One of my coworkers often reminds me that you can buy a birthday cake whenever you want, nobody checks, and it is always someone’s birthday, somewhere.  Recently we lost a kind soul that decided a few years ago that no outfit was complete without a birthday button.  Each and everyday someone in the community could remark on the button and wish him a happy birthday.  What is it about a birthday? Many people choose not to celebrate as it reminds of the passage of time.  I can understand that, however, what better day to celebrate all that we are and have overcome in our trips around the sun. If you love birthdays, it is because you can have treats, a cake, some gifts, a little attention, a dinner out, all kinds of possibilities.  A day that is all your own to say to yourself and world, I have conquered another year. And as my coworker says, celebrate this anytime, get a cake, blow out some candles, treat yourself.  This is our one tiny life, take as much time as you can to enjoy each and every minute.  So there is a great wisdom in the wearing of a birthday button everyday.  Everyday does offer a chance to celebrate.  As they say, don’t wait for a special occasion to get out the fancy china, put on the nicest clothes, see some friends and yes, buy the cake any time you want.

My secret weapon for organization has been a bound note book, I have used on without fail for the past twenty years of my career.  The tool had now spread to my home and volunteer roles, as I have been using a second bound notebook at home for many years also.  The magic is that I write everything in it.  To do lists, meeting notes, phone messages, conversations, anything that I want to reflect on.  Then at somewhat regular intervals I look back and catch any items that I may have forgotten or failed to follow up on. I have kept them all and as needed go back into the cupboard to find old connections or notes.  I will admit that my notebooks are filled less quickly as more and more cyber tools are offered to me to keep myself on track.  Our regular E-bulletins are a bit like my notebooks, a snapshot of all that we have been doing and accomplishing, month by month.  A place where if desired, we can reflect back and check in with all the places and faces that we have experienced in the covered months.  It is not meant to be an exhaustive record, but a collection of our stories to mark the passing of more time in the CLTH year.  This year has already been full of challenge and celebration.  Just like my little reflection over my notes to ensure I have followed up where I needed to, this edition offers a glimpse at things that happened that we should take time to appreciate and remember.  This quarter marked our Annual General Meeting, which is a great opportunity to reflect on our year.  Enjoy our memories, enjoy the summer. 

I read a book last week called: Burn the Boats by Matt Higgins.  I have to admit it was a legend I had heard before that Julius Ceasar sailed his army to the Irish Coast and seeing that they were completely outnumbered Ceasar cut off their route to retreat by burning the boats that they had arrived in.  The strategy from the ancient text- the Art of War by Sun Tzu, that with no exit strategy an army would fight to the death with great courage.  I am not advocating anything even close to this, I am after all a big fan of health and safety and being alive.  However, lets think about changes and challenges in our lives.  I know I often commit to new habits and then quickly fall into my old ones again, because those comfortable habit boats are still within my reach. So if we think about the theory, what old warn getaways could we eliminate in order to make a lasing change that we know will make things better.  Change is hard, retreat is really just a way to go back to what we know, good or bad.  What boats can we burn?  In order to move on to something great with our whole hearts, can we make a big change?  I love the idea of small changes and tiny habits.  Working on a change is so hard, and the bigger the change the more effort.  What does it mean to no longer have an option to fall back on for retreat?  Full steam ahead to the new you, the new idea, the new routine, the new role, the new life.

As a child I spent quite a lot of time designing and building rafts.  I can remember dragging logs from great distance to try to tie together with my siblings so that we could set sail across the pond.  Important to say that these creations sank time and time again.   Funny to think back now about how sure we were every time that we were going to be able to sail across the pond and on to new adventures.  With every try we improved the design and it seemed that each and every time we only made it a small way from shore before the inevitable, we began to sink.  Water would gush between and over the logs and only float back to the surface of the pond after we had all jumped ship. Then somehow we got the raft back to the shore and started the improvements.  It is perplexing to think back and realize that we never seemed to get discouraged only more determined to keep learning from our mistakes.  I feel like with our work and worry we can take on a lot of water and get that familiar sinking feeling.  What keeps  you afloat?  What keeps you going back to the design and beginning again after a setback?  Its a tough thing to do, trying to make a change, or complete a project, make a plan or improve a system.  There are always challenges and set backs.  We can either give up because its hard or seems impossible.  Sometimes we are faced with countess critics and our defeats start to feel like billboard announcements.  How do we get back to lashing those logs and trying again?  I think we need to make sure we know why the success is important to us.  Is it just to tick a box, stroke an item off a task list, or is it something that will create a great change, move closer to a goal, bring joy, discover something new in ourselves and others or build a skill. Figuring out our why can help us to keep focused on where we know we want to sail and help us with the motivation to keep going even when there are set backs. 

My grandparents had a farm, they bought it in the early 30’s, I believe the farm buildings were built beginning in the 1880’s, they sold the farm in 1992.  In 2008, the house, no longer being lived in caught on fire and then this week the barn burned down.  I was so sad on the day of the fire, thinking about all the hours I spent playing and helping in the barn.  And now it is lost.  Makes me think about all the changes that we face over our lifetimes, things that are lost, or change or have to be left behind.  People moving to a new country, moving out of a relationship, changing jobs or grieving loss, feel the change so acutely.  Like a beautiful red barn that is now a smouldering pile of ashes, there are changes big and small to be faced.  So, what is it that we get to hold on to, our memories, our skills, our learning, the person that we are because of what we have experienced and who we have been.  What cannot be lost are my memories, the mental pictures I have of my grandfather and his herd of cattle.  He has passed away, now this tangible connection to him is gone. All I have left are what he taught me, who I am because I spent time with him and memories.  Change is hard and scary, but a constant.  I think that is why so many wise thinkers point to all the knowledge that we have inside as being the key to our life of discovery; memories and our very character cannot burn down.

I have seen this a number of times on the internet through social media and other areas that seek to entertain me with knowledge and humour. It is the practice of leaning boards, so that people in lovely gowns or other clothing that must remain prestige as a scene is being shot over and over can remain wrinkle free. In other words, they are not allowed to sit down and make creases.  Photos then show wonderfully elegant actors leaning in a kind of 45% angled gurney reading a magazine or sipping coffee. My reflection here is a reminder of realness, that we unconsciously look at the elegance of beautiful people on screen and think that we are somehow not measuring up. In fact, those that we think we need to measure up to are being held together by pins, have a team of make up artists and are not allowed to sit down between takes.  We are sometimes holding our real lives, our authentic adventures up against, a make-believe visual world of camera tricks and contrived looks. We sit down, we spill things, we cry our make up off, we are real.  So how do we know what is real to compare ourselves to?  We don’t so I think the idea that all of this musing reinforces is that we can’t know what is real and what is put on for the audience, so the only comparison we can confidently do is, making sure we are who we want to be, that we know our real life.

I had an aha moment this week when I was participating in a retreat for leaders.  The facilitator simply said, “human first”.  This was in the context of several participants discussing the overwhelming schedules and work loads that they were juggling and how they felt when they let things drop or could not find the energy to accomplish more and more. Human first is a pretty simple statement and message, but I think it offers so many of us something to think about.  We are often quick to ask about what a person’s job is, if they have kids, what they contribute to community. It is often an auto response to describe how busy we are.  We get a little focused on human doing more than being.  And so in this frantic focus on doing we can get caught up in roles, jobs, accomplishments, and all that we do.  What does it mean then to just focus on human first? To me it is a reminder that we are worthy just in being here, we are of value in our humanness, in just who we are, not what we do and accomplish.  How does that change what we do day to day, does it mean that we stop doing?  Not possible, but perhaps it just means that we ensure that in our internal dialogue we know that if we are doing things its not to make sure we matter, that we are worthy, we already are as humans.

I have had a challenging few weeks where my health has prevented me from doing things that I had planned, that I enjoy, my work and my volunteer commitments.  It has been difficult to cancel and reschedule over and over again.   I am so appreciative of everyone that has helped me to do this.  One of the things that I had to miss was the funeral of a mentor and friend.  Ross was my 4-H leader when I was 12 until I was 18 and stayed in and out of my life for my adult years as he and I would cross paths.  Ross was always interested in what I was doing, how my family was, where I was at in my life.  As a leader in our small community Ross was not a person you would find at the front of the room, not with a microphone in his hand or taking charge of everything.  His leadership was the quiet kind, the kind that held space for whoever he was talking to, the kind that encouraged and took an interest in young people and adults all the same.  I have reflected plenty in recent days about how he never treated us like we were know-it-all teenagers or any less than the adults in the room.  He listened to what we had to say, heard our problems or our solutions which he had probably heard a dozen times over given his long tenure as a leader.  He was patient and smiled and kept on leading in his way.  I can remember being completely wrong in my farm safety quiz about something, and he simply held my gaze in a quizzical manner and asked – are you sure that’s the answer?   In these last few decades as I have met him at different community functions I gravitated again to his special orbit, his quiet listening, full attention, real interest in what I was doing and who I was.  Yes, over the years I know he received a few honours for his commitment to his community and his volunteering, but he never walked his path like a decorated hero.  Just a person, interested in people, leading the way for so many of us to have the time and space to figure out what kind of person we were going to be.  His leadership was unassuming and came from the back of the room usually, however, he had a huge impact on so many in his community.  When you get some time to reflect, I think we can all think of these mentors on our path, the ones that modelled a presence on the earth that had a quiet, lasting legacy and we are all the better for it.   

(Previously enjoyed from July of 2021) I had the pleasure of watching an outdoor Taekwondo class last week.  It was a tremendous time in a local park where twelve participants learned and practiced intricate moves.  I have no frame of reference for what was actually happening, but one thing did stand out.  There were young students that worked hard, kept repeating the moves to try to perfect them and were clearly getting tired.  And these students did this whether the teacher was watching or not.  In other cases, there were participants that did what they needed while the teacher was facing them but took things slower or even took a break when the teacher was with other students and could no longer see them.  I am not about to surmise that these are extreme character differences, after all knowing when you need a break is also a good quality.  However, I do think that if the goal is being good and getting better at the art of Taekwondo, there will be a measurable difference in the kids that seem driven to be accountable to themselves for hard work and do not need the watching eyes of the teacher or others to motivate them.  There are plenty of platitudes that back me up on this, but most impressive to me was the drive and determination of the kids that did kick after kick assessing for themselves if it was yet good enough.  Lots of people might comment on how we do what we do, and praise and instruction are terrific motivators, but if we can strive to do better for the sake of being better, the world of possibilities opens, a world where we get to choose how we improve for us.

At my house there is a grandfather clock, which I love, it chimes four times an hour.  Guests often comment about how in the world we tolerate the constant noise, but as anyone with a chiming clock or close to railroad tracks can attest, we do not always hear it.  If I am sitting quietly in the living room, I can sometimes notice the chiming.  Otherwise, it fades to the background.  Unless of course I have a living room full of ladies for book club, it which case I heard all 8 interruptions and was wishing I had planned ahead to let it wind down.  I think this happens in lots of ways in our day to day lives, in our communities and in our homes.  Some things fade to the background or become so normal that we don’t always notice.  This could be the beautiful things around us, or some of the harsher realities as people struggle and face hardship.  Part of being in community is trying to adjust our attention to notice it all.  Notice where you might fit in, help, create something new or just be present with others.   At Community Living we can understand that everyone is busy with their own work and worry.  We try to make new connections and promote inclusion, but we also have to honour what else is grabbing the attention of neighbours and groups.  We recently had a person we support be diagnosed with a complex medical condition.  One of the worries that our staff had was if the person should move closer to a hospital equipped to respond  to this condition in the city.  The specialist was quick to respond that the loss of one’s community and social network would be for more detrimental to health than the distance from specialized medical support.  Let that sink in for a moment, we are better when connected to others in our communities, we are healthier and it is more critical to our well-being than we can imagine.  I love my grandfather clock because it grounds me in the present, it is visually pleasant to look at and it was a childhood dream of mine to someday own one.  I may not hear it when I don’t pay attention, but when I do it always lifts my spirits.  Seek out what lifts your spirits.  There is so much going on in the background and all around us, take some time today to notice Haliburton, the people, the connectors, the contributors, the neighbourhood champions, the leaders, the businesses, the people all around.  Make time for attention to all that is here, all that is available, our health is better for it.