FUTURE
“ The process of building a better world never ends
because our attempts to build better relationships
are never f inished. „
take responsibility for yourself. You take care of yourself. If you are
good at it, you will have some excess to take care of your family. If you
good at both of those you have some excess left to take care of your
community. Those are heavy burdens. You pick up those burdens. You
find that this is meaningful. The best way to pick up the burden is to
continually improve yourself and that is where the meaning is to be
found. That meaning is in the continual self-transcendence. That’s
letting your old self die and the new self be reborn.
“The way out of political polarisation, the way out the excesses of
the right and the left, the way out of racial disagreements, is through
the individual. This is where the West got it right. The fundamental
unit of measurement is the individual. The fundamental task of the
individual is to engage in a process of humble self-improvement.
That’s where the meaning is. That’s where the responsibility is. If
enough people take responsibility for getting their individual lives
together then we will get wise enough to stop our politicians creating
the political polarisation that put us back to the same places that we
were at in the 20th century.”
It is self-evident that the world is a place of suffering and there
are things to be done about that. It is self-evident that people are
flawed and there are things to be done about that. The suffering
could be reduced, and the human insufficiencies could be
overcome if people orientated themselves properly and did what
they were capable of doing. What is an organisation other than
that which allows the expression of limitless human potential?
In this fractured and chaotic world, it’s up to us to generate
order. We are the ones who construct and give pattern to the
16 • SHAMUS RENNIE • 60 YEARS • A THIRD GENERATION FAMILY BUSINESS
world – not by getting rid of unwieldy human emotions, the
messy stuff that is us, but by beginning right there. And we do
this through daily self-cultivation: working through our rituals
to improve the way we relate to those around us; cultivating
energies in our bodies so that we can live with more vitality;
training our hearts and minds to work through daily decisions
in a powerfully different way; and resisting our tendency to
cut ourselves off from experience, so that we can become
constantly receptive to new things.
The process of building a better world never ends because
our attempts to build better relationships are never finished. But
as we learn how to better our relationships we will learn how to
alter situations and there create infinite numbers of new worlds.
If the world is fragmented, then it gives us every opportunity
to construct things anew. It begins with the smallest things in
our daily lives, from which we change everything. If we begin
there, then everything is up to us.
These are some of the ideas that we try to cultivate at
Shamus Rennie and we look to the future with excitement!
Ryan Rennie
0860 SHAMUS • www.shamusrennie.co.za