Pope in Brazil gives no abortions message

Where are the Catholics?

The Pope has landed in Brazil and there is no doubt that he would be thronged by faithful adherents of the Roman Catholic doctrine and dogma as they gather for a message of hope, of peace and of love.

And that is to be expected, the encouragement to keep with the truth and the admonition to keep away from trends and fads that have no religious bearing on bringing succour to the people.

There is also a kind of disaffection amongst worshippers, people are looking for a livelier God, a kind of worship that includes reverence but also involves the whole of their being in vision, hearing and motion - the type that you would find in Protestant Evangelical churches to which Brazil is haemorrhaging followers.

A message for now?

It would appear the message of hope that the Pope takes to Brazil is the anti-abortion message, one that was at variance with medical realities - a few years ago, a 9-year old girl whose life was at risk if she took the pregnancy to term and the parents decided on an abortion - her parents were excommunicated because the life of the unborn child was more precious to keep than that of the suffering child who might not survive the ordeal of giving birth.

In that circumstance, the parents refused to risk the possible lose of their daughter and prospective grandchild to be succoured with the epithet - God giveth, God taketh away. Nobody, not the doctors nor the church could guarantee the survival of either party should the foetus have come to term.

Of doctrine and of relevance

Indeed, unborn life must be protected, but a humanity of circumstances has to be involved too; religion was made for man to help achieve peace, contentment and balance, it is not an ideological set of dogmatic rules upon which man should be offered as sacrifices to maintain an unconscionable status quo.

Too many times through history, we have allowed such machinations to deprive others of the right to live or exist; driven by some force that portends to speak and act for God, men arrogate to themselves powers that do not belong to any man on earth to exercise terror and dominate the pliant; this should not be so.

We know of the poverty, the disease, the illiteracy, the crime and destitution in certain communities in Brazil - the followers of Catholic doctrine must ask their Holy Father one question - How does the anti-abortion message change our lives for the better, how does it raise Brazilians out of desperate circumstances?

Basically, does the anti-abortion message have any relevance to those who hunger, who suffer, who are deprived and who need a different kind of help?

Even I am listening for an answer in the comfort and security of my Western affluence.

More opportunities for irrelevance abound

Between retiring and having a new lease

I bought my apartment from a couple in their 70s who in turn were purchasing a comfortable retirement apartment in Arnhem by the Dutch Rhine. Four years earlier, they had come up to Amsterdam buying this apartment whilst it was still a drawing plan, having lived in Eindhoven for 25 years.

Not many people buy a new house in their 70s, one knows of none other who has done that twice in their 70s. More so, they could easily have retired in Eindhoven and lived out their lives there having lived there for 25 years already.

The couple might have been in their 70s, but they were young, youthful, young at adventure, given to opportunity for change and getting themselves a new lease of life when many of their peers were wasting away in idle retirement.

I want to be a 70 year old who has purpose, who is relevant and can still do things people half my age do and possibly do it all better.

Early retirement

In the last two decades middle managers arranged to take early retirement at around 55, however with an average life expectancy of 75, one wonders what the next 20 years would be spent doing. Golf and travel eventually take their toll on enthusiasm, a life of leisure does not equate to being relevant apart from being useful baby-sitting grand parents.

As we have all noted with the pensions crisis in Europe, we apparently cannot afford to retire before 70. Each individual now has 70 reasons to alter the course of their lives and careers to suit working until 70.

The fight against irrelevance has never been bloodier with youth, technology, globalisation, business practise and trends leaving the unprepared behind in the land of wasted dreams.

More so, it appears those in their 20s have at least 50 years of working life ahead of them, they had better be on the right train or as certain as taxes and death, irrelevance would overtake them and consign them to the scrapheap.

Strong reasons to be reasonable

Take account of your age and have a reason for each number of years to remain relevant.

At birth, you may have no reasons for anything, but even you have to draw sharp breaths to live, to cry and survive.

At 5, you might have 5 reasons why you want that present.

At 10, you might have 5 reasons why you want to stay in this school and 5 given to you about the need to go to another.

At 15, you possibly have 15 reasons to rebel against authority and do your own thing.

At 20, there are 20 reasons to realise you are becoming independent and are taking on some responsibilities.

At 25, there are 25 reasons to succeed and excel at all costs and possibly start a family.

At 30, there are 30 reasons to wonder if you are in the right career, if your dreams are getting fulfil and the weight of responsibility is easy or stressful.

At 35, there are 35 reasons for a life-audit and the same number for where you want to be at 40.

At 40 and beyond

At 40, there are 40 reasons why do you do not want to have a mid-life crises because of what you have done at 30.

At 45, there are 45 reasons why if you are beginning to feel out of place, you have to rethink some reasons you had at 35 before you reach 50.

At 50, there are 50 reasons to be at the pinnacle of your career and the beginning of a new one of mentoring to remain relevant.

At 55, there are 55 reasons to be a grandparent and the same not to be a young parent, with great concern if you are already a great-grandparent. However, there are still 15 years before retirement, how are you doing?

At 60, there are 60 reasons to earn all the accolades working a 2-day week for as much as you earned working a 12-day week in your 30s. You should be during really well and grooming a successor. Enjoy the next 10 years or else there would be 70 reasons why you did not have the reasons for every time you had the opportunity to reason.

One probably has 38 reasons for working on the changes to remain relevant.

Opportunities for irrelevance abound

Your rank in the Army of Relevance, Sir!

One being a collector of quotations, it is easy to recite and regurgitate quotations without finding out more about the particular persons and circumstances that lead to those gems of human wisdom and intellect encapsulated in words.

In fact, a quotation is a phrase or sentence of relevance. Relevance is a beacon; it stands out from the other group of words that give it a context to exist.

One's reference to the army stems from the time one has spent thinking of Gen. Eric Shinseki's very notable quotation.

"If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less"

One has paraphrased this to "They who hate change would hate irrelevance even more" - Every aspect of one's life has to experience a concept of evolution or irrelevance sets in - Irrelevance = Extinction. There is no time friend to be an endangered species; the endangerment was there when you ignored the trends of change.

The recruitment drills of entering the Army breaks down the individual and develops the team based on trust, enforced by authority, nurtured by respect, rewarded by promotion, reckoned by discharge and sanctioned by expulsion.

Discipline governs the ability to remain relevant in the Army and that lack of it brings sanctions that could lead to expulsion if there is no means of reprove that can convince authority of your further relevance to the Army.

Jesus identified that understanding of authority as the highest form of faith when the centurion in asking Jesus to heal his servant by speaking the words.

The Centurion reckoned himself a man who had authority by being answerable to his superiors, respectful of his peers and leading his subordinates. In that station, he was an example to all around him.

How to become irrelevant

What appears below may sound ironic; however, the full appreciation of the knowledge of anything is, knowing what it is and knowing what it is not.

Change what you cannot and leave what you can.

You read that right. There are we cannot change and things we can.

• There are people younger and smarter than you are, you cannot change your age, but you can get smart.
• These younger people will come up with the strangest and seemingly weird ideas, you may not be as radical, but your wealth of experience can help in making those ideas practical.
• Your organisation may be changing to make your circumstances untenable, but you can change your circumstances for the better without having to rely on your organisation.
• You may have been there long enough to have the delusion of being indispensable, however, if you keeled over now, after two weeks, someone better and smarter would replace you.
• What you know in terms of experience may not be valuable, but understanding how to adapt that experience to trends is most invaluable.

Be persuasive in peace but invincible at war.

Another of General Shinseki's quotes

The theory of evolution has moved on, it is no more the survival of the fittest, but the ascendancy of the smartest. The species would not change into anything other than the humans - homo sapiens sapiens - that they are. There is no point having two heads, four hands, six legs and eight reproductive organs, that type of fitness is redundant.

The greatest resource available to man is their intellectual capital - ideas, dreams, vision turned into the reality that changes humankind for the better.

New and Improved is OUT - Radical and Groundbreaking is IN.

I do not want more of the same I want something different. Enough of the tremors in office politics, what we want are earthquakes.

Radically uproot it all and build it somewhere else. Only smart buildings survive earthquakes, not mammoth edifices.

Finally, whatever game is played in the quest to remain relevant, be principled, honest, trustworthy and reliable. Those unimpeachable qualities endure after the smoke has cleared up. Those were characteristics lacking in the leaderships of Enron, Andersen, WorldCom and many more failed organisations in their heyday.

Postscript references

Tom's 60 TIBs - It's a PowerPoint

Why Associations and Consortia fail

Trends you should know to survive tough times