On this Heritage Day, I remember a particular man whose name, journey and survival became part of my own identity: Bertel Pedersen of Randers, the Danish forefather of the Pieterse family in South Africa.
In 1743, Bertel left Copenhagen as a common sailor aboard the Donquen, bound for Tranquebar in India. Over the following nine years, he crossed the oceans repeatedly, sailing to India and towards China. Through experience and competence, he rose from sailor to quartermaster and eventually to boatswain—an officer entrusted with the ship, its rigging and its crew.
In November 1750, he departed Copenhagen aboard the Kroonprinses van Denemarke. The ship reached Tranquebar, but it would never return to Denmark. On its homeward voyage, it was severely damaged by storms around the Cape and was eventually driven ashore at Mossel Bay in June 1752. Bertel stepped onto African soil carrying an antique clock from the wreck—a family relic that still bears silent witness to the moment one life ended and another began.
In 1753, Captain Svend Finger gave Bertel written permission to seek his own future ashore, wherever he might find it. Three years later, Governor Ryk Tulbagh permitted Bertel Pieters van Randers, a carpenter by trade, to remain at the Cape as a citizen.
His name changed as he made this land his home. Pedersen—“son of Peder”—became Pieterse. Randers remained the echo of the Danish place from which he came.
In 1761, Bertel married Anna Christina Minnie in Swellendam. Together they had seven children. He later made his living as a cattle farmer on Drie Vanteyn, a loan farm between the Kouga and Langkloof. The sailor from Denmark had become a craftsman, husband, father and farmer at the southern end of Africa.
My heritage therefore did not begin with certainty or comfort. It began with a young man who went to sea, crossed oceans, survived a shipwreck and was forced to build a new life far from everything familiar.
Had the Kroonprinses van Denemarke completed her voyage, Bertel might have returned to Copenhagen—and there may never have been a Pieterse family in South Africa.
Today, I honour Bertel Pedersen of Randers: sailor, boatswain, shipwreck survivor, carpenter, farmer and forefather.
His ship did not reach its intended destination, but his journey was not lost. It continues in us.
Quarter Two was coming to an end, and I had deliverables to finish. They weren’t just items on my personal to-do list. Other people depended on them. Somewhere in the project plan, my work sat at that ominous little place called the critical path.
If I slipped, the project slipped.
If the project slipped, deadlines further down the road would begin slipping too.
I knew this.
And yet, I procrastinated.
There was no dramatic decision not to do the work. I simply didn’t start. There always seemed to be enough time. Tomorrow would do. Then something else demanded my attention. One thing led to another, and the comfortable distance between me and the deadline quietly disappeared.
Until suddenly, time was no longer my friend.
It became an unstoppable steam locomotive hurtling down the tracks towards me.
And then, naturally, the hero arrived.
Unfortunately, the hero was also me.
Suddenly every sense kicked in. I was focused. Alert. Working at full steam. Late nights became very late nights. Sleep became negotiable. Meals became inconvenient interruptions. The relaxed person who had believed there was plenty of time had vanished, replaced by someone racing furiously against the clock.
And, of course, this was exactly when the computer decided to join the story.
Systems failed.
Information disappeared.
Things that should have taken minutes took hours.
I fought the computer, the deadline and my rapidly declining vitality.
But eventually I pressed Send.
Done.
On time.
For a few wonderful seconds, there was victory.
Then I looked at what victory had cost me.
I was exhausted. My nervous system had been dragged through a small war. The computer failure had felt like a catastrophe precisely because I had left myself no room for failure. Every small problem became an emergency because of choices I had made days and weeks earlier.
And that is when karma became very real to me.
Not as some invisible cosmic accountant sitting somewhere in the universe, carefully recording my good and bad deeds.
My karma was much closer to home.
I had created the conditions of my own suffering.
The exhaustion was a consequence.
The panic was a consequence.
The vulnerability to a computer failure was a consequence.
Even my original decision to do nothing had been an action of sorts. My omission had consequences just as surely as my actions did.
That, in its simplest form, is how I understand karma.
What we think, intend, say, do — and sometimes what we fail to do — enters the world as a cause. From that cause, consequences begin unfolding.
Some arrive immediately.
Some wait quietly further down the track.
Perhaps that is why karma need not be understood primarily as punishment or reward. The frantic final days of my project were not the universe punishing me for procrastinating. They were simply the conditions I had created returning to meet me.
And there is something strangely hopeful about that.
Because if my previous actions helped create the present moment, then my present actions are already participating in the creation of what comes next.
The past conditions me, but it does not completely determine me.
I can learn.
I can choose differently.
I can start the next project earlier.
Well… theoretically. 😄
There is another idea I find interesting here: Garma — the idea that our commissions and omissions do not merely produce consequences behind us, but participate in what we are becoming ahead of us.
Seen that way, life is not simply a trail of consequences chasing us from the past.
There is also something ahead.
Possibility.
Development.
Becoming.
The present moment stands between the two. Behind me are the consequences of what I have already thought, chosen, done or neglected. Ahead of me are possibilities that will partly depend upon what I choose now.
And right here, in this moment, I have agency.
So, do I believe that somewhere in the universe there is an intelligence keeping score — adding points for kindness and subtracting them when I procrastinate?
I don’t know.
But I do know that actions have consequences.
Thoughts have consequences.
Words have consequences.
And doing nothing can have consequences too.
More importantly, the person who acts eventually has to meet what those actions helped create.
That is the karma I believe in.
And now I am about to press Publish.
This article, too, will become a cause.
Perhaps somebody will read it and recognise their own frantic race against a deadline. Perhaps someone will disagree with everything I have written. Perhaps a conversation will begin. Perhaps a new friendship will emerge.
I cannot know all the consequences.
But the moment I press that button, something changes.
An action has entered the world.
And somewhere, quietly, the next part of the story begins.
How do you write what people actually want to read?
There are three kinds of readers: people who don’t want to read anymore, people who can’t read anymore, and those rare and wonderful souls who genuinely enjoy reading.
Three (four) types of readers
Some people don’t want to read. They prefer to scatter themselves across Twitter feeds—now simply called X, presumably because Twitter was becoming far too long a word to read.
They scan, react and move on. By the end of the day, they cannot remember a single word they have read—except, of course, the X. It is short enough.
Then there are those who can’t read anymore. The algorithm has gradually relieved them of the ability.
When I doomscroll through Facebook, my eyes are delighted by images and videos that leap from the screen to entertain my mind before it has time to become bored. Instagram and YouTube are the faithful companions of the non-reader. For them, even X may be asking too much.
Ahhh, and then we come to my favourite category: people who love reading.
They sit down with a book and disappear into it. Their imaginations conjure characters, landscapes and entire worlds from nothing more than marks on a page.
And yes, some of them are here on WordPress.
If you are still reading, you are probably one of them.
I write for you—hopefully offering some variety, a different way of looking at the world and, on certain days, enough humour to make you keep a few tissues nearby for the tears.
Of course, not everyone on WordPress is actually a reader. Some merely pretend to be. They click Like without pausing long enough to read the title.
But even the Like helps. It encourages me to keep writing—pieces considerably longer than an X—for those who still enjoy the craft of words.
And then…
Oh, my word!
There is that highly irregular individual who actually leaves a comment.
I write for you, baby!
One thoughtful comment can fuel another six months of writing. So please, don’t be shy.
What’s the most spontaneous thing you’ve ever done?
In the corner of the restaurant sat five students, deeply engaged in solving the problems of the world.
We were young. We were naïve. We had pizza. We had wine. And we had absolute confidence that, given another hour or two, we could probably sort out most of humanity’s difficulties.
If only world leaders understood the diplomatic power of pizza and wine, we might have achieved world peace a long time ago.
The serious discussion gradually dissolved into laughter, banter and the kind of increasingly ridiculous conversation that happens when good friends have nowhere else they need to be.
Then, somewhere in the chaos, the conversation turned personal.
One of my friends said quietly, almost apologetically:
“I am sad about one thing. I have never seen the sea.”
Silence.
“Never?”
The chorus was almost unanimous.
“Never seen the sea?”
She immediately realised she had made a terrible mistake. Four pairs of eyes were staring at her as though she had just confessed to never having seen the sky. Her face turned red. She looked as if she wanted to disappear beneath the table.
And that was the precise moment my mouth overtook my brain.
“Don’t worry. Be happy. Tomorrow morning you will watch the sun rise over the sea.”
Silence again.
This time everyone stared at me.
One of my friends nearly choked on his pizza.
Their confusion was understandable.
The nearest sea was more than 600 kilometres away.
There are moments in life when common sense taps you politely on the shoulder.
This was not one of them.
I slapped my hand on the table.
“Road trip! Who’s in? We drive to Durban. Right now.”
Suddenly everybody was talking at once.
“What?”
“Durban?”
“Tonight?”
Then one voice attempted to restore sanity.
“We have an exam in two days!”
“No problem!” I declared, with the supreme confidence of someone who had done absolutely no calculations whatsoever. “We drive through tonight. We watch the sunrise. We swim naked in the ocean. Then we drive straight back. You’ll be home in plenty of time.”
That was the entire plan.
And somehow, it was enough.
Within minutes, the restaurant summit on world peace had been abandoned. Chairs scraped backwards. People rushed home to grab whatever they thought they needed. Pockets were emptied. Coins and notes were counted. Somehow we scraped together enough money for petrol, food and whatever other necessities five students imagined they might need for a completely unplanned 1,200-kilometre round trip.
Less than an hour after somebody had casually mentioned that she had never seen the sea, five students were squeezed into my little Datsun 120Y, speeding down the highway towards Durban.
No bookings.
No itinerary.
No proper budget.
Not much of a plan.
Just five young people, one tiny car and the Indian Ocean waiting somewhere beyond the darkness.
We drove through the night.
And yes—we made it.
We sat on the beach and watched the first light spread across the horizon. My friend saw the sea for the first time in her life.
That alone made every ridiculous kilometre worthwhile.
Decades later, she still boasts about that trip. She still tells people about the night we simply got into a car and drove 600 kilometres so that she could see the sun rise over the ocean.
That should probably be where the story ends.
Unfortunately, there was still the small matter of the exam.
Did we get back in time?
No.
My heroic little Datsun 120Y, perhaps having finally realised what its irresponsible owner had asked of its 1,200 cc engine, developed mechanical problems on the return journey.
And of all the places in South Africa where five exhausted students could become stranded, we got stuck at a place called Pramkop—an Afrikaans name whose anatomical implications provided considerably more entertainment than assistance.
The delay cost us the exam.
But that is another story.
The strange thing is that I cannot remember what examination it was. I cannot remember what mark was eventually written on some academic record.
But I remember that night.
I remember the restaurant.
I remember slapping my hand on the table.
I remember five students scrambling for money.
I remember the little Datsun carrying us through the darkness.
And I remember sitting beside a friend as she watched the sun rise over the sea for the first time.
Sometimes spontaneity is simply that tiny gap between an outrageous idea and the arrival of common sense.
That night, fortunately, we were already on the highway before common sense caught up with us.
“Those who are inspired to achieve great things must wake early to cultivate the consciousness and conscience they need to succeed. Those who habitually sleep late risk spending much of life reacting mechanically to circumstances and impulses rather than making conscious choices.”
For me, self-care begins by protecting the first hour of the day for myself.
There is something precious about those first moments when consciousness begins to stir after a night’s rest. Before the demands of the world arrive, there is a brief space in which I can consciously choose who I want to become and how I want to meet the day.
I go directly from waking into my morning ritual. It is a time to connect with my body, nurture contemplation, and embody the mythology and cosmology through which I make meaning of my life.
More importantly, I simply show up.
I show up every morning to be present for myself. I protect this sacred time irrespective of the weather, my mood, or how I happen to feel. It is a contract I have made with myself. By honouring that commitment consistently, the vow compounds over time into something deeper: a way of becoming.
What you actually do during that hour matters less than the act of showing up. Your practice may be meditation, prayer, exercise, journalling, walking, stretching, reading, contemplation, or simply sitting quietly with a cup of coffee. The practice is personal. The commitment is what matters.
For me, those early hours—sometimes still in darkness, sometimes as the sun begins to rise—are where I prepare to meet the world. Through posture, breath, meditation and visualisation, I restore my energy and prepare myself for the demands of work, family and everyday life.
I return to patience.
I return to equanimity.
I return to gratitude.
And from there, I am better able to step into conscious service of others.
This has changed how I understand self-care. Protecting time for myself is not withdrawing from life or placing myself before everyone else. Quite the opposite. The hour I reserve for myself becomes a shield around the quality of the hours I subsequently give to others.
By first becoming present to myself, I become more capable of being genuinely present to my family, friends and colleagues.
So, how do I make time for self-care?
I don’t try to find it somewhere in an already crowded day.
I claim the first hour.
I show up.
Every day.
And over time, that simple act of keeping a promise to myself becomes part of who I am.
