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The Talk for RADGEN LIVE 2019
Bear and skelter
Hi, my name is BE Alink and BE is also my pronoun
The name in my passport is Barbara, people called me Barb or Babs, but nothing felt right
I am just me, I am just BE
When I was a young kid, I became aware of that ‘girls’ and boys’ thing. I didn’t feel a boy or a girl… the language did not match with what I felt. And what’s up with that binary thing anyway! Girls were to pose with a doll, the boys with a locomotive. I fought really hard to pose with my favorite bear!
This was my first gender victory!
France camping (me on the right)
Boy, girl, woman, man, I was neither… I felt like a misfit, I was different.
High school dyke friends
When I fell in love with a woman I learned the words lesbian, dyke, queer… but nothing felt like me…
I became friends with the first transsexual in the Netherlands in 1982. She challenged me… but… no, that was not me either…
Equality
Now in times of transgender identities etc., I still find no suitable language… all feels like words for segments that don’t resonate with me… she hers him his they them theirs…
Why do I have to identify as anything?
I am just me… I am just BE
Cello
I have never had language for what I felt inside, but in the absence of language something really special happens.
Without language, there is really no box, no limiting framework.
So, the conditioning that applies to typical boys and girls, with language, never really rubbed off on me… nothing applied to me, I was free to think the unthinkable…as I had to make it up!
I played music…
This brings me to the call-in question this day.
Inventing, mmmm … isn’t that the most fascinating thing?? Since I was a little kid, I have been obsessively fascinated by the act of inventing, the process to invent! Creating something that does not exist yet… how is that even possible? How can you think of something when you don’t have the language for it??
In the absence of language, I also needed to figure out who I was. I invented myself.
What does your life look like in a future we haven’t
invented yet?
When I was young, I remember people asking me. What do you want to become in life?
That question always threw me. Is my future determined by the career path I am choosing?
Opera and bassoon
My life is a wild journey, with no language for my path… I’ll give you a little rundown of some of the things I have done
After high-school I was an instructor at a therapeutic horseback riding farm, became a group leader in a resocialization center for drug-users.Acted and sung solo in an opera. I was a bassoon player in a rebel dyke band in Amsterdam. And built the set ups for the National Ballet and the Opera in Amsterdam.
All directions
Community
Shouldn’t the question be: who do you want to be, who I am to my community?
I had no plans
I had no ambitions
I had no goals
- but dreams
- but was driven by values
- but had visions of what can be
I taught Deaf children carpentry and built coffins in Kenya.
I wrote a book in Argentina.
I worked with the UN in Darfur and rode a camel of the Janjaweed.
I have been a photographer on assignment with a female MP in Afghanistan, where I also built 300 schools, and worked as a woodwork restoration architect in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia.
I managed the production of $17M worth of art glass for the new airport in Doha, Qatar.
Edge
Oh, the times I that people told me: “you are all over the place”, “you have no focus”, “you are scared of commitment”, “why do you run away”, “you never finish anything”, “you are a scatterbrain”, “messed up”, “chaotic”, “crazy”.
Imagine, I had no language for what I was, or who I was… except hearing all these words, that did not fit, with what I felt.
When people are called crazy, they are either threatening, envied or not understood.
Boy, girl, woman, man, I was neither… I felt like a misfit, I was different.
Haruna
So, now I am the inventor of the Alinker, this three-wheeled walking bike, not the next technical solution for a body with a problem. I designed it for how we want to live an engaged and active life. Not a bike to sell, but a vehicle for social change, educated and supported by everything that I have done, experienced and learned in my life… Haruna here has Muscular Dystrophy, she had never walked in her adult life and once she got on the Alinker (prototype #4 here, of the 14 we made before going to market) and said: “I feel so tall, I feel so tall”. Haruna taught me that more than half of the people who use wheelchairs can in fact still use their legs, but there was nothing designed for them to stay active, use their legs and be at eye level.
Boy, girl, woman, man, I was neither… I felt like a misfit, I was different.
Eltje
Eltje was a professional cyclist, who was hot from behind in a hit and run accident that caused her traumatic brain injury. After we took this photo in New Zealand she went on to compete in the Paralympics and came in fifth.
Wilco
Wilco had a massive stroke and was lucky to survive. Now he does half marathons on his Alinker, with one functional leg and one functional arm.
Neurofit360
Young people who broke their backs and were told by the medical system to never walk again. At Neurofit360 close to Miami they never give up, they believe in possibilities. These people can regain up to 40% of their capacity to walk again. You don’t just walk with your legs, you walk with your brain.
So activate your brain.
Jack - fashion shows
People with cerebral palsy, amputees and muscle spasms used the Alinker on the runway of the Bezgraniz Couture shows during Mercedes Benz fashion shows in LA and Moscow. In the middle Jack Eyers, last year Mr. England.
It changes lives as people can walk again, regain muscle strength, and feel alive!
MULTI SPECIALIST In a world where being a ‘specialist’ is being celebrated, generalists are marginalized and even ridiculed. In the absence of language to describe my life in retrospect, I came up with the word “multi-specialist”. You know we are so conditioned to think in either or, the binary limitations! Chicken and egg. But, look around you… there are the chicks!
Boys or girls. But, there are the queerdos! Specialists or generalists. But, there are the multi specialists!
And you know “multi specialists” have certain very special characteristics. • First of all, we are a threat to the establishment, to the status quo• We learn extremely fast, and only what we need• We are extremely adaptable• We have no plan, but are driven by visions and values
So, if you recognize any of the remarks like ‘all over the place’, you lack focus’ etc.
Don’t let anyone put you down… know that you might just be one of these multi specialists.
I still have no plans
I still have no ambitions
I have no goals
I have no believe in authority
- but dreams, yes
- but am deeply grounded in my values
- but have clear visions of what can be
- because I’ve learned to trust the power of community
So, how do we think about our future we have not invented yet...
I have no faith in changing systems, but know that we can change our perspective.
RADICAL GENEROSITYSo, I am just BE - but would not be, without radical generosity
My path to get here was not a paved path… I had to make it up in the absence of language and there is freedom in that… no limitations, no boxes, no conditioning
What does your life look like in a future we haven’t
invented yet?
Selma
Did anyone see Selma Blair a couple of weeks ago on the red carpet? She came out to the world that she has MS, she walked with a cane and owned that moment. A week later she posted this on her Instagram. She is using the Alinker to be more stable, have a cool assist and in her words, to move at the speed of sound!
Becoming an entrepreneur is not a career path you choose. You become an entrepreneur through building your practices of risk taking, edge walking, paradigm shifting, following your heart, your inner truth and be congruent.
Let go of focusing on the problems, but ask yourself, how you want to live.
