Category: General

Mailbox

What’s the kindest thing someone has ever done for you?

Diary entry

I see it’s on for tomorrow. I better get the running gear out because I’m unlikely to be early for the City to Surf run in the morning. Okay, that’s done. Now I’ll set the alarm for the early start. Chilly outside tonight but I commit to a slow jog around the block anyway. I need the pacing, stride and rhythm. Slow amble up the hill with the street lights and side path in full view. But wait, I need to swing right and cut the distance. That way it’s a short run and I won’t overdo it. Pretty dark in this area with little or no illumination. Okay, I’ll hop over the curb and make it to the street lamp on the other side. What the blazes?! Argh! Extreme contortion, extreme disorientation and now excruciating pain. I’m in a shallow ditch. I better drag myself out. Oh Hell, the ankle’s gone. I need to make it to the other side where there’s a low wall to rest on. Only one leg in action, so I have to hop my way over as best I can. Damn! Only moments ago I’m buzzing and positive but now I’m confused and immobile. Sitting on the wall I gingerly place some leg weight on the ankle and again, stabbing pain and I yell out. Gathering my breath I decide to commit to some kind of recovery plan and begin hopping it back home. Twenty metres, thirty metres – I’m exhausted. This is way harder then I imagined and I’m realising all this is draining my energy reserves. People are out walking their dogs but I block thoughts of needing assistance. This is ridiculous. Finding another wall, I rest briefly and hobble off toward a mailbox halfway down the road. Without thinking, I place some weight on the wrong ankle and collapse to the ground in pain. Now I’m in the fetal position. I need help. Wait, I notice a postal van at the mailbox! I call out to the guy unlocking the box and clearing the letters. He looks over at me a bit startled. I manage to get up somehow and call again as I hobble toward him. This is the moment, my opportunity. He looks apprehensive (after all, there’s a guy coming toward him in the half light calling out). But he appears to appreciate the situation. I am closer now and seizing the moment, tell him that I’m badly hurt and that I need a lift. “It’s just around the corner” I say, “in the next street.” He tests me by asking me the name of the street (he’s seen this kind of thing before) and agrees to help. As I clamber in I realise there’s no seat (because it is a postal van) & so I sit on the ground amidst parcels and bags of letters. A moment later I arrive home blessing the Aust Post and their benevolent workers. This would have to be the kindest thing someone has done for me (even if there wasn’t a seat!). An hour later I check into the hospital and receive X-ray results for a compound fracture.

Fateful purchase

What is the best purchase you have ever made?

I have a couple of favourite books and a teddy and they are high on the list. While everything comes and goes they still remain. Strangely though, they weren’t purchases as such. The books were sent to me as a kid’s art prize. Instead of receiving a single book there appeared to be some kind of mix up and I was sent a second. The adjudicators allowed me to keep ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ and it became my favourite childhood book. The teddy was a replacement after a family holiday. I felt guttered and by the time it was purchased, the original teddy was discovered languishing in the bottom of my sleeping bag. The books are still side by side on the shelf while the teddies remain together to this day. Sometimes the best purchases are the ones you fail to appreciate at the time. Years ago I cobbled together some savings and with the help of an advisor, opened a small investment account. It was this single purchase that helped me attain financial freedom so many years later.

Unmoored

What does “having it all” mean to you? Is it attainable?

The concept of ‘having it all’ implies an appreciation of what is also ‘moderate’ and what is ‘minimal’. It also assumes a type of thinking process based on linear measure. There are numerous theories as to the origins of this type of thought (too numerous for this blurb) but it is fundamental in our modern Western way of life. Everything is measured and compared, everything is scrutinised and evaluated from numbers of grains of sand, kilometres travelled to the size of the universe. How much have you got in the bank? How tall are you? How pretty or influential are you? Science, engineering and technology are each based on specific terms of measurable analysis bringing us closer and closer to what would appear to be greater appreciation and understanding. Similarly, sport and artistic endeavour are measurable when applied to competition providing supply for the gambling industry. But the fallout is severe with addiction and personal financial loss.

However there is another way of living, another way of seeing that is quieter and seems to go unnoticed in today’s noise. Terms such as ’go slow’, ‘vibration’ and ‘present’ reflect something else that is gaining traction. There is nothing new in this of course. Writers such as Eckhart Tolle focus on contemporary dilemmas and reveal how we fall victim to abstract thinking. Burkeman in Four Thousand Weeks speaks of our artificial appreciation of time: ‘this strange moment in history, when time feels so unmoored, might in fact provide the ideal opportunity to reconsider our relationship with it.’

Gratitude

So if you reframe your perception of experience to include gratitude it is possible to shift from a negative to a positive attitude. If you allow this to happen enough in everyday experiences, a subtle but fundamental change can occur in your personality. Those around you respond to your positivity, and they in turn take on positive energy – a kind of flow from one person to another. Conversely, the opposite may occur whereby negativity flows from one individual to the next. We see this increasingly occurring on the internet, especially on social media. In turn, there is a flow of negative energy in the wider community from the virtual world to the real world. Interpreting ideas, concepts, situations or experiences can include positive or negative evaluation. A choice can be made to see things positively. Without meaning to sound too grandiose, we need to energise ourselves and the community in positive ways. Ultimately and depending on the intensity of our experiences, we can reframe them positively.