Change & Stuff

I was out walking today and we came to a place where the path got very muddy; deep, boggy and very mucky.  It obviously happens all the time there because to one side of the path, people have developed an alternate path that bypasses this mini-swamp.  You see this quite often in the woods.  I often wonder how many people it takes to make a path.  I think it is great that where there is a problem area, people find a way round it, and by following in the paths of others we too can avoid the mess.

Sometimes it is a good thing to follow in another’s footsteps and to walk around a problem…  the alternative can be very messy!

“Others will follow your footsteps easier than they will your advice.”

“Men nearly always follow the tracks made by others and proceed in their affairs by imitation, even though they cannot entirely keep to the tracks of others or emulate the prowess of their models. So a prudent man should always follow in the footsteps of great men and imitate those who have been outstanding.”  Niccolo Machiavelli

Following the redesign of our kitchen, it still seems that we don’t have enough storage (do you ever??).  My wife is very sensibly looking at where she has stored stuff to see if we can make better use of the space we have, so we have been reorganising and rationalising. 

The thing is, having what you need to hand, and removing clutter is an important thing in life.  Too often we keep doing things the hard way because we lack the time of energy to put it right, then we wonder where our day has gone and why we feel so tired having accomplished less than we wanted to.

We all need to take time to review, clear out and simplify… may today is just such a day.

“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”  Hans Hofmann

For those of you who are interested, the picture is also by Hans Hofmann

I tried one of the latest and best of Nokia’s new crop of phones today.  I haven’t had a Nokia for about 5 years now and whilst I have always had a high regard for them, they just haven’t been the right phone for me.

The E71 is a very tempting package, slim, light weight, metal case, very pretty and packed with all sorts of goodies.  It has a built in GPS, a proper QWERTY keyboard, long battery life, push email and should be a great phone for many business folks.  There are loads of very detailed and very good reviews out there, so I won’t go through it all feature by feature.

I really wanted to to love it for so many reasons, but it’s one little flaw was a total deal breaker.  It doesn’t hold the RF signal well enough, which means that here on the edge of the reception zone, it is all but unusable, except as an executive paper weight.  I think that it is odd that the one key function of a phone, the ability to make and receive calls, seems to be ranked so low down the list of ‘features’.

Nice phone , but no cigar.

I got drawn into a domestic fracas the other day between a parent at the end of their tether and a distraught teenager.  The teenager was absolutely hell-bent on a course of action which was all-consuming; the parent had no more to give.  “Why?!?” asked the teenager to every single point, and “But..”

Being the child of parent who was in the army and had been given an old-fashioned education, I was used to being told “Because I say so!”  Now that isn’t a particularly satisfactory response, but one recognised that it was a final one.  There were never any threats, but it was crystal clear that was the end of it.

These days it seems quite common to find that youngsters don’t have any sense of this kind of boundary, and whilst I absolutely admire a creative response to over-coming problems, the fact is that in Life, at work, and at home there are all sorts of things we just have to accept.  It is never fun, and whilst it might not be good for the soul, it is part of growing up.  We live within multiple systems which impose their rules and expectations on us.  I strongly suspect that the move from home into the work place is much tougher without understanding this basic reality.

Our boundaries, to some extent, define us, and the way we handle them, and negotiate when we reach them is a key skill.  How do we stay open, and yet know when is the right time to back down or step out?  On the other hand stepping beyond our self imposed boundaries is the root to growth.

“Your current safe boundaries were once unknown frontiers.”

I came across the fabulous statue outside the Marlow Theatre in Canterbury.  It must be at least 10′ tall and the colour and texture is incredible.  I thought it was interesting how the iron managed to mimic the texture of skin so cleverly.

I guess we all have a mask we wear, and probably a series according to the role we are playing, dynamic business executive, sex bomb, man-of-action, good son…  It is tough to step out from behind it and show the world who we really are.  And sometimes when we do we discover, like the Great & Mighty Oz, acceptance for who really are, including our limitations.

What mask would you like to hang up?

“You, my friend, are a victim of disorganized thinking. You are under the unfortunate impression that just because you run away you have no courage; you’re confusing courage with wisdom.”  Wizard of Oz

Despite having lived in the South East for all my life, and in Surrey for over 30  years, I have never got round to visiting Canterbury.  On Friday night we realised that we would have an empty nest this weekend and thought that we ought to take advantage of this.  So it seemed an excellent time to correct this oversight and visit this historic city.

As expected it has some fabulous old buildings, we found a great little B&B in the neighbouring countryside and dined in a nice pub.  There is something very restful about just removing yourself from your normal environment where you are surrounded by all sorts of distractions and little jobs that beckon.

On the way home we visited Scotney Castle.  We had an interesting little experience en route.  The satnav wanted us to go left on a roundabout, which I did.  It soon became clear that this was a new exit and ‘Jane’ thought we were driving in the middle of a field.  I had no choice but to drive on and look for an exit.  I arrived at the next roundabout only to find the road had taken us directly to Scotney.  I thought it was interesting how Life could take you ’straight to Go’ sometimes.  Sometimes when one thinks one is lost in fact you are just being taken right where you need to go… isn’t Life wonderful?

PS>> for those of you tempted, as we were by this fabulous view, this isn’t the castle you get to visit.  The National Trust property is a Nineteenth century country pile

I wrote the other day about the use of the word “But” and its power to do harm.  The thing is, we seem to feel the need to vent, and that is a valid and natural consequence of letting things build up, rather than dealing with things as they arise.  Too often, rather than speaking up and saying what we feel, or asking for what we need, or speaking our truths we will either keep silent or toss off an “It doesn’t matter” and so the bitterness begins to build.

If we didn’t bottle, if we just spoke our truths at the time, before we began to feel resentful, then perhaps we would avoid dumping on others, which whilst it relieves the pressure, seldom is the best way to build relationships.  So today might be a good day for you to be a little braver about saying what you want / need / feel and seeing what magic might flow…

“The most effective way to achieve right relations with any living thing is to look for the best in it, and then help that best into the fullest expression.”

I mentioned in an earlier blog that I had become caught up listening to Internet Radio, and the 24-7 standup comedy routines.  Now some of them are weird, some of them are wacky and some just plain not funny, but the thing that really hooks me is when someone like Eddie Izzard or Richard Prior or Robin Williams opens a little door in their head and takes us on a tour of their brains  from the inside! 

Now I don’t know about you, but even with family members, one seldom gets such a glimpse into their inner world.  They animate the tour with various voices and sound effects till  it feels more like a Disneyland ride than a person just talking.  They are capable of temporarily bending time and space and transporting you to an alternate reality where body parts have voices.

The thing is that we all experience this kinda-shared reality so differently and we all stay sane by ignoring this fact.  What would it be like if we had to take the time to synchronise realities with everyone we interacted with?  However, when it is important to really communicate it is a good idea to back up the conversation and make sure whether they are on Planet Me or Planet You first.

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. “   Albert Einstein

“Reality leaves a lot to the imagination”  John Lennon

I caught a segment on GM TV this morning as I was making a cup of coffee.  Three generations of this family had been back to the same room, in the same hotel, in the same town every year for 53 years!  They hired the same beach hut and sat on the same spot on the beach. 

Now I think that there is a huge value in habit and routine, it is a necessary part of life, but 53 years with no change?!?  Surely we have to find a balance between routine and new experiences?  We all get into a bit a of rut be it the way we work or what we do for breakfast.  Agony aunts and women’s magazines are constantly telling us to “Spice up our marriages” and whilst I don’ really think that is the way to approach it, we do need to keep fresh so that we have something fresh to offer.

The world around us is in flux, if we stand still, it just flows round us… Do we want to be the river or the boulder?

“All is flux, nothing stays still”   Heraclitus of Ephesus

I caught all of 3 minutes of a documentary on Sky the other day called “The Real Dirk Diggler”.  It was the story of John Holmes, the man  on whose life the movie, Boggie Nights, was loosely based.  Without getting too bogged down in the specifics, this man was a very well endowed chap.  The interesting thing is that this apparent blessing became a curse that destroyed him.  He seemed to define and think of himself solely in terms of this ‘gift’.  Other people can take an event that would crush another person in their stride, just think of the Para-Olympics.  Why is it that an event that most people would label as ‘good’ can harm, and equally a ‘bad’ one can almost make someone?

I think the secret is that the events and things are not intrinsically good or bad, it is just how we chose to label and respond to them.  The same is true of people, if we label someone ‘no good’ then that is all that we see and all that we get from them.  Someone else with a more positive view almost certainly gets a much better response.  So our labels have huge power to affect not only our own lives but also those who we work and live with.  Labels, are just another handy, labour-saving devices, but they need reviewing or they can be dangerous.

So today maybe a good day to take stock of your labels and check they are all still valid and serving you.

“A name is a label, and as soon as there is a label, the ideas disappear and out comes label-worship and label-bashing, and instead of living by a theme of ideas, people begin dying for labels… and the last thing the world needs is another religion.”   Richard Bach

Resources:

1.  The real Dirk Diggler