The Daily Insider: Zander’s Rule Number Six: Don’t take yourself so damn seriously!

Among my fondest memories of the “Noughties” was spending a weekend at the Thornybush Game Reserve in the company of the extraordinary Benjamin Zander. Having seen the US leadership guru use a piano and a few words to move a hard-bitten Davos audience to tears, my expectations were high. He surpassed them – and then some.

Dr Zander, now 82, is best known as conductor and musical director of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. He’s also the master of pithy one liners. You’ll find a bunch of them in his excellent (and uplifting) book The Art of Possibility. Including his famous Rule Number Six: Don’t take yourself so damn seriously.

Applying that Rule is sure to help those instant pundits getting so worked up about well-publicised stands by two young South African men.

Whether one agrees with them or not, surely Gareth Cliff and Quinton de Kock have the right to follow their conscience and even act on it? After all, tolerating the views of others is what makes democracies different from autocracies. And SA is a proud democracy. Right?

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