Thirty Nine More Summers

This morning, I woke up to the sad news that Leonard Nimoy (aka Mr Spock from Star Trek) had died at the age of 83.  I was saddened for the loss of one of the characters with whom I had grown up with, and whose spats with Captain Kirk I had enjoyed to watch play out on screen and whose underlying love and respect for each other was always evident, even in their darkest moments.  Although deeply saddened by the news, it was another thought that occurred to me, the realisation of which shocked me rather suddenly and more deeply.

The thought that came unbidden to my mind was that if I also am to live to the age of 83 years, I will see only another 39 more summers.  Old age and death have always seemed so remote to my thinking.  I never ponder them since they are the inevitability of life and there is nothing that I can do about either of them.  With each key stroke on my keyboard, I have aged.  With each key stroke on my keyboard, I have moved inexorably towards my end.  Everyday, we live out our lives and at the end of each, we are sure that we have many more ahead of us, many more opportunities to change things, to do all of those things that we wish to do, to fulfill our dreams.  "I'll do it tomorrow."  "I'll get around to it next week."  "I'll do that next year."  I too have these thoughts.  I am sure every single one of us has them for one reason or another.  There is after all, only so much that can be achieved within a day.

Each day of our lives is already filled with so much that we have to accomplish in order to survive.  School, university, and work take up huge amounts of our time for those of us not yet retired.  That's 33% of our time allocated at least and if not more.  Sleep accounts for around another 33% of our time.  Now we are left with about 30% of 'free time'.  But is that time free?  We have to eat.  In order to eat we must prepare food.  In order to prepare food we must go and purchase some groceries.  There's administration of our lives to deal with too - paying bills and banking, checking insurance policies, and so on.  Slowly, the amount of free time ebbs away.  This is before we factor in any time for checking Facebook, Twitter and other social media, before we catch up on the news and perhaps the weather.  And if you happen to be a parent...  Well, my mind boggles with that one! How do we fit it all in?  When do we find the time for ourselves?  Where are the quiet moments of contemplation and thought, for reflective thinking and for making sense of everything that is going on?  And whilst you are thinking this, a nagging thought sits in your head, "I should call Mum and Dad."

Time is not on our side.  It marches on, flowing like an uncontrolled torrent whose waters we can try to slow down and dam, but the attempt to do so is futile.  Eventually the dam will break and the water will flow on towards its final destination, where the river is lost within the ocean.  Our days are numbered.  Those of us who are fortunate enough to live without illness or disease, we think of ourselves as immortal and untouched, but we are not.  From the moment we come into this world in a physical state, we begin the slow process of decay. The cycle of life must be completed.  I recall at this moment a line from Mr Keating in the movie Dead Poets Society, "We are food for worms boys."  Our time of life will inevitably cease and we will indeed go back to the earth where our bodies will nourish the soil and become new life.

I feel that there is a paradox that haunts human life.  When we are in the midst of it, we feel that we are immortal, that we will go on forever, that we will always exist, even though we know that logically this cannot be the case.  We know that life must come to an end but it is always the end of a different life, not our own and in this way of thinking, perhaps we sidestep the inevitable - that we too must one day cease to exist.  There is a part of me that is thinking as I write this, that maybe this way of thinking is driven by the fact that our spirit and essence of life knows a different story.  That the body my die but the soul lives on eternal?  Or perhaps we have tricked ourselves and conjured up another Santa Claus because we cannot face the thought that this is really it?  Whatever your thoughts on life, death and the after-life, there is one inescapable thing: the body, as a living organism cannot survive indefinitely.  Our days are numbered.  How then should we live out those days?  

Mr Spock was famous for his saying, "Live long and prosper."  I'd like to add something to this because I feel it is not complete.  It lacks a kind of definition.  What does he mean by prosper?  For me, to prosper in life is to live happily, a deep rooted, in the guts of your stomach and a fluttering of the heart kind of happy.  Prosperity is not economic and monetary success.  I thought about this yesterday actually and how I often say that we should look on the world through the eyes of a child.  When I thought about that yesterday, I changed my mind about it.  I would rather look upon the world as a dog sees it.  A dog lives their life in the moment; they find joys in the simplest of pleasures, they make the most of what they have, when they have it; they wear their heart on their sleeve for everyone to see - their emotions are plainly and sometimes painfully evident; and a dog craves love and gives love unconditionally.  That is the way to live - isn't it?

So then, if I am to enjoy (for summer is my time of great enjoyment) only another 39 summers, I had better make the most of every single one.  If I am going to suck all of the marrow out of life (thank you Henry Thoreau) then I should do so today, starting right now.  If there is something that you have planned to do, begin it today.  Make a start.  I can assure you that once the movement begins, it will inevitably gather pace and momentum.  Please don't leave important things undone.  Say I love you. Offer a smile to the world. Make a positive difference.  Our time may be short, but by golly, we can make it such a time as to be worthy of being remembered, a time that will echo across eternity to the furthest star of the universe.  Live long and prosper by all means but just make sure that along the way you love, that the love starts with you, and you wag your tail as much as you darn well can for as long as you are able.

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Why Daring Is A Must And Why Routine Is The Silent Killer

Darkness.  My eyes tried in vain to penetrate its cloak, but all that I was able to discern were the vague shapes of the boats, that I knew were tethered to their mooring lines further out.  The quiet was interrupted only by the gentle swells that rolled in, becoming waves that broke upon the shore.  Into this darkness then, out into the deep water, did we venture.  What craziness was this, I wondered.  Crazy?  Perhaps it was, but it was something more than crazy to me, it was adventure and it was daring and it was something that I had wished to do for as long as I could remember.  Now, here I was, here we were, walking out into the depths of the black ink that was the ocean.  The cool water rose slowly up to my chest, I prepared to swim and I thrust my arm out, ready to take my first stroke.  In this moment, life decided to show us its magic and it presented us with a miracle.

Life is full of possibilities, it is full of opportunities, and it is full of miracles.  Every single moment, you are surrounded by them.  The first problem is perceiving them and it is not always easy.  Each of us becomes entrapped in the daily routines of our lives.  We do the same things, we perform the same tasks, and we do them at the same times.  Life begins to become a monotony.  Routine is the silent killer.  It stalks us, it sneaks up behind us and it ensnares us.  It is far too easy to be caught.  I know that myself all too well.

There are many moments in my life when I have a sudden realisation that I have become deeply entrenched in my routines.  Yes, some routines are necessary and helpful.  Take for example my own morning ritual.  I get up, I fire up the laptop (it needs a lot of time to run through its own routines), I put the coffee on brew, I wash my face, I do some push ups, some stomach crunches, I make my cereal with chopped banana and milk, and I pour out the coffee.  While I have been doing all of this, my laptop has become ready to use, so I sit down and catch up on the news, check my e-mails and Facebook happenings.  It's my twenty minutes of peace and quiet before I have to get myself ready and leave for work.  I need it to be able to function in the morning.  It's part of my wake up routine and because of it, I know that at certain times, I need to perform certain tasks and by doing so, I will be ready to leave for work just at the right time.  That all seems quite normal enough, so where is the danger in routine?

Let me use an example.  There are people who commute to London every day by train.  They end up standing in exactly the same spot on the platform and they sit in the same seat of the same carriage, with the same people, every day.  They have become so completely conditioned to their routine.  But that's good though, right?  These people get to hang out and talk with their acquaintances and friends, they know they'll have a seat and they know where that seat is going to be.  It all sounds so logical and it is, which is exactly the problem.

These people are missing out on the chance of making important and new discoveries.  No new opportunities will come their way, no new people will enter their lives, people who may bring with them an important message that could alter the course of their destiny.  These commuters have closed themselves off to chance and in so doing, they have closed themselves off to the opportunity to learn and to evolve.  Life begins to become dull and boring, always the same.  This is the danger with routine.  It prevents us from discovering the new because we seek comfort in all that is old, all that is comfortable, secure and known to us.  Routine blinkers our eyes, it deafens our ears, and it quietens the voice of our heart to all of life's opportunities and possibilities.

So, the first task in beginning to open yourself up to opportunities is to break some of your old routines and habits and to do things differently.  Be spontaneous.  Be a little crazy.  Say yes rather than saying no.  Take a different route to work. Sit in a different seat on the train or bus.  Leave ten minutes later or ten minutes earlier.  I recall a scene in the movie Dead Poets Society, where Mr Keating (Robin Williams) asks the boys to stand up on his desk and to view the world differently.  "You must open your eyes to possibility", he tells them.  This then is the trick.  You need to find your own desk and to look upon your world from another angle.

You also need to heed the voice of your heart and to be a little daring.  The moment that you do, life will reward you.  In order to achieve all that you wish for, it is necessary to step outside of your comfort zone.  Inside that zone, everything is known to you and it is safe.  You can spend the rest of your life in there and you might be content, but you will never have any chance of discovering what lies elsewhere, what incredible things could occur to you, if you were to just take a single step outside.  You will never discover your one true path from the safety of your comfort zone, you will never realise your dreams.  It can be scary, there is no denying it.  It can be a little overwhelming.  That too can happen.  But, it can also deliver to you the most rewarding experiences that will ever occur in your life.  In order to make discoveries we must be bold and we must be daring and we must follow the urges of our heart's.

There are times in my life when I chose to do exactly that.  The time I booked my plane tickets to New Zealand for my first solo vacation, taking that job in Budapest, giving up my career with IBM, booking those tickets to Bangkok, enrolling in university in New Zealand, going to Honduras and becoming a dive instructor.  Each time I have dared, I have been rewarded more richly than I could ever possibly have imagined.  Even in the times when things did not quite go the way I had thought or had planned, I was still rewarded with new experiences, new people and I learned.  Everything that I experienced was necessary.  It has helped me evolve my spirit.  This is how life works.  This is how we discover our true selves.  Each of us is far more capable than we can possibly imagine.

This is exactly what happened the other night.  I had an urge in my heart, I wanted to go night swimming but for some reason, I always knew that it had to happen in a certain way.  When that opportunity presented itself, when I heard the words that asked me if I wanted to take a swim, I could not deny the voice of my heart.  I knew it was this moment, I knew that it had to be right there and then.  I could have said no, it was too late, that I wanted to stay dry, that I wanted to get home, but I did not.  Instead, I dared.  And in the moment of my daring, I opened up myself to the possibilities of life.  There I was, in the water, at the moment in which I thrust my arm forward.  As my finger tips separated water from water, something extraordinary happened, the water exploded with a shimmering light that surrounded my hand and my arm.  I was stunned, amazed.  I did it again and the same thing happened.  Then I lifted my arm out of the water and hundreds of tiny drops of light fell from me, slowly cascading down to fall back into the black of the water and disappear.  Truly this was one of the most incredibly beautiful spectacles I have ever seen.  There in that moment, the two of us shared together a moment of pure magic.  It was a moment when life chose to reveal one of its miracles to us, as if it had been waiting there all of this time, for the right moment, for the moment when we dared.  And by daring we discovered one of life's miracles, we found an ocean of bioluminescence. 

Those same miracles await you too.  They are out there, all you have to do is to believe, to dare, to switch up your routines and to let yourself open up to the possibilities and opportunities of life.  Once you begin to see the miracles, you will never stop.  Once you hear the voice of your heart and heed its message, you can never go back.  Opportunities will come to you. Miracles will occur.  And with them, so too will you come to see and to know the one simple thing that connects every single thing in the universe: love.

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Sometimes It Helps To Be A Little Mad

There are times when I am asked about my life, about the changes that I have been through, the places that I have been, the things that I have done.  As I explain the events of my recent past, as I describe my experiences, as I list the countries in which I have visited and lived, as I give the reasons for doing what I have done, I hear my own voice as if it were spoken by another.  I hear the tiny vibrations of air that pass between my lips and form into words, and I wonder if in fact, when it comes down to it, could it be that perhaps I am just a little mad?

How then could I explain my life if it were not otherwise?  A person of rational, sound thought and mind would surely not lead the life that I lead.  To have at one time, known a life of comfort and security, of which so many others can only hope, and to have left it all behind, to strike out into the unknown, with no real sense of where I was going, what I was going to do, and what would happen after I did it.  I disposed of all of my possessions, systematically, machine like, devoid of any emotional connection to them.  I decided that everything, except some small mementoes and sentimental items would have to go.  I saw everything only as a link back to the past that I was trying to leave behind, a knot that bound me to my old life that I needed to sever.  It was as though a madness were upon me, driving me on, telling me that these things had to be done.

It is almost eight years now since I heard myself resigning from my job at IBM.  Those words came out in a moment of madness that, at the time, I thought I might come to regret.  I knew nothing back then of all that was to come, I knew only that I wanted some other path for my life.  If it had not been for my madness, I could not know what it was to scuba dive, I would never have stroked my hand down the side of a tiger shark, I would never have pulled my car up on the side of the road and watched a male lion who stood barely six feet away, I would never know what it was to listen to whale song under the ocean, I would never have met so many incredible, inspiring and amazing people, I would never have seen humpback whales leaping from the ocean, I would have never glided with giant manta rays through the ocean, I would never have turned my hand to writing, I would never have helped those people I have helped, nor inspired those I have inspired, I would never have learned all that I have learned, and I would never have understood that the secret to life was held in a single, simple word called love. 

Without that moment of madness, my life would be different.  I cannot say it would have been better or worse.  I know only that which I know now, which is that since the moment when I resigned, I have never felt a single pang of regret for the life that I left behind.  Perhaps down the other path I would have found my love, my partner and my family?  I will never know.  Would I trade that for all that I has happened to me in these eight years?  Never.  That particular dream is still very much alive and one that will come to fruition when the time is right for me and for her.  That is just the way it needs to be.  

If I am suffering from a touch of madness, then from where could it originate?  As I was sitting up in bed this morning, reading and sipping my morning coffee, my thoughts turning towards my chaotic life, I made a decision to begin to write my thoughts down.  As I commenced the writing of this post, I had a thought that leaped out at me.  Perhaps I was born with the madness in my blood and in my soul.  It was not a thing that I planted and grew, rather, it was already within me, biding it's time, slowly growing its roots and waiting for the right moment to push its head above the soil and show itself to me.  That one single moment of time when it knew I would begin to listen to its voice.  So, if I did not invent the madness for myself, if it was already within me, from whence could it have come? 

From our mother's and our father's comes our blood.  From their parents, so too came theirs and so forth and so forth, back thousands of years to the very dawning of human existence, nay, to the very dawning of life on this planet.  With their blood comes the DNA and genetic code, the building blocks of what creates me, what creates you, of what defines how we will look and how we will think.  Is it possible too, that within the blood that pulses through our veins, that we also carry an accumulation of all of our ancestors hopes, dreams, whims and urges?  Within the blood, could there be a secret essence of life, a purpose that drives us ever on.  Perhaps, that is why we feel our dreams and our emotions so keenly from the heart.  The heart is the centre of  the blood flow, everything goes in and out from there, so naturally, that would be why we hold our dreams and our love within our heart's.  Why could that not be true?  That the blood line of our ancestors must go on, ever evolving, ever reaching out, until we have evolved spiritually and fulfilled our one true destiny, until we have accomplished the goal that was set before us at the dawning of time?  I like this thought.  It brings a smile to my lips and a joy to my heart.  The thought that I am continuing the dreams of my father and my grandfather brings me closer to them in spirit.

Even if the blood theory is wrong, it makes no difference.  We are taught from our parents and they from theirs.  With each passing generation, we are moulded by their learning, by their views of life, by their hopes, their dreams, their failures, their joys, their disappointments and most importantly of all, by their love.  From generation to generation, the accumulation of spiritual evolution is passed and as we, in our turn, carry that flaming torch, it is up to each of us to decide how we will write our own story.  How is it that we will help turn the wheel of spirtual evolution and what is it that we will pass down the line, to those that come after?  In the movie Dead Poets Society, there is a moment where Mr Keating (Robin Williams) recites a poem by Walt Whitman that contains the line, "That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse."  What will be the verse that I choose to write in the play of life?

We can chose to move the spiritual evolution forward, we can turn the wheel and in doing so, add our own piece to the jigsaw.  Perhaps ours will be the last, perhaps ours will be only a tiny part of a much greater picture, perhaps ours is a magic piece that brings everything together, paving the way for those that will come after.  All that matters is that we do turn the wheel.  I don't see spiritual growth as a choice, I view it more as a duty.  To carry out that duty, we need only listen to the voice from within - the voice of our heart.

There it is.  The heart.  It always comes back to this one single, beautiful, miracle of nature.  The heart speaks with the voice of love and the voice of love originates from the centre of universe, it is the power that holds everything together, it is THE force of the universe, the force of life.  I've written before of being heartstrong and it is true of every single person on this planet.  The only thing that makes a difference between each of us, is whether we chose to act upon the callings and the urges of our heart's. 

When you look into the eyes of a certain person and in your heart a voice calls out, you are presented with a choice: act, or do not act.  It is that simple.  If I choose to act, then I follow my heart's desire, I follow a whim of madness in thinking and believing that this other person who stands in front of me may feel the same quickening of their pulse, the same racing of their blood in their veins, the same flutter of their heart.  It is the same feeling that occurs when you think of your dreams, when you hold a picture of a certain mountain, an ocean, a river, a desert in your mind, or when you picture yourself as a teacher, an artist, a writer, a singer, a chef, or whatever it is that is your heart's desire.  It is love. 

To be heartstrong is to listen to, and to follow your heart.  I am going to add another attribute of what it means to be heartstrong.  To be heartstrong means that you must be mad, since only the mad among us, dare to dream and not only dream, we dare to follow the voice inside of us.  We are the believers, we are the listeners, we are the walkers.  We are filled with love because love is the force, and we smile, we laugh, we do crazy things, because we of the heartstrong are possessed with a madness.  And being mad certainly helps just a little.

~ ~ ~ 

Oh me! Oh Life! by Walt Whitman

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,

Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,

Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,

Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,

The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here—that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

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