Toe in the Pool

Angkor Wat main temple, Cambodia

"In times of great change, it is important to dance through dynamic developments with one eye on your guiding light and steady thoughts of realistic expectation."

When I wrote those words, I was in the midst of a contract negotiation for something I really wanted to do. But I also remained very cognizant through the process that I can no longer compromise, accept conditions or cajole myself into agreeing with anything just to get something.

I am very glad now that I have learned to separate my mind from my emotions at least once a day. That I am mindful enough to notice when my body is telling me that my emotions and thoughts are creating stress. That I remembered to breathe.

Egret, Celestun, Mexico

I find myself in the same place I was last fall when I pulled the plug. It seems putting the plug back in is just as hectic. Maybe even more so because there are key components out of your hands.

My mind organized resettling in these steps – find a job, get approved for a mortgage, find a home, move in and get my stuff out of storage, realize I sold my life last fall and GO SHOPPING!

I can’t wait until I get to that last step! I’m looking forward to creating a nest this fall and curling up in it with Jack the cat. I’m looking forward to visits from friends, dinners with family and satisfying work. It’s just possible I landed the perfect job for me.

I’m thankful to be finished step one. The job hunting experience is a very demanding and unsettling exercise. There doesn’t appear to be a standard procedure and employers are totally rude in this process. It amazed me that ignoring people has become part of acceptable practice through the hiring process.

I expected companies that didn’t want to interview me to ignore me. I did not expect people who interviewed me to then behave as though I no longer exist. Does courtesy not extend to a rejection email? I find it unlikely that these organizations interviewed double-digit numbers and simply don’t have time to let everyone know, “It’s not you.”

Goose in Richmond, BC or me
living on the sidewalk becasue I can't get a mortgage.

Now it’s “Can I have a mortgage please?” Sheesh! I must say it’s hard to put that out there without a little trepidation. “Could you please throw some chains around my neck and make me work like a dog to keep you happy? Mr. Bankman please?” Hmm hearing Woody Guthrie in my head.

Shopping for a house is a different matter. I’m looking forward to seeing different houses in different neighborhoods. It might take some time, but I’ll find something eventually. Looking on line is fun, but here’s some tips for anyone thinking about selling a house.

Path by Bow River, Calgary, AB

Paint those rooms you decided to do in bruise purple, bloodshot eye pink and hold your breath blue. Put some friggen legs on the beds eh? Pick up the junk off the floor before you take photos to post on MLS listings. I don’t care how pretty your dining room table looks with fresh flowers on it, I’m not buying the table and you forgot to step back far enough for me to see the room.

So, new phase to my adventure. Here’s hoping I can find Jack and me a cozy little home to settle into for the winter. I expect visitors!

Rivers of Rain

It’s a rainy June in Calgary. For many years, I lived out in Rockyford counting my blessings that I wasn’t living under the rain cloud that settles over Calgary most Junes.

Now here I am living in it and I find it fascinating. Perhaps all those years of living in a place where rain is odd has given me a new perspective on it.

Now when it rains hard, I go watch. Last night I actually got out of bed and went to stand outside and just watch and listen.

I find my mind flying off on flights of fancy listening to the rain and watching it run downhill in tiny white capped rivers along the curbs. I imagine the sight of the Bow River as it swells within its banks and say a silent prayer for people living too close to find the rising water fascinating.

I think about the ducklings I photographed last week and hope they are out of harm’s way. Rivers are very powerful and, at the moment, the Bow is raging like teenage hormones. You can get in the way if you like, but I’ll just wait until it calms down before I get too close again.

One slip and a person would become a statistic.

Check this out...

Community Challenged

There is an age old debate in our society about wealth sharing that goes something like this.

One side: I worked hard for what I have and see no reason to share with someone who has not worked as hard and therefore doesn’t have as much wealth as I do. *This side doesn’t talk much about inherited riches.

Another side: There are people within our society that, through no fault of their own, have not had the opportunity to get rich. (Read Outliers by Malcolm Galdwell)  In the spirit of community caring, we offer to take care of these folks.

Kayak community enjoying the Bow River together.

Down through time, humans survived by building and caring for a community. We do this for the selfish reason that it is necessary for our own survival. For millennia, shunning was a death sentence.

Imagine a caveman hunter that excels in bringing home the kill. He is loved and looked up to in his community. He is valuable and everyone knows it. Then one day on the hunt, he gets injured and cannot hunt for a time or for all time. He and the community survive because he is only the best hunter, not the only hunter and immediately there is a new best hunter.

I can see everyone nodding at this. Yes, you say, it is right and fair that the community supports the injured hunter. But why is that right and it is not right that the community help others?

Thai women work in community to accomplish a large task.

We humans are terribly fickle. We marginalize members of our society for all kinds of reasons. We create reasons why a person is not worth supporting that range from lack of intelligence to lack of motivation and we make these calls on superficial information and hearsay.

What I believe the majority forget is that the more people we marginalize, the more we limit our community’s ability to thrive. We relegate people to the bottom rungs of society without giving them a chance to climb higher. Ask yourself how often you take the measure of a person just by looking at them.

On the one hand, we expend massive efforts to make sure every baby born lives to fulfill its human potential. Then we pull away when that potential shows itself to be a need for life-long assistance. Now this individual is not a baby that deserves our money, time, hope and faith, but an adult that doesn’t cut the mustard in our dog eat dog society and should be cut off to fend for itself. We throw tax dollars into social programs like coins into a fountain wishing that the pennies would turn into riches.

Cambodian men gather on the river bank.

Well, no that’s not right you say. We don’t do that. Umm, yes we do; all the time.

Even children born hale and hearty only get our support for so long. We have normalized abandoning our our children if they don’t conform to a certain life path by set deadlines.
Not going to finish high school? Get out, get a job and learn what life is really like. Going to university? Okay, we’ll pay for that if we can, but then you have to get out, get a job and learn what life is really like.

A different, but equally vital community.

So, finish high school, go to university, get a job, get married, have kids, save for retirement, retire and die. That is the path, there is no other. Oh, don’t forget to follow your passion somewhere in there.
Whew! Almost forgot the passion part.

We put limits on what a person can do/be by creating boxes to tick, papers to get and ways to fit in. Then we don’t acknowledge how this challenges the community’s ability to thrive.

Yet, our history is ripe with examples of people who ditched the boxes, ignored the papers, didn’t fit in and were the greatest minds of their time. These are the people that moved our society forward in leaps while all the paper-holding,  box –tickers plodded along barely noticing the changes taking place around them until they became the marginalized by some new world order.

It is irrational this society we’ve created where the best hunter (aka rich guy) refuses to share with his community because they didn’t work as hard as he did. We have become selfish, short-sighted Lone Wolves. No wonder we go nuts during full moons (yes, that’s documented). We need to howl in hopes of hearing another Lone Wolf and thereby feeling community. Because we are pack animals. Lone wolves mostly starve.

In case you haven’t heard, it takes a whole community to raise a child. I would add that it takes a whole community to allow each member to thrive and it takes each member thriving to make a whole community.

― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“It is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success. It’s the rich who get the biggest tax breaks. It’s the best students who get the best teaching and most attention. And it’s the biggest nine- and ten-year-olds who get the most (hockey) coaching and practice. Success is the result of what sociologists like to call “accumulative advantage.”

Yet another kind of vital community.

Although things can be hard....

Elephant in the Room

 

Silver Ganesh in Chaing Mai

While in Asia, I became mildly obsessed with the need to own a Ganesh statue to bring home. We left most of our shopping to our last 3 days in Bangkok; which in hindsight was not enough time. I despaired at the end that I hadn't found the Ganesh that spoke to me, but resigned myself to the fact that it was one item not coming home with me.

Our flight home began in the wee early morning, so the night before we spent packing our purchases until after midnight. With 3 of us, we packed for getting things home in one piece front of mind rather than who's stuff went in which bag.

While going through every pocket of my pack to see what I had, I found a very small brass Ganesh that I forgot I'd bought at a temple in Cambodia for $1 from a woman who looked like she needed the $1 way more than I did.

Wondola, wondola, wondola… (you have to have been there to understand what this means).

Terrace of the Elephants
Angkor Watt, Siem Reap, Cambodia

I read recently that “(Ganesh) is the Lord of success and destroyer of evils and obstacles. He is also the god of education, knowledge, wisdom and wealth,” according to About.com.

Perfect God for someone looking for work.

This morning, I went to the EnchantedForest website to choose an animal spirit to help me with my job search.

I did a similar thing last year around the subject of self-love and the forest gave me Squirrel. At the time, I thought WTF? Squirrel?
Over time though I came to understand just how perfect Squirrel was for me as a learning tool for self-love.

Today, the Enchanted Forest gave me Elephant to help with my job search. It told me, "You are a tower of strength. Your heart is full of courage and you know that you can do and be anything you care to. After all, you are the elephant."

Wall post with elephants, Chaing Mai

It goes on, but you get the picture.

Maybe because I was raised without formal religion I see no harm in taking strength from Ganesh and the Enchanted Forest website in equal parts to lift me up and set me on my way with a spring in my step. Who is to say which of these elephants will lend me the strength I need to find the work I want for now.

Two Things

Two things: environment matters and a comfortable mold will lurk for a while even after you think you’ve broken free.

Recently, I allowed myself to slip back into my comfortable mold of The Mother.

The person responsible for the efficient, socially respectable and tidy management of a home and family.

Dictator Mom at your service!

That’s the old role where I can’t afford to be warm and fuzzy because I’m too busy making sure the structure doesn’t crumble around us and allow the worst to happen.

It’s an attitude where you are convinced that life is a slippery slope and it is only by clenching that you can maintain order and survive.
I had returned to clenched. Actually, until today I hadn’t realized just how clenched I can get. I must have spent years like that in my old life!

Only when I changed environments did I see the truth of what I was doing. For me, my immediate environment has the capacity to affect my mindset. I need empty space around me.

Years ago, I read that Sagittarians need space around them so much that when they sit down at a table set for dinner, they will immediately push away the utensils, dishes etc. to make a space in front of them. I do that and, yes, I am Sagittarian.

I like empty spaces in my home, in my neighborhood and in my view.  No wonder I liked my Little House on the Prairie; it had views all the way to the sunrise.

Right now, I’m in a place of space and quiet. I can hear my spirit here. Today, I heard it tell me to chose faith and a spirit of adventure. Okay!!!

I spent a few hours today clipping branches and sawing big sticks.

I’m going to have a big, full moon fire tonight!

I may even howl!

People Are Great

So hanging out in Vancouver on a pendulum. One day I’m looking for work here. The next day I’m talking about returning to my network in Alberta.

taken from FB

I came across this term the other day – Negative Capability. The definition says – the ability to tolerate uncertainty and doubt. Clearly, I’m exercising this muscle right now. 
Of course, I’m also exercising that muscle in the people around me as I exhibit multiple personality disorder. Consider this week; each day my sister arrived home from work, I had a new plan for my future.
This particular sister is very good at handling chaos; which is very much working in her favor right now. I, on the other hand, prefer minimalism and simplicity. So this is driving me crazy and making her laugh.
This might be why today’s thought is that I love people more than anything. People are great. They are kind, generous, caring, supportive, instructional, forgiving and, if nothing else, good for a laugh.
When I stop to think about what makes my life good I can’t avoid the obvious; which is that it’s the people I know and interact with that do it… well, unless it’s interacting with an animal. Cats and dogs are people too and do some funny sh_t.

Cherry blossoms at Steveston

Here’s one 2-hour interlude to illustrate.

The other day my sister and I had time to kill. We drove around Richmond and stopped at various points of interest and here’s what made them interesting.
A small girl learning to ride a bike hollered “Hi. Hi. Hi.” She was not going to be ignored, so I turned and said hi back. Her face lit up with a big smile when I acknowledged her and she proudly rode on toward the benches. She was just as insistent about saying bye a few minutes later.
At the monument to sailors lost at sea, it is very moving to see the names of souls lost at sea, but even more moving to see the boats they take to sea moored on the other side of the park. The thought of those little boats tossed on a high sea gave me shivers.

When fishermen go out to sea.

Sitting on a bench watching the variety, energy and love in the people around us lifted my spirit. There were conversations at a sedate pace, groups running in camaraderie and support and people playing with the dogs that love them unconditionally. For me, the most poignant was a group of women that looked like 4 generations of a family out for some air on a spring evening.

Sunset at Richmond Dyke

At the north end of Richmond dyke as the sun set over the marsh planes landed at the airport full of people coming to see people.
Then we stopped by a park where white geese we resting on their annual migration. Almost an entire school yard was covered with white geese.

Geese eyeing up the neighbor's nice grass!

Here we saw a little league baseball outfielder hesitate just short of the edge of the geese then plunge in to retrieve the white ball from amid the white geese. Practice over, a few young players tried their luck running through the geese. It really didn’t seem to bother the geese much at all.
I got the feeling the geese put up with the humans every year. Such as the woman with the finely manicured lawn that tries to keep them on the school side of the street by clapping her hands. I suspect she fails because her grass looked very green on that side of the fence.

Bull Rush fluff by the sea.

A woman who pulled up in a car to walk her dog, but the little dog was too scared to get out into that sea of geese. She managed to coax him out and we watched him suddenly become the Great White Hunter or Herder to be more precise.
Through all this, it was the companionship of my sister sharing the observations and laughs that really made it so much fun. I realize many people know that it’s people that make our lives fun and meaningful, but it doesn’t hurt to remind us all of the simplest truths sometimes.