word!!!

if there is one thing I know for sure about myself - it is that I love words.

I love reading them

I love writing them

I love using them and sharing them and listening to them

and I love learning new words

I have friends who process their thoughts and their challenges in peace and quiet, alone.

I have to talk through my stuff. 

as others offer words of advice or wisdom, I begin to see my issue from another perspective - which allows me clarity and solutions

I am going to buy myself a beautiful teddy bear

I am going to give it a lovely name (we will choose it together) and then that beloved bear will be my sounding board when I am not able to call someone 


hey Sounding Board Bear ...when are you arriving? I am looking forward to meeting you ...


and I am so keen to know what name we will choose ....

......

it is all about perspective

a few weeks ago, while I was showering, I had an accident. I have no idea how it happened. one minute I was doing what so many women do in the shower ...shaving my legs and oxters (look it up!) and the next minute there was blood! for some bizarre reason, my razor decided (it can decide - it is NOT an inanimate object, of that I am certain!) ...it decided to take a chunk of my ring finger nail from where it should be - and leave me with a bloody mess.

oh wow, I hear you say - after you get over that hideous cringing moment when you imagine the event - it is like that nails on a chalkboard effect ....shivers up the spine stuff.

I did not say oh wow. what I did was put pressure on my finger to staunch the flow of blood and gasped things like - omg omg omg omg, while I tried to understand what had happened - I have never worked out HOW it happened.
my daughter asked if I was okay - and I said that ultimately, I would be - but only after I stopped bleeding! she kindly stepped into the bathroom, turned off the water and wrapped me in my towel.

some weeks down the line, I am exceedingly weary of popping a plaster onto my finger a few times a day. seriously - it is tedious! my finger longs for freedom! it will take another week or ten days and I will be back to normal. okay - my finger will be back to normal. I never will be. it is a long time since I was what i once considered to be normal

during this time I went to visit a friend. she was very ill last year - and to cut a long story extremely short, suffice to say that she has had both lower legs amputated and her left arm is amputated below the elbow. the right hand has a thumb, and somewhat shortened fingers. it is horrid, what has happened to her. she has to start life all over again - learning to walk and write and feed herself and brush her hair - all with artificial limbs and prostheses.

so it seemed a little odd that when she asked how I am , that I wanted to share how irritated I am by this finger drama! and I shared with her how silly and insignificant it is in the greater scheme of things. how could I, an able-bodied person with no limitations, complain to HER about a fingernail????

and that is when she said - if the roles were reversed, she would be saying the same thing! and that she fully understand why I would feel inconvenienced.

it is all about our perspective and circumstances. being able to do what I like, when I like, is the perspective from which I view things.

when she looks at things, her frame of reference is now far different from mine.

neither perspective is wrong nor right - it just IS!

I will remember that as best I can ...that how I view (and sometimes, judge) things -  may look different from another perspective

and perhaps, I will be a better person for having had this moment of understanding

I live in hope

.....

perspective

There is something about aerial shots that I thoroughly enjoy.

Even more enjoyable though, is the opportunity for me to be the photographer!

Some years ago, I bought myself a diary that had an aerial shot for each week. All the images were shot in this country , and we have such a range of different terrains that it was never repetitive.

I used to imagine that I had either been a bird in another lifetime, or was meant to fly a lot in this one. Who knows what the truth of the matter is, anyway? And who would care, other than me?

There is not as much opportunity as I would like for me to take aerial shots - it involves aeroplanes, and they really don't come cheaply.

This particular shot was taken from my amphibious plane in Sydney, Australia. I say my plane, because for 30 minutes, I owned the plane - along with a young Irish couple. That may be stretching the reality a bit much, but the young couple and I really enjoyed the fantasy of being wealthy movie stars who did this kind of thing regularly!

There is something magical about being aloft, up there with the birds and the clouds. And looking down at ant-sized people. And teeny tiny skyscrapers. And pocket handkerchief farms.

I have come to understand why it is that I love the shots from the air. It is the perspective one gets from up there. So completely different from what we see at ground level. Still looking at the same thing, but having to make adjustments to accommodate the different view. Having to shift from preconceived notions of what we think we should see - it just never looks quite like I imagined.

This different vantage point reminds me of the ability I have to see things from many sides. What may seem like an enormous building to some, is merely a speck from the sky. And yet the building remains the same. All the time. Big to some. Little to others.

Many years ago, when South Africa was in the midst of all it's troubled times, I flew across the country to visit family. And as I looked down on the land below me, the beautiful mountains, the semi-desert, the green pastures and tiny villages, it was hard to imagine that on the ground there was such division and anger and separation. Tears welled up in my eyes as I came to realise that separation is an illusion. We are all one.

We are all one - with strengths and weaknesses. Wealth and poverty. Heath and disease. We perform a dance that weaves all the possible computations throughout humanity. So much suffering. So much joy. Lots of beauty. Lots of pain. No matter our differences, we are all one. We are, because we are.

Ubuntu. Loosely translated, it means that a person is a person, because of other people. We are who we are, because of those around us. The good, the bad and the ugly - all parts of the glorious mass of humans.

And we can choose to see each other from one perspective. Or from many perspectives. Because for as many people there are on the planet, there are that many different perspectives on issues. Each one of us has our unique perspective. There is no right or wrong. It all just IS.

Who would want it any other way?