Karabo

The board meeting was about to start. Karabo practiced her smaller circles. A practice she had read in her favourite book. Josh Waitzkin had been a child chess prodigy who had turned into a world champion Martial Artist. He had realised that the thing he was good at was ‘the Art of Learning’.

Karabo read that book every year. She loved it.

It took her just two minutes to get her focus. Her confidence. Her calm. She was incredibly good at her job. She had an ability to read people. To see beyond their words to the engine that drove them. Sawubona is an isiZulu greeting meaning ‘I see you’. Karabo saw people.

She also did her homework. Karabo was passionate about what her company was built to achieve. So passionate, she could suck up the politics that was always required to get things done. The egos that needed to be understood. The conflicts that needed to be resolved.

She took a breathe, and opened the door. The space was hers.

Michael

He was just tired. He had tried. He didn’t feel like trying anymore. It didn’t to seem to make a difference. Life seemed to be living him rather than him living life. Every decision he made seemed to result in a bunch of other things going wrong. So what was the point? 

Michael closed his eyes and sank into the couch. He took a breath. Counted. Tried to make the inhalation and exhalation match in length. Tried to slow it down. Then remembered his friend telling him not try so much. Not to use the word try.

Trying. Tried. Tired.

Job. Kids. Stuff. Michael felt he had never really taken a decision despite angsting over almost every step until his feet had been forced forward.

Emma

She loved red wine. She also loved the sound, and action, of her name. There was a link. The people closest to he called her Em, but the tail of her name also carried satisfaction. The sip as two lips press together, followed by the exhalation as they released… satisfied.

Emma sipped her red wine. She sat thinking about the people she loved. She was home alone. Lived alone. But she was not alone. The taste of each and every one of those people who had said her name lingered. A warm glow.

Those moments when she sat with a glass, and someone she loved, were her favourite. When she was alone, like tonight, she would close her eyes and visit people. Kuier. Her favourite word. An Afrikaans word. Kitchen Dutch. A language that was born in heartache, and yet still symbolised so much beauty for her.

Emma’s mother was Afrikaans. She had died when Emma was young. Emma couldn’t really remember her, but she had written a large pile of journals. In Afrikaans. Em would visit her mother by reading the pages in which she had poured out her heart.

Her mother had been a lover of life, and people. She had grown up in a very confusing time. A time when the love of her parents had been forbidden. Emma’s grandfather had grown up in Swaziland on a farm. Her grandmother lived nearby, but it could have been another planet.

Breaking Possible

As a grand finale to my two months in the US and Canada (Chicago, Seattle, Vancouver, Victoria, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas), I went to a show - Absinthe. Somehow the performers manage to move in ways that don't seem possible. Through concentration, strength and flexibility they do things that bend physics to its limit. I don't believe most of the stuff I see shared on line. Photoshop means things that aren't real can look real. But this stuff was flesh, bone and muscle! 

Mixed Reality and Virtual Reality are soon going to be a part of our lives. We are going to be able to share experiences like we share information. We will be able to experience what it is like to fly a wingsuit from the safety of the ground. We will be able to feel like we are walking around in Paris when we are in Parys. What we won't be able to share is the hours of effort that go into that level of controlling the body. The ability to zone in. To focus.

Different Worlds

Our worlds are already a mixed reality. A mixture of what we believe is possible and what is possible. A mixture of fact and fiction. Sometimes we see things that break our reality. That break possible. Then we can take that spark and go out and make possible. 

You can't share flow. You earn it.

The Brothers Karamazov

'Crime and Punishment' by Fydor Dostoevesky sat on my bookshelf for a couple of years after a friend bought it for me for my 21st. I had never heard of the author and his name was imposing enough to strike the fear of all things undesirable into the heart of the bravest of the brave, even without a title like that. The guy who gave it to me was no intellectual slouch and I didn't feel up to the task with my history of two or three books a year. One day, feeling a little brave, I picked it up and gave it a go. It actually was not difficult at all to read and within 50 pages I was completely absorbed, stealing every possible moment to fit in a couple more pages till it was gone. It is a fantastic book.

Dostoevsky himself thought that 'the Karamazov Brothers' was his best work, and so about 6 months ago, I decided to give it a go. Now into my new stage of racing through books by Gladwell, Godin, Van de Ruit, Haidt and others I thought this would be a good choice to get back into Fiction. Unfortunately... it wasn't quite as smooth sailing as 'Crime and Punishment'. And unlike the other books I was reading, it was written in the same way you speak, so it was a little bit of a struggle. That said, and the fact that it took me 6 months to finish all 750 pages of it aside, I do think it offers something very different to the stuff I have been delving into.

I have been reading about Finance, Economics, Morality, Religion, Happiness, Marketing, Presentations and all sorts of real world things. But, you can't really use the medium of fiction to really delve into emotions that well. You can describe them, but there is nothing quite like a good fictional story to recreate feelings that we experience.

Spud, The Power of One, Pride and Prejudice spring to mind on the (mainly) uplifting side and Disgrace on the downright depressing side.

The 'Tale of Two Cities' and 'David Copperfield' have always been two of my favourites. A friend of mine's mother, who is an author and an English Lecturer, asked the question about whether Dickens would have been as successful as he was now if he wrote in a similar style today. I think both are great stories, but there is a lot of value to writing in a style that is easily accessible. 'Spud' by John Van De Ruit really gets this right.

Ok, that was a bit of a ramble. Is 'The Brother's Karamazov' worth the read? Yes, but you should make sure you are feeling up to the task.