Confidence

In a film released when I was 3, "The sound of music", Julie Andrews (who pays Maria) sang "I have confidence in me"  on her way out of the Convent to face a problem family. Even though I was just 8 when I saw it, I knew the song could not possibly create confidence out of nothing.

The main reason for Maria's angst is because leaving the safety and shelter of the convent to face a confirmed difficult family. In fact, things would just get worse as Hitler occupied Austria and the family was forced to flee. Everything they depended on for security crumbled and safety would not be guaranteed as they left home.

This happened to me. After many years of making the most of institutions in my life to learn, live and work, I didn't mind moving on to new modes of working and living. Geography, language, culture were never insurmountable barriers. In fact I loved climbing these fences that threaten to separate us from each other.

Then after my short prison experience, year-long investigation and final acquittal it coincided with middle age, a change in the economy and dissolution of old business models, which all made my quest to find the next institutional refuge unsuccessful. I was like Maria who just couldn't find a way into the monastic life she wanted but was drawn into motherhood on her own.

I looked for help from friends who enjoyed their institutional success but nothing materialized. A word of encouragement would have been nice but I felt like they preferred to ignore my predicament altogether. Perhaps they wonder why at my age, I still had not "succeeded" in climbing a respected institution.

I thought I would just move on to a new job, a new location, a new culture like I had done over and over again to much "success". But after feeling persecuted by religious, legal, medical, business and even cultural institutions despite that I was trying my best to follow their perceived requirements, I was forced to find a new source of confidence.

Illness, misfortune, silence, loneliness all conspired to make me feel inadequate and scared of having no institutional shelter or the prospect of one. I'm not saying I refuse to work in a company or powerful organisation, ever. But I will never work "for" them.

I thought that if the institutions that treated me unfairly failed me, there will be better ones that take over. After years in the doldrums of my life, I discovered that the problem was my security, confidence and faith in the future hung on my success in the institutions in my life. With this attitude, even if I were to create a new business, it could easily take over my life. My hopes and dreams will then be merged with the success of my business.

It's like the haunting from prison had little to with bad memories but my misplaced faith that the institutions that put me there were evil so I needed to escape to a benevolent country, company, people...

Confidence must be rooted in the mystery of my life which needs to be discovered, as Science decodes Nature, philosophy seeks meaning, hearts yearn for love.... This confidence began as the conditions of life that are as rare as winning a lottery, gave us the opportunity to live.

What we end up creating, contributing, achieving cannot be our source of confidence if we want to rise above them. To rest in past success and wanting to reproduce the same thing over and over again is very much related to the industrial paradigm because it is assumed that what worked before must work now.

To embrace what awaits us tomorrow is more related to discovery and creating, than relying on tried and "true" methods of the past. Yes, my confidence is in the mystery of what I do not know because the opportunity to discover the answers will be exciting.