This month’s Currents were selected by Dr Jean Cooper.
Jean consults internationally on leadership, culture and systemic change and is a long-standing associate of the Tavistock Institute, most recently co-directing our programme for freelance professionals.
Currents is a place we share the books, films, conversations and snippets of everyday life that catch our attention.
Amor Towles’ bestseller, published in 2017, only made its way into my hands (and head, and being) this past winter (your summer in the Northern Hemisphere).
Count Alexander Rostov has been sentenced to house arrest for the rest of his life in the Hotel Metropol in Moscow. His adjustment to this new reality, his taste for life and his descriptions of the human condition mesmerised me.
On raising kids, for instance, he says: “For it is the role of the parent to express his concerns and then take three steps back. Not one, mind you, not two, but three. Or maybe four. (But by no means five.)”
This sentence made me laugh out loud for how aptly it captured my own constant (and clumsy) balancing act between giving my kids freedom and being there for them.
This book overflows with gems such as this.
Image: Egor Myznik, Unsplash
Every Saturday morning, I wake up to another essay on Karin Schimke’s Substack page, Love Letter.
This one, about teenage friendship and love in my own neighbourhood in Pretoria during the heydays of Apartheid, particularly struck a chord. For me, it’s about the heartbreak of misplaced, misconceived and misused (read: abused) masculinity in societies that lost the plot.
I think today, as much as during Apartheid, we need a reminder of the vulnerability of and in the masculine.
Image: Evie S, Unsplash
The audacity to forego society’s comforts, pseudo-guarantees and expectations. The guts to leave all material possessions behind and simply walk into the unknown. Trusting its unfolding as the only reality one can count on. Forming relationships along the way that are free of pretence or control.
The idea that a short life, lived close to and in harmony with, nature and our true nature, is worth more than a long life of comfort, pretence and conformity.
This must have my third time, but I think I have to watch this film at least once every ten years - even if the result is to make only one small change in the clutter that clogs my life.
Photo by Joris Beugels, Unsplash
