It had started to happen. From now on, the rest was to become history.

It still felt like yesterday. An election that didn’t result in a government. A prime minister that didn’t want to govern. A nation that didn’t know its identity. All that was now past, soon to be forgotten.

In the distance, King Albert could hear the countdown: Trois – Deux – Un – Zero. He closed his eyes as his seat began to shake. The momentum pressed him into the seatbelts. He could feel the spaceship moving. It had started to happen.

Thirty minutes from now, he would be in orbit. Then, he would flip the switch that would connect him first to the Flemish, then to the Wallonian television satellites. Several hundred thousand meters above his former territory, he, the last Belgian, would officially announce: His country had moved on.

The bickering, the bitching the Flemish could keep. The nagging and complaining should stay with the Walloons. But Belgium, Belgium was to thrive.

His secret plan, hatched for years and refined in classified negotiations with the European Space Agency, was this: Belgium was leaving on a one-way mission to Mars. Behind the king, also pressed into their seats, sat a hundred volunteers. They would build the new country on the red planet.

The new Belgium would occupy not a crowded corner of Europe, but would settle a magnificient planet. Belgium would be famous as the most innovative location in the entire universe, not for being a failed state. Never, vowed King Albert, was he to return.

It had started to happen. From now on, the rest was to become history. Belgium was never going to be the same.

Credits: Edina’s and Monica’s Creative Writing Workshop and Adrian for the first sentence.

via Oberrazzi on Flickr

1. Where is the root of the situation?
2. What is my contribution?
3. What do I need?
4. How can I do this differently? [Read more →]

Jamie Ridler asks:

What do you wish to complete?

When answering this question, I notice how many of my current projects aren’t so much asking for completion, but for the establishment of a practice. Each completed step is just progress, but nothing to hold on to; nothing that would give me permission to let go.

Still, when reflecting about my themes for the year complete was one of them. I even made a list (and did sufficiently well on it).

For now, I wish to complete:

1. The Toastmasters Competent Leader Certificate
2. The Professional Diploma in Marketing
3. The book ‘Branded’

Completing things creates room for new things to emerge.