Best Wishes for 2017

Dear Friends,

I see tall the wishes wishes flowing to me… and obviously I want to send mine too…

Now I must admit that I still don’t quite know how to express sincere wishes to my beloved friends in these extraordinary times in which I feel myself torn between hope and despair.

Some speak about an age of disruption. I know that disruption is very necessary indeed, but I see so many suffering although “real” disruption did’nt happen yet. It is vain to predict or otherwise forebode what lies ahead of us…

What to say,whilst remaining honest with you, and with myself…

As I was procrastinating the words of my friend Esa Saarinen came up to me:

“Philosophy is a state of fermentation a process without a final outcome”

Ok, my procrastinating was just fermentation! And I know from the new science of life, that we don’t measure our actions against outcomes but against the process we follow to act…

Normal then that I am still “fermenting” how to live a GOOD life, at the service of the whole and of my cherished family. I know “there is no final outcome”. And no outcome, no roadmap… just a journey in and towards the unknown.

That brought me to remember the words of William the Silent. Around 1500 he is famous saying: “One needs not hope to undertake, nor succeed to persevere”.

He was already in process philisosophy right?

When I am “fermenting” I keep on reading, digging in old text and dicovering new ones…

I am still in this process, yet I need to send my wishes…NOW!

So I decided to share Vaclav Havel’s book “Living in Truth” and his speech at the 1995 Future of Hope Conference in Hiroshima. He qualifies Hope as:

“…hope is not something to be found in external indications simply when a course of action may turn out well, nor is it something I have no reason to feel when it is obvious that nothing will turn out well. Again and again, I realized that hope is above all a state of mind, and that as such we either have it, or we don’t, quite independently of the state of affairs immediately around us. Hope is simply an existential phenomenon which has nothing to do with predicting the future. Everything may appear to us in its darkest colours, and yet for some mysterious reason we do not lose hope. On the other hand, everything may be turning out just as we would like, and yet for no less mysterious reason hope may suddenly desert us. Clearly, this type of hope is related to the very feeling that life has meaning and as long as we feel that it does, we have a reason to live. If we lose this feeling, we have only two alternatives: either we take our own life, or we choose the more usual way, that of merely surviving, vegetating, remaining in this world only because we happen to be there already.” (Full text can be sent on request)

Dear Friend, this is the closest I have come to share with you my best wishes for 2017, for you and your familily…It does me GOOD to write this to you, I hope it does GOOD to you.

Wholeheartedly,

Charles

“Experience is not what happens to us – but what we do with what happens to us”

Otto Scharmer

About charlesvanderhaegen

My life purpose is to contribute to re-aligning the “Human Condition” and “Relational Practices” to a Regenerative and Resilient “Evolutionary Vision” with a “cosmopolitical” impact. Catalysing cooperative practices between people and institutions. Building bridges and common sense between distinct and radically opposed world views and opinions. Allowing the emergence of mutually satisfactory resilient and peaceful solutions to complex wicked problems, whatever their nature. Transforming them into lasting symbiotic relationships. Sowing germs for positive change with lasting impact towards the Future. Embodying experiential learning and pursuing collective action according to a radical, speculative, additive, inclusive, collective, altruist, open, responsible, respectful, comprehending, appreciative, common sense engaged Empirism… Catalysing bottom-up solutions, transforming existing local, situated wicked problem into collaboratively emerging creative interdependent combinations of apparently dissociated circumstances into “cosmopolitical” nature with “evolutionary vision”. The origin of my transformation can be found in comprehending the wisdom underlying Einstein’s words”: “Insanity, doing the same thing over and again and expecting different results” Since 2000 I've been tracking the weak and not so weak signals that indicate the deep changes happening in society, systematically searching and studying those ideas, people and initiatives at the edge of all aspects of life with emphasis on what is not listened to and responded to. Between 2012 and early 2019, during my 8 years with Gunter Pauli and his promoting his Blue Economy “concept“, I experienced the wickedness of NOT coherently catalyse the emergence of radical change. It was traumatic and ruinous for me (and others), yet it opened my eyes, obliging me to reposition myself. I embarked on a propaedeutic experimental learning experience that transformed itself into never-ending empiric fermentation processes (with no end ever). I am confident to have found, at last, an opportunity to applying the learnings of 50 years of multifarious professional and private experiences. Let me share the simple yet most effective wisdom that has allowed me to remain resilient in every circumstance that I had to face: “Experience is not what happens to you, it is what you do with what happens to you” Otto Scharmer “Always Learning, never getting it right” Michael Thompso

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