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Childhood dreams are significant…usually born out of personal experiences:

Mine dates as far back as I can remember, at my mother’s home. Deemed unpleasant and terrible at the time, no matter which way I looked at it. I grew up alongside 3 cousins—one boy and two girls, I was the youngest. Their mothers lived with us. I could swear they had something against my mother who got married young and so left to live with hubby. My aunts did not treat me very well, mildly put (crudely put, they ill-treated me in sum), my mother’s eldest sister more than the twins, her other sisters. One of the two twins was not at all bad, actually. I started having reservations after she had my mother offload her frustration with how I was being treated by her other sisters and she told everyone else.

I owe my childhood dream to these ladies. Had they treated me like they did their own children, I would have been too comfortable to dream, by age 9, to build a safe haven to house children who have suffered raw deals at their homes, to protect them from monster parents and relatives. Later, for the most part in my life at school and in church environments as a teenager, I had flashbacks of the experiences from my mother’s home when other significant people like teachers and brethren seemed to see a chip on my shoulder. I resolved then that if this could happen across settings then I was unattractive, unlucky, inadequate, everyone’s rejectee and had all such negative qualities. (Remember, my mother and father had married off and left me (my father even denied I was his son)). A few relatives made me think I was not all that bad. They were interested. They loved me.

My dream stayed with me throughout teenage years into young adulthood by which point I had learned that dreams come at a price (figuratively and literally). Building a safe haven would cost arms and legs, let alone housing, empowering children, dealing with their realities and general upkeep of the facility. I toiled with this idea and soon did my best to push it to the world of forgetfulness, only to realise that I had only deferred it.

Deferring or ignoring one’s childhood dream is unsettling. I can’t say that I succeeded with forgetting or deferring because my heart stayed there. I got involved in related voluntary or paid work. Only, I just did not know how I would launch and service this dream on-going. People with clarity and achievements irritated me because they had something I did not have and they seemed happy to stand out because of it. I banked on schooling to eventually be my launchpad. School has its own value. Suffice to say, where I am now with my childhood dream has been “made easy” by the education (informal or formal) I received.

Heeding…giving in to my childhood dream, my WHY, gives me a great and growing sense of liberation. It aligns me constantly and progressively. I find that, invariably, work that never stops starts when I listen to my childhood dream. This is not work as is traditionally understood—it is more works of service to my fellow human beings (dubbed human beings because they are meant to be fellow creatures in a state of being kind, gentle, polite and in touch with self and others). I am committed to live like this. I even have my wife’s blessing. It must be working hey!

Living my dream has no equal. I have watched myself pursue my childhood dream all the more when it didn’t make sense. A crazy and fulfilling place to be.

I have learnt in this place of pursuance:

• Living one’s dream cannot be the sole focus, sometimes. In those moments, find multiple schemes to stay connected to it nonetheless.
• Dreams feed off positivity when positivity doesn’t make sense.
• Positive self-talk advances and negative self-talk stifles my dream.
• You have critical questions? Find answers in your deferred dream.

Credit to my mother, who uplifted me a lot as a child and challenged me to view hardship as strict training that was to make me a great person. Another person who helped me embrace a painful past to a large degree was Si Erkin who gave a masterclass on absent fathers in 2006 at The Coaching Centre. After his session I repented and began to appreciate my upbringing. I still have episodes of pain when I think back.

Isivivane is an ancient African metaphor for guiding change, now revived for the modern world. The model has been successfully used in a variety of environments ranging from schools to boards of listed companies. We provide in-house team building facilitation using the Isivivane model for up to 20 people at a time. We get to work with real life problems that matter to us and find innovative ways of solving them in the workplace.

Keywords : Knowledge Management (KM), Co-operation, Leadership, Culture, Change Management, Change, Transformation, Learning Organisation, Systems Theory, Storytelling, Narrative, Organisational Storytelling, Narrative Therapy, Modeling, Meta-Modeling, Innovation, Ideation, Community Animation, Strategic Planning, Vision of Harmony

We provide Isivivane Facilitator Training that enables you to use these models for individuals and organisations in co-operation with Storytelling Africa / Kokopelli Partners

Isivivane is a Zulu word that refers to a concept found in a number of other African cultures. In Zulu, Isivivane literally means ‘throw your stone upon the pile…’ and refers to rocks arranged as piles and / or hub and spoke patterns.