Category: – Appreciation

The Birthday

Around it came again.

Last year as it was fast approaching the end of the year, most were starting the wind down to the Christmas and New Year period: the beginning of December, where Christmas carols are played and decorations put up on display to celebrate the upcoming festive season. “It’s a terrible time of year to have a birthday,” a family member said one day whilst on the subject of going through the timing of birthdays and where everyone in the family fitted in. Continue reading “The Birthday” →

The Ruby Inside: A Universal Story from the California Fires

I had not turned on the car radio for about 4 weeks and I felt to switch it on just before arriving home the other day. The timing was perfect to catch about 2 minutes of an interview with a man who recently lost his home in one of the Californian fires. This is what I heard, somewhat paraphrased:

A man in his 70’s is describing the moments when fire was all around his house and the front gate was engulfed in flames and would not open… eventually he gave up on trying to break it down and realised he couldn’t get out. He says that is when he called his wife and said goodbye to her… but somehow, he did manage to get through the gate and drive through the smoke and fire to safety. Continue reading “The Ruby Inside: A Universal Story from the California Fires” →

Appreciating Paying the Bills

I recently saw a post on social media for what sounded like an amazing free event about having a different relationship with money, which was run by the charitable institution College of Universal Medicine. I would have loved to go to this event, though that wasn’t possible as it was in Australia, but I did manage to speak to a friend who went. Now I can’t tell you what the course was about as I wasn’t there, but one thing my friend shared that she took away from it, was appreciating paying her bills. What???? I nearly fell off my seat with that. Appreciating paying my bills! I had never ever considered this in my life.

I have been someone who is like, “Oh no, here’s another bill come in.” Someone who dreads paying bills. Never ever have I once considered appreciating what paying a bill offers me. Continue reading “Appreciating Paying the Bills” →

Soul Train

For many years I had frequent dreams about trains. In fact, they were more like nightmares. I would often dream of catching the wrong train and going in the wrong direction, or missing the train and watching it pull out of the station, or I would be standing on the wrong platform and see my train on a different platform. Often I would be trying to get through the ticket barrier with no success while watching the train disappear. If I ever had a dream that I was actually on the train, I would often be on it without a ticket, or without a seat, or facing backwards and feeling like I wasn’t getting anywhere. Continue reading “Soul Train” →

Relationship Advice

For all the relationship advice I have received over the years, I can safely say that little of it served me well; if anything it contributed only to the fact that I stayed in relationships that I really ought to have ended long before I did. In fact some of them I never should have started!

I do recall my mother’s not-so-sage advice when I was embarking on my first serious relationship where she said, “try living with three different men before you decide to marry as you don’t really know someone until you live with them!” Even when she told me that something in me thought, “But what if I decide it should have been the first or second one and l’ve already moved on!” Continue reading “Relationship Advice” →

The Magic of the Mundane – Appreciation is the Key

In our world, it is common for us to appreciate almost exclusively the ‘big ticket’ items in life – the new job, house or car, the unanticipated windfall, the volunteers who help out in a disaster, the player who scores the winning goal for the team. It is, in my experience at least, rare for us to appreciate what we deem as insignificant or mundane events like enjoying a lovely meal or just a cup of herbal tea, for example. Such moments are relegated to the status of being merely incidental and instrumental in our pursuit of the big-ticket items.

Even rarer is it for us to appreciate qualities, those of others and ourselves, the exceptions involving social rituals like death, marriage, and graduation. Rather, our focus tends to be more on achievements and material acquisitions. Continue reading “The Magic of the Mundane – Appreciation is the Key” →