Home again

Holiday was cut short by a military lockdown. Not your usual reason.

It’s nice to be home. I’m trying to be optimistic. This is a chance to live differently. Thank the Gods we are allowed to walk the dogs. This is good for both my dogs and my marriage!

21 days can sometimes fly by. My children are confused about the interruption but I think they’ll cope fine.

We have food, we have plenty of work to do on the house, and actual job work which is still coming in over this period though to a lesser extent.

We have entertainment, a garden with a pool. We have space in the house and we have shops down the road. We have every chance of side stepping this damned virus.

Here’s to healthy kids, dogs, marriages and national lockdowns.

Living with Heartbreak

An unexpected halt to an idea will cause heartbreak. Heartbreak is inevitable and yet we spend most our lives trying to avoid it. How to live with heartbreak?

Like most of the world, South Africa is shutting down in response to the corona virus. It is heartbreaking. Heartbreaking for my kids who have had their holiday cut short. Heartbreaking for my wife and I to forget all the plans we had made. Our ideas around freedom, health, community are all being challenged. This too is a heartbreak. How to live with heartbreak? I’m finding this quote from David Whyte helpful:

If heartbreak is inevitable and inescapable, it might be asking us to look for it and make friends with it, to see it as our constant and instructive companion, and perhaps, in the depth of its impact as well as in its hindsight, and even, its own reward. Heartbreak asks us not to look for an alternative path, because there is no alternative path. It is an introduction to what we love and have loved, an inescapable and often beautiful question, something and someone that has been with us all along, asking us to be ready for the ultimate letting go.

The quote suggests that there is a use to this feeling of loss and damage. We must be ready to let go. We must all get ready to die. Not just in times of crisis but every day. Use the time you’re given as if you will have to let it all go one day. As if your time will come to an end. Because it will.

Misalignment

Here’s an interesting quote:

We banish the misaligned when we align with what we are called to, we become visible and real when we give our gift and stop waiting for the gift to be given to us.

I am ruminating on this like a cow with cud.

Contraction versus expansion

There is some clarity that comes with the dread of an impending pandemic. When times get tough it’s a lot easier to prioritise your life.

Some silly examples; I now know for sure that I can’t buy anything fancy. I can’t go on any big trips. The house will not get expanded this year. I won’t visit my family overseas. This is before I even think about plans we may have had at work for our company. So many cancelled plans. All because of uncertainty around Corona virus.

In more normal, predictable times I would toy with all the exciting ideas I could think of. Weigh them up. Choose one over the other. Now I can put all these haunting wishes to sleep.

When this thing passes I will stretch myself again. Until then it’s a period of contraction, consolidation, concentration on the task at hand. Just a period. Nothing more and nothing less.

Not exciting, but necessary for long term planning and resilience.

Habits in pandemonium

There are many methods to create new habits. If you create and persist with these new habits, you alter your longer term behavior.

At first these changes in behavior are hard to keep up. They feel wrong, and difficult and like hard work. But over time, if you persist, then they become second nature. What was difficult becomes manageable.

In this time of pandemic, panic, pandemonium – it makes sense to me that you could find yourself a method to create some new habits. Persist with the new habits even as you hit a trough of disillusionment. Even as you are tempted to take the easy route. Once you pass through the dip, you will find the new behavior easier to manage. It will normalize.

Disruption

Disruption comes in different shapes and sizes. Often it is spoken of positively, especially recently, referring to technology that impacts our lives. But the most disruptive thing to happen in my life lately, and I suspect to anyone reading this, is the corona virus.

Pandemic. What a word that is.

Today is my mother’s and my wife’s birthday (Different people, same birthday). It’s a milestone birthday and we had big plans. However those plans have gone out the window and we are isolating to avoid exposure to a global pandemic which seems to be only just getting started.

Company

If we wanted to do something worthwhile – and it almost doesn’t matter what it is – we would likely find it easier to do with someone else as a guide, a teacher, or just as company.

There’s always an opportunity for creating a welcoming venue for birds of a feather to come together and practice, discuss, create, define what they want to get good at.

The best websites do this. Podcasts too.

The best restaurants, clubs, churches, offices, parks, homes and companies do this too.

Do it online

If you have an idea to build a community and make a change, do it online.

Apparently an online presence should be welcoming, specific and consistent to serve the people you seek to serve.

That’s really what this blog is about for me – trying to figure out through writing the change I want to make.

Do it online

Every 10 seconds

Google randomly displays the masters of fine art on my screen, switching every ten seconds or so. A Monet just flashed by, now its someone named Joseph Léon Righini.

All of this is staggeringly good art. None of it is given much attention by me during the day. But it is there for me to see whenever I want it. A mountain peak – an Everest – of fine art to aim for every 10 seconds. This would have been unthinkable a couple of decades ago. I remember growing up we had a massive Encyclopaedia Brittanica in our house for reference.

Why does this matter? I think it matters because it means that the problem of our time – the problem of this revolution we are experiencing – is not one of scarcity or of access to information, or to inspiration. The internet has given us access to more information than we could possibly want – be it art, science, history or cat videos.

Instead the problem is one of contribution. The nagging question in our heads should be “When am I going to show up?”

I don’t mean show up in Google’s algorithm, I mean show up to the party and contribute. Care enough to try, to fail and to show your work.