Beyond Freefall

A motivational book by Wendy Addison

Preface:

We live in a relative world.  Nothing is absolute.

The motivation for writing this book has been this very realisation.  When I lived in South Africa I believed that everywhere else would be better, beholden to the adage ‘the grass is greener on the other side’ and to fully appreciate the potential of my homeland I needed to travel elsewhere to experience the power of relativity. 

As South Africans we are conditioned to believe that we are less educated, less artistic, poorer off and generally less able than the rest of the Western world.  South Africans have learnt to dilute their own excellence and negate their self worth.  Perhaps this is as a result of the mechanism of apartheid that prompted the world to punish South Africans by projecting guilt, shame and worthlessness onto all of its’ people.  This self limiting guilt has been perpetuated through many generations resulting in South Africans losing faith in their own values and beliefs thereby looking elsewhere to find affirmation of their worth.  The history of apartheid and its’ consequences have provided some powerful lessons and I believe the current generation and those ahead of us need to break the cycle of self depreciation and start appreciating the brilliance of all the people of Africa.

There are word experiences and world experiences and I understand that people don’t learn by being told, they learn by doing things themselves.  My book is intended to create awareness and to urge readers to go beyond understanding the words on the pages by recognising and embracing the values of our country before looking elsewhere for validation.  Collectively and personally we could serve ourselves and our country better by electing to harness and cultivate what we already have.

It was only after I had completed this book about my journey of self discovery that I was able to acknowledge the synergies between the journey of a boy called Santiago from Paulo Coelcho’s book The Alchemist and my own.  The Alchemist tells the tale of Santiago who has the courage to follow his dreams and begins a journey of exploration.  When he decides to leave his home his father advises him, ‘travel the world until you see that our castle is the greatest and our women the most beautiful.’   As Santiago travels he sees the magnificence of the world and meets interesting people but by the end of the novel he discovers that ‘treasure lies where your heart belongs’ and that the treasure is the wisdom he acquires to appreciate that he had always been in the right place but needed contrast and relativity to recognise and appreciate it.

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