Cultivating a Blossoming World
I BELIEVE every person has the right to blossom to their full potential, develop their natural talents and follow their passions - at work, home and play.
MY DREAM is for the natural-born potential of the world’s people to be collectively in full bloom, the seeds of their talents fertilized by passionate interests and enriched by shared experiences with like-minded people.
The Yearning to Blossom
In terms of human history, we live today in an artificial, ‘unnature-al’ lifestyle. Long forgotten is our pre-industrial age heritage of living, loving and passionately creating the joys of a natural lifestyle. Fulfilment was found through a family life of linking soil, toil, mind and body to produce food for the table and warmth for the home.
The industrial revolution transformed life from individual endeavour to mass production. Our sensitivities to enjoy smelling the roses were dulled by the demands of the never-ending treadmill, grinding out the constant expectations of others to which we must slavishly adhere to survive.
Individual natural talented beauty was systematically bulldozed into creating endless, mindless crops of uniform growth, managed with machines and by machine-like managers. The seeds of mass passion, potential and creativity were left to wither and die.
The pre-industrial lifestyle is gone forever. But to this day there continues to exist within each heart an unquenchable yearning to grow naturally, follow our passions, creatively express our talents and scale the peaks of our potential. That yearning has been drastically inhibited by the demands and stresses of a world driven by economic rationalism and materialism.
The Worm is Turning.
To feed the insatiable economic appetite of the 21st century, the seeds of individual knowledge are at last being encouraged to germinate. Creative, imaginative, innovative thinking is the key to economic success. No longer can it be left in the hands of the few. The abundance of dormant seeds of talents are bursting to sprout, thirsting to be watered, fertilized, cultivated and encouraged to blossom.
Now that individual talents are back in vogue as the key to success, we must ensure those talents are used wisely.
The Enemy
The enemy is ourselves, our traditions, our comfort zones, our thought-patterns. We still see progress in the form of unending fields of bland uniformity. New fertile fields of human potential have to be ploughed and new seeds planted, allowing a profusion of desperately-needed natural talents and skills to be unearthed, cultivated and spread abroad.
The enemy is also the expectations of others. A plant’s growth is determined not by the expectations of the gardener but by the fertility of its growing environment. The task of the gardener is to encourage the plant to blossom to its full natural beauty. In the same way we must nurture each other’s desire to enjoy blossoming to their full natural potential, unhindered by our limiting perceptions of their potential.
It’s Natural!
The dream is much greater than simply making people and business more productive and fulfilled. It’s a dream to head off society’s lemming-like stampede towards the edge of an environmental abyss. The role of nature – of which humans form a major part – is essentially one of self preservation.
For humanity to survive and thrive, it’s therefore time to get back to and re-apply the principles of natural human growth and development:
Plant growth is governed by the strength of its hidden root system, relentlessly searching for rich, fertile environments in which to flourish. Similarly, the source of human strength is grounded within our hidden selves, our talents, skills and abilities.
Our seed is an abundance of unique talents, bursting to be unleashed in the fertile environment of our passionate interests, cultivated and enriched by life’s experiences, teachings and wisdom.
The fields of bland uniformity are ripe to be converted into fertile gardens of blossoming beauty – ablaze with the colour, energy, purpose, passion and life-expanding fulfillment of human endeavour. It’s a vision sustainable for generations to come, grounded in the knowledge that its what nature intended of humankind in meeting our responsibilities as custodians of the world for future generations.
Human Gardens
There are many human gardens to cultivate:
Each person’s desire to
- eradicate the stunted weeds of contrived expectations, withered by the pressures of conformity thinking,
- allow our creatively-expressed talents to flourish and bloom, warmed by the sunshine of passionate interests – at work, home and play
- spread by cross-pollinating new thinking, touching the hearts and minds of positive like-minded others
Every home, fertilizing the positive, warm, rich, earthy environment that recognizes and cultivates the passionate interests of all who live there
Every community, harvesting the talents and skills of its diverse members contributing to community development and wellbeing
Every workplace, employers to
- nurture the strong growth of natural talents and unique potential, allowing the seeds of staff self–esteem, self confidence and self worth to flourish and blossom
- plough-in the fields of bland conformity and arid thinking
- Intensively cultivate, for corporate benefits, the whole field of peoples' personal talents/skills (not just work skills)
- fertilize employees' passionate interests at work, home and play
- ensure that staff leadership, training and development programs:
- feed passionate interests, and
- recognize that sensitive gardening of the human mind and emotional resources will generate luxuriant personal growth."
The world of business and economics to change direction from that of destroying earthly nature to one of sustaining human nature.
Wealth has to be defined in terms of :
- maximized natural human talents, skills and abilities and
- enabling those talents to be developed to their maximum potential for maximum mental wealth.
Every nation and government, providing and sustaining rich fields of endeavour that encourage and cultivate opportunities for all peoples to contribute their natural talents to the social good.
An Anthem
My poem “The Invisible Me” provides the core philosophy underpinning the manifesto.
There is a me you cannot see,
A me that even I can’t see,
The person I was born to be,
The soul that soars inside of me.
Sometimes I see a fantasy,
The younger me I used to be,
A Peter Pan, forever free
To stay the person I love to be.
You would see me differently,
Perhaps someone you want to see,
A portrait that you paint of me,
The person you presume I’d be.
Please accept the reality
Of an inner me I long to free,
To be the person I was meant to be,
And to love the person I know as me.
Our common responsibility
Is not to assume who others might be,
Don’t put them in boxes, nor steal the key
That allows their talents to set them free.
We all are different, you must agree,
Unique in our talent and ability,
We yearn to allow the world to see
What we can do and give and be.
My message for the world to agree
Is for you to be you and me to be me,
To follow our passions and set them free,
To enjoy being you and enjoy being me.
View a visual version of this poem on You Tube,
spoken by Peter, music by Rosemary Nairn OAM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kFSE9x042w
