Despite the backdrop of our pain, South Africa achieves.
Today’s introduction is longer than normal. It’s December, it feels right to reflect a little.
Next week will be our last email for the year. I will resume our conversation on 10 January 2021.
This week I shared a photograph of many of the books that I’ve read throughout the year. I hope you find it useful and interesting.
My nerd-self was elated to receive responses from some of the authors who’ve inspired me.
This e-mail started as an experiment sent to a handful of friends. The circle has grown to a few hundred friends. I no longer know everyone personally, and that makes the connection even more gratifying in some way.
I am thankful for the depth at which you engage in the conversation, for the times that you’ve shared something with me, for the times when you’ve shared this e-mail with someone you care about. My week is made when I hear how something I’ve said or included here has made a difference to one of your lives. Thank you.
For the past while I have been reading Charles Van Onselen’s The Night Trains. If you read this e-mail regularly, you know that I believe that we take the most effective action when we understand the place from where we act. To overcome our histories, personal or societal, we need to understand our past.
Van Onselen’s book is a searing account of the rail-lines and economic system that brought migrant labourers from southern Mozambique to the Witwatersrand goldfields.
As I read it, it took me down a path of reading and reflecting on what is construed as normal. My thoughts were given futher impetus by an Aspen Action Forum event “The Fierce Urgency of Now: Rethinking the Social Contract” that I participated in on Friday afternoon. And so today’s mail was meant to engage with those questions, “What is normal, and what do we want normal to be?”
It then dawned on me that there are four weeks to the end of THIS YEAR, and I skidded to a halt.
Such existential questions felt best left for January, not piled on to the back end of a year that has left most of us staggering.
And so, I found myself unsure what to say to you. As the week unfolded it felt like a touch of celebration may be in order.
Despite the backdrop of our pain, South Africa achieves. In the just the last month, these have caught my attention.
The iconic Tate Modern launched its first major showing of Zanele Muholi’s work. This NYT article by another South African, Pumla Gqola, will give you an excellent sense of Muholi’s global stature. Prof Abdon Atangana, from the University of the Free State’s Institute for Groundwater Studies, was included on a list of the top 1% of scientists in the world. Mark Gevisser’s book The Pink Line was listed by Time Magazine in its 100 Must Read Books of 2020. Simphiwe Ndzube’s work was included in a new acquisition show at the prestigious Rubell Museum. And, Fortune Magazine named Elon Musk as their 2020 Business Person of the Year, saying “he’s controversial but undeniably transformative.”
Despite the staggering pain reflected in van Onselen’s work, it is good to see South African excellence impacting on the global stage.
It reminded me of this poem by Buddhist nun Tissa, in which she says, “If you really want to be free, make every thought a thought of freedom.”
/ STRATEGY
Tissa’s poem took me to Cleo Wade. She took to the TED stage in 2017 to deliver her address, Want to Change the World? Start by being brave enough to care.
I am struck by the power in the simplicity of her message.
The power rests not in the language she uses, or the rhythms of her address, it rests in her reminding us that we all have the power to act in some way, and that in acting we create new possibilities for ourselves and others.
These are two of my favourite extracts.
“The world will say to you, ‘Be a better person.’ Do not be afraid to say, ‘Yes.’ Start by being a better listener. Start by being better at walking down the street. See people. Say, “Hello.” Ask how they are doing and listen to what they say.”
Indeed, there is no greater gift than listening to someone.
Listening is a powerful way of making people feel seen.
“The world will say to you, ‘We need peace.’ Find your peace within, hold it sacred, bring it with you everywhere you go. Peace cannot be shared or created with others if we cannot first generate it within.”
There is a wisdom here. Whatever you want to give to the world, the most powerful way of doing so is to ensure that you embody it.
/ SELF
As the end of the year approaches, inevitably the impulse arises to both reflect and to plan.
As you start to experience that – for you will – you might want to re-read Be Gentle and Be Ambitious. It was one of the most popular mails of the year and is appropriate for this time.
Brendan McNulty shared this great article on How To Conduct An Annual Life Review with me.
I won’t say anything more about it other than I will be doing it. It is an excellent process. I look forward to speaking with you about our experiences of it.
/ SOUL
Last week, I watched in awe as master ceramicist Andile Dyalvane took his new solo show iThongo to his ancestral village of Ngobozana in the Easter Cape.
The show will premiere at the Southern Guild Gallery in Cape Town and then, later in 2021, travel to New York.
The work itself is exquisite, but I loved the connections that Dyalvane has woven through his purpose-filled action.
His action has connected back through time to those who shaped his lineage, who in turn shaped him who shapes the clay.
His action has strung chords that now connect New York, Cape Town and Ngobozana. The consequences of his actions will ripple into the future creating possibilities that none can predict.
In his actions, he took me back to Cleo Wade who said,
“We spend so much time thinking we don’t have the power to change the world. We forget that the power to change someone’s life is always in our hands. Change-making does not belong to one group of people; it belongs to all of us. You don’t have to wait on anyone to tell you that you are in this. Begin. Start by doing what you can with what you’ve got, where you are and in your own way.”
Shew, I think I’ve managed to give you a coherent message today. I wasn’t sure that I would manage it.
We’re off to immerse ourselves in Chef Charné Sampson’s spice journey at recently re-opened Epice in Franschhoek.
At only 25, she is heading the kitchen at one of South Africa’s most exciting new restaurants and, like Dyalvane, is integrating her history into her craft.
I hope you have a wonderful week. I will see you for one last time next week.
Karl
(This letter was first published on 6 December 2020)