Jurriaan Kamp

The tears in the eyes of Jesse Jackson. That was the most moving moment for me. His face spoke the defining moment in history. Injustice fading into hope. And please watch this once more. Barack Obama lost a grandmother just before the election. He still has another grandmother. It's almost unbelievable that the president of the most powerful nation in the world has a grandmother living in rural Kenya.

For me, more than anything else, that's his promise to the world. Where the world of the White House meets rural Kenya, that's where progress is made and the future is changed.   Read more...

Some years ago I went through a very hard time. The burden of starting a business weighed increasingly heavily. I felt that the challenges of work were completely consuming me, and I didn't have enough time to spend with my family and friends--let alone time to spend by myself. I ran into a good old friend and over a cup of tea I shared my "complaints" with him. Johan listened supportively, and after a while he posed a question: "Do you remember that talk we had about our futures a few years ago?"

I did remember. My friend reminded me about the dreams--the things I wanted to achieve--that I had shared with him during that conversation. He brought me back to that earlier conversation and invited me to look at my present reality from that perspective. And, interestingly, it turned out that many of the things I had wished for years ago had in fact become part of my everyday reality. That meeting changed my life, because I realized that my wishes and dreams do tend to come true. It is only that I forget, because I'm always on the move to the next goal. "Count your blessings," Johan said, and the heaviness of the time fell from my shoulders.   Read more...

I've just been told that the woman in whose hands the world would always change for the better passed away. At 64, much too early, Anita Roddick, left us. What a brave soul she was, never afraid to address the painful issues in our societies. She was never interested in being politically correct or in even being sensitive to her audience, she would just speak from her heart. She fought injustice with all her energy and passion.   Read more...

I've just been told that the woman in whose hands the world would always change for the better passed away. At 64, much too early, Anita Roddick, left us. What a brave soul she was, never afraid to address the painful issues in our societies. She was never interested in being politically correct or in even being sensitive to her audience, she would just speak from her heart. She fought injustice with all her energy and passion.

What a drive she had…! There were only a very few bridges too far for her. She got far, very far, because she dared to cross whatever challenge was in front of her. From a tiny shopk in Brighton, she created, together with her husband Gordon, one of the first companies – The Body Shop – that really did business just for social change. Yet for me, the most important part of her legacy is not her company – it is the simple fact that every individual can indeed change the world. "Just do it", could have been her tagline. So she lived. No regrets.   Read more...

Being out in the sun is good for your health and may protect you against a range of diseases. That's the insight offered by a spate of new studies (www.odemagazine.com/doc/46/are_you_getting_enough_sun). But is that really so surprising? A much greater shock to me was the idea, circulating for the past 15 years or so, that the sun could threaten your health. I regularly see people in abundantly sunny California hiding from the solar rays as if sunshine were the messenger of death. Of course sunburn is not a good thing, but it doesn't make sense to me to hide from the source of our very existence. It is a simple as that: no sun, no Earth, no life.

I have a friend, Joel, who--in his own special way--worships the sun. He has a telescope on a rooftop deck with a range of special filters that enable him to look directly at the sun. It's an amazing experience to see the burning fireball sending flares into the universe. These flares, Joel mentions, are often several times bigger than the diameter of the Earth. Looking through the telescope with Joel--whom we've nicknamed "Lord of the Sun"--makes me realize and appreciate the importance of this ultimate source of our lives.   Read more...

So here's a question for you: What can the West learn from the rest? Or maybe even better: What should the leading Western world learn from the rest of the world?

It's quite clear that Western culture - or at least the Western economic model - is dominating the process of globalization. Big corporations dictate the shopping behavior and the aspirations of billions of people. Hollywood is reaching the furthest corners of the planet. Money is the primary driving force behind this globalization. As a result other important aspects of life tend to suffer. Humanity seems to be is losing many kinder and better solutions to many problems that have worked for centuries.   Read more...

I would like to briefly speak with you about news. Because that's what Ode Magazine is about. And that's where we present a different perspective.

We are made to believe that news is whatever is presented to us on the daily front pages and what makes the headlines on television. Media pride themselves about their objectivity. But one can hardly argue that the media present us with an objective picture of whatever goes on in our world. We only learn about the mistakes and the problems. About fraud and violence. We only learn about whatever goes wrong. And then we are supposed to believe that that is our reality.   Read more...

I used to think I knew the best place to find peace for my mind. It's a place in France, a farm tucked away in the most northern parts of the Provence. I have been going to that farm since my parents bought it with two friends when I was six. I have been there as a child, as a student and as a father and over the years I have learned that whatever pressures I bring to this decades-old family hideaway just melt away on the ancient hills. A friend once wrote a poem about the place referring to the power of the ‘mountains that would always be there.' Indeed there is relief in finding things in the same place and order year after year. Somehow the rapid changes of modern life pass by this farm and its surrounding hills. When I sit in a chair gazing into the horizon that stretches 50 kilometers and beyond, I know that as much as change is good and necessary, there is a deep value as well in things staying as they are.

Much to my surprise I recently found an experience that seems to bring my mind even more at ease than our annual retreat to the Provence. I had been to a conference in Arusha, Tanzania. It had been an exciting experience being together for four full days with an enlightened group of people from all over the world who shared a passion for Africa. We heard stories of promise and hope that put shades on the usual news of despair about the continent. Africa is much more than disease and poverty, which the media only seem to report about, it turned out. We left inspired and energized with a bag full of uplifting African stories for Ode. And yet such conferences are exhausting as well. We spent late evenings meeting and talking with new friends, only to get up early again to listen to the morning's first speaker.   Read more...