I don’t usually write about my personal life here. But this crazy, topsy-turvy year has been a year which has melded personal into work and back again, hasn’t it? I learned a great deal in 2020 and thought to share.

I was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer, with cancer in some lymph nodes, around the time I first read about Covid-19 in December 2019. This was unexpected and devastating. Almost a year later, I’m recovering well.

My journey of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation took place during the various stages of SA’s response to Covid.

During this time, I witnessed others – particularly those experiencing the negative economic impact of lockdown – suffer isolation and hard losses.

Also, from my vantage point in the hospital bed, chemo chair and radiation bunker, in conversation with those suffering more than me and those dedicated to getting us back to health, I learned a few key lessons.

I learned that because life is short, I want to spend time with people, doing things that matter. There is no room for self-important busyness, a life cluttered with tasks, or anything unnecessary. Life can be simpler, slower, and yet with more meaningful contact with others than I used to allow.

I’ve concluded there is little worth in politicking, or prevaricating about what you stand for. There is too little time for poor ethical behaviour or not doing the right thing.

When hours and minutes are precious, they need to be spent on living fully, nourishing self, nourishing others, sharing, and cutting through the junk to what is right, life-giving, and meaningful.

Precious hours and minutes need to be spent serving, speaking about and acting on concern for others, and on that which is fair and just.

I learned that if my life is to fade, then I want it to count for something. Leave a legacy. I want to have lived my values clearly and with impact. To have walked significant journeys with others. To have grown up a kind, resilient son. To have helped those in my circles of influence. To provoke people to think differently and act better.

Love matters. I’ve always been careful of using the concept of ‘love’ in a work context. But there is a growing trend in literature and practice, and in the organisations with which I work and hope to work, of acting right towards and doing good for others . . . others being stakeholders like employees, suppliers, clients, the public, society. Showing love, in other words.

Conscious capitalists, as I have previously written, speak about love. Best-practice governance codes like the King IV Report on Corporate Governance for South Africa speak about realising value for all the stakeholders that organisations touch.

‘Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can,’ Methodist theologian John Wesley is purported to have said.

That, and leaving a legacy despite life being short, is something I can aspire to.