ARNE VAN OOSTEROM
I Refuse
I remember it well, as a child, 11 year old, entering a supermarket with my
mother. She needs a coin for the shopping-cart and hands me a money
bill. She expects me to go up to the lady behind the counter to ask for
change. My mother looks at me. I look at the lady behind the counter. I
freeze. I can’t do it. I’m simply too scared. I don’t leave my mother’s side.
Why? Did I think she was going to yell at me? Laugh at me? Turn into a
green slimy monster and bite my head off? No. Up to this day I can’t re- ally understand what it is that scared me back then. But I do know I have
had many such moments. And I still do. Not a week goes by without
having this fear.
It’s a fear of performing, showing myself, in front of others. A fear to fail. A
fear so bad I’d rather fail by not even trying to succeed.
I gave up on a running match a few meters before the finish, pretend- ing to be too tired. I refused to be in family pictures. I refused to act in a
school play, and made a fool of myself. I refused to go up to strangers
at dinner parties when I bitterly wanted to be able to network. I refused
to learn how to read music, and study, but wanted to be a musician. I
refused to start schools and I refused to finish schools. I refused to be a
writer using my dyslexia as a great excuse, my favorite tool to strengthen
my reasoning for refusal.
Sometimes I think that I refused to start or finish so many times that finally
I could only refuse refusal itself.
And then I let go. Lost the weight that was holding me down and lifted
off. I’ve been a musician and had a comedy act. I present concepts and
strategies to deadly serious looking board of directors. I give keynotes at
international conferences, work and teach at schools around the world,
write and give life to many networks.
What changed? I simply started refusing to pretend I am not scared. I re- fuse pretending to know everything. I refuse to pretend I don’t need help.
I refuse to pretend to be stronger than I am. And that changes everything.
Being vulnerable made me strong.
But I am still scared to death by everything I do.
MARK SILVER
Don’t Look Left or Right
Today, this is due, and I have a head cold. I spent the entire morning tak- ing one of my sons to the doctor with the croup. It’s early afternoon, I’m
exhausted, I’m worn thin. Do I ship or do I rest?
When the guidance isn’t clear, I don’t follow it. So I stop. I take refuge in
my heart, accessing compassion and love for myself in this. What’s true
here?
Our culture has two forces aiding the devil of resistance. On one side
is escapist fantasy, seducing us with all kinds of ways to numb out and
avoid our true work. On the other side is the workaholic treadmill, push- ing us on to produce ever-more ever-faster. By judiciously using first one,
then the other, the devil can tie us in knots, trap us in useless busy work,
and exhaust us.
Rather than slugging it out with Resistance, I take some minutes to rest
into my heart, to take refuge in compassion and love. I can feel the anxi- ety ebb away. I can feel the truth of my situation arise. I can taste com- passion in my heart for how I’m feeling.
In order to get the work done I don’t have a battle to fight. Yet, I do have
a struggle. To the left is heedless unconsciousness, lost in the world of
fantasy. To the right, busy work, overwork, exhaustion, illness, but with
nothing to show for it.
I struggle every day to choose the middle way and rest into the strength
and love that carries me through the work that is to be done, and that
sets aside the work that doesn’t need to be done, at least not now.
Don’t look left or right. Choose love. Do the work.
JOHN ROOKS
Doing More Than Promote
As a career marketer and environmental activist I had trouble reconciling
the two. Marketing was not Sustainability. I struggled with this cognitive
dissonance. I searched for answers. Finally, I realized that no one was
going to connect the two to my satisfaction. Most eco-marketing was
pabulum for the masses. It was capitalism giving permission to itself to
thrive and “be green” at the same time.
I wanted marketing to be The Thing, not a representation of The Thing.
Linguists before me and marketers around me said it could not be done.
Language (verbal and icon) is all marketers have, but symbols are not
things.
Unless of course, we remove the symbols from the dialogue and make
the act of sustainability the marketing, instead of marketing our acts of
sustainability.
So we launched More Than Promote, built an on-line community of com- petitors and giant brands who were interested in doing more than saying.
We wrote a book that explained how to do it. We lecture to high schools
and universities and at tradeshows teaching people how to do it. It starts
with a pledge:
“Wherever and whenever possible I will architect promotions that have
corporate, civic and cultural value. I will engineer promotion that has
intrinsic social value.”
The theory said it could not be done. The practice showed otherwise.
JAYESH SACHDEV
Exhilaration of Victory
Growing up in India, in a town trying hard to turn into a metropolitan city,
in a middle class family, my father, an owner of a small sports shop, my
mother a teacher, I had a very interesting upbringing. I was brought up
with deeply rooted values and principles, encouraged by my mother to
think on my own and be responsible for my actions and decisions, and
on the other hand my father, more protected, old schooled, who wished
for me to join his shop and sell hockey sticks to kids; and then there
was me, with larger than life aspirations and ambitions. I was a dreamer.
I wanted to be a designer in a country and environment which had no
respect for it.
After several rejections to art school, I landed a job as a Graphic Artist
at a Television Channel, facing rejection for close to a year, never having
a single design approved, I continued my quest for design school until I
was finally admitted to one in Singapore at the age of 22. Financially and
socially outcast, I immersed myself into my art and design often doing
homework of my classmates to pay off my rents, often freeloading food
off the near by Sikh Temple. I graduated with an impeccable record and
moved back to India to found my own studios, Emblem.
Having been disconnected with the creative industry in India I had no in
roads into the industry and clearly no work. I translated my depression
into my passion for art and soon started painting, and was encouraged
to exhibit my works. To my dismay, the pseudo art culture only accepted
renowned artists with credible history or fine art schooling. Struggling to
find galleries I managed to open my own space in retaliation, allowing
only first time or new artists to showcase at my gallery, soon Emblem
became a national rage.
Over the next 2 years, I went on to showcase often at my own studio/
gallery and won national accolades for my works and soon began exhibit- ing world wide. Now I am a graphic designer, artist, photographer and
fashion designer. I accept the challenges so that I can feel the exhilaration
of victory.
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