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"I could tell you my adventures—beginning from this morning," said Alice a little timidly: "but it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then."
"Explain all that," said the Mock Turtle.
"No, no! the adventures first," said the Gryphon in an impatient tone: "explanations take such a dreadful time."
So Alice began telling them her adventures.
Lewis Carroll – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
INTRODUCTION
Strange that when asked my motivation in my storytelling, I had none. There was no goal other than a story to understand myself better, since if I could not explain myself to myself, how could how could I possibly reflect myself?
It was also meant to capture the historical fabric into which I was born, in which I then travelled in time, and which, to a certain extent, has sculptured me.
Each time I read my story I draw myself to me, it enlivens me and connects me to myself.
I invite you to read my story and find your connection to me and the connection to yourself through me.
"We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the Light that is within us. It is not in some of us; it's in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
Our deepest fear though as Nelson Mandela was quoted as once saying, is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. “It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.”
I was born in South Africa - under the cross - in the metaphor of death and hope all at once, and in locus at the Marymount maternity hospital in Johannesburg, a mission of the Order of Preachers; I am a neonate who at 8 months of her life is struggling with her first breath to enter and remain in the world, at once at pains in distancing herself from struggle, with its incumbent fears and pain, whilst being concurrently drawn to it.
I am a little white Jewish girl, spending most of my free time in the garden, playing and talking to my friend - an old black gardener from Zimbabwe. A peaceful picture with so much happiness, hopes, sorrows, and struggles hidden inside.
I am a woman and a mother, who in her own internalization of struggle is drawn to the vortex of peoples’ struggle and their quest for freedom, with sometimes the need to “take control” when all about her, things seem like they are falling apart, “holding on” when there is a demand for letting go, and sometimes disconnecting herself; yet throughout – walking in the world, with the deep knowledge of being connected and feeling a connection to human and nature, being a student of leadership and followship, their correlation one with the other, and the courage required in being honest with whom we follow and how we lead, and at the base of it all having the resolve to take a mirror to herself, to know herself and the world around her.
I am that woman trying to build a better reality for what was this little girl and her old friend.
MY LOGO
People are not one dimensional. We are multidimensional or better still, all-dimensional. We have the power to realize ourselves in a multitude of ways. Conventional wisdom suffers from the failure to capture this all dimensional essence of what it is to be human. In the conventional theory of business, we have created a one dimensional human being who plays the role of business entrepreneur. He or she is insulated from the rest of life, the religious, emotional, political and social which characterize the social entrepreneur, also boxed in, in many ways emasculated.
As a logo I have chosen the Nguni Horn to reflect this multi-dimensionalism of the self. Nguni cattle are a breed specific to South Africa. Each set of horns is vastly different and unique.
The ancestors of Nguni cattle were brought by the Nguni during their migration to southern Africa. Since then, these animals play an important social and economic role in the development of these societies.
The single biggest factor which has been said to highlight the Nguni is its adaptability to its given environment.
At the heart of my adopting the Nguni cattle logo, is a statement as to our being part of a bigger whole, and the quest in understanding what is this meaning of the greater connect? In what way am I one with it and it with me, our influence on it and it on us. Our connection and separation through fear and love and sometimes through ideology.
It is in a multitude of ways that the Nguni horn allows me to enquire into my dimensionality.
MY TREE
Trees feature in much of my story: as metaphor for rootedness, and periods of uprootedness, for being grounded and then being lost. And then coming home again.
Just how much a part and apart, adaptation or transformation, how do I and the ecosystem of which I consist, shed light on the forest of which I am a part but am apart, what my path towards better awareness, asking questions and not necessarily having the answers fundamental to both the tree and the forest. That is my story.
In wisdom and with more fundamental knowledge I return to chapters of my story and do enquire:
Where was I and why was I there?
Who was I then and who am I now?
What happened there and what is happening now?
What did I learn then and still, do I recall, need reminders? Do I learn?
What did I feel then and what do I feel now?
What did I miss then and what do I miss now?
Am I tapped into those feelings?
What did I not see and what am I still not seeing?
Where the disconnect?
And of course THE WHY.
South Africa - Israel - Lithuania - Africa
Trying it all together... How does my story fit together?
Conflict - all have conflict
Paths for Reconciliation
Assets - people, human achievement, beauty.
Celebration in Excellence.
Heritage - Human, Natural.
Rootedness, Core (does this mean standing for something?)
Hope, simplicity, grace, humility
Subjects of entitlement, which lead us one way - victimhood, separation, conditioning
....................................
guilt, fear, anger, and their place in transformation or otherness?
Outcomes: truth, reconciliation, justice, mercy, forgiveness
My domain, my responsibility, my mission, places of threat and fear
TREE AS
LIFE GIVING FORCE
ROOTS AND BRANCHES
LAND
LAND... Africa | Israel | Lithuania
LEADERSHIP, MISSION, ROLE - Leaving the big things up to G-D
Places of oneness: can there ever be places of otherness? Where he is not me and me is not him.
Threat? No mirroring?
What happens when I come from...
Places where we are stuck.
THE WHOLE
“There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard. There are not more than five primary colours, yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever been seen. There are not more than five cardinal tastes, yet combinations of them yield more flavours than can ever be tasted.”
Sun Tzu, The Art of War
“The patterns are simple, but followed together, they make for a whole that is wiser than the sum of its parts. Go for a walk; cultivate hunches; write everything down, but keep your folders messy; embrace serendipity; make generative mistakes; take on multiple hobbies; frequent coffeehouses and other liquid networks; follow the links; let others build on your ideas; borrow, recycle; reinvent. Build a tangled bank.”
Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation