Life is a journey and 2020 will for many reasons be ingrained in our collective memory for many years to come. One moment, it was business as usual, and the next moment, the music stopped. It was much like we were on a train speeding forward at breakneck speed, when the brakes were applied, and this enormous train came to an almost complete standstill.

When it happened, most of us thought it would be just a short delay. But as it gradually dawned upon us, that this was not going to be over soon, we went through almost the same stages of grief that people go through after the loss of a loved one, as described so beautifully by the psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. First, when a loved one dies, we go into denial. We tell ourselves that it cannot be true and that it is not possible; but as reality sinks in, we enter the anger stage. We desperately try to identify a scapegoat or someone to blame. Feeling helpless and deeply aware of our humanness, we then enter the bargaining stage. We reach out and try to connect to a higher power, to something bigger than ourselves that may be able to influence the situation or create a different outcome. If that does not happen, we often enter a stage of depression. Life feels meaningless and empty. If we can manage to get through that stage, the final stage is one of acceptance, in which we accept the situation and that it is what it is. Having passed through all the stages, we are then ready to continue our journey.

As this year is drawing to a close, our journey continues. What will 2021 bring? Who can tell? But one thing is certain, we are leaving behind the world we used to know. The train has left the station, our journey is leading us to a place no one has ever been to before, and we are all holding one-way tickets. There is no turning back. We are not just going to another location somewhere on earth. We are going to another world, hidden within our everyday lives. We have entered an era of significant transition. We can expect big shifts in the world, and big changes in our lives. A new world is emerging and each one of us can help to bring it about. The time has come to dream a new kind of world into being, and we can all play a part in that. So, this time around, forget New Year’s resolutions; let’s rather dream into being a whole new world.

Let us create that new world that John Lennon sings about: “Imagine all the people living for today. Imagine there’s no countries, nothing to kill or die for. Imagine living life in peace. No need for greed or hunger. Imagine all the people sharing all the world”.  As we enter the new year, we are also entering a new era in the history of mankind, and we are all fortunate to be part of it. We are meant to be alive now. Let us be guided by the well-known prayer of St Francis of Assisi:

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace;

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

And where there is sadness, joy.

Let us make this our only resolution for the New year, to sow seeds of love. Then watch how that hidden world starts to emerge.

I wish you a festive time filled with love, peace, and gratitude. Thank you for sharing the journey with me in the past year. See you on the other side.

With love and respect.

Your partner in creating new possibilities for your life.

Rudi

“We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.”  

   E.O. Wilson

Birds are amazing creatures. They not only come in different shapes, sizes, and colours, but did you know that each species also keeps to a specific altitude when in flight? Because of that, there can be millions of birds in the air at any given moment without them colliding. In terms of altitude, the most fascinating birds are the high flyers. Most migrating birds fly between 200 to 1,200 meters above sea level. However, high flyers like bar-headed geese in central Asia regularly cross the Himalayas – the world’s highest mountains.

But in terms of jaw-dropping amazingness, nothing beats the frigate bird. These seagoing fliers with their 6-foot wingspan can stay aloft for weeks at a time. Frigate birds are unique among aquatic birds. Their feathers are not waterproof, so they cannot rest on the waves. However, what blew ornithologists away was their discovery that these tropical birds manage to fly in freezing conditions at a height of up to 4,000 meters. According to an ornithologist, Henri Weimerkirch, no other bird flies so high relative to the sea surface.

How do they do that? Astonishingly, they fly right into those fluffy, white cumulus clouds dreaded by most pilots since they often cause unnerving turbulence and panic amongst passengers. Over the ocean, these clouds tend to form in places where warm air rises from the sea surface. The birds hitch a ride on the updraft, all the way up to the top of the cloud and there these birds, between meals, soar … and soar … and soar. One of the tagged birds soared 64 kilometres without flapping its wings. Several covered more than 480 kilometres a day on average, and flew continuously for weeks.

Earlier this year, we similarly entered a turbulent storm that caused unbelievable turbulence in our lives, and we frantically began to flap our metaphorical wings in an attempt to remain aloft and survive. The more the uncertainty we faced, the greater our anxiety, and the greater our anxiety, the more we flapped our wings. The more we flapped our wings, the more exhausted we became. It is no wonder that there seems to be a general sense of tiredness amongst us at this time of the year, which is different from the usual end-of-year tiredness. It is almost a burn-out tiredness. It is a kind of I’ve-reached-the-end-of-my-tethers tiredness. We are all tired. Tired of flapping. Tired of uncertainty. Tired of making new plans. Tired of political rhetoric and shocking corruption. Tired of trying not to get infected by the virus. Tired of not knowing what the future holds.

Perhaps we can learn from the frigate birds. They fly high. Perhaps we too should consider flying at a different altitude. Zoom out. Fly higher. Pay closer attention to what we are focusing on. Be mindful of what kind of energy we expose ourselves to. Switch of the television. Go on a social media fast. Spend time in nature. Walk the dog. Tell those we care for that we love them. In short, leave behind the noise, negativity, and animosity. Fly higher.

Frigate birds ride the storm. They soar. Once they`ve reached the required altitude, they spread their wings, relax and surrender to this atmospheric roller coaster in the clouds allowing it to carry them to new destinations. Now is a good time to remember we are high flyers by design. No need to fear the storm. No need to flap. This storm is taking us exactly where we need to be. Let us listen to the whispering of our soul and soar like the eagles we are.

“To soar with eagles all you need to do is believe that you can fly.”

― Anthony T. Hincks

There is a running joke amongst elderly people that, when you wake up in the morning without feeling any aches or pains, you have probably died in your sleep. This can also be said about those claiming that 2020 has not affected them at all. Those rare individuals who make such claims should perhaps check their pulse to make sure they are still alive, because it is almost impossible to have escaped the ramifications of this perplexing year. For most of us, it was a disruptive and unsettling year, causing all sorts of ‘aches and pains’. Instead of just taking it in our stride, it may be useful to take note of and reflect on what specific ‘aches and pains’ have showed up in our lives and to remedy that. Much like an X-ray, which indicates even the faintest bone fractures, the 2020 X-ray machine has relentlessly exposed the cracks in our relationships, the shadow side of our personalities, our deepest fears and uncertainties, and our often rather flimsy spiritual foundations. In general, it has rattled our cages. We were blown out of whatever comfort zone we were in. In essence, it was a year of purification and stripping away. For many of us, it felt like we were walking through fire, and the year left us feeling exhausted, depleted, anxious, bruised, battered, broken, and even bitter.

But why? Why do we have to go through this? What is going on?

Let us zoom out first and look for an answer in the sky. Every 2160 years, Earth moves into a new zodiac cycle, and this process is called the precession of the equinox. The precession of the equinox is a twelve-handed clock, much like the clock you see on the wall. The twelve numbers are the constellations of the zodiac, also known as ’star signs’. This clock moves over a very long time span. One period (or hour) takes roughly 2160 years, before it moves into the next constellation. After 2160 years, the period that is now drawing to a close on this clock is the Age of Pisces; the symbol of Pisces is a fish, and we all know that it also happens to be the symbol of Christianity. The Age of Pisces was also the age of the patriarchy and male dominance, large corporates, materialism, profit at all cost, urbanisation, and loss of community life. People became affluent but desperately lonely.

As we now enter the next phase, the Age of Aquarius, things are starting to change and we can already see signs of that. The rise of the feminine, more women in leadership positions, an intolerance for blatant materialism, and a push-back against discrimination. There is a growing distrust in political leaders, and a demand to put power back into the hands of the people. There is a revolt against the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots. Green living, organic food, artisan baking, cooking and crafts, respect for all forms of life, joining a community, and a concerted effort to live more simply so that more people can simply live, are all busy trending.

But there is also a more transcendent reason why this is happening. We are, symbolically speaking, being offered an opportunity to pass through the eye of the needle. From a mythological perspective, the ‘Eye of the Needle’ serves as a threshold crossing, a gateway into an enlightened space. It requires those of us seeking entrance to the walled ‘treasure house of the soul’ to shed our ego baggage, to be humble enough, and light enough, to pass through the gate, and move towards a new state of consciousness. As foretold long ago, we are heading for a new heaven and a new earth that offers a more enlightened way of living. That is exactly what the Age of Aquarius is all about.

One day, we will look back and be grateful for the year 2020, which pruned and prepared us for this new chapter in the history of humanity.

 “Trials don’t come to take what you have, they come to supply what you lack”

― Emmanuel Igunbor

Most of us associate confetti with some sort of celebration like a parade or wedding. However, Brigid Schulte, author of Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time, uses the term ‘time confetti’ to describe all the small scraps of free time she experienced in a day. Most of us can identify with this. Rather than having clearly distinguishable periods of free time, we tend to use free time like confetti. Five minutes here, ten minutes there and, more often than not, we even spend those precious little moments glued to the screen of a phone, tablet, or laptop. No wonder we end up feeling overwhelmed, overstimulated, and fragmented. The long blocks of free time that we used to enjoy a couple of years ago are now constantly interrupted. Multitasking and mobile technologies can be a lethal combination with regard to our well-being, if we are not careful.

A tell-tale sign that we are using confetti time is our inability to be fully present and enjoy the moment. Often a dinner, a birthday party, a vacation, a movie, playing golf, or whatever we do to relax becomes just another piece of confetti in our otherwise crazy world of busyness. We are not fully present, let alone enjoying these moments, because in the back of our mind there are other duties calling for our attention. Instead of having meaningful time off with friends and family, an alert that we receive from work creates guilt and dread over what we’re not getting done. Mothers often feel torn, trying to be a committed parent and a good employee at the same time. Thinking about work while trying to relax induces panic and anxiety, and sadly, that robs us of certain never-to-be-repeated special moments, all because we settled for confetti time.

We need to become more deliberate in creating and valuing our free time. We need to recognize and overcome the time traps in our lives, and we need to intentionally carve out happier and more meaningful moments each day. The old excuse of not having time to relax is not true. The truth is that it is not a priority, and if it is not a priority, then confetti time is what we settle for to the detriment of our own well-being.

So how do we change that?

It will take some effort, much like trying to get fit. It calls for discipline and small, deliberate steps. We need to consciously build free time into our day, and to hold ourselves to it. No more confetti time. No more five minutes here and ten minutes there. No more guilt and anxiety around these moments. Free time is our gift to ourselves. Let us claim it.

“Either you run the day, or the day runs you.”

Jim Rohn

Most of us do not regard ourselves as dancers. Yet, in a sense, we are all dancers on the stage of our life. There are interesting similarities between the requirements for becoming a professional dancer and dancing on the stage of our life. Both require us to be dedicated to dancing, to be able to persevere and to have physical stamina. We must be flexible, agile and graceful, and able and willing to form part of troupe of dancers. Dancers are also subjected to prolonged, irregular and taxing working schedules, and must pay constant attention to their diet, fitness and health.

This year has proved to be a particularly challenging year for all of us on the dancefloor of life. Earlier this year the music we had been used to dancing to suddenly changed. Our familiar dance routine was disrupted, and we were forced to adapt to new music and to a new style of dancing. When the storm of the pandemic hit us earlier this year, we abruptly went from a fast-paced cha-cha to a slow dance. As the storm now slowly seems to be subsiding, the destruction it has caused is becoming more and more evident. Millions have lost their jobs and their income, and even those who have been fortunate enough to have escaped this, have had to adapt to a world that has changed dramatically. Things are simply not the same anymore. The music and the dance have changed inexorably, and we are being challenged to master new dance steps and new rhythms. This causes huge uncertainty and anxiety. For some, this is too overwhelming: they cannot hear the music, and thus simply stop dancing altogether.

Life is an easy dance when things are going great for us. We gracefully glide across the dancefloor with ease and poise and laughter; but to keep on dancing when our lives are turned upside-down takes some doing. When a storm is raging, and we are riddled by anxiety and fear, it can be hard to hear any music, and the last thing on our mind is to dance. Yet, the secret seems to be that it is exactly during a time like this, that we should try our best to find the beat, and then to start dancing fiercely, because hard times require fierce dancing. As Purvi Raniga wrote: “Some days we have to just learn to pick up the broken pieces and start dancing again. Difficulties are there but these difficulties do not define your art of being fully alive.” Or as Vivian Green suggested: “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to be over, it’s about learning how to dance in the rain.” 

How do we do that? Stop fighting the storm. It is what it is. Welcome it. Learn from it. Whatever your situation is, trust that it is what you need to experience now. Storms are personal growth accelerators. Never has a smooth sea made a skilled sailor. In every storm, there is a gift of new possibilities, with new music and a new style of dance waiting to be discovered. But this is impossible, if we remain stuck in the past, or if we feel sorry for ourselves, and just want things to be the way they were. Rather learn to dance in the rain, knowing that this showed up in your life for a reason. The question is not whether the storm will pass, because it always does. The question is what we have learned about ourselves and life in general while the storm was raging. We can use this opportunity to ask ourselves whether we will be better equipped when the next storm arrives. The more storms we face, the more we grow; the more we grow, the more resourceful we become the more resourceful we become, the less we fear the storm. Eventually, we can become so good at this that, when a storm is bearing down on us, we embrace it, even welcome it, and start dancing. By then, we may have learned that the secret to surviving any storm is not to tap into fear and anxiety, but to tune into the song of our soul. Not even the fiercest storm can drown that out. This is what keeps us dancing and, as Dahi Tamara Koch says, “dancing makes your soul grow its own pair of wings”.

If you find it hard to dance at the moment, try to make the time to reconnect with your soul. Become still. Hear the beating of your heart. The heart is the seat of the soul. And when you can hear or feel your heart beating, know that you are loved and taken care of. Let it remind you, that this beat, this beating heart, has always been there, through every storm you have gone through. Just connect with it again, pick up the beat and start dancing – fiercely and fearlessly. Your soul will grow you a pair of wings.

“There are those who dance to the rhythm that is played to them, those who only dance to their own rhythm, and those who don’t dance at all.”

Jose Bergamin

In 1967, two behavioural psychologists, Martin Seligman and Steven Maier, conducted the following experiment to research animal behaviour: they put dogs in an enclosure without a roof and subdivided into two parts by a low wall. The floor on the one half of the enclosure emitted light electric shocks – just enough to be unpleasant to encourage the dogs to jump over the wall to the other side of the enclosure to escape. The dogs did just that. In another part of the experiment they strapped some dogs into a harness and repeated the experiment. At first, the dogs tried to jump away to avoid the shock; but since they were strapped into the harness, they could not escape. Later, even when these dogs were released from their harness and given the possibility of jumping over the wall and escaping from the shock, these dogs laid down and passively accepted the shock treatment without even trying to escape. This is a heart-breaking image. These dogs had learned that nothing that they did would allow them to escape from the shock treatment —so they gave up even trying. This type of behaviour is called ‘learned helplessness.’ Learned helplessness occurs when an individual continuously faces a negative, uncontrollable situation and ultimately stops trying to change his/her circumstances, even when it is possible to do so. They simply stop trying to change their situation.

This also explains why people tend to stay in abusive relationships, or why people find it so hard to give up smoking. After trying everything, they come to believe that nothing they do will help, and therefore they stop trying altogether. They feel that they have no control and thus become passive. This feeling of helplessness can lead to depression and anxiety because someone may believe that nothing will end their suffering, so they completely stop seeking help. Learned helplessness typically manifests as a lack of self-esteem, low motivation and low perseverance, which then reinforces their belief that they are inept, and a failure. Times are tough at the moment, and many people feel that they have no control over their lives. They feel overwhelmed, drained, and lack the energy to keep on trying. They feel helpless and buy into it.

There is good news though.

Seligman later did a bold revision of his theory and came up with what he calls ‘learned optimism’, which can have huge implications for how we understand ourselves. According to him, we become victims of learned helplessness because of a mistaken belief that we should be able to handle life’s knocks, because we all have this inherent ability. Not so, says Seligman. As babies, we are all initially helpless. Feeling helpless and out of control is our default state.Taking control of our lives and developing hopeful feelings is something that we must learn and practice and protect within ourselves. We must learn to take control of our lives rather than trying to control life. When we are in control of our lives, we can dust ourselves off when we are knocked down, and we can try again and again, because we refuse to see ourselves as helpless. The truth is that every hard knock we survive instils within us a sense of achievement and hopefulness. Over time, our self-confidence and self-belief become so strong that the word ‘helplessness’ disappears from our vocabulary. Then optimism becomes our natural way of being, because we have freed ourselves from the harness of helplessness.

This is something that all parents should take seriously. An important role of parenting and education is to teach kids to take control of their own lives, to see their problems as surmountable, so that, by the time they are adults, they see themselves as the determiners of their own destiny and not as helpless victims. We do not simply fail children through neglect or abuse — we can also fail them by preventing them from ever facing the world. Molly-coddling, suffocating, and over-protecting our children is the breeding ground for learned helplessness and passivity. Instead, we need to allow and even encourage them to enter the school of hard knocks. When they are knocked down, we can then help them to get up and allow them to try again and again, watching with delight how their optimism grows.

I’m not interested in blind optimism, but I’m very interested in optimism that is hard-won, that takes on darkness and then says, ‘This is not enough.’

Colum McCann

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‘Middle of the road’. ‘Stuck in the middle’. ‘Caught in the middle’. For most people, the word ‘middle’ does not conjure up any excitement. Middle school, middle class, middle management, mid-range, and whatever fits that description – for most people it just translates into not-there-yet. Surely the ‘middle’ is not something to aspire to. Up or down, left or right – anything but the middle! The ‘middle’ is so vanilla, so boring, so mediocre.

But how wrong can we be?

Never was there a time as good as this one to rediscover the importance and the wisdom of seeking the middle ground. The middle ground seems to have given way to the extremes: you are either black or white, politically left or right. There is no tolerance for fence-sitters and middle-of-the-road citizens. No, you have to choose a side, take a stand, dig yourself in, and defend your view as if your life depended on it, even if you hurt others. We just need to watch the news or read the newspapers to see how that approach is serving us at the moment. It borders on craziness. With fanatic zeal, we point fingers at each other and call each other names because we are so convinced and so certain that we are right and that the others are wrong. It is these claims of rightness and wrongness that tear nations, societies and communities apart.

We need a space, a place we can step back into, and that is what the middle ground can offer us. It allows us to compromise, concede, arbitrate, collaborate, conciliate, negotiate, settle, bargain, make a deal, and agree. But nothing of that will happen as long as we dig in our heels because we are so convinced that we are right and the others are wrong. We need to tread carefully when speaking about right and wrong. There is no such thing. We all know this to be true from our own experience. When we look back at our lives, we can all identify and remember certain things we felt very strongly about, and that we fiercely pushed against at the time, because we felt it was wrong. Once we find ourselves in this mode of self-righteousness, there are no limits to our behaviour and we often hurt others in the process of taking a stand. But now, with the wisdom of hindsight, we may feel bad, even embarrassed, because we can’t believe what we did and how strongly we felt about it. However, we should not beat ourselves up about our behaviour in the past; instead, we should realize and acknowledge that it is simply because our perceptions have changed. We think differently about it now. Part of the maturing process is to seek the middle ground from where we can see both sides, and to have the wisdom to realize that we don’t necessarily have to take sides, because we know from our own experience that what is right today could be wrong tomorrow, and vice versa. So, by standing firm in the middle, we can become the observer, rather than being swept away by the views and opinions of others. From that solid place, we can then take action for the greater good of all.

We need to tread carefully in these volatile times. Either or, right and wrong, are not our only options. There is a far better solution, there is a field between the two where we can meet as suggested by the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.

Let’s find that field in every relationship we are in. Let’s meet each other there and allow our soul to take us beyond the things of this world and then, perhaps for the first time, we may see and hear each other because we start speaking from the heart, which so fluently speaks the love language of the soul.

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

What normally comes to mind when someone is called a freak are images of an oddball, a hippie, a drug addict, or someone displaying some displeasing social or sexual behaviour.  It is not something we want to be called. However, it is a pity that we typecast such people as freaks because we owe much to the freaks of this world. They are the odd ones out, the outliers, the unusual and unpredictable ones who are brave enough to stay true to themselves and add some colour to our world.

In a way, we were all born as freaks in the positive sense of being unique and unusual. The sad truth, though, is that society, for the most part, cannot handle unique freaks. It starts with our parents, who with the best of intentions, jump right in and do their best to make sure that we fit in just nicely and not cause them any embarrassment. Then we are handed over to the other two main partners, the school and the church, to further ensure that we fit the mould and that we proudly carry the label as an upright and respectable citizen. Often, by the time that society has put us through its paces, there is not much left of our uniqueness. All the colour has been washed out. We are now exemplary conformists. We don’t stir up trouble; we do as we are told, and everybody is happy apart from us. They can now relax in the belief that they have done their part to ensure we stay in line and follow the rest of the sheeple.

How sad.

And yet, some got away. They are the rebels, the freaks, and the outliers who managed to escape this levelling and sanitizing program, and who stayed true to themselves, often at the great personal price of being ridiculed, rejected, and side-lined. Bravely, they fly their freak flags and hang onto their uniqueness for dear life. They travel the road less travelled, they question and challenge rules and beliefs, and they stay clear of the shackles of conformity. They don’t play according to the playbook of their culture, but design their own. They explore. They fail and then try again. They have no desire to impress or seek approval. What other people think of them is none of their business. They are free.

In 1969, during the so-called hippie era, Jimmy Hendrix, an American musician, singer, and songwriter and a non-conformist by nature, wrote a song called “If 6 was 9”. A few lines from that song say it all:

I got my own world to live through and I ain’t gonna copy you

White-collared conservative flashing down the street

Pointing their plastic finger at me,

They’re hoping soon my kind will drop and die

But I’m gonna wave my freak flag high

Let us fly our freak flags high. Wear that purple hat or those silly shoes! Be goofy, laugh from your belly and cry like a baby! Think for yourself, do your own thing, and proudly show your true colours! It is only then that we add colour to a world that is so desperately in need of honesty, integrity and uniqueness. Let’s embrace our uniqueness, and love ourselves for who we are. Let’s be brave and start removing the layers of old paint and discovering our true colours. No one should die with their song still playing silently inside them. It is never too late to start living. It took me a few decades to remove the layers of old paint to get closer to the core of my own true self. But thanks to going through this process, it is now my life’s calling to help others do the same, to find their own true north and proudly be the beautiful freaks they were originally meant to be.

Let them freak out. Be who you are. It is your birthright.

“Nothing can be more hurtful to your heart than betraying yourself.”

― Roy T. Bennett