now, I will tell you that I am a father of two and husband to my wonderful wife (thank goodness she still wants me), I am a passionate amateur photographer, a gardener, an obscure bloggist and an author in training. The answer is more honest although certainly unimpressive by societies’ standards!

Today has been a day of great joy and rejoicing in our house. It started it off in front of the bread maker, again! No, not true! My day actually started a whole lot earlier than the bread machine. At precisely 04h45, I was ready to go on a surf mission. At just after 05h00, three surfers quietly shed some tears at we looked at our favourite surf spot. The swell was right but the gale force winds just decimated the waves. With heavy hearts and enough excess energy to push the car home, we departed. Another failed dawnie, score another point to the South Easter!

Back to the bread machine! Neither the South Easter nor my mistreatment of it seemed to have had any impact on its abilities. This time my attempt was made with my wife peering over my shoulder to ensure that the recipe was followed to the letter. You will not believe it but she changed it herself half way through. Nevertheless three hours later, out popped the most delicious loaf of bread that was promptly consumed, again! Obviously a little woman supervision was all that was required! This evening I conjured up a Green Thai Chicken Curry. It was not bad and the whole family scoffed their share. My skills are back!

Even more exciting than my culinary improvements was my writing progress. Today I managed to complete my editing of chapter 5. This chapter has confounded me for more than a week, so this really was progress. Even better than that, I arranged all of my material for chapter 6. If you are interested, chapter 5 is about the concept of worthwhile and chapter 6 is about soul. This is all very deep stuff and I am not sure if I have nailed it, yet. One day I may even take it to a publisher and hope that he or she would be very interested. For now, I have entrusted the task of ploughing through my musings to my wife. If she is still awake after the first page, I will assume success!

It is the weekend and even I feel that I need it. I find it rather bizarre that I have not formally worked in eight weeks and yet I need my weekend. Probably so that I don’t feel guilty about not working as nobody else is working either. This informal working keeps me just as tired and brings in not one red cent. None the less, my weekend will be a time of family and fun, which is just the way it should be! Enjoy yours too.

Today has been a strange day. It all started yesterday, well actually today started this morning but my dilemmas started yesterday. My wife gave me a lesson on how to use the bread maker. This is a simple piece of equipment where one follows the instructions and out pops this most amazing loaf of steaming hot bread. If you know me, it would be an understatement to write that I eat a lot, and so do my two sons. A loaf of bread lasts a day in our house and so bread making has become an essential daily chore. Anyhow I observed the procedure well, listened intently and made copious mental notes. I thought that I was ready to be let loose on the brown flour and yeast.

Roll on today and there I am in front of the machine thinking this is so simple. I follow the recipe for a brown loaf like a good boy. Ok so I did not follow it exactly, I added the ingredients in the reverse order. They just felt better to me going in that way. I switched the machine on and confirmed that I had it right by shouting up the stairs to my wife. I had obviously missed a part of the tutorial the day before.

So why was I making the bread today after a year with the machine. Well the first reason is that my wife makes simply brilliant bread and I had no doubt my attempts would fall somewhat short of her high standard. I just did not know how far short it was possible to go. The other reason is that I was somewhat lazy in this department, why fix it if it ain’t broke, you know what I mean! Today though, I had invited somebody around for lunch. She had been having an atrocious time at work and I thought that lunch and some other company might just lift her spirits. Boy was I wrong about the lunch.

Fresh bread seemed to go well in my brain with a salad and a quiche. Not just any quiche, an old family recipe quiche. I hunted and found the old recipe and got busy. Obviously the family had been rather short on words as it was a full three lines long. It left a fair deal to interpretation. I thought that I interpreted well and my creation was soon in the oven.

Moving along, my guest arrives to be served a dripping quiche and some bread bought at the local store. My salad was brilliant, not sure if anyone could get a salad wrong though! My family recipe interpretation was a little off, mental note to self, throw away that recipe. The bread was the silly part. Remember how I wrote that I had put in the ingredients in the reverse order, well that was not the problem. I had forgotten to put the little mixing arm into the bread tin and guess what, nothing got mixed. I had to throw away a perfectly good flour brick...

More important was my guest. She choked back her meal admirably and earned herself ten bonus points. Obviously my cooking was not as bad as the conditions in her work place. It seems that she has found herself in a work environment that has forgotten she is a person. I was amazed to see this talented and extraverted young woman with her life in tatters and on the brink of depression as a result of an uncaring and arrogant work place. Even sadder, I know of so many more people who are in exactly the same predicament for very similar reasons. How unfair that a company can pay you a salary and shatter your life and justify the latter because they pay you a salary! What is the price you put on your time, your happiness and your life?

I have no idea how this woman was able to stick things out for so long and be so miserable inside. I suppose the question is how far can we push people before they break? How far should we be pushing people, if at all? Do we really know the people that work for us and understand their passions and fears, their frustrations and dreams? Are we even interested in them as people? If you answered no to the last question, then there is no doubt in my mind that you are not as worthy to be a leader as you think!

If you are a leader out in the world, get to really know the people that surround you. Don’t do it because I say so, but rather because people are the real joy in life! Another amazing truth is that people like to be treated like, well, real people!!!

To those of you suffering out there, I wish you well. The power to change your life is in your hands.

Today if you see somebody walking around with a funny looking smudge on their forehead, please do not wet your finger and try and wipe it off. The reason for the smudge could be that today is Ash Wednesday, the start of the season of Lent. Lent is really the 40 days leading up to Easter and is a time of reflection and repentance. The smudge could also be some nasty dirt, but please refrain from the wet finger thing!

As part of the celebration of Ash Wednesday, ashes are blessed and then a simple cross is drawn on everyone’s foreheads. Hence many people walking around with dirty faces. The symbolism is that the ash represents that man has come from dust and to dust he shall return. This service really brings it home that that we are all destiny bound for nothing!

Interestingly enough I read in a book by Deepak Chopra that 98% of the body is less than a year old. Our bodies are continually becoming dust, much faster than I ever imagined. Did you know that your skin is replaced once a month and is therefore only ever one month old? The only thing that ages is the ethereal essence that is you and I. The rest of our make up is pretty young and happening!

As we march onward to this space of dust, we should be asking what is it all about? And each of us, if we search should be blessed with our own answer. It is up to each one of us to use that hidden power within to do really incredible things. The great tragedy in life is not that we die, it is that we die with our power untapped and unused.

I am not sure how much time I have before I too am a shade of grey and very dusty! Right now, I am blessed with time which is my own and I know that I need to use this time wisely. My challenge to myself is to find something difficult that I can start doing that not only helps me to repent but also leads me closer to my God and helps others at the same time. Best I get thinking and moving.......

Yesterday afternoon, I entered the business world again with much trepidation. A partner and I pitched an idea to a company with money and resources. I was pathetic!!! I was ill prepared as I did not really know what we wanted. The presentation itself looked great but unfortunately a great presentation sells nothing and just looks pretty! This whole fiasco brought one thing home, there are far more learning’s in failure than in success. Over a beer, my partner and I made many resolutions and changes to our approach. I think we are far wiser than before and certainly more focussed. There is nothing wrong with failure if you have the right attitude! I have also heard it said before that you can make as many mistakes as you want, there is just no excuse for making the same ones twice!

On Sunday we went surfing at a place called Betty’s Bay reef. It is a very shallow rocky and powerful break. The reef is submerged under only a metre of water, it is very shallow. I have surfed there a couple of times in the past and not really enjoyed it. This day was no different! The water was about 14 degrees Celsius, a little chilly, with a fair size wave that was breaking. I got out to the back and found myself cold, shivering and rather unnerved. My mates had an awesome time because if you got past the psychological aspect of shallow rocks, this was a fantastic wave. I floundered around, caught almost nothing and eventually swam back to shore. Here was a classic example of me letting my mind lurk in the ‘I can’t do this’ pity state. I don’t go there often but certainly found that it was not a place that is easy to leave once you are there.

Now for some time, I have been telling my sons that life is all about having the right attitude. My message has been that 90% of anything they do is won or lost in their minds. I am not sure that they fully understand what I am trying to say but they certainly have a new mantra!

Sunday’s insight was that I am telling my children life is all about attitude and I go and fail at something because of my attitude. I felt pretty bad about my new hypocritical status and so when I got home I had a chat with my sons telling them about my failure. I thought that they should know that I can be honest about failing and why I have failed and perhaps that will help them to understand the whole lesson on attitude better. Who knows – we shall see.

So there you go – a whole heap of rantings about my own failures. I seem to have racked up rather a few in a short space of time. Surprisingly enough, I am more excited and inspired than ever to keep on going. There is so much to learn through failure even if it is the very clear understanding that the mind is an incredibly powerful piece of equipment when used correctly and devastating when turned off!

From being a blog a day kind of guy, I fell into disgrace last week as I only posted once! I have no excuse! Last week was extremely busy and full and yet I have nothing to show for it. Or at least nothing that I can name and display. I will try and make up for it with today’s descriptions of the mayhem.

I had a crisis early in the week. For so long, I have been an island in my problem. There has been almost nobody out there who has shared my frustration about life and my need to make it worthwhile. Part of the problem has been my inability to name the issue. Now that I have named it, I have been able to research it and am amazed at the amount of literature that is available. OK, there is not a huge amount, but there is more than I imagined. This has started to pose a problem for my book and hence my crisis. I started to ask myself why on earth I am trying to write a book where I am not the expert on the subject at all. I am just an unwilling participant. I struggled for a couple of days to word my thoughts but all of my writing lacked soul. In the end, I took an hour out on the couch to ‘think’. In that time of reflection, I was able to see exactly how I needed to write and why it was important for me to write this book. I am not sure if you know that there are 1000 manuscripts submitted to publishers in South Africa each week. The odds of getting your book published are pretty slim. A slight dampener to the outpouring of my soul. The thing is, the way I want to write it now means that it will be written in such a way that I am the expert! You will just have to wait and see or until I have my next book crisis!

With the book crisis at bay for the moment, and my hunger for writing reawakened, I was all set to spout forth the most amazing prose! And then I was asked to present some proposals for project management work in Africa. My whole writing world came to a standstill as I realigned my creative endeavours. I have always been able to put slick presentations together, and they are usually very different. With everything that I have learnt in the last couple of weeks about Photoshop and photography, I suddenly had some alternative creative insight and some serious skills to back it up. Going off on a tangent was called for and so that is what I did. I think I have put together a wonderful presentation but we shall see if it aids us to deliver the goods later this evening! The fulfilling part for me was that this has been the first test of the success of my studies towards my ME degree. I amazed myself at how much progress I have made and this has gone some way to allaying my need to always add visible value!

My mother gave my oldest son some surfing lessons for Christmas. A most Cape Town kind of present. We now go down to the beach on Thursday evenings for an hour and a half. The surf school is run by a good friend of mine and somehow he has promoted me from interested dad to assistant surf coach. This has meant spending a good deal of time in the sea with a bunch of youngsters and gale force winds, a very interesting combination! I have thoroughly enjoyed myself and feel like I am adding some value not only to my son but to a whole heap of youngsters in a sport that I enjoy. Some day as a result of this effort, I hope to spend lots of quality time with my sons at backline languishing in nature and shredding waves with hoots of pure joy!

I severed ties with my old company last week. Thursday was my last official day at work, even though I was on leave. I took back my laptop and cell phone and a number of other gadgets. It was a new experience to park in the visitor’s parking lot. I spent far longer than I expected chatting with old colleagues, but it was great. For me the change in perspective hit home hard. Looking in from the outside, seeing their pain and frustration and with a good deal of relief knowing that I have traded all of that for piles less money and tons of life! One of the ladies that I caught up with gave me a big hug and said that she was enjoying my blog. She added that it was helping many people. I have to say that I was blown away and thoroughly inspired to do far better. Thank you, thank you, thank you! That comment certainly gave me the lift I needed!

And so, now that you know that I have been far too busy with nothing and yet absolutely everything, I hope that you have a productive and fun filled day!