This is a somewhat strange topic to be asked to speak on. It reflects a very good understanding of what makes an individual successful in life, for academic training, good business plans, access to capital, do not for a successful person make.

Passion is how life is supposed to be lived

With passion, life flows, resistance to living our purpose is less, and the eternal question of why we are who we are, or why we do what we do be comes clearer.

If we tap into passion, we are able to live our purpose. Each one of us are unique individuals. Each one of us has a purpose for being here. For me, it is not possible to separate my purpose from my passion. The two feed off one another.

So let me tell you a bit about myself, and how passion has helped me achieve my purpose for being.

I don’t know how to succinctly articulate my purpose. But I know that my purpose is to build a better humanity. I know that my purpose is served, by serving others. I know that my passion grows more and more, the more I am able to serve others, I know that my purpose is served by not accepting injustice, poverty, greed, and exploitation. And this is where my passion lies.

I knew at a fairly young age that I wanted to work with disadvantaged communities, and that I wanted to find innovative ways of doing that. I had a flash of entrepreneurial stupidity/brilliance when I was 27 years old, that Toursim was a way to do that. I had a vision of doing business in a way that served the poor. I had no idea of the detail, the model or the finite plan, but I believed we could walk a line of benevolent capitalism or social entrepreneurship.

So I started Calabash Tours
A small, effective tour company that operates in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. It has a simple purpose: to link people – rich and poor.
Wonderful results flow from that. Effictively managed, it creates an understanding of how we are all interconnected, despite different races, cultures, economic status etc

I took the idea of doing business in a way that served the poor into boardrooms and to big tourism players.

Often, they did not get it! But I communicated my vision with tremendous passion. I so believed this would work, and was the right thing for me to be doing.

Often I got complimented on my passion, but left with no deals.

Passion alone does not make for success.

I refined our products based on the feedback I got. I realized I needed to understand the tourism industry better, the supply chains. I realized who made the decisions about what clients did when in our area.. And I realized I needed to find ways to add value to what these clients were looking for. I had to serve them, in order to live my vision.

In the early years of our business, it was only through believing that what I was doing was my purpose and my passion that I was able to go on. I was making very little money. I was having doors slammed in my face. I was being made promises. I was complimented politely for innovative ideas, but not getting bookings. It seemed helpless sometimes. But I continued.

What I realized along the way, was that my ideas, though not that innovative or brilliant, were beginning to stir people. The world is so jaded, greedy, dull, lacking in innovation. I noticed people slowly being stirred by my different approach. Business started to come in. Resistance gave way to flow. And we have now been in business for 12 years.

Along the way, other opportunities have come my way. People have wanted to buy our business. People have encouraged me to go more mainstream with my business. People have offered me jobs. And upon reflection, each time, I have remained steadfast – that what I do now, is what I am meant to do for now. I am where I am, because that is where I am meant to be.

Knowing your purpose, living with passion, means you must know yourself. What is important to you. I am sure I could have made more money, more easily, if I had taken some of the opportunities that have come my way. I would have had to be less self reliant maybe. Maybe I would have had more security.

But would I have been able to serve humanity in the way I do now. Would I have been able to have the wonderfully humanizing experiences I have now, straddling the development sector and the business world. You see, I know myself. I know what it is that drives me. And that is my compass.

To live with passion, you must know your values. You must know who you are. This allows me to live with great Faith. I have faith in myself, and that I am doing what I was born to do. I have faith in a loving Creator, I call him God that the journey I am on, is the journey I was born to be on. And having that Faith, allows me to get through the tough times.

You must know yourself. Do you know yourself? Do you know who you are.. Do you know what you are to do with your life? Do you know your values. You must. You must engage with this, and they don’t teach this in lecture halls.

So how do you get to know your purpose and your passion. Some of you do. For sure. That is why life is rewarding you and you are able to live with great Joy. Some of you don’t. You remain in the mind space of being victims. Not being good enough. Not clever enough. Not liked enough. Not pretty enough. Too white, too black, to man too woman – whatever.
Knowing your purpose and living your passion leads to being Enough for yourself. Being. Just being. Just being Enough!

So to snap out of the place of victimhood, and to snap out of the place of a passionless life I can suggest the following.

Pray. Meditate. Be still. Make sure you are able to just simply be a few times a week. Just be, Not do. Clear your mind. Listen to your inner voice. Listen to your intuition. Still, quiet, just be.

Be yourself. Trust yourself. Serve others. Let your passion grow.

The results will be beyond your wildest dreams.

Believe me.

As I put my bags of garbage out, I encounter those whose lives are made up of moving from suburb to suburb on respective garbage days, looking for scraps to eat. I know them by now. And I am always caught a bit off guard, not knowing what to say to them. What is the right thing to say to someone who is going through your garbage bags, analyzing the contents carefully for anything of value, anything that can feed the crying mouths back home?

And what is the appropriate response to this inequality. I wonder about this a great deal. Should I sell what I have and give it away? Should I feed every person who knocks on my door? Should I pray harder for the poor? Shall I refer them to the church outreach? Should I invite them in to dinner?

In a developing country like South Africa, there is little social support for the poor. So poverty kind of becomes everybody’s business. Including mine.

I shared in my last column that it was my initial belief that the isms would solve the problems. Socialism maybe? Capitalism?……….communism?………

I don’t know the answer.

But I have some strong opinions. Firstly I have worked out that I must take responsibility for myself and my own family. So selling all my possessions and giving them away will only add me to the poor. That is no solution. Secondly, no utopian society exists in the world as I know it. And thirdly, the issues of poverty are complex, and in order to understand them, I need to understand myself, and the inner source from which I operate. I must understand my own purpose on earth. I can only start there.

And this is where I find some respite from the chaos of thoughts; thoughts about what makes me so uncomfortable. By understanding my own self, and that as a human being I must acknowledge my interconnectedness with others. And that the gift/curse that I have of feeling empathy and pain when others suffer is to be used for good. And that my purpose on this earth is to be an open pair of eyes, that are unafraid to see what is. And that solutions come in the form of turning the garbage bag scrounger into a human with a name, a face, a history, a community.

But importantly for me, I am greatly comforted by the fact that no matter how big the problems around me appear, there is always something I can do. I as a human being do not have to accept the status quo. I can act. I do act.

For the last 12 years I have dedicated much of my creative energy to the pursuit of making tourism in my city something that effects the lives of the poor directly. In a positive, creative manner that creates opportunity. I have worked at setting up an NGO with other like minded creative thinkers that provides support to poor communities, focusing primarily on education and skills development.

I wish to share more about that in my next column. Today, I wish only to share that poverty makes me uncomfortable. Out of the discomfort comes a call to action. And from understanding myself, my inner source, I can take action. And when I take action, all kinds of energies are released. Focused, positive energies, which allow me to feel human, alive, connected, and compassionate. This to me is very valuable.

I grew up in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. It's a big city, 1, 4 million people, mostly Black African, Xhosa speaking people. I am white. My parents are Dutch immigrants. I grew up in the suburbs, a middle class white boy. This was part of my lesson in life. Growing up as a privileged white, defined valuable by the previous system, simply because of my skin colour. I struggled with that, but part of my journey has been coming to understand that I am where I am, because that is what is best for me. I have also learnt that guilt is a useless, taxing, destructive emotion. Action in life is what counts the most.

So here I was, born into apartheid, in 1971. I was blessed with parents who believed in equality and social justice, and they planted a seed in me that has continued to grow. The seed of belief in one common, interconnected humanity. To many reading, this may seem like common sense, but believe me, a few years ago in South Africa, this was enough to have you labeled a ‘communist' or traitor!

So from quite a young age, I had a sense that all was not well with the world. As I grew into my teenage years this sense of injustice become stronger and stronger. On a personal level I could not reconcile how I, as a young white South African, could simply focus on getting that degree, that job, that car, knowing that it was on the blood and suffering of the majority of my fellow citizens.

In 1988 I finished high school, and went to university to study social science. My interest in subject choices was driven by a deep seated desire to understand how a world so unjust could be understood, changed, ‘fixed' or revolutionized. I studied philosophy, politics, sociology, and became exposed to the so many isms that may or may not help understand this world.

Marxism, Feminism, Socialism, Non Racialism and most importantly I thought, National Democratic Revolution. Being young in country where profound change is inevitable, in a country searching for solutions to social and economic injustice was indeed a gift. Needless to say I became a student radical, on the march, debating, shouting, exploring the ‘truth'. My societies ills became the source of my energy, the force that drove me. I defined myself against what was, defined myself as the ‘other' swept away by the demand for freedom that was becoming louder and louder.

And then………….and then in 1990 Apartheid was abolished. Nelson Mandela was released. I recall vividly how on February 2 1990 when the African National Congress was unbanned I drove with some friends into the African townships (ghetto's) a handful of whites in a sea of heady Black liberation. It was unbelievable. It was like a wild festival, people singing and dancing everywhere. Fires burning, the police just watching, the same police that a day before would have opened fire. Our small group was swept into the masses reveling, we lost each other, but it seemed completely irrelevant. We were hugged, loved, accepted, included, for Freedom was here. Black and white were to be equal. We would change this country into the democracy. Suffering would be gone. Poverty eradicated. Prisoners freed. Mandela for president, Mandela for president. Mandela would solve all.

For those of you that know South Africa's history, you will know that from 1990 to 1994 we entered a period of extreme political violence. Massacres still occurred, negotiations between the African National Congress and the Apartheid regime faltered many times.

Slowly it dawned on me, that not everything was going to be solved. No quick fix, no socialist utopia, no end to poverty, no end to suffering.

And it became clear over the next years that no ism was going to fix everything.

I tell you all of this, because it is important in making me who I am. The history I lived through impacted on me. It shaped me. But many of you will also know that context is not everything. It is how we deal with our environment that shapes us. Here in lies the choice.

I lived through a revolution. My world changed profoundly after 1994. We had a transition to democracy admired and studied by the world. We have a new constitution which speaks of equality and justice. I have seen the power of Action, the power of mobilization. I have seen that as individuals standing up, we can take an action and make a difference. We can be agents of change. We have a responsibility to act, to engage to impact.

And in the midst of all of this, a young white boy grew into a young man. Anger subsided. Being right became less important. But a nagging sense that all is not well with the world remained. And this constant sense that I needed to do something. Do something, Act, not accept the status quo.

So this story is the first part to understanding what I was asked to share about here. It is here that I stop….for now.

Next time I will share about how I see myself now, and how I have chosen a path free of isms, how my path from political activist changed to one of simply living with more love, compassion, and action directed at human beings, not social structures.

But I still cannot get used to injustice……..