The missing

So my angel is learning about change and the bittersweet happy sadness it brings. I'm fascinated as I watch the development of her conceptual understanding... Watching her stumble, in her pure innocent  way, through ideas that many of us still struggle with as adults.
She's been naturally super excited about going back to Australia, to our old home, grandma and papa, the coast....but I've been reminding her that we won't be coming back to Fiji...so going home also means saying goodbye to the people and places we enjoy here.
She thought about this for a while, and then she said "but I will be sad about that mummy".  "Yes" I said... She thought a little longer and then announced "mummy, I wish things didn't have to change...when things change we feel happy about the going but we feel sad about the missing things". So we have a few conversations along these lines. It's obviously on her mind. This morning I woke up to the patter of her little feet and a sad face next to mine.... "Mummy I miss grandma, and I'm happy but I'm sad because I'm going to miss Fiji"
Yep... I'm with you sweetie.
As I count down the weeks and struggle to navigate through my burn out, it's easy to want to rush to the finish line. I'm trying to remember to stay in the moment and savour the things I will leave behind...the spectacular vivid sunsets over the ocean as I drive home under volcanic mountain ranges,  the sound of my little chickens chirping and rustling outside the window as they have their cage free time, the tumbling flowers I planted in my garden that are just coming into their fullness, the smiling faces, people who go out of their way to make our every day a little happier, the way indigo is known by, and safe with, all the people around our daily lives...and of course our lovely nanny and cleaner and the fact that I have not had to mop a floor or iron a shirt in a year and a half...
There are so many more things as well, of course, and each day I try to remember and cherish them while I can... Because any change, no matter how happy, also brings with it the missing.

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Weeks

The closer you are....

"The closer you are to who you want to be, the closer the people along the way will be to what you really always wanted all along"

Le love

Embrace the imperfect

So recently I watched a TED talk by an artist who had embraced his physical limitation, a shaky hand, and created his own far more interesting, inspiring and personal style of expression.  Rather than being held back, or give up, he was able to use his nerve damage to free himself from the restriction of creating perfect images.  In doing this he found that he was free to explore much more profound themes of impermanence and play with the very concept of limitation in a unique and meaningful way.

And it got me to thinking... How much energy is spent in my life avoiding, fighting or overcoming my own limitations, my "issues", my imperfections.... And what would change if I was able to embrace them and make them work for me, instead of holding me back.  More than just finding ways to live with them, how can I make them into advantages instead of hindrances?

I don't have any answers yet, but I am enjoying the question....

The missing and the finding...

The missing piece.   (Click the link here)

This little animation may just sum up a rather profound amount of the theme of my life...and perhaps it provides a context to what I think of as the Malaise of Generation X.  I think of the people I know my age, and so many of my dear ones seem to echo my theme... We search and search for the "thing"...the thing that will define us and make us whole. Maybe it's a person, a relationship, a child, maybe it's a job, maybe it's a home or a culture or a religion, a passion or a way of being in the world. We were raised to be acutely aware of the infinite possibilities before us, and of  our fundamental life-task...to choose the right path for us and follow it to reach our full potential in life.
As I reached my late 30s and early 40s it dawned on me that I've been searching searching searching for the "right choice"... Thinking I have found it but then...no... Always the slight misfit, the slight emptiness, the jar of a pointy edge where there "should" be smooth connection. And on goes the search.  It dawned on me that I may not find "the right thing" and maybe I'm going to have to find a way to be happy anyway...
Somewhere around the last year or so I have started to realise that the best likelihood is that my life is not going to be defined by finding the right choice for me.  At this point it is far more likely it will be defined by the search, the relentless search for meaning, than by that meaning found.
This little animation prompts me to think...perhaps this is the thing to be embraced.  Perhaps the issue is that when the piece is found, the search ends...and perhaps the greater meaning is in the experience of the search than in the finding.

What is it all about anyway?

If children's most profound shaping influence is the unlived unfulfilled dreams of their parents (Jung) then the greatest authenticity must be in navigating a way of not reliving or fulling the gaps in your parents relationship, not following anyone else's dreams and finding a way to define "the one" in the space of absence of influence. Is this possible? It seems unlikely...

10 weeks

So I have 10 weeks left in my job.

10 weeks of being CEO.  10 weeks of being the boss.  10 weeks of "the buck stops with me".

10 weeks of stretching myself into new shapes. 10 weeks of being pushed and prodded and manipulated into new ways of being in the world.  10 weeks of winging it and working it out as I go along.  10 weeks of feeling like I have to know everything and 10 weeks of feeling like I never know enough.

10 weeks of feeling drained, empowered, cynical, hopeful, driven, burnt out, meaningful, pointless, motivated and utterly peeved...

10 weeks of feeling that my life has a purpose and a routine - all-be-it one I have frequently wanted to chuck in the nearest swamp.

10 weeks to find a way to walk away feeling like I did all I could.

10 weeks to find a way to walk away not feeling like I leave behind a house of cards, and 10 weeks to accept that I cannot control what happens after I walk away - in fact there is not all that much I can control between now and then either.
3 weeks of active management left, then 7 weeks to wrap up all the lose ends and produce a mountain of words on paper.
Words on paper will be my legacy.
Words on paper which, in my optimistic moments, I trust will translate into making the world a little easier for some people.
Words on paper which won't change a whole lot in an obvious way, but may just be foundation that makes the difference between dark and light for some people.

10 more weeks of putting words on paper... before my next adventure into arranging different words in different orders on different bits of paper.
I must hold up my hands and blindly hope it all matters somehow.

10 weeks until everything changes again.