Max Winchester Visits Bethlehem

Max hadn’t intended to visit Bethlehem. The truth is, geography never has been his strong point, and satellite technology isn’t either. When the word ‘Stable’ had come up on his TomTom, he’s assumed that it meant something completely different. He’d hit the ‘Go’ button – with a degree of his normal trepidation – and driven off into the night. Mrs Winchester, knowing the limits of her beloved husband’s technological skills, and aware that he’d left his trusty AA map at home, went to bed a little worried. In the morning, when his side of the bed had remained unslept in, she phoned the police.

No, they hadn’t had any reports of accidents, but thanked her for leaving her details. She heard the Community Support Officer on the other end of the phone snigger as she mentioned his satnav skills. As Mrs W. returned the old phone to its rest, she noticed his mobile on the chair. The battery was flat. Her faith in angelic beings looking after her beloved husband of forty years would be tested over the next few days – and it was. She slept not a wink that night, lying in bed imagining the worst. Or even worse.

If she had only checked with his credit card company in the ensuing week she would have found a series of petrol purchases across Germany, Austria, Croatia and Greece. (Greece was worrying.) And a huge cash withdrawal at Athens. Little did she know that as she lay in bed on the fourth night, their little Ford Fiesta was on board a ferry in the Med, headed for Haifa.

Max Winchester arrived at Haifa and continued to follow TomTom diligently. The man at the border had asked him for his passport, and he was relieved to realise he had on the same jacket he’d been wearing when they’d done their last international trip – Newhaven to Dieppe in the summer. The passport was in his inside pocket. What a stroke of luck! He still remained a little confused about how he had managed to travel so far when he’d only planned to go Christmas shopping at Bluewater. The Med had indeed appeared to be the only blue water he had been in close contact with since he’d left home. However, during his drive through Albania he had noticed a particularly bright star in the night sky. He’d found it strangely comforting – not least in the absence of Mrs W’s reassuring night-time warmth that he had snuggled up to for so many years. This shopping trip had not been quite what he’d imagined, and he knew there was no way he could do anything other than follow the satnav. He’d be lost without it.

He drove out of Haifa with his spirits high, and it was one in the morning when, having had a bit of a kip in the back seat, he checked the satnav again. Only ten miles to go!

The next city looked very unattractive. “Unemployment high here” he told himself as he surveyed the unkempt streets with their high walls covered with graffiti. Very down market. Poor. Not a very safe place to stay. He kept an eye open for a place where he could get a room for what was left of the night – with secure parking. Mrs W. would be very disappointed if he came home without the car.

So it was that a few minutes later a little inn attracted his attention, and he pulled over. This place really was the pits. The gum-chewing girl on reception was chatting up a bunch of locals who smelt of, well, the countryside, and through a doorway he could see there was clearly a lot of activity going on under the light in an old stable. He could hear a girl crying in distress. What on earth…

Max never forgot that out-of-this-world moment. It wasn’t the teenager giving birth, or the scruffiness of it all. It was as if a shaft of burning light like lightning pierced his heart on that December night.

And back in her warm bed, Mrs W. switched off the light, closed her eyes and slept like a baby.

The Big Trip. Week Two: The Significance of Insignificance

The ferry docked in Tallinn, I filled up with fuel and headed into town to find some accommodation. A young English-speaking businessman pointed me in the direction of a ‘value’ hotel. Just for the record, it is easy to misunderstand the no-entry signs in Estonia. I went down several roads the wrong way and found myself in pedestrian-only streets. No one seemed to care.

Whenever I’m out on a trip I deliberately make myself available – even vulnerable – not just to the rewarding opportunities and interactions with the people and the places, but to my own inner heart and mind. I’m a firm believer in a God who is not just ‘out there’ but also ‘in here’, so I listen naively (or wisely, depending on your own perspective) to the thoughts I’m having.
Enjoying a warm shower and washing my clothes in the back-street ‘€16 Hostel‘ in Tallinn where I’d booked a night at the cheapest rate (of €38!), and wandering round the cobbled streets of this typically ‘Central European’ old town, chatting to the waiters and waitresses, the leaflet distributors and the students I mused on the phrase that had first made its gentle presence felt in Finland:

“The significance of insignificance”

It seemed a very weak phrase to base my thinking on for this trip, so I logged it, and thought some more. “The significance of insignificance.” You’ve got to be joking. Insignificance by its very definition cannot be significant. More thought required.
Yet this phrase would not be so easily dismissed. Like many life-changing thoughts, it would not be denied. It demanded my serious attention – and may infiltrate into your thoughts too as you read this, so beware! The significance of insignificance.

Here I was a tiny speck of humanity on the earth. A grain of sand on the beach. A single traveller exploring the world. a two-metre bike on a 230 miles-a-day journey. So insignificant. Yet, as I mused, I realised I had missed a trick. Each grain of sand is not ON the beach, it IS the beach. If I were to remove each grain of sand from the earth on the basis of it being insignificant, there would be no earth, for the earth is made up of such tiny insignificances. The grain of sand of itself may be removed with little apparent effect, but the surrounding grains would notice, and were I to get into the habit of declaring each grain insignificant and removing it, I would be wreaking a destruction of very significant proportions, one grain at a time.

With that thought in mind I went to bed, and woke to a new day. My first in the Baltic States and back in mainland Europe. I loaded the bike and left Tallinn, heading due south, determined to find a beach and paddle in the Bay of Riga. I hadn’t gone ten metres before a van tooted at me. I turned to see that I had left both panniers outside the hotel by mistake. It would have been a long way back.
Riding out of town I headed due south towards my ‘farthest point’ destination a thousand or so miles away – the Black Sea. The thought of seeing with my own eyes this huge ‘inland’ sea mattered to me. But when I’m riding I can easily be so focussed on my destination that I miss the pleasure of what is immediately in my view, so I drew my attention in to the more immediate: the long roads through forest and agricultural land.

The road I’d chose took me near the coast of Estonia and on into Latvia as I’d decided a paddle in the Gulf of Riga was called for. I’m not a swimmer (though I can swim a short distance) but I love paddling, strolling for miles along the shore with the sea lapping over my bare feet. Brilliant. And on the way… perfect, a ‘service area’. Well, a little hut with a couple of tables on a veranda planted to the side of a rough pull-in from the road. Perfect. I parked my bike so it could be clearly seen from the road, and ordered a coffee and burger. At least the coffee tasted good.

And then the sound of a slowing fellow motorcycle traveller. I love these chance meetings. He had seen my bike and wanted some company. We chatted freely and decided to find a beach.
I remember a solo traveller telling me one day that, when you travel with a friend, you have a friend. When you travel alone, all the world is your friend. So here was a new friend, and we shared our lives for a morning. Great. We also found the beach, just off the A1 near Saulkrasti, brewed up filter coffee in my ‘kitchen’ sunbathed for an hour and finally got on our respective ways.

Riding through the Baltic States in August is a bit like riding through the UK countryside in the 1960s. Hardworking farmers doing their best to bring in the crops. The occasional horse and cart. Tended wooden homesteads, with logs dumped in the front gardens awaiting storage for the winter. Old tractors pulling old farm equipment, little old combine harvesters with no cabs or air conditioning. The people too concerned about this week’s grocery budget to be distracted by the West’s fixation with pollution.

I thought up a dubious joke as I rode along the comparatively narrow roads: Where does UK farming equipment go when it dies? To Latvia and Lithuania,it seems. (I was later to decide that if it is really naughty it probably goes to Romania.) I took many photos of this stretch of the road, touched by the leftovers of a shattered communism-based economy – rusting deserted factories, cold characterless buildings, old 80′s cars, poverty breathing its chill breath over the village communities – but I lost my camera in Bulgaria, so you only get secondhand ones on this part of the blog.

Yet each one of the people I met in these central european countries (they hate to be called Eastern Europe) matters to the people they feed – their families and other loved ones. And I mattered to them too. My ‘insignificant’ custom of food, fuel, bottles of water, and the occasional ice-cream was a part of their essential income.

I loved the entrepreneurial spirit that was around me too. Some of these people had become very successful. No 80′s cars for them. New Skoda Octavias and posh 4x4s would occasionally whip past me as I journeyed on.

The significance of insignificance.

The Big Trip: Week One

So here I am in Sweden.  I left on Monday and it is now Wednesday.  I have ridden over a thousand miles in seven countries so far. I popped in to a BMW dealer on my way through Germany to check an odd noise on the bike, but he said it was ok. I’m now just 100 or so miles outside Stockholm at Timmen-nabben, just about to splash out on a tantalising fish dish, and am looking forward to it.

My first night camping was in Germany, close to Puttegarden, in a farmer’s garden (650 miles) and then another 320 miles yesterday. I saw a farmer in a field turning hay, and rode over to him. He was great, we chatted and he came over for a drink and an hour’s chat last night.  

Today I want to get near the ferry, so I can spend the morning in Stockholm and head out in the afternoon. Turku – it was once the capital of Finland, and is, By all accounts, a beautiful city. We’ll see. 

One treat today has been the four mile bridge to Öland. I love bridges, so the more I go across the better!  Three great one’s so far. 

I love Sweden too, the large spaces, the way the flatter landscape hides the houses in the trees, the painted farms, and the quality of everything. I love the way the drivers pull over to let motorbikes through on the roads. This is high summer and yet there is little traffic – though Lars the farmer said he thought the roads were very busy!

It is highly therapeutic to be out on the road, watching the countryside go by. Such rich colours, and peace. The sun is very hot, it is 27 degrees today, yet it is not oppressive. A cool breeze off the sea makes it idyllic. Gorgeous. 

I have met lots of bikers, some in groups, some couples, few like me. It is a real fraternity, with everyone acknowledging each other on the road with a wave. Always a few odd ones, though some would say we all are!

Time for coffee and then on my way again. 

3rd August. 2011
I came up through Kalmar, (well, visited it.  All these little coastal towns are off the main Stockholm route, the E20 by about 10 km.) a lovely waterside town with a posh harbour on the side of which I rested and slept and read. A big waterspout hosing up from the sea gave atmosphere, along with the local market stalls.
On my hunt for the perfect spot, I set up camp on another farmer’s front lawn. Cherry and apple trees abound. The sun is as hot as ever, with ‘big sky’ all around.  Brilliant. An old man has invited me in for coffee in one of the nearby houses. All the buildings round hear seem to me coated in red cedar paint and look beautiful, prettied up and the gardens trimmed.
Ingmar and Barbara are lovely and have invited me for breakfast in the morning. Although the lady whose garden I’m camped on is a bit suspicious, it is because they get a lot of hawkers round here, just off the road.
After lots of laughs and fun as we struggle for language, them remembering English and me finding ways to explain as simply as possible,  and getting both wrong, I go to bed.

4th August.
Breakfast.  Home made bread, two fried eggs and a sliced tomato, fruit juice,  strong coffee and friendship. More hilarity as we tease and play.  These folk are around 80 and full of joy.  Wonderful people.  I packed up my things and got on my way with a friendly toot of the horn.

Stockholm was ok, but a bit of a disappointment.  Although it is pretty with lots of grass and walking areas, and plenty of space, it still has that sense of constant disturbance, the restlessness of the city. I love the calm of countryside, the gentle landscape.  It soothes me. The city jarred me. It is of course a place for commerce and sales and I am happy for that.

I spent an hour or so in the museum looking round the exhibits.  It was an excellent overview of the Swedish culture.  It had a special pesentation of the Sampni(?) tribe in the north of Sweden and a self-castigation of the way the people were treated – measured, examined as animals.  Like the American Indians and Inuits, they were pushed out of their lands and persecuted.  

I left Stockholm after a few hours and headed for the port of Kapellskār further up the coast, having typed Turku, Finland, into my satnav. I met two Germans who I chatted to re 10/10 and coached. They were riding Heinkel Tourist scooters to Nordcap, which you can get to from Finland. Lunch was two sausages and chips.  I was tempted by a sauna but the place looked a bit seedy and I only had a credit card. 

Arriving at the port it became clear that the ferry was full, and that if I went in the morning I would pay £50 less with no berth and two free meals! I love ferries generally, so I put the tent up right outside the customs building and settled for the night.

I  discovered my iPhone App  was accepted today! Brilliant. (type Powerchange into the App Store search) One more step on the road to helping people find their true worth and support them as they enjoy and make their contribution to the world community.  

5th August 2011.

Today is our wedding anniversary, with Sue and I married 39 years.  I was up at 4.30am to be first in line for any tickets to the ferry. Having waited for 3 hours the ferry terminal’s computer terminals packed up!  Eventually i paid and was welcomed aboard.
I made friends with a lovely Finnish family with six children, and we talked for half the trip.  My celebratory ‘wedding feast’ smorgasbord was scrumptious (two meals are included in the ferry price) salmon steak, yummy curried sauce and fruit dessert, with cheese and biscuits to follow. Coffee, juice, all ad lib. Great.
I arrived in Finland, and booked into a campsite (€20 for a patch of grass and a shower!), did my washing and heard a dreadful noise from the sky as I was pegging out the washing on the bike.  An emergency helicopter landed 50 metres away on a car park to treat a fellow camper.
Finished my book , had a long chat with Sue on the phone ( it is a local call to me from the uk!) and  slept like a log.

6th August.
Awoke at 9.30 to the patter of rain on the tent and rushed out – just dressed enough to be decent – to rescue the now dry washing!  Back to recover from the shock and eventually left the site at about 11am. 

The treat of the day has been a wonderful little cafe on the motorway E18. The sweetest little motorway café ever, with coffee refills, a tiny breakfast bar and a kind older lady efficiently running the show. So special.  These people are a gift from God to the world.
Arrived through the endless rain in Helsinki and asked a couple of girls about the best place to visit – the Market.
I like Helsinki. Walking up and down the Esplanade was entertaining, not least the site of a woman having a reikki foot massage, lying on a table wrapped in polythene sheeting against the falling rain, another woman holding an umbrella over her head, and the therapist massaging her feet!  I took a photo.
Helsinki  has a lot of atmosphere. I liked it more than Stockholm, though I may not have given either of them a chance to show me their best as I whistle-stopped through.   I loved the market too, not huge but fun. And early supper was a reindeer meatball for a euro…  
I finally found the ferry by putting “Tallinn, Estonia” in my satnav, bought an expensive €61 ticket for the bike and me, and  boarded forthwith.
I wonder what Tallinn has in store? Estonia is an up and coming place, making a lot of effort to be thoroughly European. I’ll know in and hour or so.

As the ferry crosses the Baltic Sea, the last little islands of Scandinavia recede to the horizon and turn to grey.  Time for a coffee and there is wifi aboard, hence this blog upload! (This coffee was strong, double-creamy, and perfect. I bought a dark chocolate Toblerone to accompany it!)
The bike is out of fuel, so I’ll need to get some ASAP when we dock.

More later. Pics will follow eventually!

For the want of 5p

Today I went into the Body Shop in Chichester for some shaving cream. It was to cost £8.00 – not a small amount for a pot of creamy paste, but I’d enjoyed The last one I used and liked it. Last time it cost £5.99. The assistant instantly offered me a ‘free’ £4 ‘gift’ if I spent another £8. I didn’t want the gift or the extra expenditure. At the till I dipped into my pocket and found I had £7.95.

The assistant held her hand open and waited. I didn’t have the additional 5p and eventually found another way to pay. The assistant pointed out that they would ‘give’ me another £10 off if I spent a further £25 in the next two weeks. But I had needed 5 pence worth of grace 30 seconds ago and it wasn’t forthcoming. I left the shop, walked down the street and decided I didn’t want the thought of using a cream provided by a company that needed that 5p so badly so I returned to the shop and got my money back. The Body Shop? I won’t be shopping there for a while.

Compare that with next shop I went into: Rohan, also in Chichester. The manager phoned one branch after another to try and get me a raincoat the colour I wanted in my size – sadly to no avail – AND offered me a further 10% off if he could get one! It took him 20 minutes. Sadly the blue raincoat I’d waited to get in the sale is no more. I’ll have to wait for the next production run – or something. Needless to say, I buy Rohan products because they are committed to me, not mean.

Five pence. The credit card transaction costs more than that!

I’m sending an email to customer services of both Rohan and the Body Shop to see what they have to say about today, and I’ll let you know what happens. In today’s competitive world no one can afford to lose a customer for the cost of 5p.
Or maybe they can? I wonder if L’Oreal would regard me as ‘worth it’?

Update:22.7.11. Two things happened today. Brian at the Chichester Rohan shop phoned me. They have found a blue raincoat in my size and will be delighted to give me a further 15% (not 10%) off. It is the last one for sale in the country. Well done Brian. And Rohan head office replied to my invitation to view the site. They had, and wanted me to say which store so they could personally credit the staff with my appreciation. I told them and have updated this site. They also apologised for not being able to get me what I wanted on this occasion. (Now they have of course.)

Self-control and priorities

It is a big deal.  Here are three Top Tips from me  -  and read them ALL not just the first one.  They are all fresh and ready for human consumption.

1. Control is a Verb not a Noun.

Self control is something you DO.  It is not something you HAVE.  It is an action, or maybe a non-action. You can’t keep self control in a cupboard and look at it every now and then. You may HAVE driving skills (or talking or eating skills!) but that is not at all the same as driving (and talking or eating). Self control is something you can do whenever you like, outside the realms of torture, a straight jacket, or someone holding a gun to your temple, of course. All of us can control ourselves, give or take.  You can raise your hands or your voice. Both are actions. In the same way NOT  raising your hands or your voice, or food to your mouth is the ABSENCE of an action a deliberate non-action. And NOT acting, doing nothing as an active choice, has consequences too. You decide.

Self control involves the process of putting your desires and longings into some sort of priority and deciding what outcomes you want the most, and acting towards those, and NOT other things.  I recently had a payout for a motorcycle injury and had to decide what my priorities were. It was a big (for me) chunk of money and I had to decide what my priorities were. I acted towards my priorities and phoned Santander to pay off my mortgage instead of Michael Hold to buy that Airstream Bambi! I still want one, but I had another priority. By the way, priority choices usually mean boundary choices. That’s what self-control is all about – living within chosen boundaries.  I can’t spend my money on clearing the mortgage AND get the Bambi right now (it wasn’t that much) though I guess there probably would be a way to do so!

You may want a quiet evening reading a book more than you want a stimulating conversation, so you switch off the phone and sit down with the book and a drink. You may want a fit body more than you want a flabby (or even average) body, so you go to the gym instead the chip-shop. It isn’t rocket science, and doesn’t need a gastric band – or a Bambi parking space.

2. Actions bring consequences.

ALL actions bring consequences – something that won’t happen otherwise. It is not possible to act without your actions resulting in outcomes.  Actions are a deliberate operation into the environment and will change it. It is simple: Act towards your goals and they get nearer. Gallop towards them and they get nearer. Saunter casually towards them and they get nearer. Crawl towards them and they get nearer, though much slower.  The outcome of acting towards what you want is that you get closer to what you want until, all things being equal, you arrive at it!

3. You’re free to choose. 

So what are you not controlling right now? What little contorted conversations do you have with yourself to explain how it is not your fault, there is nothing you can do and another person is to blame? Yes there are all sorts of different pressures on us, seeking to persuade you and me to hand over the control of our minds and bodies to another person. (It usually results in money coming out of our bank account and going into someone else’s) but it is worth remembering that those people have no more power than you – and much less power over you than you have. You really are free to choose. No need to surrender or fight. Just fill your screen (or your thinking) with what is important to you. What you want to be like as a person. What you want in your life. How you want to be in old age.

Then act towards it.

In the interests of self control I’m going to resist the temptation to write another paragraph and STOP.

Except to say … (tempting, isn’t it?)

Driving through a red light?

Here’s an interesting story for you!

Last Wednesday I drove through a red light on the outskirts of Storrington, here in West Sussex.  It was at a road works, and the lights had locked onto red in both directions and were not changing. A two mile traffic jam resulted.

When would YOU go past a red light?

Once I had understood the situation, I turned my bike around and rode back to the lights, parked the bike and proceeded to direct traffic, like the good citizen I am. Within half an hour or so, with my encouragement, 200 or more other people had done the same and the rush-hour traffic jam was no more. It was perfectly possible to see past the road works (the works themselves were only the size of a large car with the two light masts set 3 metres apart from each other!) so there was no need for the lights, and as the nervous lady Community Support Officer turned on her heels I told her that I would be turning the broken lights sideways so traffic could flow again without me.

However: how is it that the CSO would not help the hundreds of stuck motorists but dismissed the problem with a wave of her hand?

Here is the conversation:

Her: “Excuse me sir, you can’t do that (me waving traffic through in turn, with drivers in both directions thanking me as they go past).”

Me: “Isn’t this what YOU are supposed to be doing?”

Her: “I’m not allowed to.”

Me: “But there are hundreds of motorists trying to get home.  Everwhere in Storrington (a mile away) is blocked solid because of this broken system”

Her: “Yes I know. I saw the queue when I was in Tescos(!). It happens. I’ve phoned the traffic light company and the police. They could be another two hours.”

Me: “Well, it seems I’m not so restricted in what I can do to help these people as you are.  I’ll continue to do this until the queues go, then we can turn the lights round so they face sideways. Then people will drive past without a problem.”

Her: “I can’t advise that. I’m not allowed to touch the lights. It is up to you.  I’m just going to walk back to my Land Rover.”

And she walked away.  And I cleared the traffic queues, made the necessary adjustments on my own, and everyone used their common sense and drove in turn past the parked-car sized obstruction without the slightest problem.

Yes, hundreds of drivers drove through a red light on Wednesday, including a fireman in his red car. I saw them. A few stopped, and pointed at the red light. I merely beckoned them on more ‘forcefully’ and they started again and drove on. And I wasn’t even wearing a yellow jacket.

Human beings are all too susceptible to mindless obedience. The Milgram Experiments and many like them have demonstrated that all too clearly. Robert Cialdini in his excellent book, Influence, describes the nature of social obedience.

And the moral to this story?

You decide, and write your comments below.

Time.

I’m sitting in the showroom of ChandlersBMW of Brighton, waiting. My legendary 1200GS motorbike needs a little attention. (For the techies, its a steering head bearing.) It will take an hour according to Phil Banks, Chandler’s outstanding workshop manager. He is brilliant, a walking encyclopaedia.
But this blog isn’t about Phil. Its about Time.

Emmet, without helmet, leading a brilliant ride through the Brecon Beacons.

Will the time I spend waiting in reception pass slowly or quickly?

It depends on what I’m doing and how much I’m enjoying it. If I’m enjoying the wait, … oops, there we go. (The bike is done and the time went far too quickly for me to complete this blog. I’ll stay a while, get another coffee and finish it.)

Emmet Reidy, Chandlers excellent Motorrad Manager, has just come over and is asking me about time. He has to work at “time management” he says, and then lists the unpredictability of each day as the reason for his planning challenges. I laugh, and explain it is to do with how he perceives time, and nothing to do with all the interruptions he cites.

Emmet tends to process time as if he is on the inside of it, a bit like a hamster in one of those exercise balls rolling round the room. He is living in the moment, and is surprised by interruptions that he bumps into as he lives out his day. Classic ‘Inside Time’ processing. Life is an adventure for the hampster (and for Emmet!) When you’re in the moment, as Forrest Gump‘s mother always told him “life is like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you’re going to get.” Emmet’s immediate enthusiasm and spark will really ‘work’ for the GS riders like me who love a bit of adventure.

Phil is different from Emmet. He prefers to see time from outside – and runs the workshop accordingly! It’s great – efficient, predictable and thorough. As if he is watching himself from outside the hamster ball, about to roll down a step, he likes everything done very precisely. He sees what he thinks is the ‘future’ coming, and adjusts for it, preparing for those events that surprise Emmet. Phil tends towards ‘Outside Time’ processing. Phil will value safety. Emmet is likely to take some risk – though preferably on a bike that Phil has made sure is safe!

Flexibility – you can have both

The Powerchange GOLD Coach training – famous throughout the world (I wish!) for it’s amazing power, depth and breadth – focused on Time in our training last month. We showed the coaches how to move from Inside to Outside Time processing and back. The flexibility is great. We can enjoy the moment AND prepare for what lies ahead. We can also take a new perspective on the past – and change how we feel about it.

But is it that easy?

Each of us has developed our preferred default position for our own reason. It makes us feel good – either because we get a buzz out of surprises, or because we like the feeling of being prepared, being able to look forward to a good time. Or maybe some other reason. Moving from our default preference can be thought of as a not-so-good choice.

Time is odd. The past no longer exists, the future hasn’t arrived, and that leaves THIS moment. Now. As you read this. Do you prefer to be in the moment, or prefer to live life a little more detached? Are you an Emmet or a Phil?

Emmet may have more difficulty remembering and planning. He’ll need to reference a diary more often. Phil, on the other hand, may find the normal unpredictability of life less exciting than Emmet, and is likely to look forward to future events  and past good times with what he will regard as due caution. He is unlikely to get such an amazing emotional ‘high’ as Emmet. He will avoid the ‘lows’ too. Life will seem safer, and perhaps less interesting.

Human beings start life ‘inside time’. A baby has no understanding of hours days, past or future.  That concept is developing at a massive rate through childhood and into adolescence. However, by the time we’ve reached adulthood we will have experienced all sorts of traumas, some very minor, others highly significant, and know what it is like to wait in a queue and rush for an appointment. Those traumas affect our learning about time. Pain and pleasure affect the memories we have, ‘tagging’ them. If there are a lot of tags that are unpleasant (just one major one can do it) we will be much more cautious about ‘living in the moment’ as Inside Time people tend to, and want to take a more stepped back, Outside Time position. It gives us time to process and consider.  The upside is that we will be better prepared to handle/withstand negative experiences. The down side is we are unlikely to enjoy the pleasurable moments so much.

How do you process time?  If you’re after more flexibility, get in touch.

The Phantom Box

We went for a walk on Thursday, my friend and I.  Not the Kind Stranger, you’ll be interested to know – though he was probably somewhere around too, but a friend I’ve known for about thirty years.  My friend is a highly skilled trainer.

The South Downs at Amberley.

We got to talk about our work and he mentioned a training he had attended where the guy had a ‘new take’ on Thinking out of the Box. You know the theory: Don’t just go for the same old-old. Be creative! Dream new ideas. Come up with something different.  Think out of the box – in a different dimension!

As we stood leaning over the five-bar gate admiring the vistas of the South Downs National Park, I said, “J, there is no box. It’s just a concept.”

I’ve thought a lot about that since. The box is an illusion and always has been. We cannot actually think inside it or outside it, because the reality has never existed and never will. The illusion is merely the creation of people who would have us perceive ourselves in boxes. Who first decided that we are all in boxes? Who was it  lumbered us with thinking from inside them? And what purpose did the concept of boxes serve? Perhaps it allowed that person to exhibit his superiority by calling us to think outside his phantom creation?

The concept of boxes make us feel secure. It enables us to enjoy the illusion that we can take control of our lives. Or each others’.  In the natural world there are no sealed boundaries, but everything flows subtly into everything else – and you’re part of that natural world. The universe is not insular. Ask any quantum physicist. Even I, as I write this blog, am changing the brain patterns in your head. Though we may seem to be separated by space and even time it is not true. We’re not separated, are we? You just read this. There is no box.

Living without the pseudo-security of an illusory box out of which we are supposed to think can challenge our very roots. We are tempted to ask questions. How old was I when I began to accept being ‘boxed’? Where did I learn that limiting skill? What were the motives of my teacher? What has this done to me, to us?

In a world that is a wide open space (not filled with wide open spaces – that supposes natural boundaries again!  It’s deeply ingrained, isn’t it?) it is a joy to know that nothing can separate us from each other, except the belief that we are in different boxes. If we choose to abandon our belief in boxes, all is revealed. We are part of the whole, and the gap between you and me is gone.

Like Neo in The Matrix, I seem to have swallowed the red pill.  Ah well…

EVERY cloud?

Does EVERY cloud have a silver lining?

Storm clouds off the coast of France

In Powerchange we’re very suspicious of the word ‘every’. No room for manoeuvre is there? We ask, ‘Every? Surely some cloud somewhere doesn’t.’ Of course few of us could care about the semantics when we’re encompassed or overshadowed by cloud.  It is much more personal than that. This is the cloud I’m under.  My cloud, so to speak.  And it is blotting out sun for me.

The good news is, yes, every cloud has sun behind it – at least when daybreak comes. There is no place that I’ve heard of where the sun is 100% blotted out for ever (you may know of somewhere – I’d be interested to know). In fact where there is endless sunshine and no cloud there is drought and barrenness. Although human beings seem to love sunshine, and here in the south of England we’ve just had a wonderful spring week of warmth and sunshine, unmitigated sun is a catastrophe. It is the cycle of sunshine, and rain, the variety – whether daily or seasonally – that enables crops to grow and the land to be refreshed. And the people to live.

In my work as a Powerchange coach I meet many clients whose lives have been traumatised by negative experiences with high levels of emotional pain. These are not mere ‘clouds’ but terrorising hurricanes, or devastating cyclones, tornados vacuuming up hope and joy, overwhelming monsoons that are beyond any control.

So how do you come back from that? How do you recover from disaster?  Where is the silver lining?

It seems to me that it is the meaning we make of these traumatic times that drowns us or rescues us, not the experiences themselves. How we see them – and ourselves within them -  really matters. Each of us has more control over that than we might realise to start with. Look again and see with the eye of faith beyond the devastation, and new meaning emerges, a more useful one, a meaning we’ve chosen, one that lifts us up instead of takes us down. Ask: what new, more useful, meanings might this experience have for me? And what else? Look deliberately and as your free choice, for a silver lining. You don’t have to, and you may need someone to help you who knows how it works, but making that inner choice is your human right. It puts you back into control. It’s not what you experience in itself, but the meaning (the label) you attach to it makes it empowering or not.

Have a meaningful day.

 

 

 

 

The Kind Stranger: On the Beach

I was sitting alone on holiday in the sun when the Kind Stranger came to me next. I’d been weary and tired – they’re different, aren’t they – and needed to hear a reassuring voice.

The beach at Speightstown, Barbados.

But it was his shadow I noticed first. It cast itself across the table I was sitting at and I knew straight away it was him. Typically he was not visibly filling the vacant chair at my side, but we both knew he was there. If he had been visible to the naked eye as well as the naked spirit, he would have been leaning back, smiling, relaxed, maybe with his legs crossed, drinking a smoothie.

“Hi Andrew.” It’s great he knows my name as well as yours. “Thinking again I see.”

“Yes, I do a lot of that.”

He didn’t reply. It amuses me how he is perfectly happy to leave my comments and expressed thoughts untouched. He has no compulsion to express his own (priceless) opinions, or pronounce subtle judgements in the way we humans are so clever at doing. So I asked him a question.

“Do you think a lot?”

He chuckled, as if the question itself was a little absurd.

“I used to,” he said. “However, now I tend to live more in the moment, being less concerned about having a thought-out answer for life’s pressing questions. Sometimes they’re better left alone with their mystery intact. I tend to consider whether or not the question has a satisfying answer – whether it needs to be asked at all. Often people ask questions to provide them with greater security or greater power. I’m not short of either of those!”

He paused, then continued, “And sometimes people think thinking is a safer alternative to acting, living out their lives.”

“Thinking to avoid the risk of failing, maybe?” I ventured.

He smiled again. “Could be.”

We’re never rushed when we’re together, the Kind Stranger and me. I don’t think he does ‘rushed’. We just sat for a few minutes, and then …

“I think to puzzle things out,” I said, “to somehow grasp the complexities of life and understand them, to simplify them, to increase my knowledge. In Powerchange we say that people are hunting for MCC, meaning, clarity, and closure.”

“And does it work?” he asked.

“I think so – it helps people make sense of a jumbled world.”

“That sounds to me like a quest for peace of mind!” he laughed.

“Absolutely!” I returned. We both laughed and the conversation went quiet for a few more minutes. We just sat.

“Andrew, I love you, you know.”

“Yes, I do know. I feel very very safe with THAT knowledge. It definitely brings MCC for me.”

“I love you when you’re thinking and when you’re not. I love you when you have answers and when you don’t. I love you when you feel safe and when you feel scared, and as I’ve said before, you’ll never be outside that love.”

I cannot describe how good it felt to hear him say that – though I’d known it to be true for many years. Friendship this deep, this real, this accepting, cannot be confined to the meagre expressions of the English language. It is drawn in through every sense we have – and more.

As I sat looking out from my shady table over the turquoise sea, listening to the breaking waves lap the shore, in my mind I saw the Kind Stranger get up from the table.

“Come on!” he invited. “Enough thinking!”

“Where are we going?” I asked, then watched in horror as he walked out on the surface of the water.

Another question, eh!” He teased. “You’ll never know if you stay where you are now. Come on, follow me.”

I rose from the table, left some change for the bill, and took a deep breath. Some things you just have to do, so I stepped onto the water too. It took a few steps of practice faith – about twenty or so – and I sank several times, but I soon got the knack.

You do, don’t you?