POTENTIAL SELVES

As I celebrate yet another blessed birthday, a number of things come to mind.  Prominent among these is a question that I have been asked in several press interviews, “Do you feel accomplished?”

Because of this question, I would like to share one of my favourite poems by artist, Sean Henry.

“A man is walking through life, determined and focused. Or is he standing, rooted to the spot? Or is he dreaming? Whatever he is doing, he always has the potential to be different. By changing his mind he can change his state. When he captures and holds his potential, he is still. When he releases his potential he is free to move and his mind is free to think. With each choice he makes, he releases one of his potential selves. As this self becomes real, it separates and gains its own potential in an everlasting cycle …”

Justina Mutale and her babies, Mwice, Namwila and Chibesa

I often wonder at what point one can say one is now accomplished and can stand still for the rest of one’s life.  I know there is a common illusion that with age one is expected to know everything. And that with age there is less to learn in life.  On the contrary, I believe for as long as someone is still alive there are always a lot of new things to learn in life.

Therefore as I celebrate this birthday, I begin yet another new chapter in my life, a chapter I intend to write and live with a passion, to learn new things and to realise my other unrealised potential selves to the fullest.   With each birthday there is so much more to learn and do, so much more to accomplish and achieve and so much more to live for and to learn …

As stated by one of the world’s most accomplished and greatest artist/painter Francisco De Goya, on his 80^th Anniversary, “Ordinary people do not know how long it takes to learn … after 80 years, I am still learning.” 

Alvin Toffler adds to that and says, “The illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot read. It will be the person who does not know how to learn.”

And so with this birthday and many more to come, I will continue to live, love, laugh, listen, look around the world and learn!

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE FOR THE GREAT BIRTHDAY WISHES.