Friday, 21 April 2006

Are you a visionary or a manager, or both?

A visionary is someone who has unusually acute foresight and imagination. A manager is someone that controls, directs and organizes. Are you a visionary or manager, or both? I would have to say that I am more of a manager than a visionary, in both my professional and personal lives.

I fell upon a succint comparison between visionary and manager on Rockadencia's blog:

A LEADER
Motivates
Visionary
Believes in intuition
Seeks opportunities
Why? Why not?
Experiments
Takes risks
Believes in dreams

A MANAGER
Administers
Analytical
Believes in logic
Seeks strategies
How? With what?
Plans
Calculates risks
Believes in facts

Friday, 14 April 2006

Inquisitive Mind

I’m a rather inquisitive individual and one issue that particularly intrigues me is “war”. Why do go to war? Why do we kill each other? I am not naïve and know that war is sometimes inevitable to protect ourselves from those seeking our demise but some of the “reasons” we often give for going to war seem petty, egotistical and egocentric.

Maybe we weren’t meant to be some many on our dear planet? Is overpopulation the reason we are chomping at each other? Is it human nature like Darwin said, “In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment”? Where do we draw the line?

Sure we should help each other out but at what point does helping others harm us? Take Africa for example. For many years now, Western countries have felt guilty for the damage it did to Africa and its people. Should we continue to assist them? My belief as the expression goes “Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime”. Educating ourselves is the only means to combat poverty, disease, corrupt governments and so on.

Violence is more and more prevalent amongst children. Is this phenomenon due to the harsh realty of life, children growing up too fast? The multi-media – TV, movies, games – are they the cause of a numb generation of individualists?

Some are convinced that men are more belligerent than women; can we say for a fact that this is so? History tells us otherwise. We shall see now that women are much more present in society and even in power.

So many questions left unanswered. As long as I ask “why?”, I know I am alive and well!

Can you tell me: Why?

Thursday, 13 April 2006

Rumi

Is it possible to fall in love with somebody's mind/soul without ever physically meeting them? To be so far away and feel so close?

Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other'.


Jalaluddin Rumi 13th Century Sufi Poet

Monday, 10 April 2006

Therapeutic writing

I discovered the therapeutic affects of writing a few years back when I was having a terribly disturbing recurring dream about childhood traumas. The moment I finished writing down the story the “demons” were exorcised. Since then, when my heart is aching I getta scribblin’ or poundin’ on my keyboard.

Here is the story I wrote down in my most desperate hour (so far):

Love, Hate and the Memory of my Daddy

Please feel free to share your thoughts about it with me.