Trips Down Memory Lane Can be Sad

I needed to go across the city to the Eastern Suburbs in our city of Christchurch almost two years after the big quake- New Brighton to be more precise. If ever you want to sense a heart break for a past beyond and similar to the loss a loved one ( not necessarily as a death rather of being rejected ) or loss of a homeland come and experience what we have had in Christchurch.

Where houses once stood there are houses derelict, dejected and tumbled down. Not from inaction or neglect rather from the aftermath of our earthquakes. Empty pieces land on prime corner sites where once little shops stood. Shops which are and were the last of the peasant ventures. Here families worked and starved together on the meager returns from selling bread , milk and 20 cent lollie mixtures to kids with pocket money to spare.

Boys toys in the shape of machines designed to rip up pieces of road and replace them with other pieces of road hang like praying mantises waiting for prey. Pumps are busy pumping water and make shift sewage systems are gurgling through human waste. The Romans, the great empire builders always said "get rid of the shit before you doing anything else". We attempt to do our best. At times the best falls short of what needs to be done. We neglect the most vulnerable and look after the most powerful first.

There are the men in their hi visibility vests all busy, all knowing that they have work to do for years ahead. Every sight and site promises a brighter future. All promising a tomorrow when everything will be all right again.

Then I get to the beach, the grey sea tumbles onto grey sands. On shore the tsunami siren waits for its call to action. A grey sky hangs and also waits and waits. Grey clouds tell me there has got to be a silver lining somewhere.

What was your journey today like my friend? Did you too see parts of what once was and never ever will be again?

Chasing the Dream of Happiness

So many of us are caught up in the hassle and bustle of life that we forget the simple things that make us happy. Here are ten little things worth experiencing. Just do one and feel and sense the difference.

Chasing Your Dream of Happiness

1. Give Life Your Best Shot

Be willing to take on life and to live.  You write your own success story. You are the one responsible for all your successes.  Be willing to take responsibility for creating your happiness.  

2. Expand

Let your physical spiritual intellectual and emotional roots spread.  Being safe does not always equate with being happy.  Reach out and keep expanding beyond the limitations of your past and present. Allow yourself to live with passion.

3. Every day is precious

Make every day above ground unique and valuable.  Make each day a new day.  In your meetings with other people discover how different they are from your last meeting with them.

4 Nurture your Body

What do you need to do for your body to have it feel great? Do you need to be fitter?  How is your weight?  Too heavy?  Too light?  Muscle tone? Breathing easily?

5. Re-experience the common place 

Look at your ordinary tasks as if you are doing them for the first time. Be open for the unusual the different nuances the task or the experience gives you.  This may mean abandoning the TV booze or other anaesthetics.

6. Stay with Hope and Optimism

Hope feeds life’s vitality. Optimism with hope empower us to rise above gloom and the destructiveness and the lack of meaning and purpose which can surround us. Hope is moving away from observed objective neutrality to seeing where you deserve to be.

7. Appreciate Yourself

Focus on what you can be thankful for learn to appreciate of life flowing through you.  Avoid focusing on what you lack. Be thankful for the little gifts which the world gives you.

8. Regain your courage

Go beyond your own perceived limitations take more risks in doing the things which deserve to be done. Risk yourself and do what matters in making the whole of life’s experience more exciting.

9. Judge Less

Be less judgmental of yourself and of others. Ascribe the best of motivations to others rather than being critical and negative. Work yourself towards becoming more positive contented and more relaxed.

10. Be Open

Open up to life, love, people and events in life. Tune yourself to seeing the bizarre and unusual in the daily experience.

Reward me for failure

I am waiting for the job where I get a huge salary and a bonus for incompetence. I am good with the incompetence thing. I know I could drive any SOE - (state owned enterprise for my overseas friends) into the ground. Failing that I could as easily accept obscene amounts of money in any private organisation and have it fail while spending money on consultants and advisors and get a huge bonus for doing so.

I just envy the executives and CEOs in the States who would sniff and turn their noses up at salary packages of less than $1.00 million. Oh dear what has come of us? Any CEO who earns 40 times more than the lowest employee is one lucky guy.

Years ago -in my life time - we had one major supplier of electricity and now we have a competitive model that has pushed power prices up as fast as it has increased the salaries of its executives. The workforce has expanded while the efficiencies have declined and personal responsibility has failed to arrive. Now we will do more and more of this game. I wonder where it was actually proven that executive bonuses improved performance?

Therefore I now wait for the letter asking me to join a quango board where I gain stature in society for being paid more and more for doing about the same as now.

I couldn't do less than I am doing now. Or could I set a new 'benchmark' and improve the 'bottom line' 'while pushing my barrow to the market' 'during these tough times'?

http://thestandard.org.nz/nats-fossil-fuel-bet-culture-of-excess-bankrupted-solid-energy/

Silk Purses Sow's Ears

I wonder if you are like me fixing things up. I don't mean just making repairs. Anyone can take something apart and put it together again. Sometimes there are  a few nut or bolts left over. Amazing to see that something worked with the redundant pieces in place. Rather are you like me in finding something in a junk shop and pulling it apart and making something far better than the original?

It is a little bit like life. Bits and pieces around us are redundant and useless. We throw those out and we start to refine ourselves adding something to our existence and polish away a few habits. At the end we find ourselves happier and on more solid ground. The silk purse is far more attractive and the sow's ear we started with becomes something worth forgetting.

In the path to explore and create happiness I guess the task of self refinement and clearing up the mess around our lives does make us happy. Clarity balance and space seem to me to epitomise the way. Doing the work is what creates the state of being happy. Not doing the work has us reverting back to the crude pig's ear. This becomes the plaything of puppies and indulgent dog owners. Metaphorically speaking we need to know who are the dogs, the puppies and the indulgent dog owners who play about with our 'sow's ears'. Knowing who they are or what they are is of little help if we want to move forward. Knowing does make us feel a little more comfortable and slightly paranoid.

There we are, looking for the next task, looking for the next piece of ourselves to refine. Strange to say we don't have to look too far. Just listen to other people they have already told you what needs to be done. You know what has to be completed. Yes you can fix things. However everything doesn't need to be fixed. Somethings need to be thrown away and abandoned for others to sort out. Not all sow's ears can become silk purses. You select. You choose. You start.

Crisis What Crisis?

Changes happen.
Yes everyday can bring something new and interesting to your situation.

When you get caught out and are unprepared you call it a crisis.

Well now you can turn it around and make it just an ordinary event.

Here are few little tips to help you to just do it.

1. Take Five:

 Stop for a moment to collect your thoughts. Stop your emotions running you. This is the time for relaxed clear rational thinking.

- Clear a space in you work area - clear up clean up. Put away anything that is irrelevant and unrelated to the issue you face.

1. Rationally Revise What Needs to be Done:

 Some items on you to do list or set of goals must go. 

Take on a command and control mentality.

Your mind must be as a medic on the battle field - what can you save? What can’t live? What has to die? What must be rescued? What will expire on ints own account? What can you resuscitate later on?

1. Renegotiate Deadlines: 

Explain to others involved what is happening. 

Ask if deadlines can be altered. Most people are sympathetic. 

If they cannot help it might mean you have to work at a more inconvenient time to keep your promises. Control you hours and avoid over doing it.

1. Delay Selectively:

Postpone all trivia you possibly can for another day, or week, or month. 

There is often a temptation to work two hours later to finish everything. 

Think about working twenty five minutes later each day for a week or start thirty minutes earlier each day to get on top of things.

1. Find Alternative Plans:

If you are obligated to do a favour for someone explain your time crunch.

6.Send a Representative to Routine Meetings:

Decide if the meeting is important enough for you to be there. 

Is there a co-worker who could represent you?

7.Improve Your Concentration:

Avoid any impulsive chores such as unimportant phone calls or going shopping. 

Learn to cut off your escape route. 

Keep clearing away distracting materials.

8.Shorten Breaks:

Keep to your breaks and cut a few minutes off each of them. 

A fifteen minute break broken into three five minute breaks is better and more effective. 

Stretching and deep breathing exercises would pull thoughts together and will get you refocused.

9.Use Temporary Help:

Keep a list of people who could help you on hand. 

This can range from social service agencies through to professional services. 

10.Cash In Favours:

If people owe you a favour now is the time to collect.

 However make sure it is a genuine emergency.

 People resent those who lurch from crisis to crisis and always ask to be saved. 

Some people are victims of their own failings and are only too happy to play the persistent victim role.

11.Regain Perspective:

Learn to reevaluate and to debrief the situation. 

Ask what went wrong to create the pressure? 

Examine how much lead in time was needed for projects?

 Did you have a problem with your own assertiveness? 

Are you working for the right goals and values? 

Do you need to delegate more? 

Do you need more check points and markers on lengthy projects.

There you are just do one or two of these at the difficult times and see how well you manage.

Ruskin and Me

I have just finished reading 'The Art Of Travel' by Alain de Bottom. Like many books it has been on my must read list for many years. Finally I found a tatty tired, over-written and high lighter marked copy in a used book pile. What an absolute joy it was to read it. I am a week end dabbler in paint. I now have started to really look at the world.

The poet's and writer's eye is so different from a painter's or artists eye. I found when out driving landscapes which speak to me. Seascapes that shout at me, flowers that whisper their secrets. Synesthesia has set in. Is it a curse or a blessing? I have absolutely no Idea if I am going mad. It is a strange feeling to look at the world again in a new way. I know the message of the mystics has always been to see old places with new eyes. However our eyes get tired as we grow older and we demonstrate a reluctance to capture enough or to lock it in as if it were the last memory.

de Bottom has demonstrated the cross over in the arts just as the physicist has a cross over in in science. The physicist has to know mathematics and have vivid imagination with which to project the maths into a physical reality. A philosopher such as de Bottom brings art alive through the written word.

Now to find my paints and brushes and see if I can create an eye for detail as John Ruskin or will I drift off to do more abstract uncoordinated splashes ore akin to my old self?