From Lima to the meaning of Life

Travelling for 24 hours is just plain hard, whichever way you look at it. ‘Cattle-class’ is called cattle class because…well, because you are herded in like cattle and have less legroom than cattle or chickens.  Oh yes, then there’s arriving in London and only one of your bags arriving with you because the other one is goodness know where, between the USA and a computer glitch over UK airspace. 

A day and a half later they still have no idea where it is. And it has Jane’s journal in it, her record of her personal journey for the past 12 months. Irreplaceable. And then there’s the cold and arriving home and .......and nipping round to a neighbours and glancing down at their coffee table to see the headlines of The Times news paper and seeing the banner across the front page, “Kate Gross” and then going icy cold inside as I read the words.

Through our lovely friend Jill Mcmillan I met Kate a few times and so what Jane & I then read very slowly to each other changed the day completely. Completely!  ...and left us deeply moved 

I asked Jill if she thought Kate would mind us blogging what she wrote for The Times and her husband then has blogged on their own website and she thought it would be more than fine.

Read Kate’s Christmas message & know that life will suddenly come into its true perspective, as it did for us yesterday as we returned to the UK for Christmas.

  - TW

May your days be merry and bright, And may all your christmases be white (This is an article Kate wrote for the Times last week, which was printed today. She asked me to publish it to the blog as our time with her is now very short. Billy - 11th Dec '14)  The ghost of Christmas Future will hang around our table this year. As we decorate the tree, open our presents and sit down for lunch, I will not be the only one imagining what these same rituals will be like next December when I am no longer there. This is my last Christmas; 2015 is the last New Year I will see in. I am 36, my twin boys are not-yet-six, and I am dying from advanced colon cancer. I have had this disease for over two years, but now I am drawing in like the December nights, knocking on the door of what Philip Gould called the death zone – the great winding down we all will face when we have weeks, not more, left to live. We found out last month that cancer was reproducing wildly in my colon, abdomen, lungs, liver and bone - ever the over-achiever, my disease has taken the opportunity of a break from chemotherapy to run riot. So, I have exited the world of Oncology, a known space of sage Professors and carousels of bright young Registrars seeking to nuke my disease with an aggressive phalanx of drugs. I enter the calmer, quieter world of Palliative Care; regular visits from the nurses at my local hospice, ever increasing doses of morphine in an effort to quell these terrifying new-found pains that travel my body. In this new world my quest is for liveable days, pleasant and comfortable hours and moments of snatched happiness. When I was asked to write this article about Christmas I hesitated. I hesitated because I am terrified that I won’t make it even that far, and writing down my hopes seems like tempting fate. Look at Linda Bellingham. She decided to stop her chemotherapy to give her a glorious “last” with her family, but she didn’t make it.  And I am desperate to be well enough to open stockings and sing O Little Town of Bethlehem one more time, and desperate not to mar festive seasons to come with the grim anniversary of mummy’s demise.  But, like all things that come with this dreadful disease I have named my Nuisance, I am not in control. I do not get to decide what speed this final part of my journey takes. Force Majeure could strike at any moment: I could pick up a chesty cough from the school playground which would do me in. The tumours could tighten their stranglehold on my liver well before it gets its last taste of Christmas sherry. Cancer is cruellest to the control freak like me. It strips away pleasures, one by one, finally stripping away my ability to plan anything other than the day ahead. Come what may, Christmas won’t quite be Christmas this year for our family. Faced with this combination of hope and uncertainty, my family learn from Larkin: we know there is nowhere we can live but days. We can’t postpone our happiness until tomorrow because we don’t know what tomorrow will bring. We have to make the most of now. The 25thDecember is too far away to bank on, so I am denied my usual months of pre-Christmas list-making. But today, oh today I can be sure of. Today I will meet my best friend’snewborn baby.  Today I will sit with my children and stuff our tasteful wooden advent calendar with gaudy sweets. Today I will walk with my Dad along the banks of the river Cam as the damp December mist enfolds us. And soon, so soon, it will be time to get the Christmas decorations out and marvel over the brightly coloured objects we haven’t seen for a year. Primary-coloured, heavy clay bells strung on ribbons, fashioned by clumsy toddler hands. Baubles covered with baby handprints. The armless Angel we cherish,amputee or not, secure in her perch at the top of the tree. We can’t bank on anything. But that doesn’t mean we stop hoping for it. With a break in the pain, I can get out of my bed and my planning gene kicks in, as irrepressible as hope. What do I want this Christmas? I want to do the simple things again. Christmas is about precious rituals carved out over the years; learned from my parents as I grew up, now taking on a new shape in my own family. On Christmas Eve, I want my husband, the boys and I to go to cinema to see Paddington, have a crudely un-festive lunch of burgers and then go and sit in the shadow of Isaac Newton’s statue at the Trinity College crib service. I want to be able to get up at 6am to the shout of “is it morning yet?” and “Father Christmas has come! He’s come!”  I want to toast my 100 year old Gran and smile as I see generations of one family around the table suffering our annual ration of Brussel sprouts. I want to see in 2015 in the wilds of Suffolk with my best friends and their kids, and a massive rib of beef. These are more than plans. They are iconic rituals which havegestated over the years. Repetition has scored the grooves deeply into our lives. I know these things we do will not die with me. Let’s say I do get that far, let’s side with hope and say I make it to the toasts and the turkey and the carnage of present opening. I wonder how we will cope with the presence of Christmas Future at the feast. I am sure two rambunctious five year old boys will help keep him under control. And we are a pragmatic lot, our family, so I suspect we will welcome him in with some black humour and offer him a mince pie. An unwanted but acknowledged guest, better at the table than knocking menacingly at the window. Better we welcome him in and recognise that whilst my time-horizon is now as truncated as a toddlers, for those sitting next to me the idea of a long afterwards when our family is three, not four, is ever present in their minds. I wonder if we will struggle more with the burden of lastness and the expectations of perfection it brings. There are few things I distrust more than the bucket list; I find any potentially wonderful experience easily ruined by the weight of expectation. I can celebrate this year being the final Christmas Dinner I eat - I never liked turkey much anyway. But if this is the last time I will open stockings with my children at the crack of dawn, then I will want it to be perfect. And, of course, it won’t be. Even if by some miracle I am fit (tish) and well (enough), like every family we will have our festive niggles.  My darling, consumerist, selfish little boys will cherish the plastic Minecraft figures I bought them under duress more than my hand-crafted, memory laden gifts I have prepared for them. I will expend precious energy shouting at them when they refuse to wear a “smart” shirt and trousers for the big day. They will see more of the Mini-Ipads which Father Christmas has been asked for than my precious face. My husband will hate the jumper I buy him, as he does every year. The dog will steal a leg of turkey. My parents will have a terse exchange over the gravy, and only I will want to watch Downton Abbey Christmas always brings with it these stupidly high expectations, whether it is the lastever or whether you have years more celebrating ahead. We have expectations of perfect families, well-behaved children, thoughtful gifts lovingly received, peace and harmony replacing squabbles and nagging. If we are not careful, reality will ruin Christmas. Not just for our family, what with all this fate-tempting writing and my sky-high hopes, but for all of us. So I like to remind myself that a real Christmas includes the bad stuff too. Not just the gingerbread house, but the arguments over who will get to eat the sweet-filled roof. Not just the carol service, but the cold, wet wait at the bus-stop afterwards. Not just generations of family under one roof, but snidey bickering, competitive gift-giving and marital disharmony. And for us, this year, not energetic mummy running the show, but mummy lying on the sofa. Mummy sleeping through present opening. Mummy reaching for her ‘special Calpol’ to ease the pain. Dad taking too many photos of mum. A little cry on each others’ shoulder at the end of the day. The Christmas idyll is never an idyll, for any of us. So my promise this year is to enjoy all of it. These days that lead up to it, not just the main event. The grumpiness, anger and frustration with my best beloveds that are a reminder that I am alive and red blood still pumps through my veins. I am pale imitation of the energetic parent I once was, but there is still pleasure to be gained from Christmas as a spectator sport. Though my Christmases past are blissful memories, I do not need to live there. The present is no idyll, but it’s what we have. And I intend to enjoy it. May you all do the same. Kate’s book Late Fragments: Everything I Want to Tell You (About This Magnificent Life) will be published in early Jan 2015. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Late-Fragments-Everything-About-Magnificent/dp/0008103453/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418402946&sr=8-1&keywords=late+fragments

Visit to Peru

Getting perspective when moving at speed is almost impossible. But today we’ve pulled over into a lay-by to let the world rush by and allow our spilling thoughts to settle.

Communities cling to ugly & dangerous  hillsides outside Lima

We’ve spent the past 6 days hurtling about visiting various communities that all share more or less the same challenges. To put it in a nutshell, they all face sure and certain attack from the weather....at some time unspecified and unknown. They live under the threat of a possible catastrophic water related event, from floods, either from violent rivers nearby or flash water&mud floods that will arrive unexpected from the barren hills above.

Within months this river will be bursting its banks

Peru is a curious country geographically and climactically. Those of you who are clued up on these subjects will know about El Nino, or have heard about it as it's in fact a global problem. And maybe you’ll also know that Peru has been central to this strange and little understood weather phenomenon.
If you google or Youtube: El Nino+Peru+1998, you’ll discover what happened when the last great El Nino hit the country - floods and mud slides of epic proportions and havoc beyond belief - more terrifying than can be expressed here.

But it’s been a while since ’98 and during the past 16 years meteorological technology has advanced to an insanely clever level. They are able to track the weather pattern of the world with dizzy-making detail and collect swathes of data from the warming deep seas and all the evidence points to another El Nino disaster on the horizon.

An informal community in the flat, desert-like, Piura basin - no water, sanitation or basically anything!

The imminent arrival of El Nino and other flood related events is debated every day...it’s ‘imminent’, but, like the second coming, no-one knows the date or time. So, you would think that everyone would be hyper vigilant and on their toes for the second coming, but you would be wrong.

The women and their children from Los Polverines, Piura

Those in the know watch and wait, they pour over their maps and discuss in great depth which are the most vulnerable areas and which communities are in danger of annihilation. But, it’s been a long time since the last disaster and when you live in a city where it never rains (Lima is the second largest desert city in the world), it’s easy to eat, drink and be merry and...keep your fingers crossed.

This house is metres from the river. See their own flimsy flood protection, which will be swept away in seconds

This week we flew north to the Ecuador boarder to Piura and visited communities at high risk and talked with their leaders and the fearful men&women who have no voice (actually it was 90% women - terrified for the safety of themselves and their children and their meagre posessions) . We walked in the wide dusty street-corridors which one day will flow with terrifying torrents of destruction and visited 3 schools all in flood paths.

This little orphan is being looked after by teachers. 

We were guests of Practical Action and their sponsor Zurich International. With them we visited communities in flat desert planes, on the banks of rock-dry rivers and those up in the foot of the Andes where rivers are beginning to bubble with mischief. We visited formal and in-formal settlements where were was no water, no sanitation, no clinics, schools or even a space for the community to meet.

They all asked for help. Help to...improve their terrible living conditions, to improve their personal safety, to get them land rights, to build schools, to get first aid training...oh, and to know what to do when the floods rip their worlds apart. All the communities had no early warning systems or sirens, no government advice, no adequate flood defences, no community action plan, no disaster supplies......etc etc (...you get the point)

This river bed has been used as a dumping site for rubble. It will be torrent in the floods - Andes in the background

And we listened and allowed our hearts to ache and to wonder what Emerging Leaders could possible offer in the future. Strangely the threat of the river almost became a metaphor for the hopelessness we felt all around us







.....and we were reminded, at a visceral level, that there is no sustainable change without good Leadership.










Oh, and p.s....right now Lima is hosting the Global Climate Summit @ COP20. All the great climate wise-heads of the world have come together from 198 counties to see how they can stop us all destroying our planet. Let’s hope that common sense rules and not the arrogance of egos.


- JB

Releasing potential @ Jambo Toto

There is something sweetly liberating about letting your life go 'off piste' from time to time. I’m talking about letting life rattle you off-tack a little, slipping yourself into neutral, ready to have fun with whatever happens on the way.

Children at Jambo Toto school

I have to admit that my melancholic streak (that, ‘little miss worry’ part of me), can become a pest at not letting me find neutral and I feel that it should definitely be on my agenda to kick up my heels more as I tip-toe up to 60.
My natural temperament is, unfortunately, happier with to-do lists, rather task driven and trying to manicure my moves on the main runs, afraid of what might happen if I chance life on more challenging slopes.




But hey, there is always opportunity for change, especially if you travel with an ‘off pister’.

The past 9 months have seen Trevor and I living like focused nomads - hotel hopping and learning to make home wherever we found ourselves. And yesterday we returned home with 4 scruffy suitcases full of battered TOMS (Blake Mycoskie’s amazing shoe company), warn out clothes, a pile of much adored books (more like comfort blankets), shells from far off beaches and a thousand memories tucked into every item. Yes, memories too numerous to fully chart. Memories of adventures and happenings that have shaped and shunted us into becoming slightly different people than the ones who left Oxford months ago - certainly inwardly.

What I have learnt is that life will do its work if you let it. Life has a way of not letting you off the hook if you put yourself in the path where your passion and skills meet.

Jambo Toto school, Nairobi

Our last weekend in Nairobi saw us visiting Jambo Toto school in Nairobi.
Some of you will remember that we raised, with the help of many of you wonderful friends, the funds to build a school for the children of the stone quarry mothers.  These women had their little ones with them each day wandering amongst the flying flints and abusive practices of that environment (they earn $1 a day for their punishing work).

We're thrilled to be able to tell you that Jambo Toto has now been running for almost a year, with 50 students - from tiny tots (with nowhere to go) up to 12 year olds.

Rose, supported by 2 other teachers is caring for all aspects of the children’s lives. They feed them breakfast and lunch each day, often wash them when they come filthy and wrap them in blankets when they arrive cold and shivering. They provide after school care for up to 100 children sometimes and have created a ‘safe haven’ for these vulnerable children.

In the past 4 months Rose (and Charles) have been able to build much needed toilets - at last!!
 (2 composting toilets, which the children had fun learning to use!!)

.......and 2 eco stoves and a small rabbit farm (part of their sustainability plan, which has a way to go)

...2 ego stoves

It is deeply moving to visit the school and to realise that this is the vision of 2 people who, ‘lifted up their heads’ and saw the great need. Who allowed themselves to be moved with compassion. Who did not look over their shoulders, waiting for someone else to step up, but made the responsibility theirs.

Chief John, William, Charles, Jane, Rose...and rabbits too pretty to eat!!

They have brought hope, not only to the children, but the knock on impacts the whole community.

The mothers have been asking for a while if Rose will teach them to read and write too and we’ve now supported them to build a small outdoor classroom for the women and Rose had already started teaching 2 groups of 10 (even though the builder has got distracted and left the pavilion unfinished).
In these afternoon sessions Rose intends to teach life skills, crafts and bring in help for sexual health clinics.


All this will enable the women to make better choices for their lives and an opportunity to leave the ’slavery’ of the rock quarry.

“Leadership is not about title/post, it’s about unlocking the potential of others. It’s about motivating, challenging the order of things, since everyone has potential and human potential is limitless” 
- Carly Fiorna 

Potential is all around us, but so often it's lying dormant, or squashed, oppressed, or ignored, un-challenged, un-warned, un-released or un-discovered.



Our job is to release our own hidden potential and then help others to release theirs and find their bigger self.

JB

“First we’ll take Manhattan..."

Leonard Cohen is a poet. At least I think so. His song title above makes me think about constantly moving on from one place to another. It’s like the film from the 60’s “It’s Tuesday, it must be Belgium”. Well, last Saturday we were on Cape Town’s Waterfront, Sunday we spent the day on airplanes flying to Kenya in stages. On Tuesday night we fly back to the UK. Wednesday until Sunday we are in UK and then on Monday it’s off to Peru for 2 weeks. Hence the feeling “It’s Tuesday, it must be Belgium”

Our group of CBO Leaders from across Kenya, working for World Vision

Kenya is so different than South Africa. We feel very different in both countries. The past week has been full on and head down, training 90 local leaders of community based organisations from across the whole of Kenya (it took some of them 2 days to get to Nairobi from the North –remember The Constant Gardner film? Lake Turkana?.....it’s a long, long way from Nairobi). These were people we first trained in Leadership for Hope in August and this week we were training them to take that training back to their communities.

Tea break for the attendees

Some of our Team of certified trainers
 - from left:Vincent, Stephen John, Millicent, Purity (up), Anna (down), Peter

When life gets so busy it is easy for the nourishing things of life to go by the way side. After a few days of no journaling, reading, table tennis, meditating, walking…you really begin to feel yourself bending out of shape.

Happy attendees

Today (Sunday) we stopped. You can feel balance returning as those important parts of life get rediscovered. I have long believed in reading widely and deeply. Reading what will stretch and challenge my perspective on any aspect of life. What I noticed today was how everything I am reading at the moment is so different, such different schools of thought. And yet everything seems to be saying the same things from different perspectives.....
- Richard Rohr’s Immortal Diamond
- Russell Brand’s Revolution
- Deepak Chopra on Consciousness
- Ken Wilber’s One Taste


They all seem to exploring how, in the first half of life, we build up a version of ourselves that makes sense according to our parents, culture, schooling, environment, careers etc and yet there’s a more true and lasting version of ourselves that sits patiently awaiting our discovery. Heavy? No, actually the more I read, the lighter I think I become, the more I realise there’s nothing I need to defend.

Anyway…..remember our table tennis idea. Remember the photos of the wine cellar? We are back under ‘house arrest’ in our hotel in Nairobi because there is no where we can go, no where to walk, no street we can easily browse the shops, no games room and no table tennis table (yesterday saw another pointless massacre in northern Kenya) …….except that there now is! I asked the concierge Angelina if she could work a miracle and find a rectangular table or bit of wood and set one up some where. She’s sorted it!! A table in a little tent in the hotel grounds….but today it’s our table tennis room!!
(and Jane thrashed me….again)

- TW

Perspective

 Perspective changes everything. If I put my hand up close to my eye I can see age and wrinkles. If I move my hand as far away as possible I can see a hand that can write and the landscape behind it.

This past week we finally went up Table Mountain, one of the new 7 wonders of the world. It was everything the adjectives suggest ‘awesome; wonderful; amazing; stunning’. Words are never enough.


But it was also a symposium in perspective.

Yesterday we finally bought a new camera. (Our old one has been worn out by our incessant ‘clicking for the past years and had got to the stage where it was taking a little afternoon nap between pressing the shutter and taking the photo).
And, predictably we took loads of photos from Table Mountain, but I was struck by two photos in particular.

Here is Jane sitting at the top of the mountain looking out to sea. In the background is a tiny, benign looking island. Green with white sandy bays and a bright white area inland. But actually it is Robben Island. Nelson Mandela’s prison for 18 of his 27 years.

Viewed from those years of mindless labouring in the lime quarry on that island it only looks like a prison sentence that will last a lifetime, eyesight destroyed by the glare, a world contracted into a few acres. But, from the top of Table Mountain it is just a small part of a much bigger landscape, a dash between the Atlantic Ocean and the ‘new world’ beyond and the ancient shores of Africa beneath us.

Here is a photo of a boat in the distance. So many boats sail on these seas. But this isn’t just ‘any boat’. It's the MAPFRE boat, finishing 7th in the first leg of the Volvo Ocean Race. A team of 9 people, knitted together as a seamless unit of human potential, racing the ocean for the past month from Alicante to Cape Town. Each of the crew are away from the people they love and the people who love them, the people who are knitted into their life tapestry, who they will be separated from for the next year.

When we spotted them they were just being joined by a tiny flotilla, escorting them into the celebrations awaiting them in the harbour. From the isolation of the “team of 9” amidst a seemingly endless ocean, to the bustle, hype and carnival that awaits them on the shores of the Victoria & Albert Waterfront. From a micro community of the wild sea, soon to be absorbed into the macro community of the worlds media. And then they suddenly go away on their own to their own private room for the first time in a month. But in this moment of the photo, from this perspective of Table Mountain,  just a faceless boat on silent waters.

And then there’s this photo. Not taken from Table Mountain. Jane and I have set up a table tennis table in the wine cellar where we are staying so we can have some fun amidst the seriousness of life. Here is me, in the wonderful chandelierd-space of this very old wine cellar, now boutique sought-after wedding venue, losing all perspective down in the muck and dust under a cabinet trying to find a lost ping pong ball.




Life is like that.
Life is actually like all three photos. It just depends where I’m standing at any one time as to what life looks like in that moment....zoomed in: I’m in the moment, focused, intense, narrow gaze and poised for action....or zoomed out: I’m open, un-fettered, holding few answers and seeing the ‘bigger picture’. Life needs both.


- TW

Shawshank Redemption

View of the Fair Valley - where we live

This film is rated as probably one of the most watched films ever. And I can see why. It is a triumph of hope against hopelessness. The hero of the film Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) says to his fellow prisoner Red (Morgan Freeman)


“Remember Red, hope is a good thing,
maybe the best of things,
and no good thing ever dies”


This morning was our second time in prison since being here in South Africa. The first was to visit Robben Island where Nelson Mandela spent around 18 of his 27 years in prison.

Today was for real. We were invited to spend a morning in a prison in the Western Cape. It’s a prison built for 250 inmates, but this morning, as with every morning 392 prisoners were present at roll-call. We were simply full of admiration for the head of the prison and what he had done there. It is a disconcerting thing to spend a morning being introduced to prisoners, shaking their hands, looking at what they are doing to keep themselves sane, knowing that some are in there for life because they murdered people.

The highlight was being put into a room with a group of the prisoners and being asked to talk to them.
What do you say to men who are in prison for life (min 25 years)?
So I talked about hope.
I talked about potential.

As I looked at these men in front of me, all in orange overalls covered with those little arrows that prisoners always had on the cartoon figures of my youth,  I was flooded with fresh clarity as I spoke to them..... that these guys weren’t born to end up in a prison. They were young guys full of potential to be musicians, artist, engineers, firemen, taxi drivers, fathers. Not murderers. That wasn’t what the seed of their potential was designed for. And that potential for who they should have been was still there, sitting there, unrealised.

Children are full of hope, curiosity and playfulness (they wanted to know about our training)

I told them that Mandela had entered prison as an angry young man. Labeled as a terrorist. But he used the time to lead his own life. To work on who he was. To end apartheid within his own heart, because if he didn’t do the work in prison on leading himself then he wouldn’t have been able to lead anyone to a place of hope when he was released.


I talked with them about hopelessness and how poverty gets inside the head. I talked with them about that hopelessness feeling like an impossibly high wall, how after a few generations of that kind of hopelessness they lose sight of who they could be. I talked about how leadership is like getting the pen back to write your own life story, not letting others write it for you.

We chatted together about the power of gangs to write a story that causes harm, but the potential power of gangs to be a force of good in the community.
They sat transfixed. One guy told our host, in tears, that if he’d just known some of what we were teaching he knew he would have made different choices and not ended up in prison where he knows he didn’t do his victim or his family any good.

National flower of South Africa - the Proteus plant (it grows everywhere)

On our way to Robben island

Jane & I stepped out of the prison three and half hours later into the burning sun of the beautiful Western Cape. Free. But we were on fire in our hearts. We have had to work through some challenging things in the life of Emerging Leaders in the past few weeks but one thing has become clear – we are on a mission, to the best of our small ability….and it’s a mission of hope.
Napoleon said that a leader was a ‘dealer in hope’. In the midday sun you just say to yourself ‘if we could have just left a little bit of hope inside that prison how amazing would that be.

-TW

In the Living Years

Why have I never come to S.Africa before? – What a truly stunning country it is! We’ve spent the past 3 weeks marvelling at the jaw-dropping beauty that every vista affords.  A country of scorching diversity: in the landscape and in the rainbow-people groups that weave a complex and often disturbing tapestry around each other.

The prison yard on Robben Island 

Apartheid, like an unsightly scar is still easily visible – inequality reigns, segregated townships abound, dulled eyed coloured and black workers toil in fields and in menial jobs where no white person is every spotted earning a crust. 

I see and feel the often subtle oppression, that continues to rob people of their dignity and teaches them to expect so little of themselves.

The cell that was Mandela’s home for 18 year. 

On our getaway journey north from Cape Town yesterday, while listening to Mike & the Mechanics singing ‘In the Living Years’, (YOUTUBE it), I soberly started a conversation with myself about what I’d want to teach the coming generations to help them to live an, ‘eyes wide open’, ballsy life. What nuggets have I mined from my life’s-journey that I’d want to pass on to my grandchildren? What has life taught me, either the hard way or with just with the passing of many tides?

And this is the imperfect list that Trevor and I came up with over a coffee in a hippy-café on the road to the stunning Paternoster coastline

1.     Open your eyes & ears to what’s in front of you – Life is an adventure, it’s a play being acted out and you’re in the drama of it all. So stay awake through every scene.

2.     Don’t be afraid to let life get to you. Let life prompt you to ACTION

3.     Stay connected to the people that matter to you and don’t let anything get in the way of those relationships

4.     Learn to spot your Ego and then laugh at it – don’t take yourself too seriously, because life isn’t about you, ‘You' are about Life             

                

5. Stay curious about everything. Get addicted to asking questions. Don’t get fixed in your thinking. Stay flexible in your living.

6.     Practice STILLNESS at least once a day, so that you can connect to the divine within you

7.     Make peace with your shadow side – you don’t have to be best friends, just foster a healthy respect

8.     Learn that suffering is a necessary part of your inner growth – it has the potential to make you a bigger person, if you let it do its work in you

9.     Don’t look for comfort constantly; look for being in places that stretch you. Seeking ‘comfort' as a goal will make you weaker & duller as a person

10. It absolutely matters who you travel with in life, so take your time and choose wisely

11. Make joy the compass of your life – when you lose your sense of joy be sure something is not right

12. Invest in LOVE and PURPOSE as the 2 pillars of your life – keep them in equal balance and keep them strong.

-       

I dedicate this imperfect offering of Life Lessons to my 2 grandsons Max & Digby

JB

The Strandloper Beach Cafe on the Paternoster peninsular