September Muse Letter
There is a war going on – a war for your heart and your soul, for mine. A bit melodramatic?
I wake up in the morning with an unreasonable fear lodged in my chest. What if I lose? Lose what, I ask myself?
- The battle against boredom and overwork.
- The fight to stay fit and healthy when all I want is another doughnut and a good long sit in the sun.
- The struggle against loneliness, as I long to be with my family but despise them for crowding my headspace.
- The strife I feel when trying to get friends to come over – do I even have friends? And then the fear that they won’t enjoy it here; so why bother?
- The war against entropy, in my money matters, my house, my garden, my paperwork, when at the same time I would rather turn a blind eye and read another novel.
I am not one of those people caught up in the rat race: I refuse! I have been there and bought into all its frenzy, and I didn’t get the big house and the two cars, the housekeeper and the swimming pool.
In fact, my rat race brought my family and me to the brink of bankruptcy as we ploughed all our resources into ‘making it’ and failed.
Now that both my husband and I have jobs in education – with a good enough income to survive, but not to get rich, or even get ahead – we are much happier and have much more time for our kids, each other, the garden, the house, the friends, and the paperwork.
BUT…
- We long for action.
- We yearn for significance.
- We pine for the opportunity to express our innermost selves.
- We wish with all our hearts that someone else would wash the dishes, do the garden, organise our papers.
We now have the time, but no motivation to do all the things on the list. So, and I will only speak for myself here, I sit around wishing for action, for someone to come visit, for some external impetus to get me off my butt to go, go, go! Of course the moment the impetus comes I resent it for stealing my peace and dictating my responses. When is sitting in the sun ‘being mindful’ mad when is it laziness? When is being present with my children healthy and when is it an excuse not to engage with something else?
How much more divided can I get?
This is the war that is destroying my heart and soul.
Inside the race, I feel controlled, diminished and taken advantage of. Outside it I feel useless, insignificant and without value.
Where is the third side of this coin?
That is the essence of my quest through war-torn territories: the search for the third side of the coin – not just in this current struggle, but in all struggles that seem so two dimensional, so binary, so colourless:
Does this mean we should take up more colourful and complex struggles like the one between the students and the government with the Universities and the parents and the whole of South Africa’s history in between? The same one that colours all organisational and leadership interactions, whether we know it or not: the struggle between those who have and who can and those who have not and can’t – along with all the colours of our rainbow nation getting involved in the mess?
I think so.
This is the heart of the SNE lens: between the strategic plan and embodied reality, you find the narrative, the story, which can integrate opposites, transform ambiguities, dance with contradictions. Between the head that plans and the hands that act, lies this treacherous landscape of the heart, the landscape of stories. Stories long to heal the broken heart. They yearn to bridge the chasms between warring opposites and mend the rifts between binary dichotomies.
Join me on this quest to mend broken hearts – especially those broken by the race for more money, opportunity and power.
Meet me at the next Pig Catching session to help process the grief of your broken heart.
Date: 7 OCt 2016
Time: 7am for 7:15 to 10am Pig Catching
10:30-12:30 Research conversation or maybe we simply continue with the session. NOTE: We will start at 7:15 sharp to make the most of our time.
Facilitator: Petro Janse van Vuuren
Cost: R250
Venue: 305 Long Ave Ferndale
Dress: Comfortable clothes you can stretch and move in
Refreshments: Coffee, tea, muffins and fruit on arrival.
RSVP: by Wed 5 Oct.
Other Pig Catching dates this year:
9 Dec
Please diarise!
Join our group on Facebook<http://playingmantis.us10.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=bd2144f97d4741293f68d899e&id=5904ae36ee&e=ef28aa4955>:
Bring your curiosity, your open minds and your questions.
About Pig Catching:
Pig catching is what coaches and facilitators do when we chase the moment of insight that brings shift and transformation in our clients.
Please note: No pigs get harmed, our pigs are purely metaphorical and they have wings.