The reason, season or lifetime....

Have you ever noticed how people weave in and out of our lives? Most times they are in our lives for a Reason; a Season; a Lifetime. When we figure out which it is we seem to know exactly what to do.

When someone is in our life for a REASON, it is usually to meet a need we have expressed outwardly or inwardly. They have come to assist us through a difficulty, to provide us with guidance and support, to aid us physically, emotionally or spiritually. They may seem like a godsend and they absolutely are! Whether we know it or not they are here for the exact reason we need them to be. Then without any wrong-doing on our part or at an inconvenient time, this person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end. Sometimes they die. Sometimes they walk away. Sometimes they act up or out and force us to take a stand. What we must realise is that our need has been met and our desire fulfilled; their work is done. The prayer we sent up has been answered and it is now time to move on.

When people come into our life for a SEASON, it is because our turn has come to share, grow or learn. They may bring us an experience of peace or make us laugh. They may teach us something we have never done. They usually give us an unbelievable amount of joy. Believe it! It is real! But, only for a SEASON.

LIFETIME relationships teach us lifetime lessons; those things we must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation. Our job is to accept the lesson; love the person; and put what we have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of our life. It is said that love is blind but friendship has a special sense.

“True friends are like diamonds precious and rare!”

Author – unknown.

This has to be one of my favourite quotes/poems….

If I have to look back and see all those who have come and gone for a reason, I am saddened but also so incredibly grateful.

Those who are for a season only are sometimes the most difficult to let go of because they have changed your life in such a special way YET you have to be willing to let them go, because, they were only there for that season in your life!

A lifetime, now these are the hardest to accept because they know the depths of your soul, the black and the white of you and they force you to change and become more of the white by asking the tough questions and prodding those bits that are the worst of you….hard relationships that test you daily BUT they make you a better person in the end!

As a chapter draws to a close in my life, and it has been the most incredible experience, I am reminded of this poem and wonder as to which I have been living – the reason, season or lifetime.

Either way, the door closes to allow for a new reason, season or lifetime and although my heart is broken I look forward expectantly to the latest chapter….

Eat, Pray, Love - thoughts!

I recently watched Eat, Pray, Love again, based on the book by Elizabeth Gilbert and was amazed at the wealth of wisdom encapsulated in one movie/book on love lost and found and the experiences we have between old love lost and new love found.

We have all had this experience at least once in our lifetime and most, probably many more!

Very few are lucky enough to escape its clutches and those that profess that they haven’t had this experience, haven’t because they have chosen to cut themselves off from love.  They cut themselves off to protect themselves; don’t put themselves out there to feel that pain of loss, the hollowness of loneliness or the abundant joy of love.  They feel better this way and that’s there choice, probably we have all tried this as a plan of action ourselves when the hurt has been too much to try!

What am I banging on about today?

Love lost!

Yip that paralysing feeling when the one you love or thought you loved has left.  It doesn’t really matter whose idea it was to start with, it doesn’t even matter whether that love was ever reciprocated, all that matters is that you are now alone, no one to love and no one to love you!

Advice from — Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)

"When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings."

I talk of that feeling that gnaws at your heart, day in and day out, that constricts it like a boa constrictor would around its prey, you feel like you can’t take a breath and if you do it is ragged and a painful reminder of the hurt….this is the feeling of loss, the pain of missing someone so much that you can’t breath or loving someone so much that it is so unbearable you don’t want to carry on with the life any longer.  Some will say I am exaggerating but most will see it as the truth.

Advice from - Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)

Wise Richard from Texas counsels Liz who misses her boyfriend.

“I love him,” she pleads. “I miss him.”

“So miss him,” Richard responds. “Send him light and love every time you think of him and drop it.” (

Later, Liz holds her ex-husband in her thoughts. She holds him with love and release.  And feels his pain.

“I really did love you,” she tells him.

“I know,” he replies.

“But I still love you. I miss you.

“So love me,” says Liz in her wise Richard voice. “Miss me. … and then drop it.”

Feel the feelings. Don’t pick up the story. That’s what being awakes about.

It won’t last forever. Nothing does.

Have you ever had that experience where you believe you have met your soul mate and for some reason, incomprehensible to you, he/she has not recognised this truth?  Next time maybe think again, was that person, who you believed was ‘the one’ truly your soul mate, if he/she was, you have been lucky…and are probably even luckier that they have come and gone in your life, because you have learnt a hard lesson through them, but living with them would be nothing short of painful!  A partner for life will probably not be your soul mate BUT they can be ‘the one’!  Now how do we distinguish the difference, the one is there to love you simply for who you are, the other is there to love you BUT will tell you the truth about you!  That truth that hurts, that truth so deep inside you think no one will ever notice it….shew this is pretty deep stuff!

Advice from - Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)

People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.

A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.

A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life.”

Further wisdom from Eat, Pray, Love for you to ponder and comment on…

"This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.”

Does the experience of having a broken heart mean this, better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all….hmmm I am not so sure!  Honestly I would trade the feeling of love lost for almost anything, I just wish there was a magic switch and then it wouldn’t matter whether we had lost, had hurt, or the reverse where we had given someone else up and shattered their world with loss and hurt!  Perhaps in hindsight the world wouldn’t be a very kind place if we could just switch our emotions on and off, willy nilly! (Still I sure would take it, if it was on offer, versus the debilitation of loss and hurt.)

“To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced life."

This is a gem – it IS better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all!  This is all part of life and we should desire to experience it ALL for what it is.  Cutting ourselves off may protect us today from hurt and pain and loss BUT it will also shield us from joy, love, being loved and happiness!

“Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.”

"Groceries, you need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select what clothes you're gonna wear every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should be trying to control. Drop everything else but that. Because if you can't learn to master your thinking, you're in deep trouble forever."

So true!  So now what?  I am sure that this is what I have just been saying about having a switch, that’s all I would want to switch off – those paralysing moments when your emotions take over your life.  Ever had that where you can’t think, breath, speak without having to say that persons name in your mind…that’s why I love the quote above, so miss me, so love me, send light and love to me and DROP IT!  If only it was so easy……Shew and CONTROL well that’s me.  I can be in control of every emotion when I ‘have to be’ and then so out of control when I am alone that it frightens me….like I am the most hardcore chick on the planet and yet I am so incredibly vulnerable to my emotions and thoughts from those emotions that I can barely keep it together.

“Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation”

Oh good one.  So you have to feel and experience the misery of loss and hurt and then ‘hey presto’ it’s all better!  OK so I have felt the hurt and pain, enough already – when do I get transformation?

“Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people.”

Another gem, thanks very much!  So I am the only obstacle to my own happiness – is that what this is saying?  I am so miserable I am getting in my own way!  Great so hand me that switch and I choose happiness today…..if only it was that easy!

So in the end we have this –

“I've come to believe in something I call "The Physics of the Quest." A force in nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity.

The rule of Quest Physics goes something like this: If you're brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting, which can be anything from your house to bitter, old resentments, and set out on a truth-seeking journey, either externally or internally, and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are prepared, most of all, to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself, then the truth will not be withheld from you.”

So I ask – what is your truth?

What is my truth?

Are we ready to throw caution to the wind to find it?  To leave everything and I mean EVERYTHING behind, all past hurt, pain, resentment, fear and rejection, can you?  Because if you can, according to this, we will find our truth.

Are you willing to regard EVERYTHING that happens, EVERYONE you chance to meet and EVERY clue along this path of enlightenment as a teacher along the way?

If so your truth will NOT be withheld from you.

Nothing in this Universe happens once

You will have to forgive me, I wrote it late Sunday night so it may be a bit melodramatic, BUT the core of the piece still remains, does nothing in this Universe only happen once?

My favourite series is called Bones, about a forensic anthropologist, I have all the series available and I watch them, like most of my DvDs over and over.  Today something struck me during one of the volumes – nothing in this universe happens just once!

Quote from The Skull in the Desert:

Angela: [...] I'm a little afraid that... I'm just afraid that I don't have a generous heart. I'm afraid that I won't have the chance that I had with Kirk ever again.
Brennan: You will.
Angela: How can you be so sure?
Brennan: Because nothing in this universe happens just once, Angela. Nothing. Infinity goes in both directions. There's no unique event, no singular moment.
Angela: (laughs) I don't know what that means.

Basically Angela is asking – will she find love again?

And Brennan is saying – absolutely because nothing in this universe happens only once!

It made me think, is it true that nothing will happen once and thus do we always get a second chance.

This can be a positive thing and a negative thing I guess.

The fact that true love can happen more than once in a lifetime is good news or is it?

Doesn’t the fact that you could find your true love, your soul mate, more than once in a lifetime dilute the first?

Or does it provide hope to those that have lost love, those whose love is not reciprocated, those whose love moved on, those whose love time ran out on?

If infinity goes in both directions does that mean that old love can return?  Or that a once rejected love can be accepted? 

Or does it just mean that because of the cycle of life that even after love, a devastating ‘heart ache’, one that you thought you would never recover from, if enough time passes you just get over it, because that is the cycle of life?

I’m not sure that this works for me….surely we want true love to last forever, like in the fairytale, ‘and they lived happily ever after’.

There’s no unique event.  No singular moment.

Now I really don’t get this surely individuals have one-of-a-kind experiences?

I can’t imagine that I can have a specific experience more than once or that someone else could have that same unique, individual experience?

So in a way I get it and in another I don’t, and yet another I am not sure I want to, expect to comfort myself, such that Angela did, that love will come again – or can it only come again if you have experienced it for real at least once?

I am not sure that I have had the first experience of love – if love is that emotion that is reciprocated and you love as if a prince and princess in the fairytale?  I know that I have loved but not sure that I have loved and been loved in return, at the same moment in time.

Does this mean it will never happen OR that it will happen but over and over again in my lifetime?

Obviously this could apply to any and all experiences, feelings, emotions, situations etc etc etc…..

EQ

Some will know that over the past two weeks I have been completing an EQ or Emotional Intelligence Course with my Heads of Department.  It really could not have come at a more inopportune moment in my life either.  With everything that is going down currently this was just the cherry on the top of a cake that was about to topple over under the strain. 

Now one thing you should know is that I do not give in very easily to stress BUT you cannot fool your body unfortunately and through the years one would think I had figured this out and learnt to concede to defeat before it is crisis management time.

BUT no as usual I am too stubborn, dogmatic and obsessive-compulsive to ever submit and so I push, and push and push and push, burning the candle at both ends, as I was told by the course facilitator, and not expecting the inevitable!

Instead of training 2 hours a day I up the anti and try for a few more, instead of working 10 hours a day I up the anti and do 13 plus – why, it is all about controlling your environment, hoping that in doing this I can control the eventual outcome.  No can do!

Back to the EQ course – I have always believed that I am a fairly emotionally intelligent person, according to Wikipedia this means I “….have the ability, skill or, in the case of the trait EI model, a self-perceived ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of oneself, of others, and of groups”.

Unfortunately when you are in, and I quote from my personality profile (done this week), – “Allyson Towle has a moderately high degree of anxiety which MAY cause her some discomfort but will NOT NECESSARILY affect her emotional stability nor lead to a decrease in performance’ one is not in a particularly good space to control ones own emotions never mind anyone else’s.

So first and foremost I must apologise for anyone’s emotions that I have been inept at reading and thus caused any form of distress, anxiety or upset to.  There is no excuse and all I can say is that I am working on improving my overall well being and thus ability to deal with life more effectively.

Firstly, one has to try and ascertain the cause behind the symptom or the route of the emotion and then make a conscience decision to DO something about it!  In other words one has to want to dig ones self out of the pit of self pity and initiate motion upwards rather then spiraling round and round and further down and down.  Sometimes wallowing is good for the soul BUT NOT for too LONG!

So what to do?

Pointers from my personality profile suggest key areas of concern and I am assuming these are the key areas for improvement?

So tell me this, how does one improve on an –

-          exaggerated sense of obligation which causes a lot of worry – shouldn’t I worry about the business etc?  or those that work for and with me?

-          or being plagued by feelings of anxiousness, panic and apprehension which will eventually present somatic symptoms of restlessness, sweating, paresthesias and palpitations – well that’s great the less people who know this the better (although some have seen the effects and it ain’t pretty!

-          that I find the constant company of others rather burdeonsome – its not true I tell you, I love spending time with you BUT just you not a whole lot of you at the same time J

-          or have a notably low degree of social sophistication and although notably unpretentious and genuine can be socially indiscreet – now this really worried me, am I prone to throwing underwear onto stages, is this what they are trying to say?  And ok I know I get a little over excited (no comments from the peanut gallery allowed I am in a very fragile state and only NICE things are allowed to be said) BUT really NO social sophistication that’s a bit extreme don’t you think? SAY YES NOW!

-          she suffers an elevated degree of overt tension

I highlight the worst parts to make a point obviously BUT really is that ME?  I am mortified that I have become an over anxious, social-idiot who behaves indiscreetly and who could resort to panic and palpitations at a moments notice.  All I can say is thank goodness for medication….otherwise I should be in a white-jacket in a padded-cell as we speak!

After day two of the course two weeks ago I had a melt down of note, I can’t remember when last I was reduced to wracking sobs, lying in fetal position at the bottom of my bed, like last week Saturday.  It was if the whole world had crashed down around me and everything that I had been through and done since the last time I had this experience had to come out then and there!  Never pleasant but can be therapeutic they say – it was NOT!

And then this week after day one I had another mini-melt down – the less said the better….

So as you can tell, it is not going well and this silly profile did nothing to aid my return to good health, well-being and EQ!

Until I read a few of the good things, dealt with one situation that was causing me a lot of discomfort, that done I could see the bushes for the trees so to speak and delve into the few and far between good points….

-          she will present herself to others as someone who is rather serious, introspective and reflective presenting as someone who prefers to stick to inner values and is prudent and dedicated – ok nice

-          she is neither too dependent nor independent can be expected to show initiative without clinging to or being dependent on – that’s ok right?

-          she is notably conservative with a preference for orthodox ideas and methods – hmmm I guess this is a good thing

-          she is considerably principled and controlled by a strong sense of duty – good!

-          it says I should be a journalist, photographer or actress and musician – OH ok then so I need to very quickly learn how to sing and act and take a meaningful photo and I am on my way to fame and fortune?  Or happiness?

-          I appear – confident and independent and energetic and quick as well as competitive with a preference for independent actions - please explain the contradiction here!

-          Positive attributes – competitive, persistent, initiates and is assertive (really these are positive) versus negatives – overpowering, too analytical and self-reliant and dogmatic (well who else must I rely on then?)

I am not 100% convinced that too many of these are positive either at this stage but I am hoping that is the result of my current state of mind…..

Can someone please tell me then how else I am supposed to react to the current status quo – called my life!  All opinions welcome BUT I reiterate only very NICE ones because I may just drop over the edge and you would not want to be the reason J!

Are we all born to run.......?

I am currently pondering why it is that we train, or rather that athletes do what they do, and I do not consider myself an athlete.  I am reading numerous books, at the same time ranging from how to train for outdoor sports; to how to climb 5.12 routes (why I have no idea); I have just finished a handbook on the West Buttress of Mount McKinley; and am moving on to Discovering Denali; I also realise I need techniques in Ice if we are to conquer Denali at all and then there is the personal stuff Straight Talk, No Chaser, as it appears I have no clue when it comes to such matters and this is besides the Women’s Health, Shape and Bicycling SA magazines littered around the house.

A thought however has crept into my mind as a result of one of these renditions, Born to Run, Christopher McDougal.  If you have read it, or are halfway through like me you will know that it is a book about the mystic secrets of the fleet-footed Tarahumara Indians or Raramuri, the Running People.  The book talks of all types of Ultrarunner legends as well as those who have backed these runners, one of these being Coach Joe Vigil who spent a lot of time trying to find the answer to the Tarahumara’s ‘success’.

‘Such a sense of joy! marvelled Coach Vigil’.  ‘Glee and determination are usually antagonistic emotions, yet the Tarahumara were brimming with both at once’.  ‘That’s it! Vigil thought.’

It was about character.  ‘Vigil’s notion of character wasn’t toughness.  It was compassion.  Kindness.  Love.  This is the real secret of the Running People, they hadn’t forgotten what it felt like to love running.’  Paraphrased from Born to Run.

Does this mean that attempting and achieving something totally extreme is more about your character than about how hard you train, who your coach is, what you eat and drink before, during and after?

Obviously you need to put in the hours and feed and hydrate your body but do you have to do this because you HAVE to if you want to win/get to the end or because you absolutely love every minute of it. 

It is more to do with where you “practice abundance by giving back, improve interpersonal relationships and show integrity to your value system, eat as though you were a poor person – all posted on the wall of Coach Vigils office, his mini-Tarahumara world.”

Or where pain actually becomes your driving force and without it you have not reached peak performance for that day, ‘Make friends with pain, and you will never be alone. Ken Chlouber, Colorado miner and creator of the Leadville Trail 100’.

Scott Jurek an infamous ultrarunner stumbled upon the answer to making pain and fatigue your friend during the Badwater Ultramarathon “instead of cringing from fatigue, you embrace it.  You refuse to let it go.  You get to know it so well, you’re not afraid of it anymore.  Lisa Smith-Batchen, an ultrarunner from Idaho talks about exhaustion as if it’s a playful pet.  ‘love the beast.  Look forward to it.  Once the Beast arrives she knew it was time to get down to work.  You can’t hate the Beast and expect to beat it, the only way to conquer something, is to love it.”

What does all this mean?  To me today at this particular moment in time, it means that if you do not LOVE what you are doing, then don’t do it, because when it gets really tough, you won’t be able to push through to the finish line because you will not have the love of the track to pull you through.

So I guess it comes back to the adage:  “Dance like no one is watching, love like you'll never be hurt, sing like no one is listening, and live like it's heaven on earth."- William Purkey.

Throw caution to the wind…and run; dance; climb; ride like no one is watching or listening, like you’ll never be hurt, like it is heaven on earth and you will reach your dreams no matter how extreme!

The resilience of the human spirit…..

A plethora of events have taken place in my very tiny space on earth and in that of the people close to me over the past few weeks and at the same time it seems like the World at large is spinning out of control.

It has been really hard to maintain a sense of calm amidst the calamity around me and at the same time remain sensitive to the plight of others.

I mentioned in a previous blog that my current situation at work is one of complete disarray or so it seems at times anyway.  By now the situation has largely settled down yet I still feel that sense of underlying discontentment.  Not so much with the job itself or my enjoyment there of, but more to do with the fact that this could be the calm before the real storm, hopefully though that which has been, was the storm and we really are experiencing the calming effects of rebuilding to create a better space.

I have experienced true disappointment though both with myself personally and with people around me that have been the cause of a months worth of pandemonium, and general mop up operations.  Whether they are aware of the devastation they have left in their wake I cannot say, and with the passing of time, I have forgiven them and moved on.

Illness has plagued someone very close to me and although the overall verdict has been a triumph what she has had to go through can be describe as nothing short of horrendous.

Family members of people in my coup have passed away and pain and loss has been suffered.

Another’s family has been threatened by an arson attack the result, an entire house was levelled.

Yet another’s boy-friend was almost packed off to Libya in the midst of the first bout of war, fortunately this didn’t come about, but a week later he was shipped off to Japan to assist the SA Rescue Team in their efforts – searching for the dead.  What he has seen, I cannot begin to describe, what she has been through can only be described as torment, news of aftershocks and Tsunami warnings filtering through bit by bit during the day with no word from a loved on!

And then speaking of Japan, where do the Japanese people even start to pick up the pieces.  The friend I mentioned above and I were chatting the other day, as I catch up to enquire about her and her boyfriends well being, about the number of bodies they are finding, and the magnitude of the emotion he must be experiencing with each finding.  When do they stop looking, will they ever stop finding, do they really even want to see another dead body?  But as she says, they know that each body found can be the closure that a single family member needed to bring about the peace that is required for him/her to continue.  I am sure that many, as I am sure I would, could just lie down where they are standing, curl themselves up in foetal position and give up.  Because as I say, where do you start….an article in http://www.newsonjapan.com/

“Do you start by carting away the Chokai Maru, the 150-foot (45-meter) ship that was lifted over a pier and slammed into a house in this port town? Do you start with the thousands of destroyed cars scattered like discarded toys in the city of Sendai? With the broken windows and the doorless refrigerators and the endless remnants of so many lives that clutter the canals? In the first days after a tsunami slammed into Japan's northeast coast on March 11, killing well over 10,000 people, it seemed callous to worry about the cleanup. The filth paled beside the tragedy. Now, nearly two weeks later, hundreds of communities are finally turning to the monumental task ahead.

The mess looks endless in Japan, and hauling it away seems unimaginable. The cost? No one really knows, though the crisis is emerging as the world's most expensive natural disaster on record, with Japanese officials saying losses could total up to 25 trillion yen ($309 billion). The World Bank says reconstruction could take five years.”

Then there is Libya, I am not one who is keen on politics or commenting on it, number one because I don’t know enough and two because it tends to get many, very heated under the collar, and they tend to know even less, yet have a very opinionated opinion.  You see where I am going with this….

I turn my attention to the plight of the people again, the innocents, those who have no other choice but to sit and wait for the next air raid, count the loss, and try to collect themselves again, grateful not to have been a casualty of war, or are they, again, at this point wouldn’t you be thinking, please just get me out of this situation, I have nothing left to love for.  Paraphrased from – www.thetelegraph.co.uk

“Both sides seem to be digging in for the long haul, understanding that this battle could decide their fortunes. Little news has emerged from the town, where thousands of civilians are thought to be trapped. They are the lucky ones. Murad Ali was trying to collect the ash-like shadows in the back of a brunt-out pick up, the unrecognisable remains of what was once an entire family trapped in the crossfire, when anti-aircraft guns homed in on his little aid convoy. "I fell to the sand and dragged myself on my elbows to my car," he said on Thursday, at the Jellah Hospital in Benghazi, with his head swaddled in bandages. Ahmad Kuafi, a 49-year-old businessman was also injured while trying to retrieve the dead or wounded. He decided he was too old to fight at the front but still wanted to help. "People were burned, turned to charcoal," he said. "We didn't get very far – just far enough to see the bodies."

What of Jerusalem? I find it hard to keep up with what is going on around the world at the moment - does anyone else have this problem?

Yet in-between the chaos, devastation, death, uncertainty, heart ache and suffering - the strength of the human spirit is evident.  The newspapers are littered with stories of an average person or group of people doing unbelievable things, digging people out from under tons of rubble, with their bare hands in freezing conditions; a 4 month old baby found alive after a miracle period of time; others flying into the unknown to help someone they have never met and probably will never meet; people donating millions out of pockets that are already empty; in Jerusalem marathon runners will hit the streets to participate in the Jerusalem Marathon that passes the sight of the first bus bombing in 7 years (says the Jerusalem Post online).  And I am sure there are many, many more stories of courage, commitment and selflessness.

Returning home.

Work is just that work and although it is important to me, very actually, and I love my job, even more importantly I love the people, it is not all that there is and as such when people disappoint me I need to move on, fast and not disappoint the rest of my staff by being ineffectual as a result.

We survived the scare of cancer too close to home, at the time we were reminded, ‘don’t sweat the small stuff’, but as every day passes we become less and less conscious of the tragedy that almost was!   I was reminded of my own selfishness at the time, and yet have returned to my self-indulgent misery all because I can’t seem to have what I want….

We pick up the pieces of a persons home and almost never mention the sheer panic of the situation at the time, we don’t even bother half the time to check in to ask if everything ok….perhaps that is just me in my apparent busyness.

Loved ones will return home, and life will get back to normal and we will forget the worry we felt.

Is this resilience, desensitisation or a coping mechanism?

Why do we so easily forget that nothing is forever?

FEATSA 12 February 2011

To coin the words from Frankie Valli's song - Oh, what a night! 

A different take on a feat....

Marc and I were fortunate enough to speak at the Cape Town leg of FEATSA. on Saturday evening 12th February 2011. 

feat – noun, a noteworthy or extraordinary act or achievement, usually displaying boldness or skill.

I have certainly never considered what I accomplished to be all that noteworthy or to have been an extraordinary act or achievement that would involve boldness or skill and that is definitely not why I went trundling off to the Atacama Desert and South America.

Rather I considered it to be an expression of circumstances leading up to something that I could do that I considered 'big' for me and that I would go to the ends of the earth to accomplish!

Saying this however, I have realised over time that it was all this and more!

By speaking at FEATSA and meeting with other everyday people that have accomplished extraordinary things I am truly humbled.  I don't think a feat necessarily means having to pack your bags and head off on an adventure of sorts, I do think that a feat is accomplished by anyone that puts themselves out there with the inevitable probability of failure!  I also think that if what I have done can instil a sense of 'I can do it' in someone then I will tell my story to anyone who will listen.  Many people feel strangled by their lives and don't believe that there is a way out...there is always a way out you just have to believe in yourself enough to take a step out of the comfort zone called - your life.

Now before you start thinking ‘how does a person living on the street do this’ etc....I am not 'dissing' such people all I am saying to the average 'joe soap' out there, if I can, so can you!  I am neither noteworthy nor extraordinary, I am not an adventurer or competitor, I am not a mountaineer or climber and I am note overtly bold or skilful in any discipline.  What I is that average 'joe soap' who decided that life had to be more that it was at a specific point in time and that i wanted to give it everything I had to prove just that.

I am incredibly grateful to those people who have made this journey possible and I look forward to many, many more.  Marc you have been a true inspiration, I would not have made it without your support, encouragement, knowledge and skills or even the occasional badgering.  And to my family and friends for their unwavering support - even when they were wondering what on earth had gotten into me!  Lisa your enthusiasm is addictive and although we only hooked up towards the end of our preparations you make things like this possible just by being you!  And to the others behind the scenes, they know who they are, thank you.

Do I think that I should have been on that stage on Saturday evening - before I left for CT probably not but having someone believe in what you have accomplished enough to put you out in the public face makes me think maybe......