Photo: DJ Pictures
As a child I would look up at the sky and marvel at the beauty of the sunlight and the clouds. It always seemed to me there was another world up there. Today we would say of course there is another world, there is the Cloud, cloud computing. But when I was growing up there was no Internet, there were films and epic stories, the great classics were born.
Always within me was the nagging thought there was something beyond what we knew? I was convinced of it. Even at this young age. Others did not think as I did, so I fell silent about it, and it was my inner world. It was comforting though to know there were indeed many things beyond what we can see. This world was revealed to me the night I saw a face at the window.
My experiences began at a very early age. The first one was when I was four years old I was afraid of dying. Years later I was to understand this in much greater detail. I was a pensive, thoughtful child, at times very serious. The world was a complex place and not everyone had the same experiences or the same fears.
The parental influence and the first role models my mother and father, were kind people. Both were open minded and had a different view of things. They volunteered and went to fight in World War II. My father a gunner in the artillery, and my mother a nurse in the Red Cross. They saw action up Italy, they were part of the South African volunteer army. My father was wounded and met my mother in the hospital. When they returned to Johannesburg, South Africa one can imagine the reunion of all those individuals who were thankful to be alive after such a tragedy as having lived through a war experience.
Why I was preoccupied with these things, other worlds I do not know. I was pensive, reflective and rather serious.