Our Personal Choices
Newsletter from June 23, 2025
Hi dear student,
What can I possibly say today that will support you keep moving on and keep bringing light into the shadow of hate, fear and deception clouding our precious world?
If you are in the center of terror, I am completely out of my league …I simply cannot claim to know what I would do if bombs would kill my children, neighbors and friends. Pick up a gun or dig out my Puppets from under the rubble and keep doing puppet shows? My believe is that puppets are more powerful, but that is easy to say from my save heaven on a little island close to the arctic circle.
I send messages of hope to my friends in Iran, Israel and Palestine, Russia and Ukraine, and all the places I was once so fortunate to travel with my puppets where now the grim, ugly claw of war and destruction defies the calling of humanity. I send messages of love and compassion sharing with them that I hope they will soon play with puppets again, that their children will see soulful Art, songs of beauty and listen to stories of the power of kindness.
I have not experienced war, I was only raised by a generation so deeply impacted by everything that seems to be repeating itself now despite all we could have learned but did not. I am forever grateful that they made it possible for me and encouraged me to invest in music, education and travel the world, that they were proud of me being a puppeteer and always supported my unorthodox ways of carving out a career in one of the most underrated yet powerful professions in the arts.
So, if I am not sure what strength I would really have to keep performing with puppets when bombs would reach also my little island, I do though want to invest my energy and time right here and now, to build that strength.
I want to build my success as a professional puppeteer, as the manager and Artistic director of my online school not only on the common powerful mindsets of success: being curious, resilient, positive, focused, strategic, proactive, adaptable, collaborative, growth-minded. I want to build the success on the foundation of respect, gratitude, empathy, compassion, intimacy, kindness, openness and love.
I have failed in all those principals, often and repeatedly. Yet today is a new day and I still have the luxury of freedom of choice. I know by now that I need to slow down to a more sustainable speed of life, to consciously nurture the calling of the heart and the power of a calm and serene mind. So when that crucial moment arrives it will catch me planting a tree or with a puppet in my hand, and a warm pounding heart that will keep the flame of love and hope alive.
Sending warm wishes of creative strength and positive choices for the week to come from the Whale fjord here in Iceland. May peace prevail on Earth!
Bernd
Join our newsletter and never miss an update!
Latest newsletters:
Do you want to start creating your own wooden puppets? Check out this free workshop:
