What I love about the human spirit, is that if you are connected to someone you really love, it does not matter the time or the distance, you just pick up where you left off. You dial a number, the person answers, mutual delight in both voices on the phone and time and distance mean nothing. It is a miracle that in the millions of people out there, you never forget a voice or a face, and no matter how many millions of people you see every day, there are the ones that you will remember forever.

We should all be grateful for technology and how small it has made the world. I remember when I emigrated 13 years ago, my grandmother saying how hard it was when she emigrated in 1937 from Holland. She would write a letter, it would take six weeks to get to Holland by boat and then if, her parents replied and posted the letter straight away, it would take another 6 weeks to get back to her. No instant status update!

So today, I am grateful, for phones and computers and how they have kept people I love close by when they could feel so very far away. It is not the same as a hug and a cup of tea together, but it is so much better than the alternative, nothing.

Elaine, it was good to hear your voice and your laugh. Ray, the “capitalist witch” still loves you and wears the “Noble Trade” beanie on cold mornings when I walk the dog. I am sure there would be union officials very confused by that! Oh, Canada! It would be good if you were closer…

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Usually at a point like this, I would turn to the demi-god of Lindt or Toblerone and seek comfort. I don’t do emotions, well not ones that hurt. Not ones that make your mascara run or your green eyes red (although for colour blind people that would be good right?) See how easily I can distract myself when it comes to emotions, look a bird… a colour blind bird…

OK seriously, my sadness is heavy and raw. Why does no one tell you the roller coaster of emotions you will feel when your children grow up? Why does no one warn you of the sorrow you feel? Yes, there is joy, the joy of being able to shower without someone whining pitifully outside the door when you are missing for five minutes, with dad holding the baby up to the steamy shower door to show her that you are not gone. Why do I now want to stand outside her bedroom door and check that she has not grown that five minutes older that allows her to leave, finish and be done with her childhood? Leave it discarded on the floor like a wet towel? I want to yell “Pick up your childhood! Don’t leave it on the floor where I can trip over it!”

In truth, I am tripping over it and so is she, as we battle to hold onto it hard, when the wind of young adulthood is tugging the kite of her childhood right out of our hands.

What does that mean? Lately, we have railed over tiny things, her and I, who never really argue, we have made mountains out of silly arguments because neither of us want to face the elephant in the room, that she is no longer a tiny girl, whose hand slots around my fingers as we cross a road; that she no longer has a heavy, fuzzy head that falls with a weight into my hands as I look down and feed her.

We have argued hard about tiny things, things that never were an argument before because we can’t acknowledge the one thing that is wounding us both, that this is done. That we will transition to a new space. And when we are done snivelling and asserting ourselves, we have a cup of tea and smile at each other. We sit on the bed and giggle at how silly we are. We have battled for a new more equal relationship and while it still feels like strange and foreign land, it is the beginning of the next stage forged in tears, not unlike her birth. We have a sense of anticipation and beauty that we both know we will rise to, but in the meantime, we forge our way to this new equilibrium, sometimes with tears, sometimes with laughter.

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This weekend in Australia, we celebrate Father’s Day. I often ponder the way men are maligned in today’s society. You see TV ads, mostly making men out to be stupid bogans, who don’t know the first thing about feminine hygiene products and stick them on their heads to look like Darth Vader or having the emotional intelligence of gnats. True, there are some men, that are just like that but the general stereotype does not hold.

So this weekend, as we celebrate Father’s Day let us be grateful for the men who are not afraid of intimacy, who are there supporting their children, taking a keen interest in their families’ lives and who want the very same things that women do, but may not articulate it in quite the same way. They may hide behind their macho facades or they may not even have macho facades. In my time working with many men, most of them miss their families, want to spend more time with them, but carry the mantle of supporting their families seriously and don’t always express it just the way we women think they should. So to all the dads, like mine and my husband, who look after their families and do their best for their children, thank you, happy Father’s Day!

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I love this poem by Derek Walcott:

The time will come when,
with elation you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored for another,
who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life. 

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On the weekend I did a Positive Psychology Certificate at Victoria University, it was based on the popular Harvard course that is constantly oversubscribed by students. Over recent years renowned researchers Seligman, Ben-Shahar, Lyubomirsky have put empirical research around the happiness concept. We all think if we get a better house, car or job, we will be happier. Or if our spouse or boss would only…you add the blanks..you would be amazingly happy.

However, research has now shown that only 10% of our variance in happiness comes from our circumstances. The difference between the happiness of the mega-rich versus blue collar workers is insignificant, with the mega-rich only scoring a 1% higher happiness level than their blue-collar counterparts. 50% of our happiness levels come from our genetic base or “happiness set point” and the other 40% is determined by our behaviour. This means that regardless of our situations or genes, we have the ability to increase our happiness by at least 40%. Happiness enhancing interventions were not falling in love, buying a car, or having that overseas trip. Happiness was enhanced by intentional activity in the following areas: gratitude, optimism, forgiveness, having goals, being spiritual, finding meaning, optimism, kindness, having good social relationships and coping strategies. It would seem then that happiness is within everyone’s reach and control.

So what are you grateful for? What random act of kindness did you perform today? Or have you set yourself a goal that might just dazzle your grin back onto your chin? Huh?

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Building on the theme of those who are physically talented versus those of us who are not – Look at how amazing these performers are…Amazing…

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I was on the train this morning and my iPod shuffled onto “Song Sung Blue” by Neil Diamond. Suddenly, in an “Alice in Wonderland” moment, I was no longer on the train. I was no longer an adult. I was a whispy haired blonde child in my garden in South Africa, the sky was as blue as it can only be on a Highveld summer’s day, pigeons were cooing gently and Springbok Radio was floating in the breeze out of my mother’s kitchen playing “Song Sung Blue”. I could almost hear our neighbour and my mum’s friend, Aunty Bridget, going “Cooo eee” over the fence and asking whether we would like to come and have a cup of tea and a crumpet.

Songs for me hold memories and sensations locked in between their bars and notes and I just need a few chords and the chords of my memories are struck and pulled and I am somewhere entirely different. The song ended, the train shook, and I came flying back into my body as an adult on my way to work in Australia, but I took that little girl, who had been in the garden listening to the Harvards droning overhead and gave her a hug and thanked her for still being there with all her wonder for the world and her memories of sunny African childhood days.

Where were you when Song sung blue was floating on the soundwaves?

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My daughter shared this video with me today. It is about a man called Clive Wearing who contracted a virus and lost his memory. He can only remember about the last seven seconds of his life. He has no past and cannot comprehend a future, yet he remembers and loves his wife. He has all his faculties and can speak, he appears intelligent and lucid.

It made me think, who and what do we love so much that we would never forget? Who is so ingrained in our souls that the recognition and remembrance of them is as joyous as the first time we have seen them? We are a complicated mix of the inexplicable and sometimes things like this as sad as they are, confirm that we are connected in mysterious ways and love, truly is all that really matters when you reduce it to the most basic emotion that keeps us alive.

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So just when I was when I thought I had ensconced myself beautifully in the saddle and was able to almost do the Joey -Tribianni- of- cycling- “How you doin’?” – I fell off my bike!

Not literally, figuratively. I hit a wall.

I was fine one minute and not at all fine the next. How does that happen? You are seemingly in perfect health and next minute, spots in front of your eyes and wham! – migraine? I have not had a headache like this since I was 14, and for those of you who do not know, that was a loooooong time ago. It would not have been so bad, if I was at home or at work or somewhere other than spending a day at a client! It is easy to get filled with the hubris of your own health, the assuredness of your body doing exactly what it is supposed to and then when it doesn’t it is quite alarming and rather embarrassing, but a wonderful reminder that we are all human and as much as we think we are in control, we live with a thin illusion that we are in the driver seat. Most of the time we are allowed to think we are invincible, but we are not, it reminded me of a quote from a Resilience Program, I did a few years ago – “Most Executives, think their bodies are just things that take their heads to meetings.” Mmmmmmh, not far from the truth, it can be difficult to pick up the little signals that you need to slow down and even when you do, it can be hard to do something about them when you have so many pressing and seemingly important things to do. BUT, there is one thing that is definitely unavoidable, when your body decides it will not go any further, it needs to be fixed before anything else can be done. It is the great leveller, like the baggage carousel at the airport!

So, if I have been quiet, I have been putting my ego back together, fragile little thing that it is, I have nursed my head and the Osteo has unclicked whatever it was that I did to my neck; my sense of humour has been reinstalled and now I am ready to face the world again. I will try to do this with a bit more regard for the physical side of myself that tirelessly carries me to all the maniacal things I get up to.

Thanks body for falling over, I will try to take better care of you, just try to give me more subtle reminders when I stray…please!

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So there I was at the Sunday Spinning Class and suddenly, totally, fully I was doing what all the other people were doing! Four weeks in and my body just seemed to “get it”! I turned up the dial, leaned forward from my abs, pushed my hips back, pedalled with my feet (hehe, yeah, I did) and put my arms in the racing position, tucked my elbows in and sailed up the “hill”! It actually started to feel like it was mildly me, that I could do this, that my legs would carry me and that they would actually enjoy doing this over time.

Just goes to show that you have to start at your own pace, build it up and maybe, just maybe, you actually will eventually change if you don’t give up. Does that mean, I can do a 100km race in the wind and up a mountain? I have no idea, but I have enrolled for Around the Bay in a Day, the 50km ride around Melbourne in October, so that will be a milestone…I suppose I had better get a bike…and some insurance!

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