Reading comments on Heritage Day, I find it inhibiting that so many people seem to find comfort in defining their heritage in the most narrow fashion, boxing themselves into a very small world view.

I prefer to see heritage as all-encompassing, expanding your reality rather than defining yourself in narrow terms in space and time.

My mind has been influenced not only by upbringing and education but by the thoughts of writers, poets, artists, scientists, philosophers, religions and ideologies originating from many continents and spanning many centuries.

My mind has also been enriched by nature and rubbing shoulders with fellow travellers from diverse cultures and persuasions. My DNA carries traces from Africa, the cradle of humankind, many countries in Europe and most probably again traces of so-called African "mixed blood", present in most Afrikaner families.

In a sense, a full circle.

I find narrow views and definitions of heritage inhibiting, distracting from what we really are, divisive instead of unifying.

No man is an island, we are interdependent and fit into a bigger mosaic, ubuntu - I am because you are.

People tend to classify, separate and divide. I prefer a broader view in terms of which I am a child of the universe or a rainbow child in the SA context.

I regard myself as also an Afrikaner, also a South African, also an African, also from European descent but certainly not only one of those.

Dawie Jacobs

Sterrewag, Pretoria