We are in the EU. Poland, country I come from and UK, country I live in. United, together, in diversity.

What you hear on the news today is a very imbalanced view on EU membership of UK.

First of all you see the distinction between us (UK) and them (EU) in media and political rhetorics, completely forgetting that UK is actually part of EU. EU is not some kind of monster dominating our country and wishing to take it over with aim of final destruction. That simply is not true. UK citizens worked really hard to form and develop EU, invest in the idea of stronger European Union of countries to allow UK stand stronger on the international arena. British citizen formed EU and remain at the core of it – not on the outside. EU is in our veins so when you decide to leave, please consider it as an act of simply giving up on a larger idea of peace and international dominance. You will not have the same powers on your own.

Secondly there seems to be an assumption that EU’s aim is to diminish all that’s British. Well, actually, one of the core underlying principles of the Union is the idea of protection, education and amplification of national heritage. You might not feel is so much in the UK because of the language we all speak but just for a second think back to the time before EU membership – would you hear English in Poland or Germany? Would your city be crowned as European Capitol? Would your local museum receive EU funding in support of your local heritage? But it is because of EU regulations that within the UK we celebrate our local heritage to such extend and the impact of loosing that support would be immense. Diversity is at the core of EU set up so much so that it is featured in its motto: “United in diversity”.

You will also hear the EU costs us money and limits our local, UK trade within Europe. This is simply not true. The Economist has a very informative piece on the topic featuring the exact numbers and from what I can tell, even though I am not a specialist, we are doing just fine. Check it out – we export over five times more than the import from EU. Surely it’s a good deal, right?

Finally you will hear that Brexit is a reaction to the overwhelming burden of EU immigration on British economy. On one hand you are told that we, EU immigrants cost UK a lot. On the other hand clarification comes along that actually UK benefits from EU migration. Ultimately commons sense should tell you exactly what the well grounded news reports prove – if we loose EU immigration, yes, certain level of benefits will not be claimed, but many jobs will not get done and those who conduct them will not contribute to our UK economy. Those Polish, Romanian, Slovakian employees will move to another EU country to pay taxes there, hire services and do their shopping thus boosting economy. Isn’t this obvious? Why do we only talk about benefits? Why are we not talking about individuals who work hard, pay taxes and feed the economy? Why are these discussions so incomplete? Do you really think leaving EU will stop immigration all together? The moment your vote out your border with France will move to Dover and all those immigrants you are so worried about (so ‘neatly’ taken care of by the French) will land on your shore. What will you do then? Surely it’s not all that simple!

The moment you vote out you ARE out and you need to work hard on your new trade agreements – because you are not EU member anymore. You become ‘them’ not ‘us’ – is this what you really want?

Now all of this is analysis and study, but just let me take this post to a very personal level – and by ‘personal’ I do not mean mine, but simply a level of an individual. I am sure you have friends from both camps. I am sure you know both UK and EU citizens living in the UK. Some might be employed, others self-employed or running their own businesses. Some might claim benefits. You probably have friends who pay taxes, and those who avoid them (a British citizen mocked me once for paying taxes, I really had no words in response). You, probably just like me, might have witnessed corruption in both UK and EU immigrant camps. You have also witnessed honesty, citizenship and patriotism towards UK in both camps, in so many ways.

So how do you decide this week? I would like to suggest something different. Put aside the entire immigration discussion – it really is a small chunk of the entire EU idea, a very little piece of the puzzle you are about to leave or stay in. Think about it on two levels – as a citizen of UK and as a citizen of Europe.

As a UK citizen you have a moral obligation to go and vote – otherwise you will live in a country shaped by others and really for the near future you will have no right to express any opinions about it. As a UK citizen you are now deciding about the governance of your country. Do you want your own, UK government to be in charge of all your policies? If so, many of the EU policies (renewables, cultural heritage, gender equality and more) are in danger. And unless you are very naive you know that work on those has just begun! Do you want your UK government to be free to decide about your country knowing that it also means that UK politicians are in practice not regulated by any other authority – obviously they are not accountable in practice to you. We all know that our democracies are not that effective just yet. Consider for a second a country in which your government does not have to be accountable to any other EU member states. Is this really a better way forward? Is your national heritage going to be as celebrated as when you were within EU? Can your economy negotiate with global powers on its own or will you end up like Switzerland – allowing bigger trade partners utilise your market for 15 years before you can trade in theirs simply because your territory is small? Can your government promise you freedom and peace without the support of EU member states? If yes, then vote out.

As a EU citizen I would like you to think about other countries and what it means to be in the EU in practice. Are you OK with your families having to stand in that longer cue at every single border from Calais onward? Do you want your kids currently employed in EU to come back home because living outside of UK, in the EU is not worth it? Do you want to pay the costs of German hospital treatment after a small skiing accident because you are not legible for EU Health Insurance Card? Do you want your parents to pay higher taxes for their Spanish villa rentals during summer holidays because they property ownership is not from within the EU anymore? If yes, than vote out.

I was born in a country outside of EU. I saw the process of assimilation and I saw my country grow in tolerance and respect towards diversity. I remember my first road trip from Warsaw to Paris during which I did not have to stop a single time to show my passport and the way I could identify countries was my road markings in all local languages, architecture and heritage signage across Europe. I have learned so much about our EU countries since we have joined. Poland became more proud of Polish heritage during its years in the EU. UK became more assertive and open about its national heritage too.

I moved to the UK not because it was a promised land. I moved here because it was EASIER, nice, prettier place to live than Hungary, and secondly because it was the land of Virginia Woolf and Shakespeare. Land of everyday political correctness and fair employment rights for all. It was the land of free speech – something that we are currently suffering from, but it is still a very precious gift. Land I really wanted to contribute to with my skills, my earned money and my free time.

UK is a country of dialogue, but we need to learn to speak it without individual, biased emotions, but with passion for common human values. UK is currently in crisis because of EU heritage, because of the diversity so developed and promoted by those new European values and because of the general lack of civic engagement.

Many of us, EU immigrants, do fear Brexit – probably more as a sign of times and changes to come in many other countries too. We witness is as a test to UK society in times where political correctness, lack of civic engagement (‘why do we have to vote, why can MP’s not make that choice for us?’) and fear of open discussions about political views combined lead to silence. Silence allows one sided interpretation of historical events. You have no words to point fingers and showcase those who incentivise hate and inspire division. Your still young political correctness is not mature enough to talk about its own flip side: freedom to spread hate and racism. It’s that lack of language, that silence that allows for intolerance and often leads to violence. Sometimes allows for reverting to more traditional and less tolerant structures.

Is this what you want? Go back or move ahead?

Do you want to see violence in your country or would you rather engage in political discussions and take a stand? Would you rather allow others to decide about the future of your country, knowing that most of those ‘others’ are your fellow citizens who often do not represent your values or would you study the reasons for the referendum and make an informed choice?

I cannot vote, but you can. Whether you go to vote or note you are about to choose your side of history. You are about to decide or allow others decide about the future of EU with or without you and about the future of UK with or without EU.

So which is it going to be?

Your home-grown threat of violence or European promise of peace? “Alone & divided in silence” or “United in diversity“?

(title image from here)

(some copy updated as the original post was written at midnight and I was a bit tired)

A good book can be summarised in one sentence – Rosamund Luption’s ‘The Quality of Silence’ is very good. It concludes with its summary:

I can feel my fingers again and I have a voice.

I wish I had a little bit more time to read but at the moment I make really poor choices when it comes to my free time and so I read only in desperation and huge guilt. So I grabbed this book when visiting one of our local libraries simply to kill the feeling of despair (‘I really must read something now!’). I did not expect this story to be so relevant to my life and work though, so I am still recovering from its astonishing relevance.

It’s a well written story of a family at the verge of collapse with three main characters (mum, dad, daughter) isolated in their own way of living and in their own boundaries. I know that mother’s relationship with daughter is never easy so this plot was quite known to me. So was the cold and fear of lonely hours of driving through snow and wind in Alaska to find their dad. So was the idea of dangers related to oil drilling. But I did not expect the technology to play such powerful role in the little girls childhood and this particular ‘adventure’ and I really like that it was woven into the plot so smoothly that it almost goes unnoticed.

This time I am not going to tell you what I mean – you really need to read the book to understand. All I can say is that I am extremely happy to see the conclusion of the book presented so easily, so obviously when on a daily basis I talk to people and work with people who do not understand the power of social media for voicing our opinions, finding a way out of loneliness and solitude or simply for finding someone who truly listens.

You see, people who are the closest to us sometimes simply do not stop and ask questions. Many make their own judgements.

While on the social web we get to put our thoughts and feelings out there in front of millions of people – many of whom read, listen, care, ask, respond, wait for you to explain, learn to discuss and share. It feels more right than the sharp, blunt and often boring reality – because it is equally really and more functional. On the social web we connect with similarly people. In the real offline world we bump into so many people who are almost incompatible, distant or simply unengaged. In the real world what we want to say comes out wrong and we simply hurt others. Sometimes our problems are not the issues we talk about but how we share them, and this becomes so much clearer when we do it online because we have to frame the context, explain the meaning and position it in the right way in front of our friends. Offline world communication is a bit dysfunctional from that point of view. We feel awkward, so uneasy to just sit and talk:

So on a day when many panic about their hacked LinkedIn accounts and consider leaving their social media presences, I celebrate the social web. Because they give us voice we never had before, never in the history of human communication. We should celebrate it and use it well, if possible take our learnings offline too.

I was supposed to blog about coffee, about fashion (Emma, please forgive me) and about hacking life as a mum, but tonight I navigate back to business and entrepreneurship. Trust me, I really do my best to avoid being an entrepreneur but the more I learn about it…well, it might just be my path. So, let’s start embracing it but discussing the ownership of ideas.

Many people tend to think that they own their ideas, but I think we only incubate them and we need to set them free. There are no original ideas. Ideas spread like fire – good ones and bad ones too. What makes a good idea impactful is the entrepreneurial success – read it again: entrepreneurial success.

For a long time, I lived in a very misguided understanding of the word ‘entrepreneur’. It was Martin Varsavsky who first woke me up to the idea of a thinker and doer. I was extremely privileged to work with Euan Semple back then and attend LeWeb London. The event was extremely overwhelming and the feminist in me raged ( the women-men ratio was not so welcoming) but Martin’s talk about his approach to free time, rest and holidays made me think about those of us who TAKE TIME and MAKE TIME to solve problems. Life confronted me with a lot of distractions but after a while, I also learned that entrepreneurship is not easy, not always fun but at the core of it really rewarding because we know that we solve problems and we help people solve their problems too.

What about success? If you add a layer of business to it than this entire problem-solving mechanism becomes more scalable, thus self-sustainable and more impactful. Let me explain. I work, I read about and I follow many successful individuals and visionaries but very few of them actually succeed financially and produce scalable solutions to their clients (commercial or 3rd sector – it really does not matter). I could say I am feeling a bit dubious about public speakers who position themselves as effective leaders and in the meantime it is their wives who actually pay the bills at the end of the month, but I know that success is not easy and needs to be shared by families, friends, networks. I could say exactly the same about motivational women leaders who live off their husband’s salaries, but I am one myself (I contribute to our family financially and effort-wise, but it is my husband who is responsible for the main income and safety blanket if my startup has difficult days). The point is – we all look for an easy way to become established, successful and inspiring but many of us don’t think about financial (and any other) independence. You learn it as a woman though. In this world. In the UK. In 2016. As a mother of a ten-year-old. As an established social media marketer. I am saying openly – I really find it difficult to be successful every day. Success comes easy to my husband who does not have to run two more companies (home and child’s education – I think that falls outside of mutually shared child’s upbringing, just for the record). But as difficult as it might be if we learn and understand the ingredients of effective, scalable entrepreneurship – we do succeed. We just need to learn to share the success with our partners and plan it with them. We also need to understand that success means something else to every single one of us. To me it is the freedom to share, test and practice my ideas. To me success is the right balance and quality of life but never taking anything for granted. It is investing as much as possible in my work, home, child – as possible. To my husband my success is ‘saving one person at a time’ and I love him for it.

So when people ask me why I do not get upset about the fact that others steal my ideas I explain to them that my idea of entrepreneurial success is not to see my idea bring money or fame. My ideas are shared to be developed into scalable, practical solutions that make a difference to people like me – individuals who experienced my challenges and see the benefit of my learnings. Thus ideas that are unique to me and solutions that can be found only by people like me. Not copycats who wish to make money. Not copycats who wish to claim the fame of the idea. It has been done so many times before. But original, grounded individuals who walk their path. And if you think that walking the path is mundane, romantic or not entrepreneurial enough, then you have loads to learn yet from those who shine in doing so.

This post is selfish though. It is inspired by the fact that one of my past students took my idea (something I share with pretty much everyone as my next goal), misinterpreted it and tonight I have seen her posting online about implementing it really badly. As a result it made me even more grounded in the search for answers – because the ideas that really make a difference are not solutions, they are answers – answers to the questions we, busy people don’t have time to think about, not to mention addressing them in a sustainable manner.

Free ideas are not impactful. Only the good ideas that answer questions, make a real difference and are implemented in a scalable manner are impactful.