The Space to Dream

E87: Mother's Day, Friends & Family IRL 4 - London, UK

This week’s edition comes to you live from London where Karena is spending time at her home singing and dancing with her Mama

catching up with siblings, family, and close friends. And hopefully meeting in person some friends from her various Writing communities - Write of Passage, Writing in Community. Photos on that next week.

Here are a few from the little coves and empty beaches that hug the border between France and Spain:

Collioure, France

I hope you are enjoying some of these travel photos. I continue to stare in wonder at structures still standing, built centuries ago - in a time before computers, before Microsoft Teams, before Instagram. Dream big. Build for future generations.

Canet-en-Roussillon with the backdrop of the Pyrennes, France

See you again next week, Tribe Tilt. Till then, stay safe and healthy. From there all else becomes possible.
Karena

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This week’s edition, pre-programmed to post while I’m on the road:

• A Mother’s Day poem.

• The Space to Dream: As parents, we are caught between protecting and propelling our children. We look at the world and we wonder - what will my kids do, how will they live?
  We can create space for them to believe – that anything is possible. As a parent that is so powerful.

  • Read it below. Or watch the eight-minute video. Or both.

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THE SPACE TO DREAM

I would like to talk to you about … S P A C E.

Space travel firsts

1. First steps on the Moon

I was a little girl the first time I got fascinated with space.

I remember it clearly. My father interrupted us in the middle of our game. “You’ve GOT to see this,” he said. “It is a historic moment.” Adults and kids were all gathered around our one little TV set. I recall sitting cross-legged on the grey carpet in the room with the avocado-green upholstery.

He turned the knob, his own face filled with wonder and expectation.

And there - in the middle of Africa - a black-and-white signal sputtered. And I watched the grainy transmission as Neil Armstrong - clad in a huge plastic suit with a giant fishbowl for a helmet - stepped onto the surface of the moon.

"One small step for man, One giant leap for mankind," he said.

That was it!
Like millions of other little kids my age, scattered across the globe, my love affair with the heavens had begun.

2. Space Shuttle Columbia

The next time was over a decade later. This time, we had recently moved into our family home in the UK and we were all in the middle of painting walls and weeding our postage-stamp-sized garden. Once again, he stopped all of us and gathered us around our colour TV screen with its three channels. “This is an important moment,” he said, as we gathered to watch the first space shuttle Columbia take off.

3. Virgin Galactic

And so, I felt I was channelling my Dad when I gathered my still sleepy kids in Canada. “Come ON! You’ll miss it,” I said pulling them out of their deep sleep in their comfy beds. “I’ll watch the replay later,” they pushed back. “Wouldn’t you like to tell your children you were there the moment space travel shifted?” I argued back. It brought me joy to see them munching on brunch platters, stretched out on the full sofa in front of our big screen TV with its 1000 channels (including the Space Channel). We sat watching as Virgin Galactic went sub-orbital.

I smiled broadly, watching 70-year-old Richard Branson (one of my lifetime heroes) execute a somersault at zero gravity. Once again, we were marking a significant moment in our relationship with the cosmos.

Space and Science Fiction

Ever since I have been old enough, I have grown up on this steady diet of space and science fiction: Star Trek and Star Wars. Foundation. The Jetsons. And (my favourite) Doctor Who.

I am old enough to see the wild imaginations of science fiction turn into our real life tools. Star Trek is where I saw my first flip-phone .. ahem communicator. And my first bluetooth GPS+voice device … ahem badge. I patiently await the transporter so I no longer have to wait in the interminable security line at airports to visit my Mother or children. WhatsApp & Zoom video calls have been a step in the right direction. But not enough. I have full faith that we can deploy what creative sci-fi writers and directors imagine on paper and film.

When we embrace science fiction, we dance – between the limits of our intelligence, the boundaries of physics, and the elasticity of time.

We play — with possibility.

A parent's passion can propel and inspire

My Dad had a wonderful enthusiasm about him when he encouraged us to share in these major feats of human accomplishment. And I got to wonder if it was in part his passion that inspires me and makes me a futurist who focuses on the Future of Work.

As parents, we are constantly balancing on this tightrope with our children - between protecting and propelling.

My father may have given me a love for space. But he actually did so much more. He created … space.

He created the space for me to believe – that anything is possible. And as a parent that is so powerful.

Today, as adults we look at the world and we wonder - what will my kids do, how will they live? But we come boxed in with our experiences, our stories, our failures.

The bigger gift we can offer our next generation is space:

• the space to dream

• the space to imagine

• the space to believe

Inspired by MayBes and WhatIfs

The longer I thought about it, the more I got convinced that the thrum I felt deep in my soul when I was first introduced to the concepts of strategy and futurism came in part because of my father’s faith in our human ability to make MAJOR change.

It was fifty years later, as an adult, when I realized that it was brilliant minds, bending the arc of the impossible, working alongside each other with the simplest computer technology that got those first rockets into space, those first men onto the moon AND safely back to Earth.

I find this world of Maybes and WhatIfs fascinating. Much of this challenge and curiosity also happens to be the language and tools of futurism. 

It is the possibility that things - could – BE.
And that they could be ... different.

That maybe impossible is only impossible … until it isn’t.

Is it big I Impossible?

As you study the words Impossible and I’m possible, the difference between them is minuscule.
It is an apostrophe …
and the S-P-A-C-E … to breathe between the words.

That is what we offer our children. Because it’s in THAT space that hope lies. And we are going to need a serious dose of that enthusiasm and hope.

Climate Action

I am very committed to empowering the next generations.

They are very clued in to what is going on around them. Almost from kindergarten, they are engaged with climate change. They know it is a huge global issue – one that all of us are going to have to rally around and solve.

We need our kids to know that they are up to the task.
And that we have full faith that supported by like-minded souls across all age groups, we can embrace this challenge. Whether it is reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, simultaneously rescuing species at risk, while feeding and educating the world population, 

we can create climate action - together

“not because it is easy, but because it is hard”

What I see right now is a world that is under threat. We are going to have to pull together. But it is within our capabilities.
We need to communicate squarely that this will not be easy. But as a human race, we are up for the challenge.

JFK understood this. As he said in 1962 when he announced why our mission was to land on the moon –

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things,
not because they are easy, but because they are hard,
because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills,
because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win"

The children of today are indeed our leaders of tomorrow. The time has once again come for all of us to embrace that different kind of possible. We can inspire young and old to live with possibility and imagination and to fight for our precious planet Earth.

I look forward to the day I can pull my grandkids on to my lap and - with an enthusiasm and pride as profound as my Dad’s - share in a historic moment when mankind working together has again bent the arc towards the possible side of clean water and clean air for all life on Mother Earth. 

TOGETHER, we can do this!
And that is something I truly believe is possible.

Dream big. Dream bold. Anything is possible.

A version of this essay “The Space to Dream” was first a HIT talk (8 speakers, 8 minutes) given on July 18, 2021, then published on karenadesouza.com . If you liked the video or this post, please consider sharing it with other parents or those who love space.

• Photo, audio & video credits: Headliner app, Canva, Simplecast, creator Karena de Souza (One of my first cartoon drawings. I thought it was impossible for me, but I did it! encouraged by

  John Nicholas
  - "If it inspires one person its worth doing")

• I’d like to thank my army of editors whose reflections improved the flow of this week’s essay:

  Randy Garman
  Kirsten Corbett
  Ed William
  Latham
  Andreas Marinopoulos
  I hope you each see your stamp of influence.

P.S. Any BTS ARMY fans? A timely message from Jimin advertising my essay for me this week!

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Mothering is a verb.

This is Mother’s Day weekend for many areas of the world. Thank you, to each of you/us who chose to take on that role - whether we give birth to those in our care, adopt or coach them, have fur or feather babies. Enjoy this poem:

Mothers come in all shapes and forms

Street art by @VictoriaCanoPerez in Valencia, Spain

See you next week, Tribe Tilt. Till then, stay healthy.
Karena