Roses need manure (s***) to bloom, to be fully formed, to be fragrant and beautiful. So do we!
Struggles (manure!)
Struggles and s*** happen! We all face challenging ‘stuff’ from time to time in the ups and downs of our lives. Critical is not so much what the struggles are. More important is what we do to the struggles, preferably before they do damage to us.
One of my struggles goes way back. To 1986 in South Africa. A tough year tainted by struggles of a business kind. In the advertising business. At the time I was CEO of the global ad agency I had worked with for over 18 years. Happily, welcome encouragement came from a brief encounter with a close friend, Fr Basil van Rensburg, activist cleric. Basil, a white priest with an Afrikaner name working (often against the odds) in a black parish and seen as a leftie upstart pariah by his church hierarchy. Jovial, courageous, charismatic, strong minded with an unquenchable passion for social justice. A man warmly loved by the black parishioners under his wing. A special person who faced struggles far tougher than mine and way beyond the experience of most people.
Basil bravely fought the apartheid regime for many of those years. He gained notoriety, and the fury of the ruling White National government, for throwing himself in front of the bulldozers ordered to raze to the ground an entire inner city Coloured suburb of Cape Town known as District 6 (not District 9 of film fame!). A cruel destructive act in pursuit of ‘ethnic’ cleansing designed to create a ‘purer’, exclusively white city. A ruthless break up of families and businesses. An inhuman eviction of vulnerable, powerless people from the homes they had loved and lived in for centuries, consigning them to a bleak and dusty wasteland far from the city.
Basil’s courageous body blocking act was condemned by the white Right (and some in the church) but admired, even applauded, by the Left (of all colours). Later on, he gained even more profile, prestige and press from going on hunger strikes in protest against the ruthless apartheid laws of racist social engineering. Laws like no marriage between black and white people, jobs and land reserved for whites only, among other objectionable, immoral legislation in that era of white domination and black deprivation.
Acceptance (release!)
Basil and I shared our ‘stuff’ over a bottle of good red on Sunday evenings once a month or so. Always at our comfy home in leafy Newlands nestled against the forested slopes of Table Mountain. For Basil this was a great escape from the pressures of his ministry and a far cry from the sprawling, congested conglomeration of shanties and low cost dwellings, most without electricity and the basic amenities, where Basil tirelessly toiled away.
It was on one of those meaningly Sunday evening discourses that I bared my soul and deep disaffection for the business situation I was experiencing - mainly at the hands of a major shareholder turned toxic adversary. And even prior to this difficult episode, as I told Basil. advertising had become for me a painful hairshirt (“an undergarment made of coarse cloth or animal hair used in some religious traditions to induce some degree of discomfort or pain as a sign of repentance and atonement” - Wikipedia).
As always, Basil listened intently to my tale of commercial woe. Finally, with sincere intent, he sagely said: ‘Rob, bloom where you are planted …. until you are transplanted’.
That simple injunction jolted me. It stopped me in my tracks, opened up my mind and changed my heart. In a flash. It was like this heavy burden being lifted from my shoulders and releasing me from my confused and troubled state. Such a powerful and relieving release, freeing me all of a sudden into an open state of acceptance. Bringing with it a feeling of forgiveness and warming well being. Acceptance was the passport to contentment, to freedom from resentment, self pity and anger.
Transformation (positive change)
From that moment, I was alive again. The dark, persistent waves of negativity had ceased, leaving my mind open for positive possibility. Positive attitude drives positive change. I was unencumbered from the web of worry that was infecting my attitude and approach to work and life. An inspired awakening of the positive that neutralises and rules out the negative. By choice.
The next day, following my ‘blooming’ meeting with Basil, saw a new Rob in heart, mind and action.
In life the simplest of thoughts or words can change our world and experience.
Author Geraldine Brooks recently said something along these lines about the hidden power in our language: words form your thoughts and your thoughts fuel your actions. Meaning that transformation in life can stream from what we say, to what we think which in turn drives what we do and how we are. I discovered that Basil’s words about blooming reshaped my thoughts, feelings, attitudes and ultimately actions for the better - in an instant.
To close on a compelling truth about life and living: you are where you are. No matter what! You cannot export yourself from your problems or experiences. The best thing to do, wherever you are and whatever you face, is bloom where you are planted – until you are transplanted! Against all odds.
