Good morning, Vietnam !

Bad start of the day. Have a terrible cold. Did not sleep well. Outside; it’s 1°C, windy, humid, and dark. Again, i woke up angry.

Was thinking about my previous post “Emotional Zombies”, where i wrote about Open Mind, Open Heart, and Open Will.

Open Mind, Heart, Will is based on the work of about Theory “U” by Otto Scharmer.

It’s a book about presence, and how – if you dive deep to the level at the bottom of the “U” – you will discover your true purpose. The subtitle is “Leading from the future as it emerges”. Now you know where i got the title of this blog.

In “Emotional Zombies”, I also wrote about the golden cages.

I recently discovered it can get worse. Much worse.

It can get to the stage of BROKEN Mind, BROKEN Heart, and BROKEN Will.

It remember somebody quoting about education just 50 years or so.

In the family instruction books of that time, the general sense was that the parent had to break the will of the child as early as possible in the education of the child, to ensure that the child would be fully under the parents’ and teachers’ control. Luckily, education has evolved, but you get a sense what it means to break somebody’s will.

To further explain that feeling of Broken Will, i will tell a true story. When i was studying architecture (yes, building houses and so) at the art school in Brussels, one year we had to design an art exposition space. We also needed to make a maquette of it.

I worked on mine for days and nights. It was made of the finest balsa wood, and the construction was made of hundreds of mini balsa pillars. Oh boy, was i proud !

Then the jury comes along. The judging was a session in full public where the other 200 students could follow the judgment of the pros.

Professor Jonckers – i even remember his name after 30 years ! – looked at my piece of art. He smiled dangerously and said: “Let’s see if this thing is also as solid from a construction point of view as it looks like” and then he demolished the whole thing by shooting with his fingers all 100 pillars into pieces. I could have kicked him in the face (i should have done it).

That hurts. It hurts when your piece of work gets demolished. It hurts when your contribution gets ignored. It brings me in my state of “Broken will”. Its an emotion beyond broken heart. It cuts deep.

This week, i mourned my broken will.

And what about the cage ? I suddenly remember a line of a poem: “she smiled gently when she discovered that the door of the jail was already open for some days”