Quiet night...

Thinking of the secrets of perfect pyramids...  

iced coffee and a sunrise on a tropical island...

walking barefoot through a jungle after a summer rainstorm...

browsing around a old market smelling of sandalwood incense...

dragonflies and ipod astronauts filling the skies...

flying the ocean following dolphins in a silver plane...

mixing my tears into cupcakes...

listening to the stars and the licking the rainbows...

feeling music caress my skin while my heart sings along...

strong hands deliberately holding my skin as fingers of love wrap around my soul...

giving of me to fix u...

Kiddie snippet

I said to my sons after they climbed into the car today "I hope everyone's going to behave! I don't want any nonsense"

To which my 3 year old trying to please me replied "I'm being haved Mommy"

Kids, you gotta love them

When your words come back to haunt you...

Sooo, I go rambling about people who go to work sick and how they should rather just stay home and guess what, I get sick over the long weekend. And then I went into work today. I went home shortly afterwards and ended up sleeping the afternoon away just to try annilate the terrorists that have taken up residence in various parts of my immune system.

Ok, I'm digressing from my original point just slightly. Why is it that we are all so good at dishing out advice but so bad at taking the very same advice from ourselves? We can objectively look at someone else's situation and give them 101 things to do and to not do and yet if we should find ourselves in a similar or even the identical situation, we don't even think about giving ourselves advice, never mind taking it.

Case in point was today, I found out that someone I know is going through a divorce. Now the person that he is, he's been the shoulder for other people to lean on in the same situation, but now that he's there, he doesn't give himself his own advice and when I said to him something that he already knew, it was like a light came on - an 'oh yeah' moment. He knew the advice, he just couldnt give it to himself. 

Maybe this is like a built in failsafe that we're all given. Maybe this is the way we're designed, to depend on other people. Humans to all intents and purposes are social creatures and maybe this is a way to re-establish contact when we're disconnecting from something. We need contact with other people, whether it be in person or even nowadays via the internet or sms. I think that's what the whole appeal of chat programs, chat rooms and things like mxit are: it's a way to connect to many different people on different levels. It lets you be the different people you are inside all in the same place.

I guess it's also a way of hedging our bets so to say. The more people we have connections with, the less likely it's going to hurt should any of those connection disconnect. Obviously the strength of the connection counts, but if you have 100 other people to fall back on who all sympathise and support you, you feel a lot better than if you had no one.

The only drawback then is that you only have so much time and effort to put into each of those connections and the more you have, the thinner you end up spreading yourself until each person only gets a megre amount of you and most likely will only return the same amount of attention to you. 

So it's that balance that counts, have enough to have support but not too much that you're not just connecting on a superficial level. If anyone knows how to get that right, let me know, you could make a fortune :)

Super Sunday

Not my favourite day of the year and being under heavy fire from some relentless unknown germs that happen to have been passed along to me didn't make the day much better...

Firstly, to all those people who dragged me into this germ onslaught, I would like to thank you.

Did you think when you bit the bullet and dragged yourself to work coughing and sniffing? Of course not, you were tougher than that!

Did you listen when everyone was so concerned and begged you to go home? Hell no! You knew that the company would come to a standstill without you, that work couldn't possibly carry on and that hundreds of angry customers would all phone in and cancel their subscription to the company...

Who the hell do you think you're kidding?? You walk in that building and everything you touch, breathe on or even look at becomes a veritably breeding ground for the plethora of microscopic meanies and all the healthy people around you try their best not to breathe or even glance in your direction to try and prevent being sucked into the same hell that you're currently experiencing. But do you care? Of course not, hell no... staying at home is boring if there's nothing to do and no one to talk to so it wont do any harm going to work..

News Flash: It does! It makes us all sick! Do us a favour and Stay At Home if you're sick! - Please!!

Mastery Club Part II

Ok, so I didnt really get to the point last blog but I think it's going to take a while for me to get there anyways so if you're going to start reading, make sure you have a cup of coffee/tea/glass of wine and make yourself comfortable.

The idea behind the Mastery Club is pretty much the same as The Secret. The idea that you are in complete control of the world around you. Not in the pick-something-up-and-move-it kind of way, but in a seriously more dramatic imagine-it-believe-it-and-you-can-change-the-world kind of way.

Its actually a scary concept. One that I started thinking of when I heard the speech that Nelson Mandela or whoever gave (there are about 6 different ppl credited with it). You know the one where it starts "Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure". That started me thinking then that we are all actually scared of our own potential. Even more than that, we're all scared to think that we're wasting our potential.

So we throw ourselves into our jobs, our families, our hobbies and say that we're all just so busy and so involved with everything that it's not our fault that we cant get to realising our full potential. We take time off for relaxing and time off to spend with the family and even take time off to move homes and redecorate. But nowhere does anyone take time off to change their lives... And when you read a book like The Secret or the Mastery Club where it explains in really basic terms what you have to do to change your life it makes you wonder why, if making such big changes are really that easy, why we arent all doing it on a daily basis??

And I think the answer is that we're scared. Not that it wont work and we'll be disappointed, but that it will work and we will be able to make huge changes in our lives. What could be the problem with that. Well think of the first thing that you would change if you could - lemme guess, it was something rather selfish wasn't it? That's not a bad thing, but we've been so conditioned by everything around us that we feel we should always be thinking of our spouses/children/parents/the next person and that to want something purely for ourselves is somehow wrong. But that's the part that doesnt get explained to us as we grow up or when we leave school or when we start working. No one says it's ok to be selfish in the beginning, to look after ourselves first so that we can look after others. We just trudge along with everyone else, we do what our parents did, what our teachers tell us we must do and what society has set out in the rules. We spend most of our lives trying to further ourselves the whole time we think of things in terms of who's 'fault' it is and spend so much energy trying to prove that things aren't our 'fault' even if that means putting the blame on someone else.

Now there is a new movement, one that says we make our own lives. Not just through hard work and being a sheep. But by being different and unique and special and standing out. That takes effort though, and that's the kind of effort that requires us to think and to decide, to learn and to take responsibility for what we do, what we think and most importantly, for who we are. And I know that that scares the living daylights out of me.

I want to try out this amazing trick or skill or whatever you want to call it, but I'm scared that if I do and it works, I'm never going to be able to go back to being ignorant again. You can't cross back over once you've crossed this line. I wont be able to say 'I never knew that' because I would have the knowledge of how to change things. That would then mean that it was up to me to actually do something about the world around me and, more importantly, do something about myself.

So what happens if I didn't want to, what happens if I didn't feel like putting in the effort, if I wanted a selfish outcome instead of the 'right' one? I could always say no, but then I would have to deal with the guilt and know that even though I could've made a difference - I didn't, and to understand that the consequence of that inaction was my doing. 

Now that scares me. I know I'm not perfect, but right now, I have all the reasons - or rather excuses, for not being perfect. I do this and there aren't any more places to hide....

So I know I will take that step, I think I'm just going to enjoy being ignorant for a little while longer.... 

Mastery Club

Ok, what I've started noticing is that people tend to focus more on negative things than they do on positive things.

Its easier to notice the beggar at the traffic lights than the guy who's trying to actually sell the Big Issue to make a living.. It's easier to complain about not having enough money after just finishing a Big Mac meal than to think about the guy rummaging through the garbage for a couple of slices of old bread..

This is actually one of many random offshoots that my mind is giving off after reading a book called the Mastery Club. Its a teenagers book with the lessons of life in it..

Its amazing, we teach children all about science and adding and where everything is, but we dont teach them how to live. Sure there's a subject called life orientation where you get to experience 'normal' life problems and how 'normal' people deal with them. But that in no way means that they're right.... Who says that anything we learn in school is important? Sure, I mean it would be a bit strange if no one knew how to read or write or add 2 plus 2, but all the fuzzy stuff that we get taught. Tell me ladies, which one of you went on to hand sew a garment for yourself after learning that in Home Economics (a misnomer if ever there was one)? 

There is so much out there in this world that we dont understand and still need to find out about and all we teach children is what everyone already knows but nothing - nothing, about how to live. I think thats probably because we havent got it right ourselves yet......