Come to Think About It

Come to think about it Associations… Introduction To the peoples, nations and men of every language, who live in the world: may you prosper greatly! Daniel 4: 1 Ever since my school days, people and human nature captured my interest more than the sciences. I liked those too, but only insofar as I could see that what was at hand had some kind of human angle and meaning. I had a happy childhood in a middle class suburb of Stockholm, Sweden, where most suburbs and people are middle class. My lucky break was a year as an exchange student at a Michigan High School. I did the mandatory Swedish military service and became a Captain in the engineering troops; then studied law and economics. My first job was with the City of Stockholm and later I transferred to banking. Having an international outlook, I decided to take up an offer of an overseas assignment with the World Bank in Africa. From there my career took me to Singapore, London, Wellington, Auckland, Singapore again and then Tokyo, before returning to Auckland. Each year I return to Sweden to enjoy the lovely Nordic summers with family and friends. During my career I have come across many different cultures and challenges. I found myself in the position where I've been asked to guide and motivate people from varied backgrounds. This led me to consider what makes people act the way they do and what it takes to increase happiness, and perhaps productivity, and success at the same time. Some of my thoughts are expressed in this book. My wife’s Linda, fiftieth birthday party was arranged in Petra, Jordan. On the way there we spent a week in Jerusalem, met up with friends and hired a bus to take us all to Petra. Knowing some time in advance that we were going to Jerusalem, and being a keen reader, I decided to read the Bible to give some background to what we would be seeing in the area. During the reading I marked out passages that I found profound, positive and with some general relevance to my contemporaries and me. This process gave me just less than one page from each of the sixty-six books of the Bible. I have not attempted to make a full and fair summary of the Bible but only to highlight what I found particularly important. In a few places in the Bible it is suggested that women are not man’s equal and I have not recorded anything about this as I feel time has rendered such thoughts obsolete. Also slavery seems to have been an accepted order by Biblical authors, but I have not picked it up as over the millennia our views also on this matter have changed. Similarly the views expressed in a few places on homosexuality have changed in modern times to reflect love and tolerance. The key message about love does in my view render all the three biases referred to obsolete. My extracts represent no more than perhaps one percent of the Bible. Once I had collated my notes of the various books, I thought I should develop the concept a bit further. Reading a book like the Bible inevitably makes you reflect on everything you have experienced and thought. I wanted to note down some of these thoughts, and decided to do it as a short note to each of the Biblical books. Over lunch with a friend in London, I discussed the concept of putting a few ideas to paper under the structure of sixty-six notes to the books of the Bible. Calling it ‘Associations (i.e. this is what I think right now having read this biblical book or summary of the book) would allow me to write absolutely anything that came to mind. No problem with sticking to the subject or countering digressions - just invite and accept them and treat them as realities of life. How readable is that going to be? That is for you to determine! It provided me an easy approach to follow and pursue. My friend thought it a good idea and that was all the encouragement I needed. The method of composing sixty-six brief notes allowed me to express some views within my limited concentration span. So I started the journey in Singapore in July 2000 and less than two years later finished the odyssey in Tokyo, to which City we relocated in 2001. During this time, I traveled to New Zealand, Australia, India, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Thailand and Malaysia, as well as through Europe by rail. In 2003 we all moved back to New Zealand and I have been editing my initial writing off and on. My belief is that we should try to integrate things that stir us and move our innermost beings more with our everyday lives, making ethics and love integral parts of daily conduct including the way we do business. A stronger commitment to ethics is not a necessary evil, or a price we have to pay, it really is adorning life with beauty and meaning, without which everything is barren and futile. Instinctively, many people believe there must be a better, more human, more inclusive and more positive way. In my role as a manager of staff and in serving customers, I have always tried to create a dance of souls by some relevant reference to ethics, beauty and love. Sometimes I felt the dance was on; sometimes I felt I was dancing alone. But generally the effort has been well received and I have found the yearning for adding meaning to monetary measures and incentives very strong, as is the potential to unlock dormant energy and enthusiasm. My hope is that anyone who opens this book will find at least something of interest within it. It gives me great pleasure to be your guide for this excursion. Frank Olsson Auckland, November 2003