With less than one term left of my undergraduate degree and having to look ahead and figure out the next few steps of life, I have come across a few challenges or obstacles which needed to be figured out. In trying to figure them out, I have tried to look back at my life and see when I had to overcome similar challenges and have actually noticed a pattern.

When I stared primary school, I did not have a choice in where I wanted to go, I was told I am going to the local school. At the age of 13 and having to choose where I wanted to attend secondary school, I told my parents where I would like to go, pleaded my case and they decided if that was good decision, I had slightly more decision making power but it was not completely autonomous. 5 years later, I now had to choose if I was going to study, work, take a gap year……………etc. At this point, I had a fairly autonomous decision but was still somewhat influenced by my parents. Having made a few decisions and having them change a few times, I eventually landed up back at university studying something that I felt was good for me. 3 years into my Industrial Psychology degree, I now find myself needing to make a decision that is completely autonomous; it is all me that is going to have to make this one. What a daunting task.

Is this decision I am about to make going to be the right one? How will it impact my future? What if I make the wrong decision? So many questions and so few obvious answers; it’s no wonder why the last few months have been so challenging….a challenge that has honestly been quite tiring but a challenge that I seem to coming to grips with. “I know that I am the one who has to make these decisions and I am the one who will have to live with the decisions that I am going to make, but I also know that the decisions will all become clearer in due course. Stepping up to the challenge is rather intimidating but is a challenge that I cannot wait to make because I know that whatever the decision is, I will be moving on up.”

There are countless examples of where the saying ”life is not what it seems” stands true. The more of these examples that I encounter the clearer this becomes. Let me share one of these with you. In a book that I read a while back the author was telling of a time when he was on the train heading home after a long and stressful day at work. Like normal, he was reading his newspaper while sitting in the crowed train, noise was not normally something that bothered him but on this particular day there were two young children running around playing games and causing havoc with other passengers while the father was just sitting there with his eyes closed and head against the window oblivious to the fact his children were making the commute very unpleasant for the rest of the people on the train. The commuter ignored it for a while but eventually after the children had bumped into him again, he turned to the father and said something in the line of “what is wrong with you and your children, don’t they know how to behave”. The father turned to him and gently said “I’m sorry and I apologize for my children, I guess they don’t know how to behave on the way home from a hospital after having their mother pass away”. The commuter was very embarrassed.

In this example, it is clear that the commuter had a perception about the behaviour of the children and was left feeling foolish when he realized that the situation was far different from what it seemed. In saying that life is not what it seems, then what is it? This is a question that I have been posing myself a lot lately. I have actually reflected with some depth to find an answer but keep returning to the most obvious answer. “Life is what you make it”. Putting this to trial with the story of the commuter, it appears to fit. Although he bad a stressful day, he had a choice whether or not to act the way he did; he allowed the reality his life to be one where he acted out of his ordinary. It can be argued that it was not his fault that he had a stressful day but the fact remains that he made his life, even for just a short while, one where he got upset and did not consider other possibilities. You can choose how to deal with situations. Circumstances may be unfavorable but in the end you choose how to deal with it and in doing so you make the reality of your life. This idea goes both ways. You may not have control over your situation but you have control over how you react to it. Do not react to what your reality “seems”, rather choose to make it what you want it to be.

A question that seems to be floating in the minds of business people today is “how do we become more profitable?” This is a very valid question for people who live and function in the world of business, or who are involved in any form of organisation that needs to be profitable in order to keep doing what it set out to do.

Many knowledgeable people would be able to provide many different answers to a question like this, none of which should be taken light heartedly as any solution to a question that is so crucial is of much value. I query whether this is the right question to be asking though, is it really profit that needs to be focused on or should the question be more along the lines of “what can we do that will make our organisations better?” In my opinion it is a one word answer – PEOPLE.

People are what keep organisations alive. Even in this age of technology that we find ourselves in today, people cannot be replaced. People are the customers, consumers, and driving force behind every organisation. Think of any organisation, both big and small, which is functioning today and remove the ‘people’ aspect of it, you will be left with an empty entity. To illustrate this I could reflect on my recent experience where I spent an American summer (my winter) in Washington DC where I had the opportunity to intern in perhaps one of the biggest and most influential organisations of the world, The World Bank. The World Bank has a number of particulars to it (if I had to mention them all we would be here all day) but more specifically it has a number of obvious particulars to it namely the 15000 staff worldwide, the millions of people who benefit from what the World Bank does and the billions of Dollars that people receive from the World Bank. If one was to remove the ‘people’ aspect from this organisation what would you have? Remove the 15000 staff members of the World Bank, there is no structure; remove the millions of people who receive aid from the World Bank and then there is nothing for the staff to work for and finally; remove the billions of Dollars that is created by people for people and there is no point of having an organisation like the World Bank.

To build an organisation around profit, you are playing a naive game. You have to build organisations around people. The better the people of the organisation, the better the customers for the organisation and in turn, the better the profits of the organisation. Putting profits ahead of people as a focus of any organisation is like putting the carriage in front of the horse, although the horse can push the carriage, it will be a much slower and painful process.

I came across this saying about 5 years ago and was intrigued about its meaning but didn’t ever seem to gain an understanding of what it meant. A few days ago I heard someone mention this saying which awakened my intrigue again. The insert below is nowhere close to the extent to which I want to understand this powerful quote by Joseph Campbell but think it’s a great start. Here is a short history of the Quote. Joseph Campbell was perhaps the world’s foremost scholar of Mythology. No one was more familiar with the deeper meaning of “Flow your Bliss” than him…he studied many cultures with different myths pointing toward an experience of intrinsic bliss. Bliss is an intuitive feeling and can be easily ignored by our rational mind as it is preoccupied with the success of a personal self… However when we put aside our awareness of the rational mind and explore the feelings of our intuitive mind we may discover we have a special blissful feeling wanting to be expressed… It is the expression of these feelings that can give us intrinsic meaning to our life not available through the success of a personal self… During a blissful experience we are free from the burdensome expectations and awareness of time characteristic of the rational mind…

When we are young and still narrow minded, it seems that we take things for granted and very literal. When I was younger, the word ‘home’ for me meant a physical brick building where my bed was, where my family also lived and a place that could keep me safe from “bad” things. I loved going ‘home’ after a long day at school; I loved it when my friends would come to my ‘home’ on the weekends and I especially loved my ‘home’ because my neighbors and I could play cricket and rugby in the back garden.

As I grew older and gained a better perspective of life and the real meaning if things I learned that which I described above was my house and came to understand that home is the place or area where I live. At this stage in my life, my home was Cape Town. As a traveled more with my cycling, I seemed to experience the same feelings as before when it came to my home. It was still a place that I loved going to after a trip to Johannesburg or Australia for example, it was still a placed that I loved because it is where my family was and it was still a place that I loved because it was a place where I could socialize with my friends and just be me.

Since landing in the USA, I have at times felt the emotion of loss or confusion and it always seem to come back to the feeling of me missing home. With this idea, I have revisited this idea of home and seem to be going back and forth about the meaning and my understanding of what home is. Missing ‘home’ and having asked myself certain question, I come to a new perspective of what home is. For me ‘home’ is not a place or area where I stay, it is not a location that plays host to all my favorite people and things…. Home for me is not a location at all, rather it is a destination that I can embrace while having the love and support of others as well as loving and supporting those around me. It is a destination that hosts everything important, and if those important things are a specific location, specific people or a specific challenge, enjoying it and feeling a sense of contentment is “home”.

While reading one of my philosophy books a few weeks back I came across a thinker who stated that “something is only good if it is used for the purpose that it was designed for and if it does so well?” This statement took my focus off the book and steered me in the direction of personal and somewhat critical reflection my life’s journey. Before I could reflect however, I had to figure out a practical example that would help me understand this statement. Having a piece of paper next to me at the time, I asked “what is the purpose of this piece of paper?” and the obvious answer was - to write on. It is a good piece of paper because I can write on it. Then I asked myself, “is it therefore bad piece of paper if I fold this paper into the design of a jet and see how far it will fly?” to which I answered no – even though I am not writing on it, there will be some entertainment in doing so which would bring good into my life (even for only a few minutes) as I would experience brief joy of making the jet fly.

Having an idea that the above statement is questionable, I applied the statement to my life and asked “is my life only good if it is used for the purpose for which it was designed?” which left me with more questions than answers.

· Who decides what the purpose of my life is?

· How do I, or will I ever know if that purpose is achieved?

· Are all human purposes the same, and how is my purpose different from the next persons?

As I noticed earlier with the paper example, it will be very difficult to find clear and definite answer to such a complex philosophical question. The questions that we can answer without too much confusion are the more simple and logical ones, and in pursuit of answering the question as to what is the journey of my life, I asked the questions that resulted from my original more complex question.

Who decides what the purpose of my life is? Quite simply - I do! As a free thinking, rational individual, I am the one who needs to say what the purpose of my life is by looking at what drives me forward. Those driving forces cannot come from anyone else but myself…..and taking that further, it is me who needs to ensure that my purpose is fulfilled.

How do I, or will I ever know if that purpose is achieved? Yes (or at least I hope so)! I feel that knowing the purpose, the sense of achieving the purpose will create happiness which will provide a feeling or knowledge that “I have achieved my purpose”. The question as to how long that feeling of achievement will take is entirely dependent on the purpose.

The question of, are all human purposes the same, and how is my purpose different from the next person, is a question that I feel I could possibly conclude with (without providing a final answer as that too is a near impossible task). “Are all human purposes the same?”, for me, NO!.......and “how is my purpose different from the next person”, well that I do not know but figure that is perhaps what the journey of life to be about. We who were given freedom, rationality and an opinion need to find our own individual purposes, hold onto them with much might and ensure that we find happiness in achieving that purpose.

In saying this, the journey of life for me is finding a purpose and working to achieve it. That purpose is up to each of us to find…

One of the first sessions that the SAWIP team attended was at the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation. This dialogue was very informative but left me having a sleepless night as my brain could not stop trying to find the answer to the question “what is active citizenship?” Till today I cannot provide a concrete answer, but I think all my questioning is getting me closer.

Reflecting on the dialogue and pursuing an answer, this is where I am:

What is the definition of active citizenship? To be honest, I do not know.

What are the roles of an active citizen? That too I cannot state with much confidence purely because roles change from day to day all depending on circumstance and relevance to situations. What does seem clear to me however is that active citizens all have common traits; these traits are the foundations as well as the structural pillars to what an active citizen builds their actions on.

Not having a clear definition of active citizenship but knowing that active citizens’ all share common traits, one needs to ask “what are these traits that make active citizens – active citizens?” For me these traits that active citizens share are:

- Responsibility

- Ability to make a choice

- Caring

- Informed about reality

- Know who they are and what they can do to bring about change.

- Understand their importance and what they can do to realize change

- Have a perspective

- Have a common Vision

- Awareness

- Willing to participate

- Willing to make a contribution

- and most importantly, they are the best version of themselves when working with and for others.

Without saying that the following is the answer to the question posed earlier, I think that mentioning all of these traits steers me to a point where I can conclude in saying that an active citizen is someone who steps out of ignorance and makes a conscious decision to bring about change, not just any change, positive change. It also seems critical that active citizens know who they are and know what change they want to influence.

With this reflection, I challenge everyone to ask themselves “who am I?” and “what change am ‘I’ going to influence today?”