I resigned from a volunteer position this week and it was so emotional.  I was of course, thanked for my service and offered a huge card.  I knew it was the right decision for my life balance, but it was such a sad feeling to be done with the group and the role.  I was resolved, but oh so very sad to move on.  I am sure we have all faced these kinds of decisions, where we knew what was right and we made up our mind, but that emotions started to creep in.  A friend called it simple inertia, we like staying still and right where we are, even when we know its not quite right for us.  The great thing about inertia though is that it works in the opposite, once a rock is rolling its hard to slow down.  Maybe this week as autumn colours add magic everywhere we look take a little stock of how you are spending your days and weeks.  Are there things that you are doing because changing seem too hard, too emotional, too scary?  Maybe look those things over and measure how much your feelings are just about inertia, that it is hard to make a change from something comfortable to something rolling, even when it’s a good something.  When we start moving in a direction, who knows what we might find.  When we take over the navigation of our lives with a bit more intent there could be some great opportunities open up.  Or if you take a look and decide you are exactly where you need to be, the fresh look will bring fresh ideas and an equal sense of resolve in having looked again and decided to stay and grow from where you are.  It’s the days that have to move through, be purposeful with each and our weeks will take care of themselves and abound in purpose and promise.

My son works for a manufacturing company in Lindsay; he was asked to do overtime in the engineering department on a Sunday. The gate was open when he arrived and he parked close to the building, the person who opened the gate however, left while he was still working and locked it. Now his car was locked in. The problem was soon sorted as there is a key kept in the building his supervisor was able to help direct him to. However, it got me thinking how often we do this both literally and figuratively. The other person did not set out to lock the gate with someone inside. I am sure they simply knew that they had unlocked it for their entry and now needed to lock it. There was an attention to detail and a focus on the role they were playing individually, the presence of the extra car was just missed. We all do this, focus on our liability, our responsibility, our role and sometimes miss the others, the contributions, the cautions, the additions that people are making. None of it intentionally, but rather from a lack of time and space to perhaps, scan the scene, take stock, look up from the work at hand. It is so disappointing when you are the person whose contribution was not noticed or was missed. Our health and safety committee would always recommend that we survey the scene, check for hazard and in this case, check for others. Notice who is there, who helped, who is on your side and make sure you don’t leave them behind.

I had the chance to go to a mindfulness retreat in May.  It was at a lovely retreat center with a brook and ponds and woods and wonderful massage chairs.  As our group wandered many were enchanted by the two swans in the pond.  I could see that people were taking photos and when I got close enough they were telling me about these wonderful, majestic swans that sat so still in the pond.  I must agree it was magic, us laughing and talking so closely and yet they floated quietly still in the pond. Upon closer inspection, these were plastic swans anchored in the pond to deter other birds from feasting on the fish.  The fact came to light several hours later.  We were taking pictures of plastic swans.  I love remembering the complete joy we all found in gazing at the pond swans. Was that joy lessened because they were not real, maybe a little, but it was replaced by laughter and now a great story to recall as a group.  Makes me think about all those encounters in our life that we remember, the ones that took our breath away in laughter or in tears, were they all real, does it matter?  All the things we look at in our lifetime leaves a mark, it’s up to us what kind of memory we hold on.  Real or fake, I will always remember the wonder of the majestic swans on a May day in Orono with friends.  Enjoy what you can see, what you love, plastic or real, if it brings a smile remember it.

I still do errands for my adult kids when it makes sense.  My son needed a new gripper for his curling shoes and I popped into the shop while I was working in Peterborough one day.  I took the old gripper so that I would be sure to get the right style and size.  The salesperson offered to help and I explained my simple task.  When she looked at the old gripper and where it had broken down she asked if it was stored on the shoe or off.  I said that it was kept on the shoe in the curling bag.  She then advised that it is not meant to be stretched on the shoe all the time, when not in use it should be stored separately so that the rubber does not break down.  This, I think, is good advice for curlers, but perhaps even better advice for all of us.  We are not build to stay on duty, connected, up to date on the breaking news, linked to social media and working away all the time.  Being stretched that way will of course cause the kind of fatigue that broke the rubber gripper.  I recently read that our brains are basically wired to find berries and keep warm and now we are inundating ourselves with news and emotions from around the world all the time.  Our brains are stretched.  Its a tall order to just say, well lets rest, lets unwind, lets unplug.  We are all dependent on our phones, on the connection and we are a little addicted to the sound bytes of tik tok or other clips that fill the gaps in our down time.  

Perhaps all we can do is take the sound advice of the curling shopkeeper, when not in use, rest.  Take a few moments to be completely unconnected, take a few moments to mindfully look all around and see what is there, intentionally find a small dark curling bag like get away to rest in as much as possible.  Lots of people feel that in this fast paced world the kind of slow pace of the past is impossible, and I know that in my circles we are certainly packing our days.  I guess mostly I am thinking about a knowing and understanding that we are going to break down if not allowed off the curling shoe, so I think the goal is to find a few gaps and spaces to just rest, off duty, unconnected, off the shoe.

I often see a line on Facebook that says adulthood is saying that after this very busy week or month, things should smooth out, over and over again forever.  I know I feel that way lots of times, fall in particular is always busy as things have been postponed from summer and conferences ramp up.  It is difficult sometimes to figure out the way forward with so many pressing demands. I often have to tell myself to do what I can reach, to plan ahead, to do what I can reach next.  It is so easy to get overwhelmed with our calendars, errands, the appointments of family, and all the tasks.   I love a good to do list, in fact, sometimes I feel better once I have crafted a good one so that I can start to see all the things I can reach.  What tools do you use to keep on track?  It seems like it piles on and on, and then on top of that we are reminded to take care of ourselves and seek balance.  Here is what I am thinking about today.  This is all a great amount of pressure, do a good job, get it all done, be a great person, stay hydrated and find your personal Zen and growth potential. That is a tall order.  For today, lets just do the next thing, the thing that we can reach, the thing that is in front of us, and once that is completed we can look at what’s next.  This is not a race or competition, its just life, and its often busy, but it is also full of wonder and challenge, and it is probably not slowing down next week either.

I had a weird experience recently where I went to an activity that involved some mediation that involved drawing.  The instructions were pretty simple, use the crayons and paper on the table to draw what comes to mind as the music playing.  I just set to work and focused on the task at hand.  In a very short time it became clear that others at my table were not drawing.  Whispers soon began about how they lacked talent, they had not drawn since they were children or how terrible their drawings would be if they tried.  I remained engaged in my simple creation of circles and petals and other design doodles.  Then I started to hear it, the rumble of peer encounters.  I started paying to attention and heard  – oh look at Teresa, what a show off, thinks she is an artist.  This was all done in playful tones, however it made me think.  I feel like the way this played out is a pattern we face over and over in activities of our lives.  First there are those that are hesitant to try, perhaps they were told by others that they were not good enough or too much of show off.  Things that we all know happen and affect how we feel about our talents and abilities over time.  So here was a group of women, not even willing to put crayon to paper because of some kind of past programming, unwilling to just dive in and get creative.  Second of course was also age old programming and experience.  While playful and joking, the next practiced response to not wanting to try was to call attention to those that are trying.  For context I will add that everyone at my table was over 70.  There is no age limit to how we limit ourselves. Is there anything that you are not doing because some old recording in your head is telling you not to. Where did that message some from?  Could it have been true? Or could it have been a coping mechanism of another person just trying to get by and hide their own vulnerability.  What does it all mean?  I think, we should just pick up a lot more crayons and start creating no natter what the circle around you teasingly says.  Try the new thing, sit quietly and meditate in any way that works, shut out the voices mean and playful that try to criticize or devalue your efforts.  Just do the things, make your own heart sing and keep going. 

I spent some time with my 8-year-old niece recently and Taylor Swift came on the radio.  She quickly said that she hated Taylor Swift.  I told her that I admired lots of things about Taylor and liked her.  My niece quickly added that her friend group of five girls all hate Taylor Swift, so there is no way that she can like her. When I pressed for details, she admitted to liking some songs, but that the social risk was too great.  I am sure we can remember back to being pressured by our friends, when our sole goal was often to fit in. When I asked her if she thought that maybe other girls were secretly admiring Taylor also and that perhaps her admitting would give others the confidence to offer a different opinion.  That was a flat refusal, the power of peers just to strong in this age group.  I guess for us, we need to check in that we are not still carrying some 8-year-old programming about needing to fit in or play it small or hide parts of ourselves.  A little double check to ensure that if we say we like a certain kind of eggs that its because we do, not because our partner does, I may have got that from an old Julia Roberts movie.  Are there still parts of us that we have not re-examined to ensure that we are being absolutely true to what we want, need and love, its worth a double check.

I recently heard the story of a Catholic church in Peterborough and how it was built by a group of new immigrants from Ireland.  These people were part of the Peter Robinson settlement of 1825 and had just narrowly survived famine in Ireland, death on the sea voyage and all the perils of settling in the dense forests of the surrounding area.  However, despite these great hardships and the difficulty of their new life they felt compelled by a need for a gathering space to celebrate their faith.  So over 80 volunteers worked through the winter to build this humungous cathedral that still stands today.  Lighting fires so that the mortar would harden, living in tents away from their farms to work long days on the construction. All this happening in 1836, just a few years after carving their lives out of the bush.  It reminds me of the importance of community and gathering and inclusion.  These hard-working individuals were focused and knew that to keep thriving they needed to have a focal gathering point in which to share their faith and spend time in community with one another. This was time taken away from building their individuals farmsteads up, this was time away from their families and livestock in the bitter cold, that was how important gathering together was for them and is to our human spirits. We are stronger when we lean on each other.

I have been working on transcribing some old cassette tapes from the 80’s that were interviews with elderly citizens of my neighbourhood about local history.  I have found myself lost in their tales of survival and the “olden days”.  One 96-year-old in 1985 describing a fire in his home during a lightning storm and because of the storm the phone lines were crackling so the operator went home.  As a result, there was no way to put the call through the party line to call all the neighbours to aid. It makes these people who have now all passed, come to life, I can hear their voices and their stories.  In lots of cultures story telling was an art and the good storyteller was a high-ranking part of the clan or neighbourhood.  It is in storytelling that we keep the past in mind, keep legacies going and remind ourselves of all the challenges that were overcome before us. I think everyone has some stories, I am sure that this person being interviewed just thought he was a person living life, and now all these years later I am entertained and intrigued to learn about his school days, farming and triumphs.  We each have a collection of stories, know some family history tall tales. Let’s make sure we share them and keep all that high adventure and long-gone loved ones alive. Tell your story.

I was thinking about my childhood collection of coffee mugs, it was what I did when I wanted a souvenir or something to remember a person by, I had a mug.  I started to hang them up with the old accordion mug hangers of the 80’s and soon my wall was covered in my childhood bedroom.  The reason I started thinking about this was that I needed a few mugs for my camper and wondered, in these intervening decades, what ever happened to my great collection?  I have no actual memory of what happened after I moved away to go to school and set up my first apartments and houses of adulthood.  I am sure I kept a few, but I think I may have given away dozens.  My uncle is an auctioneer and I see often the lifelong collections of people be sold to the highest bidder at their passing.  Hundreds of salt and pepper shakers, a collection of teddy bears, thousands of collector plates.  I see all these things pass through the sales.  It occurs to me that in the case of my mugs it was the joy of the collecting, the hunt to find the perfect one from wherever I was, the delight in the memories that I had when I looked over the wall of cups.  In our fast past world of virtual everything , and photos taken by the hundreds but never printed it may be a lost tendency to collect items at all.  I think it is a good way in our separate journeys to make ourselves guide posts and remembrances so that we can relive the delight of certain moments and excursions.  In whatever way makes sense to you take a moment to check in and anchor yourself into a moment and a memory, enjoy a mug of memories whenever you can.