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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The Time Is Now

To act, or not to act?  That is really the question that Shakespeare should have asked.  Whether it is more noble to act in a positive manner and to contribute to society, or to do nothing, and complain and moan about the state of everything?  I will always chose positive action over negativity and lethargy any day.  Yesterday, I witnessed an incident that reinforced my thoughts about our societies and made me wonder when are people going to wake up to the fact that they are the society in which they live?

As I walked the pavements of London, I saw a woman cycling her bicycle alongside a stream of cars, all making their way home from work.  Almost at the instant that I saw this cyclist, her shopping bag gave way, spilling several apples, that rolled on to road, until they came to a stop right in the middle of the road.  Too far away to lend assistance, I watched as the woman fought to balance her bicycle and at the same time, to pick up the apples.  Some people walked past on the pavement, the cars continued on.  Not one person stopped to give assistance.  Not one car paused to allow the woman more room.  In this one moment was a clear demonstration of everything that I believe to be wrong in our modern societies.

How would you have acted?  Would you have run to give aid and help.  Perhaps you would, but ask yourself truthfully, would you really?  It is all too easy to say to yourself that it is not my problem, that she will be okay, that someone else will stop, that I would like to stop but I really have to get to that appointment, to get home to put on the dinner, to go to the gym, to walk the dog, to pick up the kids.  The excuses go on and on.  Our modern and sophisticated society seems to always tell us that it is some else's responsibility, to provide an excuse for not acting, and for not being held accountable for your actions.

Here's another situation you will find yourself in.  You walk along the street and you see some litter laying on the pavement.  What do you do?  Do you stop, pick it up and carry it to the nearest rubbish bin?  Or do you mutter to yourself about the state of people these days and complain about where your tax payments have gone and leave the litter exactly where it is?  It's not your job to clean up after someone else is it?  That is the job of the local council, that is what unemployed people should do to earn their welfare, that is what criminals should do to help make amends for their wrong doings.  Why should you do it?  After all, you did not put it there.

As far as I can see, the trend in our society is to become annoyed, to complain about how things are, to accept them, to turn a blind eye, and to pass on the responsibility.  This is wrong.  Some people will say that capitalism is to blame because it breeds a culture of selfishness and greed.  It does not.  That is just another excuse that you give yourself for your lack of action.  We are all part of our society and as such, we each have a direct responsibility to make the society in which we wish to live.  We are all accountable for the state of things.  It is not the fault of the government, our economic system, materialism, the local council, immigrants, nor the youth.  It is your fault.

In the Bible, Jesus told the parable of the good Samaritan.  The Samaritan was the person who took pity on the man at the side of the road who was in great need of help.  This only occurred after other respected persons (a priest, a levite) in the society at the time had passed him by and done nothing.  This is exactly the same as now.  People are walking past, turning away, and doing nothing.  It is not a question of religion.  Neither is it a question of race, gender, or age.  It is for each of us to do something to turn this around and to change it.

I was in New Zealand recently, at Lake Taupo.  As I walked from my motel into the town one morning, I saw on a picnic table discarded fast food wrappers and cartons.  It made a horrible mess.  No more than 5 metres (15 feet) away was a rubbish bin.  At first, I muttered to myself about the laziness of people and I walked past the table.  But I could only walk a few more paces before I was forced to turn around.  I walked purposely back to the table, picked up all of the litter and put it into the rubbish bin.  A woman passed me by as I did this and gave me a big smile.  This was my reward for my unselfish action.  Later that morning, I thought some more about what had happened.  By clearing the table, I made a woman happy.  I also made sure that from that moment on, no one else would see it, no one else would have cause to complain and to have negative thoughts which could spoil their morning.  I made sure that the picnic table could be used again.  It meant that the local council workers could focus on more important matters.  I did something positive.  The ripples of my action spread wider than I had first realised.  Indirectly, I had touched the lives of others in a positive way.  I had contributed to the society in which I found myself in a positive way and for that, I felt good inside.  I took that situation and made it into a positive experience.

I am no saint.  I am not perfect by any means.  What I do want to do though, is to make a difference.  I want to know that I tried, that I did not sit idly, that I did not just complain and moan about the state of the world and society.  I want to know that I helped people, that I reached out through my actions to enrich those around me.  I have a strong belief that if others started to act in a positive way, to begin to take care of those around them and the societies in which they lived, others would begin to do the same.  Once a cause gathers momentum, it quickly experiences a snowball effect.  The minority becomes the norm.

We each have the power to make society in the form that we wish to see and experience it.  Each of us is responsible.  Most of us are luck enough to live in a free society, we enjoy freedoms of choice.  This is your choice.  Do or not do.  You have the power to change.  It only takes one spark to light a fire.  Take your energy and do something good.  Quit complaining, stop saying it is someone else's fault, and start doing something positive about it.  Each of us can make the difference.  Many ripples that join in harmony become a wave.  Let's create waves and make the change.  The time is now.

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The Incredible Thread Of Life

This afternoon, I got to thinking about the thread of my life, those significant events that have led me to where I am now, to what I am doing, and who I have become.  It was my plan to sit down and create a list of the events that occurred, and by doing so, to illustrate how seemingly random life can be.  As I was running through some of these events in my mind, something quite remarkable occurred - I experienced an epiphany. 

You see, I had been imagining my chain of events as beginning when I had just turned nine years old.  This was the moment when my parents moved the family from our home just outside of London, down to the south coast of England.  Living by the ocean created my love of the beach and of being in and around water, and helped me to create the dream that I held, of one day spending my life on a palm tree lined beach.  An impossible and crazy notion, but one that was to take hold of my heart nonetheless.

So, beginning with this event, I started to think of others.  There are some that I knew were life changing events: giving up on my high school education so that I could work on a factory production line, going to South Africa for the first time, taking the opportunity to move to Budapest, quitting my job with IBM to go backpacking to Asia.  Some events may not have seemed significant at the time that they occurred, but they were the trigger for a change in my thinking about life: being handed a copy of The Alchemist by a friend, talking about life with Sergio, meeting up again with an old colleague after fourteen years and hearing of his life as a scuba instructor in Thailand.  As I went over these events, I thought about my life when I was working at IBM, and how that had been so significant for my story, how working there had provided me with the very opportunities that were to shape my thinking.  And this was the moment when I was struck by a sudden thought: why was it that I was working at IBM in the first place? 

The answer is because of my father.  My father is a great man.  He is my hero and I have been lucky enough to have enjoyed an affinity with him.  Growing up, I guess that I wanted to be like him.  I used to watch him getting ready for work each morning, putting on his suit and clipping his security clearance badge to his trouser belt.  He used to bring home punch cards and computer paper, copies of computer printed pictures and I used to think how cool he was to work at such an amazing and mysterious place called IBM.  Some weekends, if he had to go in to the office, I would accompany him, sitting and listening to the football on the radio, keeping him updated with the scores, watching what he was doing.  I knew that this was the place that I wanted to work, that I had to work.  It became my dream to work for IBM, to emulate my father, and to give us one more thing in common.

So here's what I realised.  If my father had not worked at IBM, my life would probably have turned out very differently.  Perhaps I would have worked there anyway, but I don't think so.  You see, my family moved to the seaside because of my father's work.  If he had not worked for IBM, then this would never have occurred and I would never have developed my love of the ocean, which in turn would mean that I would never have developed my dream of one day having my home on a tropical beach paradise.  My first significant event was not that we moved home when I was nine years old, it was in fact my father commencing work for IBM back in the late 1960's.  My first significant event occurred before I was even born.

Of course, it is now clear to see how all of the lives that came before us, generation through generation, all the way back to the very beginning of life on this planet, have played some vital role in my own life and my own course of events.  The chain of events that shape our lives can be traced all the way back to the dawning of time itself, to the moment of creation.  Every thing that we do changes the future, not only our future, but the futures of every one affected by the ripples that spread out through time and space.  Everything and everyone is interconnected.  All of the threads of lives intertwine to create the great tapestry of life. 

When I stop and think of how it was that I arrived at IBM, how it was necessary for my girlfriend at the time to be made redundant; how I accompanied her to a job fair at a local hotel; where, feeling bored, I decided on a whim to complete an application form for an employment agency; how that agency contacted me two months later to say there was an opening at IBM for which they thought I would be perfect; how the set of skills that I had acquired since beginning my working life had made me the right fit for the role...  It really is incredible.

Is it fate?  Perhaps.  Maybe my life was always going to be this way.  Perhaps all of these events were preordained, necessary to help create the big picture, vital to some future design.  All I know is that each individual link in the chain of events that have brought me to this moment, is a miracle.  Every thing, every person, every experience has in some way linked together and those links are being formed ahead of me, in my future.  I cannot see them, but what I do know is that when I look back from some moment that lies ahead of me, I will again be amazed at the incredible serendipity that has been my journey.

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A Time For Spirituality

Let's face it, our daily lives tend to be pretty full.  First off, there's that thing called work that most of us have to do.  To get to work, there's the daily commute, which seems to take longer and longer.  Then there's the family.  Looking after the children, if you have them, is another full-time job.  Perhaps there are elderly parents that need your care.  There's the grocery shopping, chores around the house, cooking, the dirty dishes, the lawns that require cutting and the regular maintenance of the garden, the car that needs a wash, household bills and the accounts to be paid.  Then you need to go to the gym, go for a run, play some sports, go to the movies, watch that TV program, visit friends, go to the bar, go to a restaurant.  Perhaps there's a dog to walk. There are a lot of things to take care of and all of them take up our precious time.  Where, in all of this do we find the time to connect with our soul, to sit quietly and talk with our heart?  Are we in danger of losing our spirituality?

For the past week, I have been participating in the 21 Day Meditation Challenge from Oprah and Deepak Chopra.  It has been the process of setting aside a specific amount of time each day, to sit down and to formally meditate, that triggered my thinking about spirituality in a modern society, and the questions of when and how do people find the time to meditate and to reconnect with themselves and the universe?

For me personally, I know that I have meditated throughout my life, albeit, not in a conventional sense.  I have always sought out peace and calm, quiet oases where I could sit and think, and just be me.  Down at the beach watching the waves; in a clearing in the woods amongst the trees; on the top of a hill or mountain, looking down upon the world; under the ocean, listening to the rhythmic sound of my own breathing; sitting quietly inside of a church or cathedral.  Wherever I have been, I have made time for these moments. 

There have been several significant advances in technology during human existence: fire, the wheel, agriculture, the industrial revolution, electricity, telecommunications, the combustion engine, computers and the digital age.  With each step, humanity has moved progressively ever further away from the natural world.  As a race, we are spending increasing amounts of time enclosed within the confines of our self made spaces, whether that be the car, the office, the home, the mall, restaurants, cafes, cinemas, or at the gym.  Then, there is our  immersion in television, music,  movies, the internet, video games, text messaging, and social media.  Human society is becoming ever more closed off from the natural world.  We are shutting ourselves away from nature and moving further away from our natural surroundings, cocooned in a world of concrete, steel, glass, bricks, mortar, and an endless stream of ones and zeros.

This has a detrimental impact on our ability to find moments to commune with our inner selves, that we are no longer finding quiet moments of solace, where we can be one with our natural environment.  Because of this, I believe that as a race, humanity is losing touch with its spiritual self, and with the spiritual world in which we live.   It seems to me that our collective belief is increasingly to see ourselves as separate from the natural world, able to control nature, but we are not separate and neither can we control the elemental force that is nature.  Humanity is as much an integral part of the life on this planet as a tree, a flower, an insect, a fish, or a bird.  Immersing ourselves in nature reconnects our souls with the force of life.  Losing those moments, takes us further from a spiritual path and understanding of life.

I see that there are two fundamental problems in modern society, in regards to finding spirituality.  The first is that our lives have become too busy, and the second is that we are increasingly closing off from the natural world.  I do not believe that either of these can be good for our race.  Something is being lost, something which, although intangible, is nonetheless an essential quality of what it is to be human.  Spirituality is being slowly eroded away.

Take the Sabbath for example.  There was a time in the England, when Sunday was a special day, preserved for prayer and family time, when the shops were not allowed to open, where pubs had restricted hours for the sale of alcohol, when large numbers of people used to attend morning church services, when lunch was a traditional roast dinner involving all of the family.  Now shops are allowed to open and trade, pub opening hours are far less restrictive, church attendances have long been in steady decline, and the traditional Sunday roast?  Well, in my family at least, that was lost long ago.  Where the Sabbath was once preserved as a day of thought, reflection and prayer, and for family time, it has been steadily reduced to just another day of the week, no longer as sacred, no longer set aside as a special day, and many people are now required to work.  It is just another sign of our increasing loss of spirituality in society.  A further distancing from our spiritual needs.

I am very fortunate.  My current work as a scuba diving instructor means I am usually out on the ocean, or immersed under it.  The very nature of my work allows me the time to connect with nature.  When I exchanged my corporate life in the UK for an alternative lifestyle, there was a big part of me that wished to find this very connection.  Now, living in Costa Rica, it is impossible not to connect with my natural surroundings.  As I do not own a car, I either cycle or walk to all local places, which allows me the time to look around, to think, to see, to feel.  When I am outside, I never listen to an iPod or other music player, I prefer instead, to listen to the pulse of nature.  I choose to hear the songs of the birds as they call and whistle one another.  I like to listen to the waves as they break on the shore.  I smile whenever I hear the calls of the monkeys that are hiding up in the foliage of the trees, somewhere in the jungle.  These are the natural rhythms of life, they help me to stay connected to nature.  They have helped me to become more spiritually aware.

Since I left the corporate world, it has been my immersion into the natural world that has truly opened my heart, so that I now see truly.  I have learned to see the miracles of life that surround us, that occur every single moment.  Everything that I have learned and now express in this blog, has been learned as a direct result of walking my one true path.  Perhaps I was always this way inclined, someone once told me that I was spiritual even before my life change.  I have always followed my heart, so I guess this is true.  But now, by choosing to be surrounded by the natural world, I have found a far greater insight and awareness of myself.

Don't lose your spirituality.  Find yourself a quiet moment to stop and reflect.  Take time to get outside, into a park, to go and walk in the woods or along the beach.  Stare up to the sky and watch the clouds roll by, see the rays of sunlight, gaze at the stars and the moon.  Unplug yourself and listen to the world.  Let your thoughts drift.  Slowly and surely, you will begin to recover your soul, you will begin to regain your spiritual self, and through this, will come self awareness, and you will open your heart and see the miracles that exist in every single moment.  Life is simplicity.  Peel away the layers and finally be your true and natural self.

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