The Serendipity Mindset by Christian Busch

Author:Christian Busch [Busch, Christian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-06-09T00:00:00+00:00

Keep On Going

To keep on going often requires resilience. Robyn Scott, author and cofounder of Apolitical, a global learning platform for government, documented the work of a group of maximum-security prisoners in South Africa. Many had never been trusted in their lives. Many never felt they mattered.

Eight inmates who wanted to do something that mattered to make up for their crimes decided to support people suffering from HIV both inside the prison and outside in impoverished local communities. The prisoners had heard that a particular social worker was trustworthy. They asked him to help them help others. At first, he thought something like this was impossible. Gangs ruled the prison, white and black factions were at odds, and even musical instruments were banned.

But eventually, he decided to trust the good intentions of the men. The group of prisoners, supported by this social worker, connected with an eleven-year-old orphan boy nearby who had AIDS. They started to help him by sewing him new clothes, and they won the right to plant a vegetable garden on prison grounds to grow him food. His biggest wish was to fly, and the prison social worker managed to find a pilot who offered to fly with him. Together with the social worker these inmates made the boy’s biggest dream possible.

These men, who called themselves “The Group of Hope,” went on to change the lives of scores of men in prison, as well as hundreds of other orphans in the local township. The prisoners helped out the kids by growing food for them, throwing them parties in the prison, sewing them clothes, and giving them love. For the orphans, visiting the prison was the highlight of their month.

The self-imposed code of conduct among the prisoners was so strong that there was no major incident in ten years. The human connection between the inmates was intense, and orphans who wished for a family found one in the group. The meaning and dignity that helping out the orphans makes the prisoners feel, in the context of bead crafts they made and sold to support the children, that “we are rolling not only beads, we roll children’s futures.”16

People who are given responsibility become more responsible and take more agency, which in turn makes them good candidates to be given more responsibility—it’s a self-reinforcing circle. The high-security prisoner who never in his life had the opportunity to feel that someone relied on him now feels he matters. The prisoner project in South Africa shows how recovery is possible.

While this arguably is a situation that most of us will not have to endure, many a lucky streak is preceded and will be followed by many unlucky ones. People will not usually tell us much about those periods, but they certainly happen.

How can we rebound from bad luck, to turn it into good luck over time? Lord Michael Hastings, the chancellor of Regent’s University London we met earlier, develops a peer group around his mentees, many of whom grew up in disadvantaged areas in the UK.

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