When Scaffolding Over Stays its Welcome

Potential: Trevor’s translator in SA. After 8 years in prison, this guy is now running a group of young entrepreneurs

“I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier…..about your book and how you feel about its seeming failure and how hard it is to have the confidence to write again…….”

I waited for Judy’s conclusion with the delighted expectancy of someone who has been offered a key to some hidden treasure of wisdom. What came next wasn’t what I expected.

“I think it’s your ego. That’s why you’re struggling to write again”

 What could I say? She wasn’t attacking me, she wasn’t scoring points, she wasn’t trying to cut me down to size. She said the words from a place that I knew was free of her own ego, so I could only receive it and take it to a place within myself where I could process it. And I already knew she was right.

No one wants to admit to their ego being the obstacle. Ego, that provisional self that is so useful in the way that scaffolding is useful in building a house, but so unhelpful when it gets so attached to itself that it thinks it is the house. Ego, that self that demands to be comforted when it feels bruised, protected when it feels attacked, kept on its pedestal when it’s feeling diminished and fed when it feels hungry.

 

Miles from her roots in the Eastern Cape of S.A, this young girl is full of awesome potential

So why am I writing about ego on this eve of a new year? It’s linked to a book Jane & I are reading, the latest by Elizabeth Gilbert (she of Eat, Pray, Love fame) and it's all about creativity and fear. 

And it’s gently opening – or should I say re-opening - our eyes. We realised as we read, that we hadn’t blogged for a long time, that Jane hadn’t been drawing for a long time and that I hadn’t been writing or working up new ideas. We are both very creative people who had stopped being creative. Not totally, but largely, especially in the ways that are core to who we are. Did we stop because we decided to stop? No, it was because of…..well…..life. Life just demanded its daily work to be done and the work of creativity got put the bottom of the pile. And of course the problem with things that go to the bottom of the pile is that you never get to the things at the bottom of the pile.

Potential: beautiful, talented, beach artists in Kenya

 I have been reflecting a lot in the past month about potential. The place where all our programs with Emerging Leaders begin is with calling to young peoples potential.  I think I have always been passionate about potential and always sought to face down my own self-limiting demons, in order to allow myself to become as big as I can be. How big am I? How big can I be? I have no idea, but I’m sure there is no limit to that journey of discovery while I am willing to continue to take it.

So many things are coming together in my mind. Huge reservoirs of potential that need unlocking. Sleeping potential that needs waking up, needs someone calling out, to wake it up.  A brain that is hard wired for something more, a bigger story, a story of being an answer to the world’s issues not part of its problems. A life that needs some one to model a way of living that fulfill its potential, that breathes life and hope (inspires), into others that they might possibly be able to do the same. 

Potential waits to be set free and we hold the key (Kenya training@Simba farm)

Limiting mindsets keep us small, like scaffolding that hides the real but fragile building, protecting it from exposure to unkind weather or the gaze of people who might not like the unveiled house.

So, on the eve of 2016 let me recover the full practicing of what I preach, the exploration of what I feel passionate about, the mining of that creative jewel inside. 
Let me not just ‘do’ 2016....let me live it, explore it, sail it, mine it, run with it, fall over and scrape my knees on it and get up a little stronger to drink it more deeply and eat it more voraciously. 

Joseph and his street boys in SA - he sees their vast potential

Dawna Markova’s wonderful poem begins “I will not die an unlived life”. Let it be said at the end of 2016 that 'I lived'. That I wasn’t ruled by fear of failure or death or shame or looking stupid. Let me not be guilty of failing to discover more of my potential. Let me not be guilty of my ego being the reason why I didn’t try to write another book (real or metaphorically) because the last one quietly bombed. 

And let me not be guilty of failing to waste a moment where I can be modeling, calling out, and waking up many others to their own awesome potential this year.

- TW

Waiting for the Right Moment

“Waiting”

...I’m waiting, until I find the right words to write to my dear friend, who’s just lost her dad.

...I’m waiting for a free moment to go on line and send that money I promised myself I’d send to that Syrian appeal.

...I’m waiting for inspiration to arrive, so I can write a Blog, sign up for that Pilates class, invite my new neighbour over for a meal, shed weight or decorate the bathroom.

...I’m waiting for a perfect time-slot to appear, so I can read that article and watch that TED talk that I know will benefit me.

...I’m waiting, hoping that something will get me going, that some outside force will get my arse in gear. I’m waiting for the magical moment that will galvanise me into acting…waiting!

…I’m waiting too for new, life-giving thoughts to arrive in my head, for fresh, spine-tingling inspiration and I’m waiting for a shed more compassion and kindness to blossom in my life.

As I write these words, I glance back over my shoulder at the long-body of my life, with a slightly queasy feeling, as I vaguely calculate the amount of ‘waiting' that I’ve done over the years.

‘Waiting’ becomes the norm if I have no pressing sense of urgency to discover where I’m headed, or have no passionate purpose for my one beautiful life.

I was moved by a recent TED talk by the Kenyan activist Boniface Mwangi. His talk, entitled, 

‘The Day I Stood Up Alone?’, picks open his epiphany moment, when he realises why he’s on plant earth - why he’s here. His passion and sense of deep mission & purpose is palpable and infectious.

https://www.ted.com/talks/boniface_mwangi_boniface_mwangi_the_day_i_stood_up_alone?language=en

If we’re honest, life has a way of reducing us to fretting over the mundane and pulling us into the petty and the trivial – although it never seems like it at the time.

I can easily loose my peace over my scratched kitchen tiles, the breaking of my favourite teapot, or a parking ticket (that gets me seriously hot under the collar). I loose my peace over the trivial and give away my equilibrium too easily.

Why? 

The honest truth is that these things have come to matter too much, but when I stop clinging to them, suddenly I feel free and I’m able to get on with the things that matter and that give me joy.

When I’m obsessing over the bloody parking ticket, that I unjustly found slapped to my windscreen, or the gouges in the kitchen floor that my tenants left behind, my mind becomes dull and my heart heavy and laboured.

And, I sense myself slowing down and losing energy as I get trapped on the hamster-wheel of negative emotions.

I end up WAITING for my rage to subside, WAITING for someone else to apologize, WAITING for the rain to stop, for jealousy to ebb away and for my peace somehow to return automatically.

WAITING = lost time.

What we really need is ACTION.

It’s when I get up and get stuck into the mess and misery, the complex and the challenging stuff of life…and when I write that letter, get myself to the Pilates class and feed my own hungry soul with TED talks and meditation, that I find my purpose and discover why I’m here.

Shalom

-JB

   

The Deep

The Wild Coast of the Transkei, South Africa

I’m looking out over a vast ocean that sprawl’s effortlessly from the southern tip of Africa and careers on forever, until presumably it bumps into icebergs in a far off world. Its magical pulsing bewitches me; an eternity of water with bolshie waves that dash themselves deafeningly upon shore’s strewn with dying shells. 

In my consciousness thoughts bob untethered and unformed.

There is something deeply challenging and disarming about being close to the sea – as if it won’t let you go or off the hook. I feel it calling me into an easy vulnerability.

Being this close to an un-fathomable, un-tameable, awesome mass of ocean has a strange affect on me. It appears to dare me to a bigger self…I wonder suddenly what it’s like to sail the oceans for months or live permanently in sight and sound of the honest sea.

The past 5 months in South Africa have brought me a plethora of unexpected experiences and growth opportunities. Like the sea it’s never been calm…always moving and changing.

Together, Trevor & I have chartered some crazy rapids and wondered at times how we got so close to rocks without knowing it.

Wendy and her ‘adopted’ boys, with Trevor & Lennox

I remember standing in a soggy shack with Wendy from Mbekweni and listened to her story of deprivation & struggle and thought my heart would actually break. Hearing about the 9 abandoned children she had adopted and how she feeds 67 children every evening (she had no electricity, running water or sanitation). They come to her because there is no food at ‘home’, only violence and abuse. And her neighbours even steal the meagre possessions she has and how she tried to stand up against the brutality and sexual abuse of the gangs, even when her own life was threatened: a story of raw and gritty courage.

Filming for the LEAD NOW children’s Leadership programme

And there were wild, ecstatically, joyful moments for us, when we heard stories of transformation and change in the lives of people who took our training and did something with it. 

People who literally turned their lives around by taking up their own pen, for the first time, and started to write a story of hope and liberation for themselves. People, who then got their families back together, pulled their communities together and are now writing a story of prosperity (Prosperity = Towards Hope)

What is surfacing and re-surfacing while I write and think about the sea is this…

The sun arriving from India

"We’ve got to stop trying to do life alone…TOGETHER we can achieve great things, but not alone. We’ll do SO MUCH MORE TOGETHER…so let’s get together, and use our awesome talents for good. Let’s connect and then CONNECT BETTER and fight and struggle TOGETHER and… when the going gets tough, let’s pull more people into the story and make the battle for a more just world winnable”

The sun leaving....

A few months ago we heard a talk by the extreme sportsman and social activist David Grier (he ran the Great Wall of China and the whole length of India…yes, from top to bottom). 

In his punchy and unforgettable talk he said, ‘we need to challenge ourselves by asking’:

1 1. Do I have the ability to CHANGE & ADAPT? “Embrace change…it’s the only way”

2 2. Can I improve my ATTITUDE? “Get the right dam attitude – wake up every day with a hopeful attitude – with the right attitude you can achieve almost anything”

3 3. Am I trying to go it alone?  – You can’t do life alone. “The journey is greater than the individual”

And that last point is my message.

At the end David told us a story of a wise old man he met in India who looked him in the eye and asked him, “Are you in a negative space…? Remember, all you need is already in you to complete your journey well…. you have all that you need, but you need the right people around you. 

Don’t go it alone”

Shalom

- JB

...and we all get to be a part of this amazing world!!!

A View from the Top

When we arrived in South Africa with our suitcases at the end of last September, we started in Grabouw – following riots, rampant HIV, TB and youth unemployment. Grabouw was challenging, striking and cold, high up in the mountains. But we let our heart get attached to Grabouw.

We then headed to the other side of the Cape and found ourselves in Paarl. A town that spreads down the valley supporting much agricultural activity. Since early October we have lifted up our heads to Paarl Mountain in quiet awe.  This mountain is made of granite and is, we are told, the second largest rock of its kind after Ayers Rock in Australia. 

We have noticed it, looked at it, studied it, tried to draw it. It was months before we began to find a way to climb it. Eventually in early April we found a route and, then found a circuit that took us half way up the mountain and down again. It was a challenging uphill climb of very steep gradients that had our heart pumping hard. We got used to our lovely circuit. It became our friend. It became comfortable, manageable. Early one particular morning we tried to hit up the higher trail, but after a while we turned back, a little defeated by the challenge of it. 

But last week we did it. We went to the very top and were breathless not just with the climb but also with the views and the perspectives. We could see the whole of Paarl Valley, the mountains that surround on every side and a clear view as far as Table Mountain in Cape Town. The Paarl Mountain that has eyed us up every day and kept us in our place, was finally put in its place, at least in our mind. We now look up and wink at it each day. “We did you”

Paarl mts

 Potential is a word I love. 

In every programme we run we talk about potential. Even last Saturday morning in a gangster controlled, 80% drug abuse rate amongst youth kind of a community, we talked to the youth about potential. Human potential is the great unexplored ocean. There is so much more to each of us than we even begin to realise. 

The thing I also realised again this week is that it doesn’t matter how much potential a person has, it’s still a mountain climb to liberate that potential.  I can look at my potential but stay down in comfortable valley, I can venture up a few paths on the lower slopes and feel good about it, I can even make a big climb into my potential, go further than I’d imagined but then for fear or whatever reason, I can make my new ‘stretch zone’ in to the new ‘comfort zone’.  

Fulfilling my potential is always going to be a mountain climb. Stretching and risking and some hard walking to find the rewarding vistas.

And I’m still left wondering what makes a person decide to climb their mountain?  Do enjoy with me Erwin McManus TED talk on how everyone is an artist and we are all works of art. 

‪https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsJBGxmFQkU …

It’s end of term here. As I sit here in this beautiful Western Cape morning in the middle of what South Africans call winter, but we call either ‘hot summer’ or ‘mild autumn’ I am reflecting on the fact that  we are entering our final week of work here. On Saturday we head up the Wild Coast for 2 weeks holidays before returning to the UK, but by Friday this week our work is completed. When I say ‘complete’ of course I’m lying. The work is nowhere near complete. We’ve barely started. But this chapter for Jane & I is complete.

Two years ago about this month, after running a pivotal Leadership for Hope event for 400 people in Nairobi we were confronted by the reality that the only way we could ever truly grow this work to its potential was to come and live in Africa in order to establish working ‘hubs’ for both East and South Africa. So for the past two years we were either planning or actually living in Kenya and South Africa, Nairobi and the Western Cape. – roughly half the time in each.  Its been a mountain climb with extraordinary views, totally challenging ascents and lots of courage and risks along the way.  

As we left a restaurant this lunchtime a young lady who I didn’t recognize behind the bar, held up her pen so I  could see it and called out, “I’ve still got my pen”.  She must have been on one of our training programmes. So we stopped and asked her about the impact of the training on her life. 

In some small way we leave knowing that we have helped release a little of the potential of a few thousand people and set up a team here that will go on and reach many more thousands.

 - TW