The ultimate impossibility?

"I’M IN!!!" was the first thing Leonie said, when I told her about my idea about a music event for deaf people. Making the impossible possible was her drive, just as mine.

I met her at a party in the Summer of 2002, she was then 28 years old. We started creating this event and with vibrating floors, aroma’s, video projections, dancers, light effect, taste sensations and sign interpreters it was done! People came from everywhere around the world and they wanted more!

We started Skyway Foundation. Skyway Foundation was about making the impossible possible and after we got the events running, we organized a photography project for blind people. With Skyway we now travel around the world to organize these music events, like they are the most normal thing you can think of. As the chairman of our foundation, she made sure we stayed true to our mission: inspiring and showing people that if you take a stand for it, anything is possible.

We kept on looking for the most impossible thing to do, to challenge ourselves.... And we thought we had found it: World Peace!

So we created the event Embrace Your World: On the 21st of September – The International Day of Peace, set up by the United Nations – there was a peace event for one hour in every timezone. These events started at 8pm local time with an embrace and ended with an embrace at 9pm so that the energy got transferred from time zone to time zone. That way, the whole world got embraced and peace keepers all over the world were connected in their attempt to get people present to the possibility of world peace.

Clearly there is no worldpeace yet, but we strongly believed that this event could grow until it was done.

Was it the most impossible thing? No, Leonie came up with another:

Getting her cured from her blood disease became impossible....

In December 2007 she passed away, after years of going through every kind of medication you can think of. Facing her end, she embraced death and all that came with it. With an impressive calmness she said goodbye to all that mattered to her, having one last ultimate impossibility left for us:

She wanted us to celebrate life as she had celebrated her life. A “Life Party” instead of a funeral. So there we were, 300 people, in a warm botanic garden, surrounded by flowers. Telling each other our own version of her mantra “If you come from love, you can be related with anyone”. Everybody contributed in a way that suited him or her best. With food from her nearest friends, music from other friends, and pictures form every visitor, we understood how powerful her intention was. All 300 people were profoundly related, connected in an outstanding way. Her love was present, all over the place.

Sure there was sadness, grief and disappointment. But there was also inspiration. Leonie clearly wanted to communicate an immortal message. “In every situation, you can create an empowering context. So make sure you do, because we all have to give something away that is bigger than death, bigger than anything else.... Love!”