Horizons Journal – Going Back to the Future

Finally, the Sahara. We’ve been roughed up a bit over the steaming jungles of the equator, but now the towering clouds have disappeared and 10 kilometers below us, a giant sandbox slowly passes by.

I can’t help but think how enormously big this continent of Africa is. We had taken off at the southern tip of it in Cape Town early in the morning for a non-stop flight that would take us to Germany almost 12 hours later.

All our friends think that it takes a lot of courage to uproot our lives of almost 23 years in South Africa and return to Europe. Maybe that’s true, but we are so absolutely sure that this is what we want to do : go back to our own culture.

We’re excited, looking forward to the future, not scared – just creating the environment we want for ourselves. Leaving our comfort zone, yes. We are happy to have that freedom, it’s no big deal really, we’ve done it before; but real courage is something else, and we found a lot of it in Africa.

I’ll never forget our first Christmas office party in Johannesburg, back in 1984 : just the five of us with spouses, but one of us was black – Peter, our driver. We struggled to find a restaurant that would serve black people in those Apartheid years and it took a lot of persistence to succeed; not a nice memory.

We considered leaving the country only once, in 1987 when sanctions had isolated South Africa really badly and we had no hope that the situation would improve. But the job in Australia didn’t work out and we made some other changes instead.

That’s all different now, of course. The dramatic years of transition to democracy were interesting, to say the least – in hindsight I realize how easily things could have ended tragically. A lot of friends had bought one-way tickets just in case when the first democratic elections were held in 1994, on my birthday : 27 April.

Today, we are on a one-way ticket. Still desert sand down there, the picture-book-dunes-variety we always see on the Discovery Channel now. Then, abruptly, the incredibly blue Mediterranean at the coast of Algeria in the late afternoon sun. Some white clouds, Europe is almost in sight.

We look at each other and smile : this is an exciting adventure for me and my wife and we can’t wait to land in about two hours. The Cote d’Azure in the south of France now, then the snow-capped mountains of the Alps. This is familiar; we have been homesick – more than we realize, judging by all the joy we feel.

We’re so lucky : we stayed with good friends in Cape Town until they took us to the airport, and good friends will pick us up in Germany – everyone we know offered unconditional hospitality and helped with all they’ve got when we sold our house and dismantled most of our infrastructure in South Africa; this means a lot to us, and we are very grateful. Thanks to all of you!

Big Hallos at the airport when we arrive – genuine friendship cannot hide. But it’s cold when we haul our luggage to the cars, and dark : a reminder that we’ve travelled from summer straight into winter. No problem, a good Schnaps will warm us up again later.

That’s all I wanted when I was younger : live in a world where it was warm and sunny, experience different cultures on an incredibly interesting planet. South Africa was good for us, this vibrant rainbow nation has so much to offer; we’ll be back to visit, stay in touch a lot, but we’ll live in Europe now.

I’ll be back with more soon : Berend

Horizons Journal – Taking Charge of Our Lives : Leaving South Africa

We are moving. No kidding. After almost 23 years of being expatriates in South Africa, particularly enjoying the last 10 here at the beautiful Cape of Good Hope, my wife and I are relocating to Europe. We are homesick – if you have ever been away from home for any extended period of time, I am sure you know what that feels like.

True to our belief that we can create any type of life we want, we are taking charge and doing it. We’ll miss a lot of people and things in this country, but when one door closes, another opens and we know that there are even better things waiting for us.

How often have we looked out over False Bay from our house in Simon’s Town in the morning ? With a cup of tea in our hands, we marvel at the sunrise over the Hottentot Holland Mountains 40 kilometers across the sea to the east almost every day.

I never started counting. It wasn’t important because we were enjoying the moment, and we knew there would be many mornings like this.

Sometimes in season, there are whales or dolphins to watch, but most of the time it is just the magnificent sunrise at the southern tip of Africa. And some birds chirping in our Fynbos garden, unless the guinea-fowl kick up a racket.

Apart from that – peace and quiet. The comfortable stillness that only nature provides. The content impression that this is how everything is meant to be.

These lines are from the introduction to my eBook ‘Moving Horizons’ and they still ring very true. But we have now dissolved our household, given most of our furniture to friends who need them more than we do, sold the cars, parted with our two cats yesterday – and are ready to move.

On Monday everything will be packed and we’re taking a flight the following Monday. We’ll be back regularly, for holidays and I have work here, but we are moving our base back to Europe – modern technology enables me to work from anywhere in the world, as long as I have a telephone and an Internet connection.

BLUE CRANE and COMPASS will carry on as usual, of course – but for the next few weeks I expect to spend less time with the laptop so I might not be able to write as many articles as usual.

What I WILL do, though is keep an online HORIZONS JOURNAL with shorter messages here at the COMPASS blog to trail my next leap in personal growth in Europe – if you want to be kept informed, please subscribe to the COMPASS RSS feed here or get it delivered by eMail.

I found an excellent article on taking charge of your life this week, by the way : ‘What It Means to Wake Up and Take Charge of Your Life’ by Matt Inglot. Really very interesting, here is a short clip :

‘I was exposed there to a strange freedom that was offered nowhere else. I read some extremely positive literature from people that seemed … happy. This was a world that my programming books had never exposed me to. Never before had I seriously read about ideas like goals, personal development, financial planning, and the idea that becoming truly successfully was something other than luck or born talent.’

What else is new? Steve Pavlina’s forum on personal growth is up and running! It is very exciting and growing rapidly, with anything you can imagine being discussed – I am contributing actively (e.g. please see the thread for South Africa) and if there is one thing you don’t want to miss, it is this forum. Do yourself a favour and register there, it works well and is hugely informative.

OK, here I go – you’ll hear from me soon if you put your eMail address in the box, don’t forget – best do it now.

Until next time, all the best from : Berend

This Transition – Is It a Revolution?

Have you ever been feeling out of place occasionally? Sure you have, me too – I had a pretty good idea why, but now I can put a finger on it.

Let me point the way to two very powerful contributions from Steve and Erin Pavlina again today which will help you clarify some mysterious sentiments you may have had about what’s happening in your life. Then I’ll close with a bit of humour.

Steve writes about “The Consciousness Revolution” and feels that something is happening to a lot of people behind the scenes.

“One day you’re tooling along, working your normal job, living your normal life, and everything seems OK. But something happens that triggers a sudden expansion of your awareness, and for that brief moment of perfect clarity, you know what it’s like to be fully awake. You’re struck by the terrifying realization that your life has gotten way off course, and that you’re really meant to be doing something entirely different.”

This is what happened to me some time ago and from the comments to Steve’s blog post I can tell that it is far more common than I thought. I urge you to read the whole article – you won’t regret it, a real mind-opener.

Just a few days earlier, Steve published his podcast #17 “Placing Your Order With the Universe” in which his wife Erin offers a parable that helped her understand the Law of Attraction and the intention-manifestation model of reality. It’s very well done, listen in!

At just over nine minutes, it’s short and you’ll enjoy it if you’ve been looking for a simpler way to understand the Law of Attraction. Erin compares getting what you want from life with ordering a meal at a fast-food outlet, and what happens when you do it the wrong way.

Finally, before we get too serious here, I picked up some quotes looking at the lighter side of life from John and Patrice Robson’s eNewsletter ‘The Inner Journey’ – you can subscribe directly at Higher Awareness :

• “Inside every older person is a younger person, wondering what the hell happened.”
  (Cora Harvey Armstrong)
• “The hardest years in life are those between 10 and 70.”
  (Helen Hayes at 73)
• “Old age ain’t no place for sissies.”
  (Bette Davis)
• “Thirty-five is when you finally get your head together and your body starts falling apart.”
  (Caryn Leschen)
• “If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.”
  (Frank A. Clark)
• “I’m looking forward to looking back on all this.”
  (Sandra Knell)

Until next time, all the best from : Berend