In a previous post, I shared my son's zest for life, but sometimes ...




You see, he who takes his color into the world often becomes afraid. When the waves hit the beach with the power of high tide, when the thunder roars, and the wind howlingly gusts around him, he wants to be where it is safe. He wants to be with his mother. There he can feel safe.
If one reads what John Maxwell says about fear, one of our biggest fears is the fear of failure. So many people never chase their passion because they are afraid they might fail. So often we don’t take the risk of living the life we are supposed to live, and then take the bigger risk, the risk of living a mediocre life.
My son taught me that we often need to go to safe havens. These may be places where you can be quiet, or places where you can be with people who really have faith in you. People who make you feel better about who you are. People who make you more creative because they believe in you even when you have doubts.
Make time in your diary.
Call it haven time. It’s the most precious time you can have, it’s the time you should never negotiate away in a world where time has become the currency of caring. This should be your time. Your time to grow in a safe place while looking at the onslaught of life with courage. Like a boy, sitting on his mother’s hip. He knows he is connected to the most powerful force in the world. The power of care. The power of care goes much farther though. When you care about what you do, it creates opportunity.

Just look at my daughter:



This picture was taken one morning after her mother had left to go to teach. Well, you can see what I had to cope with...
And, yes, I did what every good dad would do. I went outside and took pictures...

No, jokes aside.

Why is it that we don’t realize that we are emotional beings, and not only rational robots? We’re not robots, we’re not minds only. We have the miracle of emotion, the foundation of passion. In his books on Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Coleman teaches us that we need to get in contact with our emotions again. We need to identify and treasure them, rather than suppress them all the time. Here is the interesting thing. In a world where IQ is professed to be everything, the results of our IQ tests are kept secret...
So what does than mean?
It means that your IQ is directly equivalent to your self-esteem. If you think you did well on the test, you may feel more clever than you are, therefore act more clever than you are and then become more clever than you are...
Unfortunately, schools are ridden with dangerous weapons called “red pens”. They become the ultimate tool in colourful criticism! So in most instances, we are afraid that we might not have done so well in the tests, and therefore a reverse cycle takes place. We often feel as if we did not do well, therefore we do not do that well...
And in a strange way, an unknown test result, a big secret, determines how clever we think we are. Yet, if we look at the miracle of our lives, we will see that each of us have natural intelligences, not necessarily in all the fields they teach at school. Thank Heavens, Howard Gardner identified multiple intelligences, today we know that brilliance is not often being really clever in all subjects, it may be, and often is, more a question of making the most of your natural gifts.
But so often we find people are not in touch with these, we feel the threat of failure as it grabs our emotions...and maybe we need to find out how to handle that...
A possible clue lies in our fears and how we oftentimes do not face them in the right way.

So next time, I revisit a picture of my son...

All I had to do was take my camera and go. Nature provided the rest. As the sun started painting, the waves started rejoicing against the rocks, and I felt as if I was attending a majestic dance. There were just not enough memory in my camera to capture The music and the dance that seemed to last forever...



Nature wants to give so much, and so often, like that memory stick, we seem to be unable to receive.

Why is it that, so often, we keep on shutting our minds from the opportunities that nature offers?

Why is it that sometimes we become disconnected from the joy that life offers?

Well, some more next time...

So what if you are passionate about something that you don’t seem to be able to achieve? What if every time you start working towards your dream, the world seems to conspire against you? Well, let me share with you the following story. When I was a young boy growing up on a farm, there were many kids attending the farm schools in the area. They often had to run several miles to single classroom farm schools. Yet, they made the most of it. Often, in order to make the road seem shorter, they would roll a tyre in front of them. The tyre took their minds away from the difficulty of running long distances.

And I asked them to teach me. Now, understand, I am not a very sporty person. I am clumsy, have low muscle tone and am often in Thought-world rather than reality. I call it my Happy-Place. It’s in the world, but away from it. I build castles there. I watch clouds and I see pictures. And I don’t need any drugs. Imagination is such a healthy drug...but back to my story.
So when I asked one of the kids to teach me how to roll a tyre, I went through a great learning experience.
First I learnt that whenever you pick up a tyre to run, there always seems to be dirty water, mud and some really "goo-ee" stuff in those tyres. That usually falls on your feet. If you still want to keep on going, the problems do not seem to stop. Firstly, the tyre goes in all directions, it wobbles, it wants to fall over... but... when it starts gaining momentum, it turns into a wonderful force. Suddenly there is so little effort required to make it go! It just needs a slap of your hand every now and then. And you run like mad to keep up with it! But you become so involved that you forget that you are running...
And so are big dreams. Whenever you start chasing after them, there always seem to be obstacles. Like the dirty water in the tyre, there is always someone who wants to throw water over the flames of passion that comes with big dreams. Many people then stop chasing their dreams. What a pity. What a pity we often don’t go further than the wobble. Because, if we persist, the dream becomes like the tyre. It starts gaining momentum, and suddenly it becomes a pulling force.
It makes you forget about the effort. It just keeps you running in its direction. Never getting tired (or should I say tyred?) –because it becomes a force of the universe, taking you to new heights, new hope and new perspective. And the universe has so much to offer...
(More about that next time...)

On a hot December Saturday, a local toy-store was having a "Picture session with Barbie". Well, there was no way my daughter was going to bail out of a session with her favourite “person” in the world. So off we went. Just before we left, I snapped this picture as she was sitting on grandma’s bed, waiting for us to finish what we were busy with.



Well, the picture session with Barbie was a nightmare. (For me anyhow). Just imagine: Thousands of kids, ( I know I am exaggerating, but it really felt like that),milling about in a toy-store. Some were complaining that they wanted toys which they would never have seen, had they not come to the store, but which were strategically placed to pick purses as we waited in the queue for our turn to have her picture taken. The picture with Barbie showed a tired Barbie with an even more tired Anienie on her lap. And I learnt another great lesson.

It’s not always the big events that make the difference.
Life happens in small moments.

Little moments are often so much greater that the “big” moments we often eagerly await. It’s no use to look forward to the end of the year so much that you forget that you can have fun in the present. So often, professionals chase their pension and not their passion. (As motivational speaker Denis Waitley says)
For amateurs it’s the other way around, we chase passion. We follow our hearts, moment by moment, second by second, because time is the stuff life is made of, we cannot afford to waste it, can we?

This is my son.
At the time I took this picture he was three years old. He had, (and still has), the zest, passion and enthusiasm we associate with three-year olds. And I don’t know why they always find the expression thereof six o’clock on a Sunday Morning when the parents just want to have some peace, some slumber...
But in his world, that’s not allowed. He’s not yet under the "bad" influence of what can be called the profession of living. Unlike us adults who have become so accustomed to the world providing colour into our lives – you know, 55 channels on the television, then there is music, radio, media, etc ... He understands that it’s not the noise that matters, not what we receive that motivate us. Rather it’s about taking our colour into life. Like kids do. With passion.
In this picture, Benno is in colour, the rest is black and white. The inverse would have made for a sad photo. Imagine he was colourless in a colourful world...I am glad it wasn’t necessary. There’s too much of that in the world already...
Well, I often do presentations with these photos. And sometimes my kids attend.
So it was obvious that I had to put my daughter’s picture in as well...
That will be next time :-)

Hello friend,
Welcome to this, a picnic spot on your journey through life.
I am so glad you came along. So glad to meet you. So glad to spend some time with you.
So often we hurry past these little spots. I know.
I’ve done it too.
Until I was forced to pause.
By passion.
Now there’s a concept, paused by passion.
Want to hear more? Well, take a seat. Let me introduce myself. My name is Igno van Niekerk. I am on a quest. I look for the picnic spots of life. And then I invite fellow travellers, like you, to share a mug of life’s finest coffee with me.
Life’s coffee? Why, I am glad you ask. It’s stories you see. Stories and pictures. Blended and percolated. The aromatic caffeine of plot which fills your cup and awakens you to the invisible treasures so many travellers never find.
Why don’t they find these treasures if they are scattered all over the road of life?
Too many questions, I know.
So let’s see.
In a world governed by the race for material goods, where money often becomes the prize in a mad but dispassionate race, there is something I would love to share.
It’s an attitude to life. Something which cannot be bought, and, for which, one cannot be paid. It has to do with the fact that one does it for the love of it. Let me start at the beginning. I see, I’m confusing you a little. Here, here’s your coffee, drink with me, while I tell you my story.
For more than 20 years, I have been an amateur photographer. Getting up on cold winter mornings when others prefer the soft silk of the duvet and the treasured few more minutes granted by the “snooze button.”
So why do it?
Why do it when no one pays you, why spend time crawling through thorny bushes in the dark early hours of the morning, rushing to catch the right light, when there is not a single cent’s worth in it.
Well, I have learnt some great things from being an unpaid painter with light. The first thing I learnt was that if I am looking for beauty, for greatness and for awesome things, I merely have to get up and go find them.
Like that early morning at Zebra Lodge, North of Pretoria, in my beloved country, South Africa.
After a late night, I could have stayed in bed, but there was the inner voice that calls the amateur. Come, see what you can enjoy...
And then, after driving around a while, it suddenly happened. On a dam I had passed in the early hours, the sun was choreographing a scene which I could capture. It was just there. And I found it. Because I was there. I believed it would be there, and there it was...

So where does passion come from?
Well, I can merely find clues, and maybe make a few suggestions. Let’s take a trip down memory lane...
A trip to our own childhood days.
Remember when you were young, when the road of life opened up ahead of you, as you were walking along?

Well, we'll talk about that next time! :-)