Weekly Reflections

An Oasis is a good place to pause and reflect. Each of my weeks provides ample inspiration in terms of topics; from coaching sessions, conversations with family and friends, my own reading, or one of the many podcasts I absorb when on the move. A topic will resonate with me early in the week and I get great pleasure from the iterative process of drafting, revising, polishing, and finalising each essay. Then comes the selection of a suitable photo, usually a product of yet another creative hobby of mine. I invite you take a little time out, to create your own six-minute oasis, find a comfortable chair, and read. You will hopefully find some inspiration from or a degree of identification in these Weekly Reflections. If you do, feel free to subscribe to this section. You will then receive future installments directly by email. Also, feel free to share the link among your circle of friends and associates. Finally, feedback and comments are always most welcome.

EnJOY!

Mental Fitness

Letting Go

Finally, on recognising that the illusion that `I had to do everything my self´ had been contributing to my malady, this too had to be jettisoned. This meant asking for help, not something that comes easily to me. I surrendered to the fact that I was in a trap which, though my own devices, I could not spring, and reached out for help. This I found in others who, through their own experience, knew my dilemma and had not only found a solution, but were, as an integral part of this solution, eager and ready to help the next folks…

Mental Fitness

Defeat

Good Lord, defeat! This was the last topic I wanted to address at that moment. I felt my mental fingernails as they began to graze on the scabs of long-supressed internal wounds and would have preferred to zone out, in whatever way possible. But this therapist knew me a little by now. He knew that my intellectual pride would never allow me to duck the issue, now that it had been presented…

Community

So far, so good, you might, or might not, say. But as we now all face the real existential threat of global warming, and having experienced the extensive divisive damage to our societies and the erosion of civil liberties resulting from the bungled political response to the first pandemic in a century, many of us have become more acutely aware of our interdependence, both in the human realm and, beyond that, with all of creation…

Mental Fitness

Grandiosity

The results of recovery emerge as we do the work, one day at a time; surrender, abstinence, inventory, clearing away the wreckage of the past, maintaining spiritual fitness, and service. Resentment, anger and antagonism are transformed into interest, willingness and acceptance…

Transformation

Change

Then there are those of us who find, often in mid-life, that we have painted our selves into an existential corner. Having reached this dead end, change becomes unavoidable, if we are to recover our zest for life and thrive once again…

Mental Fitness

Resourcefulness

I learned the acronym HALT: Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. A simple technique to become familiar with and to practice the basics of self-care. This proved to be only the portal to a whole new array of resources, all opening up before me and available for deployment, should I wish to use them…

Mental Fitness

Entitlement

The second envelope got me curious. There had been several items of post from Corsica since my accident there on holiday in mid-July; invoices, medical records and confirmations of payment, all of which were required in the on-going process of recouping most of my co-payments for the hospital care provided there. That professional treatment for serious spinal injuries may indeed have saved my life; it certainly safeguarded my mobility – the ability to move my arms and legs, without which life would be very different today…

Transformation

Shame

`What’s that you are drawing there Mary?´

Without pausing or even looking up, Mary replied in her usual chirpy voice:

`I’m drawing a picture of God, MIss.´

`But Mary, nobody knows what God looks like´, enjoined the teacher.

`They will in a minute´, replied the child, looking up beaming…

Health

Abeyance

It all happened in a matter of seconds. I had been greatly enjoying the great salty swell that sunny day on the west coast of Corsica, bobbing up and down between the 12 ft. waves. This requires successfully negotiating both the entry into the wild surf and, hopefully, a safe exit back onto the beach after the fun. It is all a matter of precise timing. ..

Mental Fitness

Holidays And Travel

I began to notice things that fascinated me; the insects in Charlottesville, Virginia, were, on average, much larger than their counterparts with which I was familiar. Also snakes, which legend tells us St Patrick drove out of Ireland 1500 years ago, abounded. Or when standing on the south shore of Lake Erie looking north towards Canada, trying to imagine it freezing over in winter, I was overwhelmed by the notion…

Community

Going Upstream

Imagine a village in the foothills of a major mountain range, a village where time has appeared to stand still, bisected by a river, always cool from the glacial melt, framed on each bank by snowfields in winter and bright, iridescent, buzzing meadows in summer. Life was carefree and easy in this village until a strange phenomenon arose. First, a lone body washed up on the edge of the pool right in the middle of the hamlet. The inhabitants were perplexed and shaken. This had never happened in living memory. The corpse, which could not be identified, was respectfully buried in accordance with the cultural mores and the villagers returned to their daily routines…

Men's Circles

Alexithymia

A case was described whereby a struggling client — a very successful man by all the criteria of our society; self-made millionaire, respected in the community, handsome, fit & healthy, seemingly intact family life, vibrant social network, etc. — was having difficulties in his “empty nest” marriage because he felt that his wife was not displaying sufficient willingness to have sex with him whenever he (apparently often) wanted. “Oh boy! “, I thought, “this is not new to me.” Thinking back to my VIP (Very Important Patrick) days, when I was proud of the fact that my average working week surpassed sixty hours, when, as an executive in a multi-national corporation, I racked up many hundred thousand air miles, it was clear to me that I, too, had fallen prey to the “sacrifice indulge syndrome”…

Community

Totality

In her book, Arendt notes that, by stoking tribal nationalism, any nation of people can be persuaded that it is surrounded by “a world of enemies”. This paranoid state then makes way for the ideology that states that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with and better than all others, thereby excluding the very possibility of a common family of humankind, a sisterhood and brotherhood of all humans, indeed of Creation as a divine whole. For such a ploy to succeed, the innate human sense of community (among peoples) and belonging (to the wider sphere of the natural world) needs to be smashed…

Weekly Reflections

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