Pursuing Horizons, Finding Identity

"Ko te pae tawhiti whāia kia tata, ko te pae tata whakamaua kia tina"

“Pursue distant horizons so they may become close, and secure near horizons so they remain fastened.”

This whakataukī was written on the back of the brochure from the citizenship ceremony my family attended last month.That day, we officially became Kiwis.

To be honest, I am not usually a fan of ceremonies. Yet this one surprised me. It felt genuinely special.

Part of that was because our close friends, our Kiwi extended family, came to celebrate with us. Their presence brought warmth, connection and meaning into the experience.

But there was something else that deeply touched me.

The ceremony celebrated difference. It welcomed the diversity of every individual and family in the room and recognised the unique backgrounds, cultures and stories that each person brought into New Zealand. Rather than asking people to become the same, it honoured what made us different.

That stayed with me.

Over the last 10 years since arriving in New Zealand, I have often questioned and explored my own identity.

Who am I?

What do I stand for?

Where do I belong?

I was born in Israel. Like many Israeli Jewish families, my family history was shaped by displacement, survival and the search for safety after the Holocaust and World War II.

My father was born in Israel after his parents arrived there from Romania by boat. My mother’s parents fled Nazi Germany to Argentina, and my mother later moved to Israel at the age of 18.

Israel is a complex place. Beautiful, challenging, inspiring and painful all at once. Growing up there, I often felt both deeply connected and at many times not fully grounded.

My curiosity around people, meaning and identity led me to study education at university because I believed, and still believe, that education is one of the foundations for meaningful change. I also majored in Jewish history because I wanted to better understand myself, the people around me and the larger story I was part of.

Studying history also taught me to sit with complexity. It deepened my ability to think critically and understand that the same events can hold very different meanings depending on perspective, experience and the stories people carry. It also strengthened my awareness that different people see the same reality in different ways, and that this is not a flaw, but part of what makes human experience so rich and layered.

This continues to shape the way I work with individuals, teams and organisations today.

Eventually, due to different events in Israel that strongly affected both my life and my wife’s life, we made the decision to move to New Zealand. Europe felt too close geographically and emotionally, and we kept hearing stories about the openness of Kiwi people and the connection to nature and the outdoors. Only somewhere along the way did we fully appreciate just how far it actually is.

So, in many ways, we repeated part of our own family history and immigrated again in search of a different future.

Since then, the exploration of identity has never really stopped.

Identity is not fixed. We explore it consciously and unconsciously every day. It is shaped by nature, our genetics, temperament and biology, and by nurture, our culture, family, environment, relationships and experiences.

When I reflected on the citizenship ceremony afterward, I realised that this is one of the reasons the celebration of diversity struck me so strongly.

In my work with individuals, leaders, teams and organisations, much of what we explore revolves around these questions.

Who are we?

What do we stand for?

What matters most right now?

What kind of environment are we creating for ourselves and others?

And extending that further, what does health and sustainable living actually look like in practice? How do the different dimensions of life that contribute to sustainability shape that picture, and how are they experienced differently across people, cultures and contexts?

The ceremony reminded me that identity is rarely simple or comfortable.

Choosing to build our life in New Zealand and raise our two beautiful daughters here also meant leaving behind people we deeply love in Israel. That contradiction still exists within me.

And honestly, I think many people experience similar tensions in their own lives and leadership. Often, the hardest decisions are not between good and bad, but between two things that both matters deeply.

Leadership, performance, wellbeing and meaningful living are not about having perfect answers. They are about developing enough clarity to ask the right questions.

And the truth is, I do not think there is one final answer.

I find clarity at times, and then life changes again, and I need to reflect, adapt and rediscover what matters. Over and over.

For every person, teams, family and organisations, the answer to “what do we stand for?” will be different.

That is the beauty of diversity.

Different perspectives, values and life experiences create a kind of human biodiversity, something that makes communities, organisations and societies stronger and more sustainable.

For me, the ongoing work is to approach life with curiosity, compassion and a genuine desire to create meaningful change, both in our own lives and in the lives of the people around us.

Perhaps that is part of pursuing distant horizons.

Not necessarily arriving at a perfect destination, but continuing the journey with openness, courage and humanity.