He was 6 years old. I made sure we arrived early so he could become accustomed to the waiting room, find the bathroom, and get comfortable with my iPad and the game he was playing.
When my session was called, I brought him with me, showed him where I would be, introduced him to my analyst, Dr. Dale Gody, and then took him back to the waiting area. He couldn't wait to get back to his game. I believe it was Minecraft.
About halfway through the session, we heard a small knock on the door and he entered. There I was, lying on my back on the couch, with Dr. Gody seated slightly behind me. I sat up, and he approached me, wanting me to show him something on the iPad, how to switch to a movie or something. I assisted him, and he left. About twenty minutes later, the session concluded, and I met him in the waiting room.
I strapped him into his car seat, and as we started driving back home, I asked, "Would you like to know what I was doing in there?"
"Yes," he replied, looking at me through the rearview mirror with those big blue eyes.
"I was in psychoanalysis."
"Oh," he responded, then fell silent. After a while, he asked, "Daddy, what is psycho... psychalysis?"
"Psychoanalysis?"
"Yes," he affirmed, still meeting my gaze through the mirror.
Where to begin? "You know Daddy's job is to work with people's minds, right? There where they go to work?"
"Yes," he replied. Then, full of enthusiasm: "Like when they're happy or fighting or sad, you need to help them be happy again so they can have fun!"
"Exactly. But the problem is, you cannot work with other people's minds if you don't understand your own mind."
He took a moment, then said, "Yes."
"So, psychoanalysis is what I do to try to understand my own mind."
"Oh."
"And do you want to know why Dr. Gody sat there in the chair behind me?"
"Yes."
"Well, it's because it's impossible to understand your own mind all by yourself. You need someone else to help you figure it out."
This time he didn't say anything. Just stared out the window.
Then, just as we pulled into our driveway, he said, "Dad, do you know what I think? I think the day you understand your own mind, on that day, you die."

How do we work with our collective trauma, on a large scale, in a way that is safe and effective enough?
 
Let's imagine a possible plan, together...
 
As with individual trauma counselling, we will need a safe enough containing space and a competent counsellor, equipped with a suitable, well-researched method. As well as a committed patient.
 
Now let's scale this up to society as a whole.
 
Of course, we can't get 60 million people on the couch, once or twice per week. But let's say we focus on those people who have the greatest influence on the institutions that weave together the fabric of our society.  And let's say we take a two-pronged approach with them: 1) Working with their own experiences of belonging to our traumatized society, and 2) Assisting them to turn their institutions into systems that can contain anxiety, reduce the impact of underlying trauma, and release the creative potential of the people they employ and serve.
 
Firstly, to effectively work with their own experiences of belonging to our traumatized society, we divide a number of them into small groups that are, in fact, microcosms of society. We can call these Healing and Transformation (H&T) groups. And, seeing that we want to work with the complex dynamics of transgenerational collective trauma, which mostly lie deep below the surface of our conscious awareness, we make use of psychoanalytic approaches to group work, such as the group analytic and group relations approaches.
 
Secondly, in terms of assisting (education and consultancy) these leaders-of-organisations as they transform their institutions, we offer modules, workshops, conferences as well as organisational consultancy to participants in the H&T groups and their organisations. 
 
For adequate containment, we form an institution, a funding strategy and a coordinated communications strategy. We partner with local and international institutions.
 
Let's say we call this institution The South African Institute for Healing and Transformation (SAIHT), mandated to contain and propel the healing and transformation of South African society and the institutions composing it, through three main drives:

1. A network of Healing and Transformation Groups;
2. Education and Consultancy towards Institutional Transformation;
3. An Awareness and Encounter Campaign.

 
But how do we scale this kind of group work to include thousands of leaders, without watering it down to a pre-packaged conveyor-belt scenario?
 
By following a train-the-trainer approach.
 
Let's say we start by recruiting 550 professional group therapists and consultants, trained in either the group relations or group analytic traditions. Some of them from overseas. Most of them from South Africa.
 
Five hundred facilitators of small healing and transformation groups. Fifty supervision-facilitators to the five hundred, to provide a containing space for the facilitators to share and work through their own experiences in the groups.
 
Each facilitator takes two groups of ten participants. This means we start with 10 000 leaders of businesses, government departments, state-owned enterprises, schools, municipalities, hospitals, churches. Each group runs for two years. At the end of the two years, two participants per group, who show an aptitude for being future facilitators, are selected to embark on a two-year group facilitation training programme, which includes the co-facilitation of groups with current facilitators.
 
Meaning, after four years we will add 2000 additional facilitators. So, in year 5 we will have 2500 facilitators who can each take two groups of 10, so 50 000 new leaders enter into the programme in year 5. We again identify and train two new facilitators per group, so in year 9 we have 10 000 additional facilitators, 12500 facilitators in total, and 250 000 new participants.
 
You get the picture.
 
Yes, there will be attrition of facilitators, and yes, there will be groups that are less effective than others, and yes the exponential curve will flatten at some point, but in principle, if we follow a train-trainer approach, and if groups meet weekly, for two years, and if we continue to provide supervision-groups for the facilitators, we will have an intensive, high-quality experience of healing and transformation, on a large scale.
 
And remember, in addition to the Healing and Transformation groups, which will grow exponentially over time due to our train-the-trainer approach, we will get another leverage effect due to the fact that participants will be senior leaders and managers in organisations from across the South African spectrum. And we will also, in addition to the small healing and transformation groups, offer them education and consultancy specifically focused on the process or institutional transformation. So, through these leaders, we will also impact their organisations, staff, customers and other stakeholders.
 
An additional layer to the work of the SAIHT should probably be a proper, well-thought-through communications strategy. Our Awareness and Encounter Campaign. The purpose of the campaign is to spread a well-researched message regarding the process of healing from collective trauma, and creating opportunities for South Africans to encounter each other, across our many class and colour divides. We know that it is through encounters that projections are transformed and bridges are built. This could include:

1. Social media and mainstream media campaigns;
2. Music and art festivals;
3. Sporting events like a Transformation Run, Cycle Tour or Motorbike Rally.

 
I know this plan is imperfect, and I know I haven't discussed funding yet, but I think it is possible. What do you think? Are you willing to join and improve the plan as we move along to make it happen? Or do you see so many holes in the argument that you think we should rather do something completely different, or jump ship?

​​South Africa is in trouble. Our society is traumatised and the trauma continues. Colonization, war, Apartheid and poverty, amongst other factors, have contributed to a historical cycle of perpetual trauma. Today, violent crime, rampant corruption, gender-based violence, drug abuse and unemployment are not only some of the manifestations of this ongoing trauma but are also continuing to keep the traumatic cycle in place. ​

Simultaneously, we are experiencing a collapse of the institutions that are meant to provide the physical and psychological containment needed to facilitate healing, economic growth, transformation and restoration of human dignity. Eskom, Transnet, SAA, Denel, public schools and hospitals, the South African Police Service (SAPS), municipalities and provincial governments are fraught with corruption and relentlessly failing to fulfil their mandates.
 
In his political analysis The Rise or Fall of South Africa (2020), Frans Cronjé, former CEO of the Institute of Race Relations, cites psychoanalyst Vamik Volkan to argue that one of the most critical requirements for South Africa's success, is the healing and transformation of our collective trauma. But Cronjé doesn't give a plan for how to do this.
 
We need such a plan.
 
But before we imagine a macro-scale plan to heal and transform our collective trauma, let's pause for a moment to fully appreciate the nature and underlying psychology of trauma and traumatised systems (groups, organisations, societies).

1. Trauma means to be 'wounded' or 'pierced'. Our psychic skin has been pierced, wounded, over many generations.
2. Trauma overwhelms us. Like too many volts that burn the fuses. In order to restore the normal flow of current, we need to relay it through a deliberately created external healing/transformative space.
3. Our knee-jerk response to being wounded is to withdraw, or hide. The external world is dangerous. Hide from it. Shun it. Hope to heal by ourselves. But, on the contrary, it is the slow and safe reconnection with others that help the victim overcome the effects of trauma.
4. A social trauma that is not healed and transformed repeats itself in ever-increasing levels of severity. It is as if the unhealed victim, individual or group, tries to make sense of the overwhelming and indescribable experience by acting it out over and over again. Sometimes in the role of perpetrator, sometimes in the role of victim. Cutting ourselves, hurting others, sabotaging processes. Over years and even generations.
5. Another effect of trauma is that, in order not to feel anything like the trauma again, we would rather not feel anything again. So we try to numb ourselves through alcohol or other drugs, or we become robotic. Without feeling. Checking boxes. Priding ourselves in our intellect. Ridiculing emotions. Growing thick, feelingless skin.
6. Revolution is not transformation. Revolve means to go round and round. In Animal Farm the pigs took over from the humans, so change did happen, but the underlying dynamics remained the same, and got worse. An unresolved trauma being repeated and repeated over and over again, in circles. A trans-formation, on the other hand, means to move from one form to another. So our system-in-the-mind of the world, where we fit into it, what our pain and suffering mean, what the Other is like, what I am like, has to take on a completely new form. I have to let go of old beliefs and stories and allow my inner world of meaning-making to change profoundly. This is no small feat.
7. Think about the Japanese art form Kintsugi. A pottery bowl falls and shatters. The artist puts it back together, piece by piece, using gold as glue. The result is both a healing and a transformation.
8. But healing and transformation require working with the unspeakable, and we will go to great lengths, even destroy ourselves, to avoid this.
9. In South Africa, for instance, some shout blood and revolution, some drink and beat their partners and children, some insulate themselves in large airconditioned pothole-resistant vehicles and security estate bastions, some disappear in nyaope or tik, some design and fill out BEE and transformation tick-boxes, some say apartheid wasn't so bad let's just forget and move on, some form gangs or even more organised mafia groups, some rape the state coffers and pillage our state-owned enterprises. Anything to avoid facing, and working through, our collective trauma, pain, shame, guilt, and rage.
10. Suppressing unspeakable emotions takes mental energy. Energy that is then not available for creative thought and problem-solving. Moreover, we cannot ever really successfully suppress emotions of this enormity, so they erupt violently or they slowly seep out in our actions, the policies we pass, the decisions we make or don't make, the machine we fail to maintain, the persons we hurt or ignore. Effectively re-traumatising ourselves over and over again.

 
You get the picture.
 
Now let this sink in: No matter who wins which elections, no matter how much money is invested in what - if we don't also start working with our shared trauma, we are at risk of unwittingly repeating the patterns that got us here.
 
But how do we heal and transform our collective social trauma? How do we move from what Vamik Volkan calls a 'chosen trauma' to a 'chosen glory'?
 
When working with individual trauma, profound care is taken to create a containing environment within which the traumatic experience can be held, made sense of and re-interpreted. When it comes to social trauma, on the other hand, institutions, symbols and myths must weave together the macro-container within which the trauma can be healed and transformed. In South Africa, however, the near disintegration of institutions such as the public health care system, the police service, the electricity supplier, water and sanitation providers, municipalities, the military and the public sector in general, have cast a cynical shadow on the Rainbow Nation myth of Nelson Mandela, leaving South Africans to feel abandoned or orphaned. With no 'mother' to console and contain and no 'father' to give a sense of direction and security.
 
Moreover, if the symbolic and institutional containers within which to heal and transform our collective social trauma have been shattered, how do we proceed? One option particularly popular amongst extreme populist politicians, seems to be the phantasy of cleansing and starting afresh, by which the degenerative splitting between 'good' and 'bad', 'us' and 'them' is taken to the extreme in order to justify eradicating 'them' from society. We have seen examples of this in the xenophobic attacks on foreign African nationals, as well as proclamations such as "Kill the Boer, kill the farmer" and the policy of land expropriation without compensation. If this fight-behaviour is one side of the 'start-afresh' coin, the flight-behaviour is the other side of the coin, as manifesting in the ever-increasing rate of emigration of highly skilled professionals, as well as general apathy, not voting, hiding behind smartphone screens or six-foot walls.
 
Splitting, projection and scapegoating is not the answer. Neither is suppression, numbing, avoidance or flight.  We have to work with the trauma. We have to create institutional containers, symbols and myths to make it possible for people to find meaning. We have to put our shattered psyche together again, patiently, with golden veins of new meaning.
 
We need a deliberate, robust, competent and large-scale effort to work with and transform our collective trauma into shared meaning, empathy and wisdom.

I couldn't help but fear that this is the future. Will my hometown Pretoria come to this?

Then I read an article by economist Magnus Heystek about how deteriorating infrastructure in South Africa's interior is rapidly destroying property value. 
 
And we drove through Meiringspoort into the Western Cape, as if driving through the gates of heaven. Through places like Oudsthoorn, Swellendam and Bonnievale - struck by the cleanliness, the well-kept tar roads, the sense of beauty.
 
And I wondered whether we shouldn't join the exodus to the Western Cape and beyond. I mean, how can we continue living in a place that we know is falling apart?
 
But then I spoke to my Zimbabwean friend in Mamelodi (outside Pretoria) and learnt of their daily struggle to survive amidst the increasing xenophobic threat.
 
And I thought of an old varsity friend in Bonnievale, who initiated the building of a first-class technical school for the local poor community.
 
And I read the words "Others make a place beautiful."
 
And I am once again reminded that, compared to the forgotten people of Wolmaransstad, Coligny and Mamelodi, I have nothing to complain about.
 
In fact, the question is: Am I willing to make my place, my town, my community beautiful?
 
Like my friend in Bonnievale.
 
And like the many people in those small forgotten towns whose front yard roses stand defyingly tall and red next to crumbling streets of dust.

It was the first time I ever rode a non-tubeless-tyre bike. Luckily I bought tyre levers and spare tubes the day before in Paarl, and the guy whom I bought the bike from, also gave me an extra tyre lever with the correct spanner to take off the back wheel. Problem was the bike didn't have a centre stand, so after struggling forever in the heat to try and get the bike standing on rocks that I carried from the veld, I decided to let it lie down on its side against the little gravel ridge alongside the road. I then had to take off the back wheel, wiggle it free from the chain, be careful with the disc brake, in order to be able to take the tube out, which was easier said than done. And a back wheel is heavy when the bike is on its side!

There wasn't any cellphone signal, so I couldn't use youtube or google for advice on how to do all of this. But I had the original Honda XR650L manual with me, so I just followed the instructions step by step. Another luck befell me when a couple on a BMW R1200GS came along and assisted me. The extra hands and weight and motivation were crucial for getting the tyre off and back on again without pinching the tube - not to mention the compressor he had to top up the pressure I could get from the tyre-kit's mini air-cylinders.

In the four hours it took me to get back on the bike again, not one single car or bakkie passed, which underlined for me the risk of riding off-the-beaten-track gravel roads on one's own. I decided to turn back to sleep in Oudtshoorn that night to get the bike checked by a mechanic the next day to see if I had put the wheel and brake and chain back properly. All was well (I felt very proud) and from there I travelled through Willowmore, Aberdeen and Victoria West towards Hopetown. What an experience - and now I know I can fix a flat in the middle of nowhere!

When I think back I remember the woman in the bike shop in Paarl who sold me the tyre levers and tubes. She was horrified when I told her I am planning to ride to Pretoria on my own. "Hulle sal, hulle sal jou oorval!" "They will, they will attack you!", she exclaimed. Not sure whom she was referring to. Most people were very friendly and helpful. Many, especially in the small dorpies with no roads and with sewage in the streets, must see this guy on a motorbike, wishing they could also escape, even if just for a moment.

There is only one way in which one can understand anything about the teams you are part of, and that is to acknowledge that your team, like all other human systems (families, businesses, governments), is imperfect. ​

​As mentioned in the introduction, acknowledging imperfection opens us up for learning. Pretending to be perfect or ideal makes us want to hide mistakes and blame others in order for the perfect image to survive, come what may. Or it makes us want to avoid seeing the signs for what they are until it is often too late. Think of the o-ring on the Challenger space shuttle, or the 'perfect family' that suddenly falls apart.
 
On the other hand, a culture where people are genuinely interested in constant improvement, is one where mistakes can be scrutinised, owned up to and used proactively as 'gifts' in our true pursuit to learn and improve. A culture where mistakes are punished, ridiculed or ignored because they are experienced as an insult to the ideal of perfection, is one where mistakes are hidden, blamed on others or projected onto scapegoats in order for people to 'survive' the mistake, rather than learn from it.
 
It seems obvious that we need to inculcate a willingness to make mistakes visible for exploration, learning and improvement. But this is not so easy. Leaders and managers often feel that they have to be perfect and that they ought to have the correct answers to all questions. Also, our own experiences of being let down by those in charge in our past, often make us very harsh critics of leaders and managers in general, including ourselves. This zero tolerance towards mistakes and flaws in leaders (and therefor) in ourselves, makes it hard to create a culture where mistakes and flaws can be seen as part of being human. And as part of being involved, with all of our weaknesses, clumsiness and best intentions, to try and contribute something valuable together.

One of the most challenging tasks of a project manager is making sure that the people involved in making the project a success, work together optimally. This is complex. Project teams often consist of people representing a variety of roles, competencies, departments, hierarchical levels and institutions. Moreover, the people comprising the project team often don't share the same physical workspace, nor the same reporting lines in terms of authority and accountability. How can the project manager ensure optimal synergy between so many variables over which he or she has very little, if any, control?
 
In this module we will focus on a set of key ideas to enable you to be become a 'good enough' project manager when it comes to bringing together the human resources necessary for project success. Yes, 'good enough' is actually 'good enough'! You don't need to be a team dynamics expert or a psychologist to make sense of people's behaviour and how to optimally channel energy towards goals. In fact, trying to be the 'perfect' or 'ideal' project manager can actually be detrimental to your performance. Because you will fall short. And depending on how you have constructed the 'ideal' in your mind, your failings and mistakes may fill you with guilt, shame or self-loathing. This is non-productive use of your energy. However, if you try to be good enough, given the circumstances and given your own limitations, chances are better that when you do fail you may be more inclined to do the curious introspection required in order to understand, learn, adapt and continue.
 
Whether you are a psychologist, teacher, engineer, accountant, brick layer, plumber or CEO, we all only have one direct point of access to the human condition, and this is ourselves. I want to encourage you in this course to take your own experience, gut feel and emotions seriously as you figure out how to best respond to the people-related challenges facing your team.
 
This module is about how to best organise your team in order to allow for an optimal utilization of the human resources (energy, thinking, curiosity, imagination, creativity, resilience etc.) available to the team. And this organisation of your team and your project is not a static task which is done once and then expected to hold, direct, monitor and drive project success ad infinitum! No, organising the human resources composing your team is an ongoing, never-ending task. It requires the ability to sense and respond appropriately, from moment to moment. As well the willingness to pause and reflect when things don't seem to work.
 
The buck stops with you. Although you may not be in control of the budget available for the project, and although you may not be able to micro-manage every minute task of each of your team members, it is your responsibility not to leave any stone untouched when it comes to making sure that project objectives are met. This is a hard, but a special task. And it may be the reason why you are drawn to project management as a profession: you turn ideas and goals into reality, despite the many foreseen and unforeseen obstacles in your way. And seeing that dealing with unforeseen obstacles is part and parcel of the job, there are usually not much tolerance for excuses.
 
Due to this complexity and pressure to be able to respond to the unforeseen, this module would prove worthless if it merely attempted to 'teach' you techniques or recipes for managing people. Firstly, we cannot manage people. We can, at best, manage the boundaries within which people have to manage themselves. Secondly, recipes or techniques aren't worth much if you don't have a good enough understanding of the problem you are dealing with.
 
This module will introduce you to a set of ideas and concepts, born from the application of psychoanalysis to management, that will enable you to make sense of the dynamics affecting your team, as well as how to respond to what you are sensing.

A radical transformation of how the ANC views itself and its place in the world is needed. If the mindset is, “I am the leader, I fought the struggle, so I deserve power and prestige”, then corruption will continue and the powerful will have to consolidate power and persecute any opposition. But if the mindset is, “I am the leader, I will continue to serve and fight for the benefit of all”, then people will start to call each other out if they betray the central philosophy.
 
To betray (call out, not promote, not award a tender to, retrench) an ally in service of the primary task and ethos of the organisation is incredibly painful and difficult. To do so when the primary task and ethos of the organisation is almost unrecognisably distorted by different and contradicting assumptions that are rooted deeply in a traumatised past, is impossible if not done alongside a concerted systemic effort at radically transforming the mind of the organisation.
 
* Krantz, James (2006). Leadership, betrayal and adaptation. Human Relations. Feb 2006; 59, 2

With all the tricks and techniques for self-care at the employee's disposal, and with all the lip-service being paid to self-care by organisations, the underlying message can quickly become: "If you still cannot cope, given all this support, there must be something wrong with you."
 
In a corporate culture where vulnerability is often taboo, one can quickly find oneself caught up in a pact of pretending all is well. And, by implication, if all of us are doing great because of how excellently we are applying self-care, then there can't be any need to take a long and hard look at how we organise ourselves to lighten our load, can there?
 
The world has changed. Organisations have to adapt. Not only by moving everyone onto Zoom or Teams and recommending self-care. But by fundamentally re-thinking what they do, how they do things, and why.
 
So how can organisations stay healthy and productive during this pandemic / post-pandemic period?

1. Focus on task. What percentage of your staff's time (especially in the case of managers) is used for activities that are directly task-related, and what percentage is expended on red-tape activities that seemed to have value pre-covid but that has now been shown to be little more than bureaucratic defences against some form of organisational anxiety? By keeping the pressure up on staff to do non-sensical administration, as if the non-doing of these tasks constitutes disloyalty, you are not only wasting time and energy that could have been directed towards real work, you are also contributing to managers' and staff's sense of being overwhelmed.
2. Make it OK to not be OK. Who is completely OK anyway? By maintaining the facade of 'being in control' of one's work, life and self-care at a time when the world is shaking, is a lie. And when lies are passed for truth, teams become unsafe. And in unsafe teams, members isolate themselves, meaning the burden to magically self-care all one's troubles away becomes unbearable. Two soldiers can carry two tar poles much further than one soldier can carry her pole all by herself.
3. How much is enough, for now? This is a difficult but important question to confront. Do we keep production or sales targets the same? Or do we lower targets when we sense that our production or sales capability is being reduced by the global situation? There is no easy answer here. Obviously, when you run uphill, you slow down, to have some steam left later in the race. No-one speeds up during an uphill when the end is not yet in sight. What happened during lockdown, however, is that the panic was immediately converted into frenetic energy, with people on Zoom or Teams back-to-back, day and night. How long can you sprint?
4. Push back upwards. If you are a team leader, you are responsible to create an environment conducive for your team's optimal performance. If there are directives from above that seem to overload or unnecessarily burden your team, it is fully within your mandate as a manager in good faith, to question their validity. We have to keep each other honest. Those at the top can also make mistakes. Their anxiety is also high. So they may from time to time do or request things that have more to do with trying to alleviate their own anxiety, than with promoting the primary task of the organisation. When you sense this may be happening, push back, question, offer alternative solutions. Guard your team's mind-space and energy.
5. Create a safe-enough team. Your team members are stressed. Their families are stressed. Your customers are stressed. Your bosses, shareholders and the government are stressed. And you are stressed yourself. Within all of this, where can your team members go to blow off steam, re-group and ready themselves for another day of work against many odds? No-where? How about the team becoming a safe haven for itself? How about creating a team environment where you can authentically admit that things are tough, where you can brainstorm ways in which to deal with unreasonable clients, where you can digest seemingly non-sensical demands from top management without splitting into us/them conversations, where you can maturely and robustly support each other in your work towards the primary task of your business?

 
Your responsibility as leader and manager is not only to tell your people to take care of themselves. It is not merely to create more opportunities for self-disclosure regarding people's struggles at home. It is ultimately to rethink every aspect of your leadership and your operation as a business to ensure robust re-alignment with a new reality. Duct tape and cable ties will only keep things together for so long.

The only way in which we can really make sense of our teams and organisations is to view them as imperfect human systems. Not only are our current teams and organisations imperfect, but we all come from a history of belonging to and being formed by imperfect human systems.

​By acknowledging this to ourselves and each other, we can stop pretending to be the perfect team or company. This means we can start becoming curious about the ways in which we are contributing to the imperfections, rather than being defensive and trying to blame others for things that go wrong. ​

Remember, if a team is a system, it means that every member of the system is contributing to (and affected by) everything that happens in the system. By holding this in mind I can ask myself: How am I, albeit unconsciously, contributing to the difficulty another team member is experiencing?

Furthermore, a team can only really THINK if its members are willing to put all their cards on the table, warts and all, rather than trying to hide things from one another. How can a team think about how to improve its effectiveness if it cannot even see all the puzzle pieces it is dealing with?

If it is OK to be imperfect, it is also safe enough to acknowledge and improve our imperfections. Leaders have a huge responsibility in fostering a team culture where mistakes are seen as opportunities for learning, and not as opportunities for shaming. 

As Leonard Cohen sang:

Ring the bell that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in