Refresh

Rain. You have all seen it. Depending on the part of the world you live in, you will see it more or less than others. I'm originally from Oregon. In Oregon, you definitely have rain and lots of it. There is a big, wet price to pay for perpetual green landscapes. My Australian husband spent almost 10 years in Oregon. Every morning, he'd look out the window and say, "Oh look, it's raining...again". You could count on rain of some sort at least 9 months of the year. Rain never bothered me really. I suppose I looked forward to the sun, but having never considered myself someone who would spend a great deal of time outdoors because of my work, it didn't really matter if it was sunny or rainy. And then I moved to Perth. Perth has what they call a Mediterranean climate. I suppose that means it's supposed to be fairly temperate here, at least on the Indian Ocean where I live. I can tell you though, at least 6 months out of the year it is dry, and probably three months of the year it is dry and bloody hot (as I've mentioned in a previous post).After all the hot, and all the dry, if you are lucky, you get RAIN. Tonight, it is raining, and it is cool-two things that don't happen together very often. When it rains here, you get some amazing scents. Rain brings out the smell of the eucalyptus trees. There are ones that smell like peppermint, and ones that smell like lemon and ones that smell like cough drops. I can smell the earthiness of the sandy soil, the freshness of the grass, and the cleansing of the bitumen on my street. All in all, with the rain, the cool and the light breeze,the world feels refreshed. Greens seem greener, birds are happier, air is cleaner, and everything seems new. Rain refreshes, it reinvigorates, it makes things new. I imagine this rain clearing out the hot, dry and dusty of everything, including me, and refreshing it all. What a wonderful feeling! Everything and everyone needs refreshing now and again. I hope that you too, wherever you are, can find some rain-literal or figurative. I hope you can find something that makes you feel refreshed. Maybe that's beautiful music, the soothing sounds of the rain, the wind blowing in your hair or a soft springtime breeze. Whatever it is, when you feel it, close your eyes and breathe it in. Let it do it's job to refresh you and make you new. Me? I'll be sitting here in my shorts and a jumper with my eyes closed right beside you on the other side of the world feeling....refreshed.

What would you do?

There is a quote that's been running around my head for the last few days. I wonder if you've heard it? It goes something like this... "What would you do if you knew you could not fail?" I know. It sounds like something you might find on a bumper sticker, or as a little caption in a calendar somewhere. It probably has featured on both of those items when you think about it. In any case, usually quotes don't stay with me. The last quote that stuck into my head was probably something related to a song like, "Dont worry, be Happy". You're welcome. Now you'll have that song stuck in your head for the rest of the day. Back to the quote- if you have kids, especially ones that have not hit the season of teenage angst, you can see the philosophy of this quote played out every day. For example, if I knew I would not fail, I would climb to the highest point in the tree in the park and JUMP! I would get on the computer and make a movie. I would ride my skateboard down the biggest hill I could find and I will go faster than the car coming behind me. I will be famous. I will be President (or Prime Minister).... You get the idea. At some point, and I'm not sure when, we become cautious. We might fail, actually...and sometimes that makes us afraid to try. It makes us worried that if we do try, we might fail and look really silly on the process. Sometimes the consequences of failure to successfully execute a dream are too frightening to consider. You might lose your savings, you might lose your job or you might even lose a relationship. So, we play it safe. We move into the next season of our lives sometimes thinking, "I could have been that...done that...or seen that". ....but there are times when we can't ignore the voice inside that urges us to be more than we are, bigger than we are or just less afraid of being who we are. It's the kid voice, the dreaming voice that believes we cannot fail if we try. It urges us on and we knock it back with many sensible excuses. But what if? What if....we did do something knowing we could not fail. What if we believed it? It just might be that amazing things could happen. That's what I've been thinking lately. Amazing things could happen when we do something big, in the knowledge that we will not fail. Big. Huge. Things. After all, wasn't it Edison who said something like he didnt fail 1000 times, but learned 1000 ways not to do something? Here's the challenge...do something today or tomorrow knowing that you cannot fail. If you don't get it right, think of it as an opportunity to learn how not to do it and try again. Let me know how it goes. Just be careful of those hills on your skateboard.

Let me tell you how I lost my mind. I was sitting on a rock...not just any rock, but a volcanic-y, limestone-y rock that had been in this particular place, in this particular bay, for much longer than I've been on this earth. The rock was rough under me, the sun was warm on my legs, sandy toes and face. I was looking at the sun light reflecting on the little waves that were rolling into this bay. I heard the sea and reflected with awe the beauty of it that I had just seen as I had been snorkeling. There was a Rock Cod with bright orange lips and the friendly Bream that made me laugh out loud under water because of their curiosity...the Angel fish who are beautiful and the Parrot fish with their babies. Then, there were the sounds...mostly the clicking you hear when crayfish are near but the different sounds of a life under water. I sat on this rock and lost my mind, and it was wonderful. I don't know about you, but I'm the sort of person who makes lists. When I have time off be it a weekend or a couple of days, my mind always turns to the things I could or should be doing. There are lists for work, lists for the family, and lists for just about everything. I think a lot of energy goes into these lists, written or mental. As I was sitting there on this rock, I realized that I was not making lists. I was not planning for the future, I wasn't even thinking about lunch. I had, in effect, lost my mind! My mind was truly lost, in the moment! It was a most liberating feeling. It wasn't that anything was possible,it was more that it didn't really matter... Could it be that I had lost my mind and given my control to a moment in time? I was astounded. I surrendered. It was liberating. Could I go back home, away from this bay and lose my mind and surrender control? Would my life be different if I could? Or couldn't? All I can really say was that the awareness of losing control was hard hitting. Maybe if I was less concerned with control, and more concerned with the awareness of losing it, I'd be able to tell which control was important and which things I should just let go. I think we go through different phases of losing control as we get older. Some things, we can't control...you will not be able to control your spouse or the opinions of your teenage son. But, you might be able to control where you live, how long you will live there and how you will leave this earth. I hope that wherever you are that you will be able to lose your mind and lose control for a moment. It may get you thinking.