A packing time again, whoopee!

The work is over for the year, and it is the time to rest, sleep and take time for reconnecting with people around me as well as with myself. The first step will be to get our van out and drive with my two kids off to Rome, tomorrow morning that is. That will give us some quality time to reconnect, but also to enjoy some Tuscany and Rome and check out the illuminati path – or whatever it is called. Then the time to be alone with my wife over the New Year and the week after will come and after that the time to be alone with myself. All great stuff!

The time in Rome is also going to be a good training at avoiding this ridiculous holiday obsession with shopping and eating (notice how every couple of months there is a good reason to celebrate something – whatever it might be – with eating and buying things. If this is not a global conspiracy, then I don’t know what qualifies like one at all!)

Anyway, since it is quite rainy these days, here comes a Haiku that my daughter produced (in the matter of minutes) a few months ago while in rainy England.

A rain drop falls

followed by another

and another

A request to our leaders

I want to remind you that one day in the future, perhaps in a few decades or perhaps in a few days, who knows, you will be lying on your death bed. And, as they say, it is likely that your life will be flashing in front of your eyes. There will be images of the things you will regret, and of the things you will feel joyful and grateful about. You will remember things that brought meaning into your existence as well as the things that brought pain and sadness. For some things you will wish you had done more of, and for others you will wish you had found strength to restrain from. We all will face this moment and I believe that we all hope our hearts will be filled with content and joy rather than regret and guilt.

Now, our dear leaders, after Copenhagen, after Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Darfur, Tibet, Myanmar…, after observing and experiencing the state of the humanity nowadays and throughout the history, I have a request and I strongly believe that should you choose to comply with it, this is going to be one of the things you will feel good about when recapitulating your life during your last hours.

It is a series of steps and I believe it can all be done within 24 hours. Shouldn’t be too hard, right?

1. Please have a look around yourself and find people who are full of enthusiasm about changing the world and making it a better place. Look for the new type of people, those who eagerly want to find new ways. Because, as you will probably agree, the old rat-race ways of trying to get to the top and have power over other people just do not work. It is so easy to see that, isn’t it? These old ways serve only some people, a very small percentage really. When you find these spirited, motivated, idealistic and enthusiastic people (they are all around, you see, in NGOs, in activist movements…), give them power, make them leaders so that they can work before they get spoiled.
2. Have another look around and look for people who have compassion for everybody, whose heart is in pain about the billions suffering, about 30.000 children dying every day, about the destruction of Nature… Find those who have enough compassion in their hearts to be genuine servant leaders, you know, leaders who know that their one and only mission is to serve people, to take care of others and not of their pockets and egotistic desires. When you find them (look in humanitarian movements, seek people who work for free, who have devoted their lives to helping and giving…), make them leaders, give them power.
3. Then go home and spend the night with yourself. Think about what is it you want to be proud of in your life. Think about what you want your life to be about. Think about what you want to tell your grandchildren when they ask you how you had contributed to the well-being of this planet and to the beauty of lives around you.
   Then let it all out. Cry your heart out, let yourself mourn over the fact that you have failed to be as good leader as you hoped you would be. Get all the sadness out, it’s all right, it’s all right…
   In the morning take a shower, have a healthy breakfast, dress up nicely – this is going to be a big day. At the first glance it may seem like a failure, but don’t worry, the history of humanity will praise you for that. Grieve not, because this is going to be a big contribution, remember? You will help this world become more beautiful and you will be proud of it. You will help humanity make a step to the higher level of coexistence. Now take a long walk to your office, to your Tower of Power. Don’t forget to smile and breathe, smile and breathe.

   When you walk in, hand your letter of resignation – you know where to put it, right?

   Now walk out, smile and breathe, and, please don’t forget, you have done a beautiful thing, you have contributed to the beauty of life on Earth. And there is going to be so much gratitude.

A different kind of a communication training

My wife went to a high-profile communication trainer’s presentation, out of curiosity, to see what other people emphasise about communication and how they do it. She came home in a state of shock. This guy – the communication expert – was preaching that communication was a war, a struggle and that it was all about being better and stronger than the other one, that it was all about getting to a higher ground, having power over the other in order to finally crush them down. And win the battle. While preaching this, he was, with his superior rhetoric abilities, humiliating people in audience who dared to ask questions, making fun out of people not present, using the losers – winners distinction all the time… He was the absolute winner, of course.

When my wife described the scene to me, I was in a state of shock too. Wait a minute; this is what this communication trainer is teaching? That it is all about fighting, winning over, crushing down? I understand communication as coming together, you know, the communion, connecting, achieving understanding and then working together on finding the ways for meeting everybody’s needs, for cooperation and coexistence… And, pardon me; this is what I teach at my communication trainings.

Up to now I was living in a romantic world, I can see. I believed that every communication trainer saw communication, more or less, in the very similar way: connecting, getting together, and achieving understanding. I believed every conflict-resolution trainer perceived conflict resolution within a basic framework: achieving true understanding and respect of each other’s needs and values, then working together on finding strategies that will meet everybody’s needs. I believed we lived in the same world. How naive, how very naive of me.

I will continue teaching what I believe communication is all about, of course. But I will be less surprised when observing political arena in which everybody speaks and nobody ever listens. Because I will know that they have been taught, by their high class communication trainers, to attack, to humiliate, to make fun out of… They were trained to not listen, to not understand, to not move and to not be influenced. They were trained to fight and to win over.

I will understand that they are just being good students.

And then I will continue my fight with the windmills.

A happy father

I am a bit crazy about our kids. I really love spending time with them, enjoy being around and my mind is pretty much occupied with pondering in which way to support them best. There are ups and downs, or course, there are all sorts of bridges we need to build on a daily basis, but most of the time it is a bliss to be around them. To enjoy the connection and the trust we have managed to build along these years.

And the more they grow and become independent human individuals, the more miraculous the life seems. All the different directions they keep exploring, all the richness and diversity of life they keep bringing home. Frankly, I am not always all that happy about just everything, but very often I am.

Nowadays I indulge in observing how my daughter Lucija keeps exploring the world of art – being a dancer and a painter already, she decided to go into photography as well. She set out for getting money together for an SLR camera, managed to buy it and started to produce photos. And, surprise surprise, I love them all.

I may be a bit biased, of course , but than even Razz, when visiting and spending some time tutoring Lucia on photography, said she had a knack for it. Though he strongly suggested she went through the instructions manual for the camera sometime soon. But, do true artists really do that?

Anyway, here are a couple of shots my girl produced.

A story of somebody’s youth

She was 16, full of life, romantic expectations, laughter, beauty… Life was wonderful, especially because she just fell in love with a guy who seemed warm, caring, humorous…, and, oh boy, was he handsome. Let’s call him Loverboy.

Loverboy had a car and he took her places – and she was flying on the wings of happiness. One day they went to the neighbouring country to meet some friends of Loverboy – they were equally cool and friendly. But little did she know she was being observed closely, evaluated and that she got an invisible price tag.

After a few weeks, on a sunny Saturday, Loverboy drove her to that neighbouring country to visit these friends again. Yet this time meeting turned out differently. She was suddenly pushed into a car, slapped heavily a few times and driven away. Loverboy did not come along.

Her life, as she knew it, was over, never to come back.

For three days she was being raped over and over and over and over again, locked up in a dark room someplace. It did not really matter where it was. After these three days, bleeding from everywhere, she broke down, ceased resisting and accepted her destiny – she became a sex slave. She had no money, no privacy, no contacts, no documents… she was just being fed and used. Numberless clients of all sorts rolled over her day after day, week after week, months after months, and yes, year after year.

On the fourth year she had an emotional breakdown while in bed with an elderly client – she started crying her pain and hopelessness out and the man was touched by that. He took pity on her and decided to help this young girl, who could have been his granddaughter. He informed authorities and they managed to rescue her and escorted her back home.

She is home now. Carrying inside of her a pain of the proportions most of us can not even imagine. Just as well as we cannot really imagine what sort of life will she manage to have.

This happened not so long ago. Not so far away. And it keeps happening all around us.

It could happen to anybody’s daughter, no matter of precautions taken.

Which freaks me out.