I have been lucky in my life to love the work I do- and to do loving work.
I spent my first few years in a small village by the shore of Lake Victoria in Tanzania. Birds of every size and colour perched on the trees surrounding our house: weaving nests in the branches; snatching insects from the air or fish from the lake. Lizards and snakes scurried through the undergrowth. Monkeys danced and chatted on the rocks and hyenas skulked and sang to each other through the night. My first friends were the children of the village: watoto kwa wasukuma.
Robin and friends in Bwiru
Growing up in England, with all the advantages and privileges of a modern western democracy, I knew the things that we took for granted were not available to everyone. I knew that the world was a beautiful place. I also knew it was an unfair place.
I grew up angry. My parents generation had fucked things up. We lived under the shadow of the bomb, in a poisoned world whose inequities were compounded by the greed and injustice of a capitalist system that enslaved the many for the benefit of the few. As a teenager I knew that they had messed up and they had to change.
In my twenties I ran a theatre company, doing work I loved with people who were my friends first and my colleagues second. I wanted to change things, to create something untainted by the corruption of money. I ran a co-operative and as it grew I learnt that even my well meaning friends could be selfish and greedy. We had messed up and we needed to change.
Disheartened by my experiences in theatre I took my skills into the world of business and began consulting. I felt like a covert agent penetrating the corridors of the enemy. I worked for Saatchi and Saatchi, for Shell Exploration and Production, for Proctor and Gamble and GlaxoSmithKline: for the very companies I had complained so bitterly about. Everywhere I worked I found smart, caring, conscious people looking to find a better way. I had messed up I realised and I needed to change.
I began to focus on my clinical practise- “fixing the world one person at a time” as a friend of mine joked. In my small little corner of the world I could pretend that I wasn’t a part of the problem.
It is human nature that we choose to protect and serve that which we love. But where do we draw the line that says this is us, and that is them. Where is the boundary between loved and unloved?
Because of my love for a small village in the developing world I grew up knowing how the juggernaut of western modernity strip mines its way through other cultures. Because of my love for the hidden and untamed wild I made the motorcar and the sprawling urban landscape my enemy.
The business whose factory pollutes; the business whose supply chain pays a dollar for a 14 hour day; the business who’s sub-prime mortgage is home and happiness for a family: all these businesses are guilty of a lack of love.
As I sit round the fire with my brothers from the village, Watu kwa wasukuma. I realise I have also been guilty of a lack of love. My Tanzanian brothers do not want me to live in poverty with them. They want me to be wealthy and to bring wealth to the village. They want electricity and mobile phones and films and the internet.
And for this I realise I must learn to love work again. I must learn to find a way to make the creation of wealth an act of love. There is no longer space for us and them. There is only us. One world, one fragile achingly, breathtakingly beautiful world.
One fragile, achingly, breathtakingly beautiful world.
I have been lucky in my life to love the work I do- and to do loving work.
I spent my first few years in a small village by the shore of Lake Victoria in Tanzania. Birds of every size and colour perched on the trees surrounding our house: weaving nests in the branches; snatching insects from the air or fish from the lake. Lizards and snakes scurried through the undergrowth. Monkeys danced and chatted on the rocks and hyenas skulked and sang to each other through the night. My first friends were the children of the village: watoto kwa wasukuma.
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Kimyer · September 16, 2010 at 9:01 am
Thanks for article. Everytime like to read you.