courage

Fear and Hand Holding in Swansea…..

| Mairead

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(Butterfly enjoying the sun)

The last stop on our Round the United Kingdom, Short Motorbike Tour was Swansea. We went there to attend our daughter’s end of year exhibition. Twelve movies in one evening… don’t worry they were short, about five minutes each. Ciara wrote and directed her movie and she also had an acting role. She played a lesbian. The evening before one of her friends asked her if she was afraid that people would think she was gay. She said she had worried about that for the previous six months…. it was too late now. It was more important to get her message out there, afraid or not, other people’s judgements or not.

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(Butterfly enjoying some lavender)

When you want to follow your dream, and live your life with purpose, there are sometimes scary things you’ll need to do. And you’ll wonder if this is a good idea…. this sharing of your dream, your wishes, your message, your contribution to healing the world. What will people think? What will they say? How will they treat you? Will they be different? Will they ever speak to you again? Will they understand? Will their judgement resonate with your own judgement of yourself… and make it impossible for you to continue….. when they think you’re not good enough?

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(Mosaic butterfly in garden at Bloom)

I will include a link so you can watch Ciara’s movie, if you choose. If you do watch you may hear her message. You may understand her message. Or you may miss her message. You may think she is brave. You may think she’s foolhardy.  You may get stuck in wondering if she’s gay or not.  Whatever you get from the watching, one thing I have learned from my judgement of others is that my thoughts and words say more about me than they do about the one I judge. That’s what I got from watching movies on a warm Friday night in Swansea.

What are you saying about yourself? Mairead.

Love Letters, a movie by Ciara Hennessy.

Horas non numero nisi serenas!

| Mairead

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(A bit of the sundial and fountain. Sorry, I chopped off the pretty parts…)

In the end we went to Powerscourt House and Gardens. The house for lunch and coffee, the gardens for flowers and graves. One of the other choices was Wexford and we picked well because they got an awful lot of rain in Wexford on Wednesday. We got the sun… and then some shade because it was too bright and then some breeze because it was a bit hot and then some sun because it got a little chilly. I suppose we got everything we needed except rain (which we didn’t need anyway).

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(The Dolphin Pond)

We began our adventure in the gardens and the leaflet told us that this first section, called the Italian Gardens, was designed in the 1840’s by Daniel Robertson and that it took 100 men over twelve years to complete. Well then… seems like all the best gardens take more time than you might think sensible to complete….

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(One of the gravestones in the pet’s graveyard)

I looked up Daniel Robertson and I read that he went bankrupt in England and afterwards moved his gardening business to Ireland. The gardens at Killruddery, where we went to the food market, were designed by him also. The latin inscription over the sundial in the Italian Garden, says “Horas non numero nisi serenas“, I do not count the hours unless they are tranquil. Because of his previous difficulties (with the bankruptcy) I thought Daniel’s choice of Latin quote might be significant, maybe an insight into how he coped, but for the life of me I couldn’t make sense of it…. if you were tranquil why would you bother counting the hours at all!

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(The Pepperpot Tower – built for the children of the house. It was modelled on a pepper pot from Lord Powerscourt’s dining table.)

Turns out (thanks Google!) that this latin inscription is on a fountain in Venice also and the word count can be replaced with remember…I do not remember the non-peaceful hours. In other words I put my attention on the times that I have been at peace, when all was well, I carry the peace from my past with me. If Daniel hadn’t found a way to carry the peace with him we might have been walking through fields yesterday.

Nice work, Daniel. Mairead.

Taxi Tour Guide

| Mairead

(Lunch…. looking like a green moustached little man?)

We had a very interesting conversation with our taxi driver on the way to the airport. He’d lived in Berlin for sixteen years and loved it. As a teenager he’d been taken on a school trip to east Berlin, while it was still under Russian rule. He was fascinated by the place and wanted to come back. So after he left school he visited Berlin many times, but just the west part.

(Anyone for some Sachertorte?)

It was a difficult journey. It took twelve hours from his home, the same journey now takes five. Going back to our history lesson….. the free Berlin, the west part, was surrounded by a wall (well.. two walls with the no-mans land filled with mines and guard dogs in between all watched over by guard towers…. to be precise). The further complication was that Berlin was also situated in the Russian (not so free) part of Germany, to the east. Maybe a picture would help?

(Former West Germany in purple, former East Germany in yellow. City of Berlin in middle of yellow. Barbed-wire lined road corridor ran from purple west Germany across Sachsen-Anhalt to Berlin)

So…. to get to Berlin (while the wall was still up) our taxi driver had to drive along a road corridor through east Germany to west Berlin. Are you keeping up? He was questioned at the border checkpoint and if anything was amiss he would not be allowed through or could be held prisoner. If he did get through his journey was timed and if he arrived at the Berlin checkpoint later than expected then he was in trouble. If he arrived sooner than expected this was also a serious problem. And yet he continued to make the journey…..

(Checkpoint….. Charlie!)

Incidentally….. the first border crossing checkpoint at the start of the corridor was called Alpha (from the phonetic alphabet for A), the second one was called Bravo (B) and the one between the American sector and Russian Berlin was Charlie (C)…. thus Checkpoint Charlie.

Over and out, Mairead.

Little Chick’s Story

| Mairead

(A perfect seed ball)

Once upon a time there was a little chick who went in search of adventure. She travelled to the sea shore and found a beautiful turtle shell. She put it on and wore it everyday for months. Everyone she met said how lovely she looked and little chick was delighted with the attention.

(I’m heading for…)

But deep inside little chick was tired and weary and fed-up. The shell was heavy and it was hard to see where she was going so she often bumped into things. One day she decided to take it off….. but as soon as she did she felt naked and put it right back on again. Then she sat down to cry, “now what’ll I do?”

(At the Natural History Museum, a pearl from Galway)

As she was crying an old hen who was passing came over to little chick and asked “What’s wrong little chick?” Little chick explained that she didn’t want to be in a shell anymore, but when she took it off she felt naked. “Oh that’s not a problem, let’s go down to the lake and sort this out.”

(Happy orange juice)

So the two birds waddled down to the lake, said a quick “Hi!” to the other animals and found a quiet spot. Then the old hen said “Ok, little chick, look into the water, what do you see?” Little chick looked in and said, “A beautiful turtle shell.”

“Great, now take off the turtle shell and look into the water again.”

(Sailboats off Greystones… rocks)

“No, no I can’t look, I’m naked.” squeaked the little chick. But the old hen insisted and when the little chick looked into the water she couldn’t believe her eyes. In the water she could see a beautiful yellow fluffy chick, powerful in her chickness! She twisted and turned to see herself from every angle and smiling she asked old hen, “How can this be, I’m beautiful?”

(I have no idea what these are?)

Old hen said “You’ve been wearing that old turtle shell for so long it felt like home but it wasn’t. It was covering up a beautiful you. Just because you feel naked doesn’t mean you are naked! Now, off you go and live the life of a beautiful, proud, powerful, smiling little chick!”

And little chick did just that.

Happy Bank Holiday Monday (Ireland), Mairead.

Oranges and Sunshine

| Mairead

(Does that look safe to you?)

We’re going to the movies tonight. To the Mermaid Theatre. Every Monday night it turns into a cinema. The movie is called Oranges and Sunshine. I’ve read the book and couldn’t put it down. It’s about a woman who discovered by accident that little children from Britain were sent to Australian orphanages in the 1940’s, after the second world war. Their parents thought their children had been adopted by families in Britain. The children had been told their parents were dead. She found it difficult to get information but little by little she discovered the details were far worse than anyone realised. It’s a true story.

(More patterns)

Just in case you want to see it, I’ll say no more…. Except, the bit that was by accident is very interesting. She was working as a social worker and she had clients who were adopted and had found or were in the process of finding, or beginning the process of finding, their birth parents. She felt they needed a support group, so she set one up. And it hadn’t been running long when a series of events led to her uncovering the story that’s in the movie.

(Liam brought us a very nice cake box and there was cake in it!)

Anyway, what I find interesting is, this woman didn’t plan to do some great big thing. She was doing her own little thing. Not that setting up a support group is little, it was very helpful to the people in the group. But she ended up being helpful to far greater numbers of people. And if she hadn’t done that first thing……

(No pictures please! How do I convince people they really DO want their picture taken?)

So I was thinking…. there’s probably some small thing calling out to all of us. Some little thing that we’d like to do but we haven’t got the time. Or maybe we think it might be selfish to do it. Or it could be considered a bit silly. But what if doing that little thing could accidentally lead us to uncovering an amazing story…. our story? That’s a nice idea.

Just one small thing, Mairead.

Let’s dance……

| Mairead

 

Sometime last year my son put me onto a video at http://www.stridegum.com/#/mattsplace/  (the Dancing 2008 link) It’s a guy call Matt Harding who travelled around the world (including Dublin’s St. Stephen’s Green) with his girlfriend doing a silly dance. His girlfriend Melissa Nixon recorded Matt and the people (or monkeys) who joined him. The video lasts about 4 minutes. I found it again earlier this month and I’ve watched it every day since. I cry every time….. I wonder if I’ll ever be immune to its effect. 

 

I love the music, it’s playing as I write. I love Matt’s enthusiasm. I love his openness, lacking any embarrassment. I love the children. I love the people running in to dance. I love the bad dancers. I love the Bollywood dancers. I love the guy in the wheelchair. I love when it gets to Tel Aviv and then East Jerusalem, and I cry some more because they’re almost dancing together, they’re almost laughing together and they’re almost together.

 

I long to be so free that I could go to St. Stephen’s Green in the middle of Dublin and do my own silly dance, with a big smile on my face. But I’m afraid. Even imagining it makes my stomach knot and my face burn up with worry about what the people passing by would think.  

 

This guy, Matt has no fear, or seems to have no fear of what others might think (he is afraid of spiders though!). And that in some way is what makes him and his dance so attractive. He does the perfect silly “Matt Harding dance” and he has an impact on lots of people, he has an impact on me. What a simple way to have an impact.

 

Is there something simple that you want to do? Are you worried about what others would think? A passerby, your parents, your brother, your sister, your friends? What if what you wanted to do could have this kind of impact on just one person – would it be worth the fear? Would it be worth courageously doing the thing you want to do?

 

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.

  ~Ambrose Redmoon


No one can do the dance quite like Matt. No one can do your “dance” quite like you.

 

 Let’s dance……

Is there something you want to do?

| Mairead

One of my friends, Laura, has returned from her second trip this year on the old pilgrim’s way in Spain called the Camino. Laura initially was due to travel with her friends but work commitments meant they had to cancel, so she travelled alone. This was the first time since she got married that she ever needed to travel alone, other than to work related conferences or seminars. Therefore the experience of going abroad alone was not familiar and it wasn’t attractive. Although she did want to go, she was apprehensive about going solo. Anyway, she took her courage in her hands and booked the ticket four days before her flight.

And that’s when she started to panic.

She was able to recall (vividly) every story she’d ever heard of a lone traveler who came to a gruesome end. In an effort to calm herself she started to tell her friends and family how she felt. But far from calming her they were able to provide even more terrifying stories, with definitive advice that she should not go!

Added to this (or maybe because of this) she wasn’t sleeping well, so that by the time she got to Dublin airport she was exhausted and on edge! On the flight things did get a little better because she sat down beside a lovely couple and had a very interesting conversation. That is, until she told them what she was about to do and they had some more stories with bad endings! As the huge cabin door swung open Laura thought the best thing might be to remain on the plane. Of course she couldn’t….. so she got out. Saying goodbye to the couple she set off with her belongings for the next five days (including walking poles) on her back and went to find her bus. There was still time do she stopped at a little cafe, got a coffee and settled herself. As she was about to sip her coffee, there was a loud clatter – both her walking poles lay in a heap blocking the aisle between tables. Embarrassed and annoyed at herself for being incompetent she bent down to pick them up. At the same moment someone else was reaching for the poles, and as happens, smiles were exchanged and conversation began.

“Are you doing the Camino?”

“Yes, you too?”

These were the first words for days that brought calm. For the next four days the two walkers kept each other company. Although some of the walking was difficult it was made easier by the companionship. companionship that just turned up when it was needed.

Since that trip Laura has gone back again – alone – and this time company was provided again. The difference this time was that she found that although she loved talking and listening to the many people she met she knew she didn’t need them to stay with her or to be there for her, she knew she could let them go or she could go and more company would be provided.

In case this sounds a little selfish in the retelling please be assured when the story was told to me I heard only selflessness. The selflessness of allowing others to be themselves and to enjoy them being that without the need to ‘steal’ their time.

Laura is planning to complete the Camino (all 890 kilometers of it!) at her own pace and in her own lifetime.  Alone or not she now knows whatever she needs will be provided.

Coincidentally Mike, a friend I’ve known for a long time called while I was writing this post. I met Mike when he was my boss in a software company, his job was to turn me into a programmer! Since then his life has changed a lot. In 2002 he was a software development manager but now he’s got a psychology degree and works as a counsellor. This isn’t the normal progression of a career in software! It’s also not the way to go to have a normal progression of salary for a man with three teenage children.

Mike was made redundant. He paid off a loan with the lump sum; cancelled his life insurance, his pension and his health insurance; he took a part-time job, and decided to pursue a career in something that had come to his attention by accident.

It’s a terrifying story!

I’m making it sound quick by putting it into one sentence, but it took time and there were lots of scary moments. He says he didn’t have a lot of choice, there wasn’t enough money to pay for the luxury of insurance.

“There was only enough for what was needed right now, not what we might need in the future.”

Then he remembers he did have some choice. He could have gone back to a former employer in software and got a full-time job but he didn’t. In software all he could look forward to was retiring, with this new career he was looking forward to every day for the rest of his life.

Even though they had very little money and no ‘guarantee’ that they were protected from what might happen he knew that his (and his family’s) new quality of life was better than it had been. He recalls going for a walk one day after dinner with his wife and noticing the commuters coming out of the train station looking weary and hungry, and he knew he was doing the right thing for him.

And as time passed money came in from unlikely sources and they always had enough. The one near crisis for his teenagers was when they were going to have to sell the car, but in the end the car stayed and the crisis was averted! They now manage to run two cars – without the ‘BIG’ job.

When Laura wanted to go walking on the Camino, she began a journey, she did the things she needed to do to get there (even when she was afraid), and what she needed was provided. Incidentally, one of the things she hung onto in the four terrifying days before the flight was the encouragement she got from people who had travelled the Camino. People who had the courage to begin their journey.

When Mike went to an information day with a relationship counselling organisation as a favour to his wife, he found something he really wanted to do and he began a journey. When he was made redundant, he got an opportunity to make a choice. He did the things he needed to do to get where he wanted to go (even though he had to trust without a guarantee that he and his family would survive financially). And what he needed was provided. One of the things provided was his supportive and encouraging wife, June. Mike says “I couldn’t have done it without her.” And he didn’t have to.

Is there something you want to do? Would it be useful to trust that what you need will come (even if only just in time)? Do you want to start that journey today? Is there someone who has made that journey before? Are you willing to do what you need to do when you need to do it?

Stop asking yourself “Why am I so Stupid?”

| Mairead

Watched a movie called The Fastest Indian on DVD last week. It’s about a guy called Burt Munro from New Zealand who had a dream to set a land speed record on his Indian motorbike across the salt flats in Utah. It’s based on a true story and set in the 1960’s.
In his sixties himself, Burt had perfected his bike to run at speeds above 100 mph, so he worked his passage from New Zealand as cook aboard a ship on route to California. In the end the bike went even faster and the record Burt set is still unbroken over 40 years later.

Anthony Hopkins plays Burt, and really nicely introduces us to a friendly man, with his own ideas and a determination to follow his dream.

He reminds me of my daughter!

I attended a workshop recently where the learning is experiential and particularly about seeing the big picture first. Only then do get to notice the little bits and pieces and to put those bits and pieces into your own jigsaw puzzle. For me this is a very different way to learn and I sometimes struggle and fight with it. But when my picture starts to emerge it is both magnificent and solid.

What’s emerging for me at the moment is the connection between the movies, The Fastest Indian and The Shadow of the Moon and the concept of dealing with problems. In the past when there was something bothering me I thought about it, figured out what I had done wrong, figured out what that meant about me and about others and about life, asked myself over and over “Why did I do …?’, wrote about it, talked to others about it and in general felt terrible about it. I had been doing this for years and had ‘perfected’ my problem-based strategy!

Then I learned a possibility-based strategy. This is where you start at your best and you deal with everything from that place. So, I learned how to use this nearly three years ago, and I am learning to understand it slowly, since then.

Today another piece of my jigsaw fell into place.

When I saw In the Shadow of the Moon (see Recent Post) it had a very strong impact on me. As in life the details of this impact slowly unfold…

When President John F Kennedy predicted that the USA would land a man on the moon and return him safely within the decade he set up a goal for his country and particularly for the men and women who worked in the space program.

The Apollo artifacts in a museum in Cape Canaveral are very flimsy. The pod they parachute down to earth in looks like its made of golden tin foil. The processing ability of the computers they used then is no more powerful than a calculator (just a little heavier!)

Yet… they did it.

Burt Munro had a dream to set a land speed record with his Indian motorbike. When manufactured, this motorbike’s maximum speed was about 50 miles per hour. He worked on it for hours every day, making new parts out of scraps of metal smelted in a pot in the run-down shed where he lived. He used his neighbour’s carving knife to turn his ordinary tyres into high-speed tyres.

Yet…. he did it. Funny enough both stories are set in the 1960’s, but that’s not the link.

When the astronauts and space craft builders were starting to create something that would go to the moon their space ships kept exploding. Lots and lots of problems. I’m not sure but I’m guessing they didn’t spend a lot of time criticising themselves for getting it wrong AGAIN. If they had spent the time going over and over what they did wrong they may never have got to the moon. Their timeframe was set, they had to do the job within 9 years. (Because President Kennedy said they would….)

So they had to look for ways around their problems.

Burt had many, many problems – the biggest – he didn’t have enough money to go to America, was solved by his friends. But when he got to Utah he realised that he could not enter the trials – he hadn’t registered. He didn’t beat himself up and use his energy asking “Why am I so stupid?” His timeframe was set, the event would be over in 3 days.

He looked for ways around his problems.

Both the people in the space program and Burt Munro kept the dream in sight and looked for ways around the problems. All the time assuming they would make it to the moon or to the line drawn across the salt flats in Utah.

Stop wasting your life beating yourself up for doing something wrong. Stop asking yourself Why am I so stupid? Use your problems as feedback to find a way around them, That didn’t work, what else could I try or how could I do this another way? Use the energy saved to keep your moon in view.

By the way, it’s not the dream that’s all that important, they come and go. But the dream is really, really useful because….. in that direction lies your bliss. But that’s another story!