Category Archives: spirituality

by | November 9, 2026 · 6:56 am

When did you last change your mind?

When did you last change your mind about something that you felt was really important to you?

Was it because somebody persuaded you to, or because it was convenient? Or did you experience something that made you question what you had always believed?

This can be surprisingly difficult for most people. One reason is that we often confuse opinion with identity.

Throughout your life, you construct an understanding of the world. Your beliefs and opinions are shaped, often in ways you are barely conscious of, by the families, communities and cultural environments in which you grow up.

They provide you with identity, security and a sense of belonging. They help distinguish right from wrong, friend from foe, and what you consider to be truth from what you reject.

But what happens when the beliefs that have shaped your understanding of the world are themselves fundamentally flawed?

When changing your mind takes courage

I grew up in apartheid South Africa, where racial separation was government policy. The country was divided into designated areas for different racial groups, a system sanitised by the authorities under the label of ‘separate development’.

As white children, we grew up knowing remarkably little about the lives of those outside our own sheltered world. The system was built on fear, suspicion and the oppression of people simply because they were different. Even more disturbing was the way apartheid was justified through religion, using biblical interpretations to legitimise racial discrimination.

Yet one man I had the privilege of meeting on several occasions found the courage to break away from this system with extraordinary moral clarity.

Beyers Naudé was a Dutch Reformed Church minister who had initially defended apartheid and its theological justification. But as he began questioning what he had been taught, his understanding changed. He came to recognise that apartheid theology had no legitimate biblical foundation and that his loyalty to the Gospel could no longer be reconciled with his loyalty to the church and the political establishment.

When he began speaking out, he was vilified by many of his former supporters as a traitor. He lost friendships, faced hostility and paid a considerable personal price for his convictions.

In October 1977, following the government’s banning of the Christian Institute, which he had founded, Naudé himself was subjected to a banning order. He was confined to his Johannesburg home and surrounding area, prohibited from preaching, meeting more than one person at a time and being quoted in public.

His story is a powerful reminder that changing your mind can require far more than intellectual flexibility. Sometimes it demands moral courage, particularly when doing so means turning away from the beliefs and institutions that have defined your life.

History offers other examples of people who displayed similar courage. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who resisted the Nazi regime, was executed in April 1945, only weeks before the end of the Second World War. In more recent times, Russian opposition figures Alexei Navalny and Boris Nemtsov paid with their lives for challenging the authoritarian political establishment.

These individuals could have chosen to remain silent and follow the prevailing consensus. What distinguished them was their willingness to look beyond the accepted narratives of their time, question what they had been taught and act according to a deeper sense of moral responsibility.

They remind us that sometimes the greatest act of courage is not to defend what we have always believed, but to recognise when it is wrong.

The comfort and danger of certainty

One of the greatest obstacles to personal growth is not ignorance, but the conviction that we already know.

When we become too attached to our opinions, we close ourselves off to alternative perspectives. We begin to see the world in binary terms: right or wrong, us or them, friend or enemy.

This way of thinking has deep roots in our evolutionary history. For much of human existence, belonging to a group offered protection, while strangers and outsiders could represent potential threats. Although the circumstances of our lives have changed enormously, some of these tribal instincts remain deeply embedded in our behaviour.

In today’s interconnected world, we are constantly exposed to different cultures, identities, beliefs and competing versions of the truth. Yet instead of becoming more open-minded, many people retreat into increasingly rigid positions.

Social media and digital algorithms can reinforce this tendency by surrounding us with opinions that confirm what we already believe. We become more entrenched in our own intellectual and ideological comfort zones, often interpreting disagreement as a threat rather than an opportunity to learn.

Clinging to familiar beliefs may provide a temporary sense of security in a rapidly changing world. But does it really make us happier, wiser or better equipped to understand one another?

Perhaps the opposite is true. The more rigidly we defend our convictions, the less room we leave for personal growth.

There is a profound difference between knowing about life and allowing ourselves to be transformed by living it.

The wisdom of not knowing

One of the most intriguing ideas in the writings of the 13th-century German mystic Meister Eckhart is that our understanding of the divine may depend less on what we know than on what we are prepared to let go of.

This is a radical idea because most of us approach life by accumulating knowledge. We develop beliefs, construct explanations and build an understanding of the world that gives us a sense of certainty.

But Eckhart recognised a paradox: sometimes the very things we believe we know become obstacles to deeper understanding.

His teaching of Gelassenheit is particularly relevant here. The German word conveys the idea of letting go, releasement and non-attachment.

Eckhart suggested that we must release not only our attachment to material things, but also our attachment to our ideas, expectations and even our concepts of God.

We create an image of God based on our upbringing, religious traditions, cultural assumptions and personal experiences. Yet we risk mistaking that image for the reality itself.

Eckhart’s mystical approach invites us to let go of these preconceived images and become receptive to something beyond our intellectual understanding.

His famous expression, often translated as ‘the eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me’, points towards an extraordinary intimacy between human consciousness and the divine.

The underlying message is that our ideas about ultimate reality should never be confused with ultimate reality itself.

This insight extends well beyond religion. We do something similar with our understanding of other people, cultures and even ourselves. We construct mental images and assumptions, then mistake them for the whole truth.

Perhaps wisdom begins when we recognise the limitations of these assumptions and become willing to look again.

From knowing to becoming

This raises an interesting question: is wisdom something we acquire, or something we become?

We tend to measure knowledge by what we have learned, how much information we possess and how well we can explain the world around us.

Wisdom, however, is rather different.

A person may know a great deal about compassion without actually being compassionate. They may understand the philosophy of forgiveness without being able to forgive. They may have studied spirituality for decades without becoming more accepting, generous or peaceful.

There is a difference between understanding something intellectually and allowing it to transform the way you live.

One of the most important qualities of a wise person may therefore be the willingness to reconsider what they believe.

Intellectual humility does not mean lacking conviction or being unable to make decisions. Nor does it mean treating every opinion as equally valid.

It means recognising that our understanding is always partial, and that our experiences, upbringing and cultural conditioning influence how we interpret reality.

It means remaining curious, listening to perspectives that challenge our assumptions and having the courage to admit when we might be wrong.

Most importantly, it means being prepared to change.

On the Camino Aragonese

The journey of becoming

We are continually shaped by relationships, encounters, disappointments, loss, travel, nature, reading and reflection. Experiences that once seemed insignificant may acquire an entirely different meaning years later.

This is something I have become increasingly aware of through my own journey, particularly after walking thousands of kilometres on the Camino de Santiago and immersing myself in the natural world.

Walking has taught me that understanding does not always come from seeking answers. Sometimes it emerges through the experience itself: the solitude, the unexpected encounters, the physical challenges and the simple act of being present.

Many of the ideas and convictions I held so firmly at 30 began to look different at 50, and different again now, in my late sixties.

I don’t necessarily regard this as evidence that everything I once believed was wrong. Rather, my understanding has deepened and, in some respects, become less rigid.

For instance, I have gradually stopped feeling the need to change other people’s opinions. I have come to accept that people see and experience the world differently, shaped by their own histories, circumstances and understanding. We do not always have to agree, nor do we need to convince one another that we are right.

There is a certain freedom in recognising that.

Perhaps the greatest paradox of the spiritual journey is that the more we learn, the more we begin to recognise how little we truly know.

For much of our lives, we search for answers. We construct belief systems, embrace philosophies and look for explanations that will make sense of the world and our place within it. There is nothing wrong with this. The search for understanding is part of what makes us human.

But there may come a time when we recognise that our beliefs, however meaningful, are only interpretations of a reality far greater than our ability to comprehend it.

The mystics understood something of this. They recognised that the journey towards deeper understanding sometimes requires us to let go of the very things we have spent a lifetime learning to hold on to.

Wisdom is not about becoming increasingly certain of what you believe, but about developing the humility to question yourself, the courage to change and the openness to embrace what remains unknown.

You may never arrive at all the answers. But perhaps that is not the point.

The journey is not simply about discovering what is true. It is about allowing what we discover to change who we become.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S: If you enjoyed this article, you might be interested in reading one of my four books, available where all good books are sold.

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by | October 26, 2026 · 11:03 am

Ancient Trees: Cathedrals of Nature and Keepers of Time

Ancient trees possess a majestic, timeless beauty. Their weathered trunks seem to hold the stories of generations long gone. They have stood through changing seasons, witnessed the rise and fall of human fortunes, and endured storms, wars, and the passing of centuries. Long after the people who planted them have disappeared, these silent giants remain, rooted in the earth and reaching towards the sky.

During a recent walk through the grounds of Kingston Lacy in Dorset, I found myself pondering these cathedrals of nature. Standing beneath their expansive canopies, I wondered what they might tell us if they could speak. What changes had they witnessed? What conversations, celebrations, and sorrows had unfolded in their shadow? How many generations had passed by, scarcely aware that these trees would outlive them all?

Perhaps their greatest wisdom lies in their silence.

The landscape at Kingston Lacy, in Dorset, United Kingdom, tells a story of changing ideas about wealth, beauty, and our relationship with the natural world. The estate’s avenues and parkland reflect the ambitions and tastes of successive generations of the Bankes family. In the nineteenth century, William John Bankes, an adventurer and landowner, helped transform the estate’s gardens and landscape. Among its notable features is Cedar Avenue, with trees grown from seeds brought back from Lebanon. These magnificent trees, now part of the estate’s historic character, are reminders of a time when exploration, wealth, and the desire to create something enduring found expression in the landscape itself.

As I stood beside these trees, I felt a profound sense of humility. Each began as a tiny seed, carrying the potential for a life far greater than its beginnings might suggest. With time, sunlight, water, and nourishment from the earth, it had grown into something magnificent. Its roots had reached deep into the soil while its branches stretched towards the heavens.

A tree does not grow in haste. It does not measure its progress against the achievements of others, nor does it seem troubled by the passing of time. It grows according to its own nature, season by season, year after year. Its strength lies not in resisting every change but in adapting to it. Branches break, leaves fall, and the trunk bears the scars of earlier storms. Yet life continues, finding new ways to grow around the wounds.

There is something deeply humbling about standing beside a tree that has lived through centuries of human history. It reminds us that our own lives, with all their ambitions, disappointments, and certainties, occupy only a brief moment in the larger unfolding of time. We tend to measure our lives in years and decades. Ancient trees invite us to think in centuries.

They also invite us to reconsider what it means to leave a legacy.

When I look at the great cathedrals and churches of medieval Europe, I wonder whether the architects and master builders drew inspiration from the trees that surrounded them. The soaring columns, branching arches, and vaulted ceilings of Gothic architecture evoke a forest, with stone pillars rising like trunks and ribs spreading overhead like branches. Sunlight filters through stained glass in much the same way that light finds its way through a canopy of leaves.

Perhaps the builders understood something we have largely forgotten: that the spaces we create can shape how we experience our place in the world. A cathedral was not simply a building. It was an expression of devotion, a gathering place for a community, and a monument intended to endure beyond the lives of those who constructed it. Generations of craftsmen contributed to structures they might never live to see completed, trusting that others would carry their work forward.

Today, we seem to have lost the long view.

Much of our modern world is shaped by speed, convenience, and the demand for immediate results. Buildings are often designed around short economic cycles, while public decisions are judged by their immediate political or financial returns. Politicians can be tempted to focus on the next election rather than the consequences of their choices for people who have not yet been born.

Of course, we cannot romanticize the past. Earlier generations also pursued power, exploited nature, and made decisions with devastating consequences. Nor is every modern building temporary or every political decision short-sighted. Yet there is a difference between creating something for immediate consumption and accepting responsibility for a world that will outlive us.

Ancient trees offer a challenge to this culture of immediacy. They embody a different understanding of time: one in which growth requires patience, resilience comes through adaptation, and what we do today may matter to people we will never meet.

Perhaps this is also a spiritual lesson.

For me, trees represent a meeting place between heaven and earth. Their roots reach into the darkness of the soil, drawing nourishment from a world hidden from our eyes. Their trunks rise through the space between earth and sky, while their branches reach towards the light. They hold these two worlds together without needing to explain the relationship between them.

There is something profoundly reassuring about this simple image. We, too, need roots and reach. We need a sense of belonging, a connection to the ground beneath our feet, and something beyond ourselves towards which we can grow. When either is missing, we may feel unmoored: caught up in our thoughts, disconnected from our bodies, or estranged from the natural world of which we are a part.

In a time when so many people experience spiritual disconnection, perhaps we do not always need another theory, another belief system or another explanation of life’s mysteries. Sometimes we need to step outside, slow down and pay attention to what has been here all along.

The next time you feel disconnected, try spending a few quiet minutes with a tree.

Find one that draws your attention. Stand beside it, or sit with your back resting gently against its trunk if that feels comfortable. Notice the texture of the bark against your skin. Feel the ground beneath your feet. Allow your breathing to settle into a natural rhythm.

As you inhale, imagine yourself opening to the sky above you, to the space and light beyond your immediate concerns. As you exhale, bring your attention downwards, towards the earth beneath you, towards the roots that anchor the tree and the ground that supports your own body.

There is no need to force an experience or expect anything extraordinary to happen. Simply remain present. Notice the movement of leaves, the sound of birds, the shifting light and the quiet rhythm of your breath. Let your attention move away from the endless stream of thoughts and return to the living world around you.

The tree will not ask you to believe anything. It will not judge your past or demand that you become someone else. It simply stands, rooted in the earth, reaching towards the light.

Although trees have no magical power to heal every wound, time spent among them can offer a genuine sense of calm, perspective and connection. Sometimes the change is subtle: a little less tension in the body, a little more space in the mind, a renewed awareness that we belong to something larger than ourselves.

Perhaps this is what I was searching for as I walked through Kingston Lacy. Not an answer to a question, but a reminder of something easy to forget: that life unfolds on a scale far greater than our individual concerns, and that we are not separate from the natural world but part of it.

Long after we have gone, the trees will continue their work. They will gather sunlight, draw water from the earth, shelter birds and insects, and offer their branches to the changing seasons. They will bear the marks of time without needing to understand time itself.

We do not have to live for centuries to learn from those who do. We only need to pause long enough to listen.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S: If you enjoyed this article, you might be interested in reading one of my four books, available where all good books are sold.

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by | October 12, 2026 · 11:00 am

The Crusade Against Empathy: Why Compassion Is a Human Strength, Not a Weakness

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
— Maya Angelou

There is something deeply troubling about the growing tendency to portray empathy as a weakness. In parts of today’s political and cultural debate, compassion is dismissed as sentimentality, and caring for the vulnerable is framed as a liability rather than a strength. This growing contempt for empathy strikes at the heart of the very values on which free and humane societies are built: human dignity, mutual respect, solidarity, and the recognition that our strength as a society lies not only in individual achievement, but also in how we care for one another.

This is particularly evident in the rhetoric of Elon Musk and other wealthy and influential figures who argue that excessive empathy threatens Western civilization. The same argument has gained traction in popular intellectual discourse. Canadian marketing professor Gad Saad, in his book Suicidal Empathy, portrays what he considers misguided empathy as a threat to Western societies, while psychologist Paul Bloom’s Against Empathy challenges the assumption that empathy is always a reliable guide to moral judgment. Both works have found a growing audience among readers questioning the role of emotion in public life, although their arguments and conclusions differ. Saad, in particular, criticises what he sees as the elevation of empathy above reason.

There is a legitimate debate to be had about the limits of empathy. Emotions can cloud judgment. Compassion can be manipulated. The desire to please everyone can prevent us from making difficult decisions.

But none of this establishes that empathy itself is a weakness. It establishes that, like any human capacity, empathy needs to be balanced with reason, discernment, and boundaries.

The real question is not whether we should abandon empathy, but what kind of society we create when we begin to treat it with contempt.

Empathy is an evolutionary advantage

The popular image of evolution as a ruthless struggle in which only the strongest survive owes much to an oversimplified understanding of Darwinian theory. Survival has never depended on physical strength or individual competition alone. Cooperation, social bonds, mutual support and the ability to respond to the needs of others have been key aspects of our evolution as a species.

Anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, in Mothers and Others (2009), explores how cooperative child-rearing and shared caregiving helped shape human sociality. Human children are exceptionally dependent, and our ancestors’ capacity to cooperate in raising and protecting them was a significant evolutionary advantage.

Our species did not flourish simply because some individuals defeated others. We also survived because people cared for children, supported injured members of their communities, shared knowledge and worked together in the face of danger.

Empathy is not the only explanation for these behaviours, and cooperation should not be confused with unconditional self-sacrifice. But the evidence challenges the simplistic notion that ruthlessness is the natural foundation of human success.

Our ability to care for one another is part of what has made us human.

The difference between empathy and weakness

One of the problems with the current backlash against empathy is that it often conflates several different things: emotional identification, compassion, people-pleasing, moral judgment and the willingness to tolerate harmful behaviour.

They are not the same.

Empathy allows us to understand something of another person’s experience. Compassion motivates us to respond to suffering. Neither requires us to agree with everyone, excuse wrongdoing or abandon our own interests.

We can empathize with someone without endorsing their actions. We can understand the circumstances that lead a person to behave destructively without excusing the harm they cause. And we can establish firm boundaries while treating another human being with dignity.

This is not weakness. It is emotional maturity.

The strongest form of empathy is not indiscriminate agreement. It is the ability to remain open to another person’s humanity while retaining the capacity to think critically.

Why empathetic leadership works

Research on leadership and organisational behaviour has repeatedly associated empathy with better interpersonal relationships, stronger trust and more effective collaboration.

The Center for Creative Leadership has reported associations between empathetic leadership and job performance. Research into ethical leadership likewise suggests that the ability to understand other people’s perspectives can help leaders recognise the human consequences of their decisions.

Empathy does not guarantee good judgment, and it cannot replace competence. But leaders who understand how their decisions affect others are better placed to build trust, address conflict and create environments in which people feel able to contribute.

The Businessolver State of Workplace Empathy reports have also documented a persistent gap between the importance employees attach to empathy and how much empathy they believe their workplaces demonstrate.

These findings challenge the assumption that compassion is incompatible with effectiveness. In many settings, understanding people is not an alternative to achieving results. It is part of how sustainable results are achieved.

What kind of society do we want?

The implications extend far beyond the workplace.

A society organised around the idea that the strongest, wealthiest and most powerful deserve the greatest respect risks confusing success with moral worth. It can begin to treat poverty as personal failure, vulnerability as inadequacy and social support as an undeserved concession.

This is the danger of Social Darwinism: not evolutionary biology itself, but the attempt to turn a selective interpretation of nature into a justification for social inequality and indifference.

A humane society does not have to deny personal responsibility, reward effort or discourage ambition. It can value all these things while recognising that people do not begin life with equal opportunities, equal resources or equal capacities. Illness, disability, bereavement and economic hardship can affect anyone.

How we respond to these realities reveals something fundamental about our collective values.

Many of the moral traditions that have shaped Western civilisation, including Christianity, place care for the sick, the poor, the stranger and the vulnerable near the centre of ethical life. The Good Samaritan is remembered not because he demonstrated superior power, but because he stopped to help someone whom others had passed by.

That principle is not exclusively Christian, of course. It appears in different forms across religious, philosophical and humanist traditions.

The point is that a society’s moral strength is measured not only by what its most successful members achieve, but also by how it treats those who are struggling.

Empathy, trust and human flourishing

Consider Finland and the other Nordic countries, which have consistently ranked highly in international assessments of life satisfaction. Their experience suggests that social trust, reliable public institutions, economic security and a strong sense of collective responsibility can contribute to human well-being.

Empathy alone does not explain these outcomes. Nor should the Nordic model be romanticised or treated as a perfect society. But these examples challenge the notion that a healthy society must be built primarily on ruthless competition and individual self-interest.

When people believe that others can be trusted, that institutions will generally treat them fairly and that hardship will not necessarily leave them abandoned, social cooperation becomes easier. Trust encourages participation; participation can strengthen community; and a sense of belonging can help protect people against isolation.

At the level of everyday life, the same principle applies. Feeling understood can ease loneliness, strengthen relationships and make difficult experiences more bearable. Empathy cannot solve every problem, but it can change how people experience the problems they face.

The real strength is to care without losing yourself

There is a danger in turning empathy into an unquestionable virtue. We can become overwhelmed by the suffering of others. We can favour people who resemble us, overlook the needs of strangers or allow emotion to override evidence. Empathy needs the guidance of reason, fairness and ethical principles.

But the answer to these limitations is not to wage a crusade against empathy. It is to develop a more mature understanding of it.

We need the courage to confront wrongdoing, the clarity to distinguish facts from feelings, the discipline to set boundaries and the compassion to recognise suffering even when it is inconvenient.

These qualities are not mutually exclusive.

In a world increasingly shaped by political polarisation, economic insecurity and the temptation to regard opponents as less than fully human, empathy may be more important than ever. It allows us to disagree without dehumanising, to hold people accountable without denying their dignity, and to recognise that another person’s suffering matters even when it does not directly affect us.

The question raised by the current backlash against empathy is ultimately a question about the kind of civilisation we wish to build.

Do we want a world in which power determines whose suffering matters? Or one in which strength includes the willingness to protect those who have less of it?

Empathy is not the abandonment of reason. It is the recognition that reason without humanity can become an instrument of indifference.

A society that celebrates power while ridiculing compassion may become more competitive, but it will not necessarily become wiser, healthier or happier.

The measure of your humanity is not how successful you distance yourself from weakness. It is whether you can recognize vulnerability in others and in yourself.

Because in the end, the question is not whether we can afford empathy. It is what we stand to lose when we no longer value it.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S: If you enjoyed this article, you might be interested in reading one of my four books, available where all good books are sold.

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by | October 6, 2026 · 3:44 am

What We Become: Five Lessons from Ancient Wisdom

Living a good life is harder than it sounds in a world that is loud and fixated on outer rewards. Religions, philosophers, poets and writers have searched for answers for centuries, and the wisdom that lasts tends to be surprisingly simple.

Lately I have been returning to Pirkei Avot, an ancient Jewish text usually translated as Ethics of the Fathers. It belongs to the Mishnah, a collection of rabbinic teachings compiled almost two thousand years ago.

What draws me to it is less its religious context than its view of what it means to grow into a human being and live one’s full potential. It sidesteps doctrine about what to believe and asks instead:

What kind of person are you becoming?

Much of this wisdom can be reduced to five movements:

  • Never stop learning.
  • Keep examining yourself.
  • Master your impulses.
  • Serve others.
  • Take action.

Taken together, these five steps describe a way of living.

Learn

One of the most beautiful teachings in Pirkei Avot says:

“Who is wise? One who learns from every person.”

I love that sentence because it comes from humility and from the realization that every relationship and encounter shapes us. Wisdom begins with admitting that we don’t know everything.

We can learn from people younger and older than us, from those who agree with us and those who challenge us. From our successes, and even more from our failures. From nature, from suffering, from relationships that didn’t work out, and especially from the moments when life didn’t go as planned.

But learning is only the first step. It leads to the second movement.

Examine yourself

Knowledge becomes wisdom only when it turns inward. You may be very good at analyzing the world around you, whether political institutions, people’s behaviour, mistakes or beliefs, but ancient wisdom asks us to turn the same attention inward.

Why did I react like that?

What is driving me?

Where am I still acting from fear?

What am I trying to prove?

Where has my ego taken over?

Self-examination is awareness, not self-criticism. There is a difference between saying “I am a bad person because I reacted badly” and asking “What happened inside me that produced that reaction?”

As you begin to see yourself more clearly, you meet the third movement.

Master your impulses

Perhaps the most striking idea in Pirkei Avot is its redefinition of strength. We usually associate strength with power: the person who controls circumstances, controls others, wins arguments, gets what they want.

The rabbis offer a very different definition:

“Who is strong? One who conquers their impulse.”

It is the ability to pause before speaking, to resist hitting back, to notice anger without acting on it, to recognise desire without obeying it. You can say: I feel this, but I don’t have to become this.

Here the ancient teaching about silence becomes relevant. Silence creates a space between impulse and action.

And in that space you discover something precious:

choice.

Serve others

Yet making spirituality entirely about ourselves is dangerous. Self-awareness can turn into another form of self-absorption. You might spend years examining your thoughts, emotions, wounds and spiritual development and still be concerned only with yourself.

Pirkei Avot keeps bringing us back to other people.

How do we treat them? Do we honour them? Do we listen? Do we bring peace or conflict? Do our words heal or wound?

Do we keep whatever wisdom we have for ourselves, or does it become a gift to others?

A teaching attributed to the school of Hillel says:

“Be among the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving people and bringing them closer.”

Peace is something we practise, not just admire. Compassion becomes real only when it enters our relationships and shapes how we treat other people.

Act now

Then comes the final movement.

Act.

A famous teaching asks:

“If not now, when?”

It is a simple question, and an unsettling one. So often we say: I can do that later. I will forgive later. I will make that journey sometime soon. I will tell them later how much they mean to me.

Or: I will start living the life I really want when circumstances improve.

But later is not guaranteed. There is only this moment, in which life is actually happening.

Another teaching balances the urge to control outcomes:

“It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you free to neglect it.”

That is liberating. You don’t have to complete everything. You can’t solve all the world’s problems, but you can take the next step and do what is yours to do now.

From belief to becoming

Pirkei Avot emerged from a very particular religious and historical world, yet its deepest questions reach beyond it. They are human questions.

How do I become wiser? How do I keep my ego in check? How do I become more compassionate? How do I take responsibility? How can I live more mindfully?

They bring me back to something I have explored for a long time: the difference between believing something and living it. You can believe in compassion without being compassionate. You can believe in forgiveness while clinging to resentment. You can believe in peace while constantly engaging in conflict. You can believe in love while letting fear govern your relationships. You can accumulate spiritual knowledge without changing at all.

That is one of the greatest challenges of any spiritual path.

Knowledge has to become experience, and practice over time becomes character.

This is how I would sum up the essence of Pirkei Avot:

Wisdom is not what you know.
Wisdom is what you become through what you know.

We will never be perfect; we are imperfect human beings. But if we stay open to learning, keep looking within, and carry what we have learned into other people’s lives through concrete action, we come close to what it means in Living to BE

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S: If you enjoyed this article, you might be interested in reading one of my four books, available where all good books are sold.

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by | September 28, 2026 · 9:42 am

The Wisdom of Silence

There is something I have been thinking about lately: how much of what we say actually needs to be said in a world that demands continuous expression and reaction.

We comment. We react. We post. We answer. We defend ourselves. We tell people what we think. We respond to something before we have even had time to understand why it has stirred something within.

More than at any other time in history, we have the technology to make our reactions instantly public. But ancient wisdom offers a very different possibility.

In Pirkei Avot, or Ethics of the Fathers, a collection of Jewish ethical teachings dating back almost two thousand years, there is a remarkable emphasis on the discipline of speech.

One teaching says:

“I have found nothing better for the body than silence.”

At first, that may sound strange. For why would silence be described as something so beneficial?

I don’t think the rabbis were simply talking about keeping quiet. They were pointing toward something deeper: the space between what you feel and what you express. And it is this space that can become enormously important.

Because not every thought needs to become a word, and not every emotion needs to become an immediate accusation or provocation that requires response. And not every disagreement needs to turn into a heated argument.

The pause before the word

Think about what happens when someone says something that wounds or angers you. Your first impulse may be to respond immediately and to defend yourself. You want to be right and want them to know that. You might even want to hurt them back. Yet, if you crate even a small pause between the impulse and the response, something shifts.

You can ask yourself:

Is this worth saying?

What is motivating me to say it?

Am I trying to clarify something—or simply trying to win an argument?

Will these words bring something into the world that I actually want to create?

That pause is not weakness but can turn into inner freedom.

Silence isn’t passivity

There is a danger, of course, in romanticizing silence and it can become avoidance.

There are moments when you need to speak out, to defend someone, to confront injustice, to establish a boundary, and to tell the truth.

The wisdom of silence isn’t that you should never speak. It is becoming aware of why you are speaking.

There is a profound difference between speaking because something needs to be said and speaking because you cannot tolerate the discomfort of remaining silent. And perhaps that is one of the great challenges of our time. We have become extraordinarily good at expressing ourselves.

But are we equally good at listening?

What happens when you don’t pause?

Words have consequences. A careless sentence can remain in another person’s memory for decades. A harsh word spoken in anger can change or destroy a relationship. Gossip can damage someone’s reputation who isn’t even present to defend themselves. Words now don’t simply disappear into the air. They remain a permanent record online.

The ancient rabbis obviously could not have imagined social media, smartphones or the speed with which words now travel across the world. Yet their concern was remarkably similar.

What happens when human beings fail to discipline their speech?

Silence creates a space for something deeper

For me, this connects with something much larger than communication. Silence creates space. And in that space we sometimes encounter something beneath the constant noise of the head mind. You actually start noticing what is happening within.

Perhaps there is fear beneath the anger. Beneath the need to be right might be insecurity. When you stop reacting, you might discover that there is not urgent need to respond at all. Silence then becomes a spiritual practise.

Before you speak

The next time you feel the impulse to respond immediately, wait. Take a deep breath. Inhale and exhale.

Notice what is happening inside you.

Then ask yourself:

Does this need to be said?

And if it does:

Can I say it without adding unnecessary harm?

Maybe that is what the ancient wisdom is pointing toward.

Not silence for its own sake.

But conscious speech.

Words chosen rather than words discharged.

Words that emerge from reflection rather than reaction.

Because ultimately, the quality of your life is shaped not only by what you believe or what you think. It is shaped by what you do with that which arises from within.

Sometimes the wisest thing you can do with a thought, an emotion or an angry impulse is simply to let it pass and to remain silent.

And in that space, perhaps, you discover a little more freedom, a little more compassion and a little more wisdom.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S: If you enjoyed this article, you might be interested in reading one of my four books, available where all good books are sold.

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by | September 21, 2026 · 2:36 pm

When Fear Turns Good People Dark

All my life I have grappled with a question that has never allowed me much peace: How can ordinary, seemingly good people turn almost overnight against their fellow human beings and participate in acts of terrible cruelty?

History gives us countless examples. Perhaps among the most shocking are the genocidal conflicts in Rwanda, where people who had lived alongside one another for generations suddenly turned on their neighbours, friends and even family members in a frenzy of violence.

In Nazi Germany, ordinary citizens looked away as Jewish neighbours were arrested and deported. Some went further, informing the authorities where those who were hiding could be found.

These events are difficult to comprehend because they challenge one of our most comforting assumptions: that good people and evil people are fundamentally different kinds of human beings.

During my years as a journalist, I came to question that assumption.

A few months into my first job as a junior reporter, an elderly colleague took me aside one day. He had been watching me, he said, and there was something I needed to understand about the profession.

“You really need to stop being so naïve.”

At the time, I thought he was talking about journalism. Over the years, I came to understand that he was talking about something much larger: human nature.

Each of us carries within us the capacity for both compassion and cruelty, courage and cowardice, generosity and selfishness. The fact that we may currently live peaceful, decent lives does not make us immune to the darker possibilities within ourselves.

Sometimes the greatest good and the greatest evil can even exist within the same person.

This is one of the most uncomfortable truths of being human.

The great thirteenth-century mystic Meister Eckhart understood suffering not simply as punishment or divine cruelty, but as something that could chisel us into beings capable of carrying light.

St. Augustine, too, understood evil not as an independent force competing with God, but as a form of absence — a turning away from the source of being and love.

These ideas have stayed with me because they suggest that darkness is not something we overcome simply by declaring ourselves to be good. It has to be seen.

And this is where the idea of the shadow becomes important.

The shadow is everything within us that we would rather not acknowledge: our fear, envy, resentment, shame, aggression, insecurity, grief and woundedness. It contains the parts of ourselves that we have pushed out of conscious awareness because they do not fit the image we have constructed of who we are.

But what we refuse to see does not necessarily disappear.

It can operate from the darkness. You can project it onto others. You can turn unresolved fear into suspicion. Or humiliation into hatred. Pain into aggression and insecurity into the need to control. The sense of powerlessness turns into the desire to find someone weaker to blame.

This may help explain one of the great paradoxes of human history: why people who have themselves suffered persecution can sometimes become persecutors.

Afrikaners who carried the historical memory of British colonial oppression later participated in a political system that subjected Black South Africans to systematic discrimination and humiliation.

I witnessed another contradiction in my own childhood.

Members of my church congregation could receive communion on a Sunday, be loving husbands and fathers, generous to their fellow parishioners and apparently sincere in their Christian faith — and yet treat their Black farmworkers with extraordinary cruelty. They could compartmentalize their lives so completely that compassion existed in one part of their world while dehumanization existed in another.

And history continues to remind us that liberation from one form of oppression does not automatically free us from the impulses that created it. Some people who once fought apartheid have themselves later been accused of corruption and abuse of power.

The lesson, for me, is not that one political group or another is inherently good or evil. It is that no human being, movement or community is automatically protected from the shadow.

We remain incomplete beings.

Nobody is immune to temptation. Nobody is entirely free from fear. And nobody can honestly claim that darkness belongs only to someone else.

This is why I have become increasingly convinced that one of the most important tasks of a human life is to transmute fear and integrate the shadow.

By transmutation, I don’t mean suppressing fear or pretending that it isn’t there. Nor do I mean excusing harmful behaviour because someone has been wounded.

You have to become conscious of what moves within you. You have to be willing to sit with your fear long enough to understand what lies beneath it. What are you protecting? What are you afraid of losing? Where did the fear begin? What old wound does it touch? What story about yourself or other people has grown around it?

When fear remains unconscious, it easily becomes a justification.

It tells us that they are the problem.

They are dangerous.

They are taking something from us.

They don’t belong.

They must be controlled.

And once another human being has been reduced to they, compassion becomes much easier to abandon. There is separation between them and us and the seeds of tribalism are sown.

It can become xenophobia. Racism. Religious hatred. Political extremism. Nationalism stripped of compassion. The search for scapegoats. Fear narrows the field of perception until the other person is no longer experienced as a human being with a story, a family, wounds and hopes of their own.

Love, by contrast, reconnects.

This does not mean that fear is always irrational. Fear has an important biological function. It protects us from genuine danger. The problem begins when old fear, inherited fear or unprocessed trauma becomes the lens through which the present is interpreted.

Trauma can travel through families and communities. Historical grievances can become part of collective identity. Stories of humiliation and victimhood can be passed from one generation to another until they become almost indistinguishable from truth itself.

Unless someone interrupts the pattern through consciousness.

It requires the courage to look inward and ask not only, What have they done to us? but also, What is happening inside me because of what has happened to us?

This, I believe, is where genuine transformation begins.

To transmute the shadow is to bring what has been unconscious into consciousness and, rather than acting it out, allow it to be understood.

Fear can become discernment.

Anger can become a recognition of injustice without becoming hatred.

Grief can become compassion.

Shame can become humility.

Pain can become wisdom.

The darkness does not necessarily have to be destroyed. It has to be brought into the light.

Perhaps this is what Eckhart meant by being chiselled into someone capable of carrying light. The work is not to become a person who has no darkness. It is to become a person who knows their darkness well enough not to be ruled by it.

This is also why I have become wary of the temptation to divide humanity into the good and the bad, the enlightened and the unenlightened, the victims and the perpetrators.

Those distinctions may sometimes be necessary when confronting injustice. Responsibility must never disappear into spiritual abstraction. People must be held accountable for what they do.

But accountability and shadow work are not opposites.

The more honestly we recognize our own capacity for darkness, the less easily we can project that darkness onto others.

Perhaps the real work of becoming human is not to prove that we are good.

It is to become conscious enough to choose goodness when fear gives us another option.

Because the shadow will always be there.

The question is whether we remain unconscious of it — allowing it to shape our thoughts, our relationships and our societies from beneath the surface — or whether we have the courage to turn towards it, understand it and gradually transform its energy into something life-giving.

That, for me, is the deeper meaning of inner work.

You cannot create a less divided world simply by changing other people. You can only begin by becoming conscious of what lies within that divides.

And perhaps the most important spiritual journey of all is the journey from fear back into connection — from separation back into wholeness, and from the unconscious shadow into the light.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S: If you enjoyed this article, you might be interested in reading one of my four books, available where all good books are sold.

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by | August 25, 2026 · 4:28 pm

Living As If You Will Never Die

The Dalai Lama once said that what surprised him most about the human condition was that “Man sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”

The German mystic Meister Eckhart, writing seven centuries earlier, arrived at something similar from the opposite direction. For Eckhart, death was not an event waiting for us at the end of life but a practice for the whole of it: “If you want the kernel, you must break the shell.” He meant that the self we cling to — our roles, our possessions, our five-year plans — is the shell. Only by letting it crack, again and again, do we get near the kernel, which he called the ground of the soul. A person who has never rehearsed that letting-go meets death, when it finally comes, as a stranger.

Confronting our mortality is anathema in Western culture. We don’t talk about it, and when a loved one dies, we’re expected to “get over it” and function again as soon as possible. Cultural icons are expected to stay forever young. The dying are outsourced to hospitals and hospices, and the dead are buried in well-manicured cemeteries far off the beaten track.

I had an intense conversation with Catherine Duncan, author and hospice chaplain, on the LivingToBe podcast this week. She has guided hundreds of people during the last moments of their journey on earth. What stands out is the same pattern that repeats itself over and over again. What was deemed as important in life such as money, status and possessions falls away. What remains is only peace, love and forgiveness. Death can teach us what is important in life such as those magical moments that we often do not recognize in the business of life.

Confronting mortality head-on

One of the reasons behind our mental health crisis and addiction epidemic is that we don’t confront our mortality head-on. Instead we compare ourselves to the Joneses next door and wait for the “happy” life to arrive — when we retire, when we get rich, when we find the perfect partner, when we have that luxury car or that beautiful home.

Eckhart had a word for this waiting: he called it living for the sake of a reward rather than living itself. He preached that people who work only “in order to get” something — heaven, wealth, peace of mind — never actually arrive, because their attention stays fixed on the getting. The people of Bhutan seem to have found the alternative he was pointing to.

There’s a reason the people of the small southeast Asian country of Bhutan are regarded as among the happiest and most contented in the world. As in the world of our ancestors, death is part of everyday reality there.

The Buddhist country encourages its people to think about death for a few minutes each day. Paintings, artwork, and house decorations often feature death. Funerals are elaborate three-week events, with the body kept in the home before being slowly cremated over fragrant juniper wood in front of hundreds of friends and relatives.

In Bhutan, death is seen simply as a transition to another dimension. The spiritual disconnect in Western culture has left no place for death, or for the rituals that once surrounded it. I’ve lost a good share of family and friends over the past five years — each loss has jolted me back to the age-old question: what am I doing with the days I have left?

Because death is the elephant in the room, we lurch into collective grief when a well-known figure suddenly dies. The University of Oxford Centre for Suicide Research found that the overall suicide rate in England and Wales rose by 17 percent in the four weeks after Princess Diana’s funeral in September 1997, compared with the average for that period over the four previous years.

A review of these cases suggested that Diana’s death worked largely through “amplification of personal losses and exacerbation of existing distress” — grief for a stranger unlocking grief that was already there, unaddressed.

History shows that when catastrophe strikes, faith tends to move in one of three directions. Some people become more rigid and fearful, reaching for certainty in the middle of chaos. Others lose faith entirely, unable to reconcile suffering with belief in a loving God. And some find a deeper faith — one rooted not in easy answers, but in compassion, humility, and solidarity with others. Which direction we take often depends on whether we’ve already done the work of facing mortality, or whether death arrives as an ambush.

Talking about the human condition

We need to talk about the human condition — about death, our mortality, and the fact that life as we know it ends. My work is helping people reclaim enough vitality and energy to live the life they’re meant to live, rather than the one they’ve settled for.

Eckhart’s shell-and-kernel image is useful here, because he wasn’t just talking about the moment of dying. He meant it as daily practice: letting go of the version of yourself built from job title, bank balance, and other people’s opinions, so that something truer underneath has room to breathe. “The eye with which I see God,” he wrote, “is the same eye with which God sees me.” Strip away enough of the shell, he’s saying, and the distance between the seer and the seen collapses. That’s a hard sentence to sit with, but it’s also a way of saying: stop postponing yourself.

Are you living the life you’re destined to live?

Are you merely existing, or living the life you’re destined to live? Are you stuck in a job or relationship that drains most of your energy? Are you waiting for the day you can finally start living?

Procrastination and fear are the biggest obstacles to raising consciousness and growing spiritually. When you’re doing what’s in alignment with your soul’s purpose, you will — to quote Rumi — feel a river moving in you with joy.

If these questions stay with you, you might find their sharpest form in my novel Sages, Saints and Sinners, set during the Black Death — a time when an entire society was forced to confront mortality on a mass scale, with no hospitals or hospices to look away to. It follows what happens to people, faith, and community when death can no longer be outsourced or postponed.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

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by | August 10, 2026 · 11:28 am

When Faith Stops Working: Are You Listening?

This summer, as Europe swelters under yet another wave of extraordinary heat, I find myself thinking about an old story I heard many years ago. It is a simple story, almost a joke. But sometimes the simplest stories contain truths we would rather avoid.

There was an old man named Angelo who lived in a small Italian village. One day, his neighbour came running to his door.

“There is a flood warning,” he told him. “The river is rising. Everyone has been told to leave the village within 24 hours.”

Angelo listened calmly.

“I will be fine,” he replied. “I trust in the Lord.”

His neighbour pleaded with him, but Angelo refused to leave.

A little later, a fire engine came through the village, its loudspeaker warning everyone to evacuate immediately.

Angelo heard it.

But he stayed.

Then the river began to rise. Water flooded the houses closest to the river, and people started fleeing for higher ground. A rescue worker came to Angelo’s door.

“You have to leave now!”

But Angelo shook his head.

“I trust in the Lord.”

Eventually, the water reached the upper floor of his house. Angelo climbed onto the roof.

Then a helicopter appeared.

A rescue worker lowered a ladder.

“Come on, Angelo! We can get you out!”

But once again Angelo refused.

“I trust in the Lord.”

The helicopter eventually disappeared.

Angelo drowned.

When he arrived at the gates of heaven, he was furious.

“I trusted you,” he said to God. “I believed you would save me. And you didn’t.”

God looked at him with sadness.

“Angelo, I sent you your neighbour. I sent you the fire engine. I sent you the rescue worker. And finally, I sent you a helicopter. What more did you expect me to do?”

Perhaps the warnings are the message

I thought about Angelo recently while walking through Wandsworth Common. Walking has become a way for me to make sense of the world. When I walk, I notice things I might otherwise miss.

This time, I noticed the grass. I noticed the bumblebee dying and the pigeon spreading its wings, trying to stay cool.

The grass should have been green. Instead, it was dry and yellow, brittle beneath my feet. Trees and shrubs were showing the strain of weeks without sufficient rain. Nature seemed tired. There was something strangely unsettling about it. Perhaps because I have lived long enough to remember summers when rain in central Europe was something we complained about rather than something we worried about.

I know that one hot summer does not prove climate change. Nor does a dry lawn. But when an isolated event becomes part of a pattern, perhaps the wise response is not to explain it away, but to ask questions, pay attention, and to listen.

And that is what keeps returning to me from the story of Angelo.

I attended one of the early United Nations climate conferences as a journalist many years ago. The scientists were warning us about the consequences of pumping ever greater quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. At the time, the future seemed comfortably distant. Climate change belonged to another generation. It would have to deal with it

What if the warnings are already the message?

But perhaps that is one of the great illusions of human beings: our tendency to imagine that the consequences of what we do will always arrive somewhere else, sometime later, and affect somebody else. Now the future has become the present. The heat, the droughts, the record-breaking summer temperatures, the fires, and the floods simply cannot be denied anymore. And yet, like Angelo, we seem strangely reluctant to leave the comfort zone of our house.

When faith becomes a way of not seeing

This is where the story touches something much deeper for me than climate change. It touches the question of faith itself. For much of my life, I have wrestled with what it means to believe.

I have become suspicious of a faith that gives us easy answers to difficult questions. A faith that tells us everything will be all right if only we trust enough. Because sometimes everything tells us that something is just not right. The river really is rising. The diagnosis is serious. A relationship is really over. The world is changing rapidly beneath our feet. The certainties we have built our lives around simply have stopped working.

Perhaps that is one of the most frightening experiences in life: discovering that the beliefs that once gave us security no longer help us make sense of what is happening. But perhaps it is also an invitation. When faith stops working, something else may be asking to emerge. It is perhaps a deeper faith that does not require you to know how everything will turn out. It is a faith that allows you to say:

I don’t know.

I am afraid.

I may have been wrong.

But I am willing to look.

Listening to what is in front of you

I am increasingly convinced that wisdom has less to do with having answers than with learning how to listen. It is listening to your body, to other people, your intuition, and to that voice that you perceive only in silence, above all in nature.

Nature does not speak to you in words. It speaks through patterns, seasons, heat, drought, rain, abundance and scarcity. Our ancestors knew very well how to interpret these signs. Their survival depended on it. But in the disconnect from the natural world, we seem to have lost that ability.

We can choose to ignore these whispers from the universe. But ignoring them does not make them disappear. That is what Angelo misunderstood. He believed that faith meant waiting for God to intervene. Perhaps the deeper truth is that God had already intervened. The neighbour was the intervention. The fire engine was the intervention. The rescue worker was the intervention. The helicopter was the intervention. Angelo simply didn’t recognise them as such.

And I wonder how often we do the same.

How many times in your life has something tried to get your attention?

A relationship that no longer feels right. A body telling you to slow down. A restlessness that cannot be explained. A recurring dream and a difficult conversation that you keep avoiding.

A landscape that no longer looks the way it once did. A world that is changing before our eyes. Perhaps these are not interruptions to our lives. Perhaps they are our lives speaking to us.

The helicopter is still there

I don’t know what the world will look like ten or fifteen years from now. I don’t know whether we will succeed in changing course quickly enough. And I certainly don’t believe that fear and denial is going to save us.

But I do believe we still have choices. That may be the most hopeful part of the story. Angelo was not a victim until the very end.

He had choices. And so do you. We are not powerless in the face of a changing world. We can change how we live. We can demand that those who govern us take reality seriously. We can consume less, waste less, protect what remains and support those working to restore what has been damaged.

But perhaps the first step is simpler.

We need to listen. To put down our certainties for a moment. To look out of the window.

To walk through a park. To notice the colour of the grass. To feel the heat and rescue the bumblebee looking for water.

To see the trees struggling.

And then to ask yourself honestly:

What is life trying to tell me?

Faith does not mean believing that someone will come and save you.

Perhaps faith means trusting yourself enough to recognise the helicopter when it arrives. And having the courage to climb aboard.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S: If you enjoyed this article, you might be interested in reading one of my four books, available where all good books are sold.

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by | August 4, 2026 · 6:10 am

Finding Meaning Beyond Success: A Personal Journey

Are you one of those people living with this sense that your work somehow contradicts the deeper yearning of the soul? Outwardly you may appear successful, yet inwardly something remains unsettled.

Each person is born as a unique individual with gifts, talents, and a particular path to walk. Yet one of life’s great tragedies is that many people discover too late that they have spent decades climbing a ladder only to find it was leaning against the wrong wall.

Our culture encourages us to pursue success, influence, recognition, and wealth. There is nothing inherently wrong with these aspirations. The problem arises when we mistake them for the destination of a meaningful life. Once the goal has been achieved, the excitement gradually fades. What once felt extraordinary becomes ordinary. Habit replaces wonder. Achievement is followed by an unexpected emptiness.

I experienced something similar after walking my first pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.

Reaching the cathedral filled me with joy and a profound sense of accomplishment. For weeks I had overcome blisters, fatigue, uncertainty, and changing weather. Every step had carried meaning because it demanded something of me.

Yet it was only after returning home to the old routine that I found that work needed to be done on the real pilgrimage. I was still stuck in an unfulfilling job and a marriage that was slowly falling apart.

On the Camino Primitivo

The Camino had changed me within, but my external world was still the same.

The real work was not completing the journey. It was allowing the journey to transform the way I lived afterwards.

That insight has stayed with me ever since.

The deepest satisfaction is seldom found at the destination. It is found in the daily struggle, the uncertainty, the conversations with strangers, the physical exhaustion, the moments of silence, and the countless small challenges along the way.

Perhaps this explains why people who seem to have every comfort deliberately seek difficult experiences. They climb mountains, run ultramarathons, walk across continents or venture into remote wilderness. They are not searching for suffering. They are searching for aliveness.

Growth rarely happens in perfect comfort.

Psychologists have long observed that human beings thrive when they are stretched, but not overwhelmed. Challenges activate creativity, resilience, and learning. When every obstacle is removed, our development often stalls. Muscles strengthen through resistance. Character is shaped through adversity. Wisdom is born from experience rather than convenience.

The workplace is no exception.

Many people see workplace difficulties as something to escape. Difficult colleagues, demanding projects, changing technology or increasing responsibilities can easily become sources of frustration. Yet these very challenges often become the training ground where patience, courage, emotional intelligence and leadership are formed.

This does not mean that toxic work environments should be tolerated. Persistent bullying, exploitation or unhealthy organisational cultures damage both individuals and organisations. But in a healthy workplace, challenge itself is not the enemy. Constructive difficulty invites you to grow beyond who you were yesterday.

The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer captured this paradox with remarkable clarity:

“If all wishes were fulfilled as soon as they arose, how would men occupy their lives? What would they do with their time? If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease… men would either die of boredom or hang themselves.”

His words may sound severe, but they point to an enduring truth. Human beings need something meaningful to strive for. We are not designed merely for comfort; we are designed for growth.

Over the years, I have facilitated hundreds of workshops on corporate health and wellbeing. One pattern has repeatedly emerged.

Many employees spend years counting the days until retirement, convinced that happiness lies just beyond their final working day. Yet when retirement finally arrives, many discover that the absence of work also means the loss of structure, identity, community and purpose. Without a compelling reason to get up in the morning, freedom can unexpectedly become emptiness.

Work is about far more than earning a living.

People often realise this only after a prolonged illness, unemployment or an extended absence from the workplace. Beyond the salary, meaningful work offers connection, contribution and the opportunity to develop our abilities. It gives us occasions to solve problems, collaborate with others and become more than we were yesterday.

Considering that we spend such a large portion of our lives at work, perhaps the better question is not, “How can I escape the workplace?” but rather, “How can I transform my work into part of my own inner journey?”

Whether you remain in your current profession or eventually choose another path, every challenge can become part of your formation. Every difficult conversation can teach compassion. Every setback can deepen resilience. Every obstacle can reveal strengths you never knew you possessed.

The goal, after all, is not simply to arrive at retirement, promotion or financial security.

The goal is to become the person you were always meant to be.

As I look back on my own life, I rarely remember the periods when everything was easy. It was the pilgrimages, the professional setbacks, the unexpected detours, the relationships that tested me, and the moments when I had to make difficult choices that shaped who I have become.

Perhaps the same is true for you.

Rather than asking, “How can I avoid life’s obstacles?” perhaps a better question is, “What is this challenge trying to teach me?”

The obstacle may not be standing in your way.

It may be showing you the way.

So let me leave you with this question:

When you look back on your own journey, did your greatest growth come from the seasons of comfort—or from the challenges you once wished would disappear?

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S: If you enjoyed this article, you might be interested in reading one of my four books, available where all good books are sold.

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by | July 28, 2026 · 5:29 am

The Trinity and Love

Over the years, I have walked thousands of kilometres on pilgrimage routes across Europe, often finding myself stepping off the trail into small churches and ancient chapels. Sometimes I entered simply to escape the midday heat. Sometimes to rest tired legs. Often there was no one else inside. The silence itself became a companion.

I would sit for a while and let my eyes wander over faded frescoes, carved crucifixes, stained-glass windows, and centuries-old icons. I rarely tried to analyse what I was seeing. Instead, I simply allowed the artwork to speak. Those precious moments became as much a part of the pilgrimage as the walking itself.

Walking a pilgrimage is not only about moving through landscapes; it is about allowing the landscape of the soul to change. The art in those ancient sanctuaries invited me to slow down, to become present, and to notice the subtle movements of the heart that are easily drowned out by the noise of everyday life. There are paintings we admire for their beauty. There are others we appreciate for their historical importance. And then there are a rare few that seem to look back at us, inviting us into a conversation that transcends words.

For more than six centuries, pilgrims, monks, artists, and seekers have returned again and again to Andrei Rublev’s The Trinity. Many consider it the greatest icon ever painted—not because of its artistic perfection, but because of the quiet mystery it reveals.

Most religious art portrays God as distant, enthroned, or judging from above. Rublev offers an altogether different vision. Three figures sit around a simple table beneath the shade of an oak tree. Their bodies incline gently towards one another. Their gaze moves in an endless circle of mutual love. There is no struggle for dominance, no assertion of rank, no hint of rivalry.

Everything about the icon whispers that the deepest reality of existence is relationship.

Rublev’s The Trinity embodies that same invitation.

At the front of the table there is an empty place.

It is impossible to ignore once you see it.

That space has been left open intentionally.

It is your place.

Icons were never intended simply to decorate churches or illustrate theology. In the Eastern Christian tradition, they are often called windows into heaven. Their purpose is not merely to tell us something about God but to draw us into an encounter with the Divine.

This is the difference between knowing about the sacred and experiencing it.

Modern culture encourages you to gather information, formulate opinions, and seek certainty. Yet the deepest spiritual experiences often arise when you stop trying to master the mystery and allow the mystery to embrace you instead.

That, for me, is the gift of pilgrimage.

Walking hour after hour strips away the unnecessary. There comes a point when the questions become more important than the answers, when silence speaks more eloquently than words, and when simply sitting in an ancient chapel can become a profound act of prayer. The journey teaches that God is encountered less through explanation than through attention—through learning to be fully present to the present moment.

When you sit quietly before Rublev’s icon, something subtle begins to happen. The image ceases to be an object we observe. Instead, it becomes a mirror. It reveals where lives have become fragmented, where fear has replaced trust, where ambition has overshadowed compassion, where you have forgotten that you belong to something infinitely larger than yourself.

The invitation is not to acquire another belief.

It is to enter the circle.

The early Christian mystics spoke of the Trinity as an eternal movement of self-giving love—a divine dance in which each person exists for the other. Creation itself flows from that love. Humanity is not called merely to admire it but to participate in it. It reminds me of the African philosophy of Ubuntu – that you become who you are through interaction with others.

Seen in this light, spirituality is no longer about escaping the world or accumulating religious knowledge. It becomes a way of seeing. A way of listening. A way of walking through ordinary life with an awakened awareness that every encounter can become sacred.

The empty place at the table reminds you that you are already included.

You do not earn your seat through achievement, moral perfection, or religious certainty but in simply accepting the invitation.

Perhaps this explains why The Trinity continues to move people after more than six hundred years. In a world marked by polarisation, tribalism, and the relentless pursuit of status and power, Rublev reminds us that the deepest reality of the universe is not domination but communion. Not fear, but love. Not exclusion, but belonging.

Every time I leave a quiet church or chapel on pilgrimage, shoulder my backpack, and return to the path, I carry something invisible with me. Not a new doctrine or a fresh certainty, but a deeper awareness that the sacred is never confined to the sanctuary. It walks with us along dusty paths, through forests and villages, in conversations with strangers, and in the silence between footsteps.

Perhaps that is the greatest lesson Rublev’s icon has to teach. The spiritual journey is not about climbing towards God.

It is about awakening to the astonishing possibility that God has been making room for us all along.

And perhaps, having taken our place at the table, our calling is to leave an empty chair in our own lives—for the stranger, the wounded, the forgotten, and those with whom we disagree.

For love always makes room.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S: If you enjoyed this article, you might be interested in reading one of my four books, available where all good books are sold.

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