Berend Lange’s KOMPASS

     Ich war mal ein ziemlich ungeduldiger Mensch, aber ich habe daraus gelernt.

     Wenn ich so auf mein Leben bisher zurückblicke … es ist ja eigentlich unglaublich, was ich alles schon gemacht habe : Schule, Bundeswehr, Beruf, erste Ehe, ein Haus bei Hamburg gebaut, nach London gezogen, Ehe im Eimer, zurück nach Hamburg, nach Südafrika delegiert, zweite Ehe, diverse Jobs und Firmen in Johannesburg, da wieder ein Haus gebaut, alles aufgegeben, um nach Kapstadt zu gehen, dann zurück nach Europa …

     Das ist natürlich nur der rote Faden - dazwischen lagen viele Umwege und Sackgassen, aber auch Erfolgserlebnisse. 

     Diese Dinge waren unheimlich wichtig und dringend für mich zur jeweiligen Zeit - ich wollte alles, und ich wollte es jetzt gleich. Hartnäckig wie ich bin habe ich mich zweimal fast zu Tode gearbeitet dabei, ich ging regelrecht kaputt - Schritt für Schritt, anfangs unbemerkt.

     Viele von euch können bestimmt ein ähnliches Lied singen. Heute kräht kein Hahn danach, welche Kunden ich damals an Land gezogen oder welches Auto ich gefahren habe, und doch war jeder einzelne Schritt unerlässlich für das, was ich heute bin, was mir heute wichtig ist - ich bereue keinen einzigen Tag.  

     Wahre Geduld ist wohl, zu wissen wohin ich jetzt will … und dass ich auf dem Weg dorthin bin - dann kann ich die Reise bis zur Ankunft genießen, auch ohne die Endstation zu kennen.

     Wissen muß ich auch, dass ich selbst an den Zwischenstationen nie lange bleiben kann: jedesmal, wenn ich irgendwo ankomme kriege ich da ja automatisch auch eine neue Perspektive verpasst, kann weiter sehen als vorher und habe Neues im Auge.

     Aber rasten kann ich dort für eine Weile - rasten, nicht rosten. Wenn die Reise sowieso nie endet, dann macht weder Eile noch Stillstand irgendeinen Sinn und ich kann geduldig sein, während ich tätig bin. 

     Das macht mehr Spaß als Ungeduld, und gesünder ist es auch.

     Have you got a minute?

     Of course you do - the end of the world week has arrived, relax.

     Yes, I’m writing this in English for a change, just a quickie - if you want the gist of it in German, go to my article ‘African Horizons’ that I wrote in November : today is all about inspirational quotes again.

     Why? Because you told me that you love them just as much as I do - and earlier this week Mac Anderson of ‘Simple Truths’ sent me a link to his little movie ‘Great Quotes from Great Leaders’ in his newletter.

     It’s really very nice, I’d like you to watch it here and no : I am not one of his affiliates trying to sell you something. Maybe I should.

     But Mac Anderson reminded me that I have my very own collection of favourite inspirational quotes with even better photos - its a PowerPoint Show called ‘African Horizons’, you can watch it online here and even download it to your computer safely. 

     I am sure you have a minute - just click, sit back and relax.

     And if you then click on ‘Emal this’ below you can pass this article on to someone else who reads English and wants to relax this weekend - try, it’s fun!

     Der Herbst ist überall eine Jahreszeit der besonderen Dankbarkeit, das äußert sich in vielen Überlieferungen, Bräuchen und Festen.

     Das Erntedankfest im deutsch-sprachigen Raum ist im Ansatz uralt und gibt uns Anlaß, gegen Ende des Jahres an die Aussaat im Frühling, das Wachstum im Sommer und die Früchte unserer Arbeit im Herbst für die kommende Ruhe des Winters zu denken.

     Dankbarkeit für eine reiche Ernte fällt uns leicht, aber erst dankbar zu sein auch für Rückschläge beschert uns ein Leben der Erfüllung.

     Dankbarkeit kehrt Negatives um in eine positive Einstellung zum Leben - finde einen Weg, dankbar für deine Schwierigkeiten zu sein … dann können sie zu einem Segen werden. Ich habe sieben Vorschläge :

• Sei dankbar, daß du noch nicht alles hast, was du dir wünscht -
  worauf könntest du dich sonst freuen?

• Sei dankbar, wenn du etwas nicht weißt -
  das gibt dir die Gelegenheit, zu lernen.

• Sei dankbar für schwierige Zeiten -
  in diesen Zeiten wächst du.

• Sei dankbar für deine Einschränkungen, 
  weil sie dir die Möglichkeit geben, Fortschritte zu machen.

• Sei dankbar für jede neue Herausforderung,
  weil sie dich stärkt und deinen Charakter fördert.

• Sei dankbar für deine Fehler -
  sie erteilen dir wichtige Lektionen.

• Sei dankbar, wenn du müde und ausgelaugt bist -
  es bedeutet, daß du etwas getan und gegeben hast.

     Sicher wüßtest du gerne, an welchem Tag der Woche deine Vorhaben die besten Aussichten auf Erfolg haben - das kann man ziemlich leicht voraussagen und damit dem Gesetz der Anziehung in die Hand spielen.

     Du hast bestimmt auch schon festgestellt, daß an bestimmten Tagen einige Dinge einfach besser klappen, an anderen läuft fast gar nichts … wenn du die falschen Sachen in Angriff nimmst.

     Warum ist das so?

     Weil die Zeit nicht nur den Aspekt der Quantität hat, den wir alle kennen … meist weil wir meinen, nicht genug Zeit zu haben. Jede Zeit hat auch eine bestimmte Qualität, die wir heute kaum noch beachten - in der Astrologie hat sich dieses Wissen erhalten, aber wer weiß denn noch, daß unsere Wochentage nach ihren vorherrschenden Eigenschaften benannt sind?

     Wenn man die Hauptmerkmale eines Tages kennt, kann man sich darauf einstellen und mit der Strömung schwimmen, sich tragen lassen von den Energien, die an diesem Tag besonders betont sind.

     Ich benutze dieses System schon seit Jahren, indem ich jeden Tag der Woche in meinem Kalender im Computer entsprechend markiert habe - danach lege ich wichtige Meetings vorzugsweise auf einen Mittwoch, bin besonders vorsichtig auf Parties an Donnerstagen und weiß, was an Samstagen die richtige Beschäftigung für mich ist.

     In meinem Artikel ‘How To Choose The Best Day Of The Week For Anything’ kannst du nachlesen, welche Eigenschaften die sieben Tage der Woche haben - keine Angst, der Text ist auf Englisch aber einfach und kurz.

     Versuchs doch mal, du wirst überrascht sein, wie gut das System funktioniert !

     “Zeit ist Geld?” Das ist ja gar nicht wahr.

     Tatsache ist, daß Zeit viel wertvoller ist als Geld. Das sieht man schon allein daran, daß wir gerne viel mehr Geld ausgeben würden, wenn wir mehr davon hätten.

     Zeit dagegen sparen wir, wo immer wir können. Wir erfinden die tollsten Sachen, nur um irgendwas schneller machen zu können - und stellen hinterher oft fest, daß wir mehr Zeit für die Geräte brauchen als für die Erledigung der Aufgabe.

     Zeit ist nicht erneuerbar, jeder hat nur 24 Stunden am Tag zur Verfügung und sobald wir sie verbraucht haben sind sie unwieder-bringlich weg. Was bleibt ist nur die Erinnerung an diese Zeit.

     Für Geld kriegen wir auch einen Gegenwert, aber überleg dir ganz genau, was du heute mit deiner Zeit machst, damit deine Erinnerungen daran nicht verrosten oder sonstwie auf dem Müll landen.  

     Weißt du noch, was du gestern gemacht hast?

     Would you like to know what activities work out best for you on certain days of the week?

     Surely you have noticed that on some days of the week, certain endeavours seem to work out better than on other days. You probably never told anyone about your suspicions, but this is not weird at all - in fact this phenomenon has been known for thousands of years.

I call it “The Quality of Time”

     Most of us have largely forgotten about it - we know the other aspect, the “Quantity of Time” much better, mainly because we think that we never have enough of it. It would go too far to explain the whole background here, but I wrote a chapter about it in my eBook “The REAL Facts of Life”.

     What I am telling you is that each day of the week definitely has a certain unique quality to it, and the days are even named for this quality, although we don’t always see the correlation in modern-day English or German. In astrology, the Greeks and ancient Romans assigned the same characteristics to the planets of our solar system which represent the same qualities.

How does this knowledge benefit us in the 21st century?

     Simply, some days are more conducive to certain activities than others - find out below why you should schedule important meetings for Wednesdays if you can, be careful at parties on Thursdays and why things often don’t go your way on Saturdays.

     I have consciously applied this “Quality of the Day” - system for a long time. The days of the week are marked accordingly on my calendar in the computer and I plan conducive activities whenever I can. Here we go : 

Monday : Emotion
     Monday is easily recognizable as Moon-day. As the ruler of the tides, the moon represents our emotions which have long been portrayed in terms of the sea. Do still waters run deep? Are you making waves? Mood-swings, instinct, how we feel about things and the way our feelings affect others are all highlighted on Mondays. They also help us see intuitively what we wish for in life. We are up and down, naughty or nice, laugh or cry - moods change as swiftly as the moon circles our planet.

Tuesday : Action
     Tuesday is ‘Mardi’ in French - Mars was the Roman god of war, and the Red Planet can be fiery and violent, daring and fearless. This energy wants the powerful and confident expression of the individual. Passion, determination, ambition, competition, achievement, courage, honour, stamina, accidents - Tuesdays forcefully command you to stand up, be noticed and get things done in an either constructive or destructive way.

Wednesday : Communication
     Wednesday is ‘Mercredi’ in French. Mercury was the Roman god of trade, commerce and profit - and the winged messenger from the gods. Whether the news was good or bad, he needed a quick wit, think logically on the run and weigh possibilities after hearing opinions and reasons. Rationalize and communicate, perceive, speak up, negotiate and get answers - our intellect, awareness and logic is needed here. Move from one thing to the next in short trips - Wednesdays prompt us to express ourselves often and well. Visiting neighbours, the workday commute and a weekend getaway are all in Mercury’s realm, as well as writing, books, eMail and learning.

Thursday : Growth
     In German mythology, Thor was the red-haired and bearded god of thunder, much like Jupiter in Roman times. His lightning bolts remind us of his supreme power, but besides being judge and jury he was mostly a kind and benevolent helper to keep mankind on the right path. Thursdays lord over ideology and philosophy and compel us to assess our ethical and moral values. Everything about Jupiter is larger than life. Grand ideas, luck and great fortune are associated with Thursdays who want us to grow and flourish. Optimism, success, accomplishments and prosperity symbolize this magnanimous energy - but we easily tend to overdo things on Thursdays : work too long, party too much, even spend too much time on going the extra mile.

Friday : Pleasure
     Venus, or Freya, is the symbol of beauty, love, romance, harmony and pleasure for us. Socializing and relating to others in friendship, marriage and business partnership is important today. Fridays invite us to indulge our senses in aesthetic circumstances like the arts and seek the beauty of our world, teaching us to appreciate others and the things we possess. We take an interest in luxuries, good food and drink, a beautiful home and generally in spreading happiness through refinement, culture, charm and grace. A good day to be attractive and attract others by rewarding them, and yourself.

Saturday : Discipline
     Saturn was the god of time, and he didn’t make things easy. The big teacher demands discipline and responsibility in learning life’s lessons and wants us to work hard at managing them. Limitations, delays and restrictions play a big role on Saturdays - is there enough time to do everything we want to do? The majesty of older age also brings with it a sense of tradition, conventionality and wisdom - it challenges habits that have stood the test of time. Structure, experience and authority are important concerns on Saturdays, and perseverance is applauded.

Sunday : Your-Self 
     The sun is the centre of our world, its energy is forceful and gives us light and life. Everything revolves around it and therefore it represents the Self, as well as our personality, ego, spirit and everything that makes us unique as individuals. Our true identity and our face to the world both speak of creativity, the will to manifest our ideas and the strength to successfully meet our challenges in life. Our sense of health and well-being is closest to us on Sundays, so do what you really feel like doing.

     Try it out, you’ll be surprised how well it works!

     Would you like to know what the future has in stall for you?

     In fact, the whole world is obsessed with the idea of knowing what will happen tomorrow, next week or in ten years time. The movie “Paycheck” starring Ben Affleck is a riveting thriller about the past and the future – and a huge paycheck he never gets.

     Analysts make a fortune predicting the ups and downs of the stock exchange. We watch the weather report to see whether we can go to the beach on Sunday, or try to pick 6 out of 49 numbers to win our first or second million – but none of these systems work with a great degree of accuracy.

     In ‘Paycheck’, Ben Affleck is a clever computer engineer who develops rip-off computer products for high-tech corporations, but must always have his short-term memory erased after each assignment so that his employers can claim the copyright. In his job for the “Allcom” company, it takes him three years to build a machine that can look into the future – and is promptly swindled out of his paycheck.

     But he knew what was coming, of course, and after his memory is erased, Uma Thurman as his biologist girlfriend helps him to retrace what happened in order to prevent a global catastrophe.

     That’s the plot, but why am I writing this?

     What struck me was a little sentence in the dialogue:
“Once you know the future, you don’t have a future anymore”.

     I had never thought of that before, but it’s true. What is it that we call the future? In my view, it is the sum total of all the interactions we still have to experience to fulfill the aspirations which we think will make us a more successful person.

     In other words, the future – by definition – includes an element of uncertainty and if you take that away, you don’t have a future. All you would have is a path on which you go through the motions.

     But what for? And where to?

     Life as we know it on this planet would be meaningless if we knew the destination of every road we travel, the outcome of every action we take.

     We tend to forget that in reality time doesn’t exist. It is just a concept – a very useful and necessary one - that human beings have to live by in their limited consciousness to manage a number of experiences and learn from them. We cannot see both sides of the same coin at once, only one after the other. Even a mirror doesn’t help, believe me.

     That’s precisely why we are so intrigued by the future - we want to know it all, right now : What’s going to happen? Will we succeed or fail in whatever we are doing? This curiosity is driving us forward.

     We all know some people who couldn’t be bothered, of course : ‘Who cares what happens tomorrow, as long as I have a good time today’. We sometimes admire them because on the surface, they don’t seem to have any doubts in their ‘happy-go-lucky’ lives. If you are not driving your challenges, however, you will be driven and confronted with them – life will not stand still for you.

     And those who constantly fear that some disaster is around the corner? Looks like they magically attract every manner of misfortune and not make any progress at all - and yet they too will eventually learn from their continual setbacks.

     There is plenty of evidence that some gifted people can in fact look into the future, though – what is it that they see then? If there is no past and no future, all that really exists is the present moment, and each of these moments literally has limitless possibilities, more than we realize. What we get an occasional glimpse of is potential, a likelihood of events, but nothing cast in concrete.

     The big chance we owe to ourselves is to shape that potential into something worthwhile and exciting and learn from it, with everything we’ve got. Since we all bring something unique to the party, imagine the endless variety!

     Paycheck or no paycheck : life today is the real thriller, and I have my very own. So do you.

     Finally - on Sunday morning the sun was shining again at the Cape of Good Hope, after heavy winter rains all week.

     It was still nippy with a bit of a breeze, but we were dying to get out, to smell the sea and maybe see some whales - on Saturday we had spotted the first Southern Right of the season from our deck in Simon’s Town, blowing its typical V-shaped spray some distance away.

     Walking down to Fisherman’s Beach, we noticed that many flowers enjoyed the rains and were in full bloom. The surf was pounding against the rocks on which some penguins waddled about - others were still taking their morning bath, splashing in the little coves surrounding Boulders Beach.

     For most of the week we had been confined indoors by the weather, but now we were thoroughly enjoying nature again, following its rhythm - and honouring our own. Early August is wet here, so what? Many people don’t like this time of the year, but our dams are filling up for summer and hopefully we won’t have water restrictions again for Christmas.

     Being German, we love the South African sunshine - but why do we also miss the dark and cold weeks in Europe sometimes, when we celebrate the Advent of Christmas and families gather at home around an open fire with a hot drink, the goodwill of humanity shining through the armour of self-interest for a change?

     We follow so many of these comfortably familiar rituals during our days, weeks and years without really noticing and honouring them. They mark the rhythm of life as we know it, of course; there is a time for sunshine, and a time for rain. These days, however, we tend to want it all, and now - why can’t we have it all at once?

     There is a simple reason : we cannot see one-ness, we always need a sequence of events to understand the whole story. We live in a world of duality and see everything in steps of two, one after the other, which creates a rhythm - and the illusion of time. The ultimate truth is that everything happens at on©e, in the Now - but we see a past and a future. You can read more about these concepts in “The REAL Facts of Life”.

     We need time - not only as a concept - to go through the stages of growth and development, the rhythms of day and night, good and bad, life and death, rain and sunshine. Together these opposites don’t exclude each other, they are just different aspects of the same thing and depend on each other.

     Like two sides of the same coin : take one of them away and you no longer have a coin. If you deny the peak or the trough you don’t get a wave. On their own, the parts don’t exist. We always have to deal with both aspects to see anything in its entirety and get a whole picture.

     Stop breathing out and you won’t be able to breathe in again - life will stop. Breathing is the existential rhythm most of us don’t even notice, let alone honour. When we are young we also want the knowledge that comes with age; when we are older we long for the vitality of youth.

     Being a desk-jockey, all too often I get caught up in my work and forget about play, jeopardizing my balance in life - passion also has its dangers.

     Leaving our favourite walk along the shore of Simon’s Town for home, we noticed a pair of Egyptian Geese with eight little chicks strut by, the gander proudly flapping his wings as if to say : “See, I am honouring the cycle.”

     Nature is so wise - I need to get out more often.