"You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.” –Desmond Tutu We held a Family Forum to engage in discussions about succession planning, investment strategies, and philanthropy. This event was designed to collaboratively prepare and empower our family, ensuring that we create a strong foundation for future generations. By sharing insights, we aim to foster a legacy that reflects our values and strengthens our commitment to making a positive impact on society. "On Children" (by Kahlil Gibran) Your children are not your children They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself They come through you but not from you And though they are with you yet they belong not to you You may give them your love but not your thoughts For they have their own thoughts You may house their bodies but not their souls For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams You may strive to be like them But seek not to make them like you For life goes not backward, nor tarries with yesterday You are the bows from which your children As living arrows are sent forth The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite And he bends you with his might That his arrows may go swift and far Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness For even as he loves the arrow that flies So he loves also the bow that is stable #family #jnhummel #kahlilgibran #children #successionplanning #legacyplanning #classicalpiano #pianomusic #poems #poetry…

To a Skylark Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert, That from Heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are bright'ning, Thou dost float and run; Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. The pale purple even Melts around thy flight; Like a star of Heaven, In the broad day-light Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight, Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere, Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. All the earth and air With thy voice is loud, As, when night is bare, From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is overflow'd. What thou art we know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. Like a Poet hidden In the light of thought, Singing hymns unbidden, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: Like a high-born maiden In a palace-tower, Soothing her love-laden Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower: Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aëreal hue Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view: Like a rose embower'd In its own green leaves, By warm winds deflower'd, Till the scent it gives Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves: Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, Rain-awaken'd flowers, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass. Teach us, Sprite or Bird, What sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. Chorus Hymeneal, Or triumphal chant, Match'd with thine would be all But an empty vaunt, A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains? What shapes of sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? With thy clear keen joyance Languor cannot be: Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee: Thou lovest: but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. Waking or asleep, Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. Yet if we could scorn Hate, and pride, and fear; If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. Better than all measures Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow The world should listen then, as I am listening now. (Percy Shelley)…

Human lives are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual's life. Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress. It is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty. (The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera)…

The Preface THE ARTIST is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass. The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything. Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless. OSCAR WILDE.…

“Hope” is the thing with feathers BY EMILY DICKINSON "Hope” is the thing with feathers - That perches in the soul - And sings the tune without the words - And never stops - at all - And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard - And sore must be the storm - That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm - I’ve heard it in the chillest land - And on the strangest Sea - Yet - never - in Extremity, It asked a crumb - of me. #equanimity #hope #positivity #faith #emilydickinson…

Ask Me Not of Sunset. Do not come and ask me of sunset, For I have not seen one, For I have not been one. They came and asked: How about the greying of hair, The fall of tooth, The aching of bones, Is it not sunset? I answered them loud and clear: No, it is not sunset, Because for every strand of grey hair, Every tooth that fell, Every aching of the bones, A new wisdom will come, knocking at our door: Learn anew, it is dawn again. The next time they marched and shouted: How about the faces we forget, The names we cannot recall, The memories that fly away, Is it not sunset? So I answered them louder and clearer: No, it is not sunset. Because for every face, and name, And memory we lost, There is always a new song waiting to be sung, A new poem to be written, To honour all that have gone by. They stomped their feet and screamed: How about those departures of our beloved, Early evening slumber that feels too early, The loneliness of the soul, Is it not sunset? I smiled and answered: No, it is not sunset, For every departure will remind us To paint a worthwhile legacy, All loneliness and slumber that feels too early, Will be wiped away by a morning prayer, And by a first, small step in the dawn. Ask me not of sunset, For I have not seen one, For I have not been one. (by Rizka Baely) #poems #sunset #gracefulaging #creativity #productivity #poetry #meaningfullife #usefullife #purposeoflife…

Do not come and ask me of sunset, For I have not seen one, For I have not been one. They came and asked: How about the greying of hair, The fall of tooth, The aching of bones, Is it not sunset? I answered them loud and clear: No, it is not sunset, Because for every strand of grey hair, Every tooth that fell, Every aching of the bones, A new wisdom will come, knocking at our door: Learn anew, it is dawn again. The next time they marched and shouted: How about the faces we forget, The names we cannot recall, The memories that fly away, Is it not sunset? So I answered them louder and clearer: No, it is not sunset. Because for every face, and name, And memory we lost, There is always a new song waiting to be sung, A new poem to be written, To honour all that have gone by. They stomped their feet and screamed: How about those departures of our beloved, Early evening slumber that feels too early, The loneliness of the soul, Is it not sunset? I smiled and answered: No, it is not sunset, For every departure will remind us To paint a worthwhile legacy, All loneliness and slumber that feels too early, Will be wiped away by a morning prayer, And by a first, small step in the dawn. Ask me not of sunset, For I have not seen one, For I have not been one.…

Approaching seventy, she learns to live, at last. She realizes she has not accomplished half of what she struggled for, that she surrendered too many battles and seldom celebrated those she won. Approaching seventy, she learns to live without ambition: a calm lake face, not a train bound for success and glory. For the first time, she relaxes her hands on the controls, leans back to watch the coming end. Asked, she’d tell you her life is made out of the things she didn’t do, as much as the things she did do. Did she sing a love song? Approaching seventy, she learns to live without wanting much more than the light in the catbird window seat where, watching the voracious fist-sized tweets, she hums along.…

It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honour'd of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades For ever and forever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains: but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. This is my son, mine own Telemachus, To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,— Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil This labour, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail: There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me— That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 'T is not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. (Ulysses by Alfres, Lord Tennyson). #ulysses #jonathanfranzen #procrastinations #corrections #leotolstoy #actions #meditations…

I found Robert Frost's poem, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", as a poem that best describes a mother's journey, especially its last stanza: "The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep." A mother is promises well-kept: A promise to love unconditionally, A promise to give abundantly, A promise to wait patiently, A promise to forgive wholeheartedly. A mother is also a lifetime journey: A journey to explore, A journey to strive, A journey to survive, A journey to thrive. Happy Mother's Day. - Rizka Baely. #stoppingbywoodsonasnowyevening #mothers #motherhood. #robertfrost P.S.: "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.…

I talked about my journal entry for the New Year: my resolutions, the 'Way', the most important people and thing in my life, my prayers and meditations. I also read Schaef's January 1 entry from her book "Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much."

I am reading for you two pages of The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who is one of the icons of our time and one of the most inspiring women in the world.

This is one of my favourite poems. It tells us to never, never, never lose faith.

I am reading from Tolstoy's Calendar of Wisdom about Good Books and reciting Gibran's poem on Work.

Ithaca by Constantine P. Cavafi always reminds me that life is a journey, an adventure to be fully experienced, enjoyed and lived.