The days are now lengthening which sounds very positive, but with this lengthening thingy comes the cold.  The winter sets in, into our lives, our very bones.  We have months yet before we can go back to lightweight cardies and no socks and I can feel my gears changing.  Up to Christmas nothing matters much beyond Christmas, but, after that it seems we are faced with self-control and diets and bare trees and winds with teeth, floodings and the very real chance of arriving at playgroup, work, the supermarket or school soaked to the skin.

I remember standing at a bus stop out in the open (bus shelters were yet to be invented) with my toes turning to wood, and painfully.   My mother fixed me into clod-hopping, steel hard lace-ups with round toes and room for growth, as there was in my regulation coat, closely resembling a small and chilly gnome, standing there, waiting for the school bus.  I remember my toes remained frozen for most of the day so that if I ran along with the others whose mothers chose softer and warmer footwear I invariably made a great impression on the gritty scree of the courtyard, and little on my classmates.

I recognise a gear shift when it comes.  It’s the same when the weather warms up in late Spring, which for us is May at the earliest, more likely well into June.  I am way too hot and yet unwilling, it seems to bring out the thinner tops.  I resist the change initially until the very real threat of internally combusting forces me to adapt, and I must needs peel back multi-layers and expose my ashen and unwilling skin to the shock of sunlight  It thinks me about change.  I say that I welcome it, but I now think that I welcome change that suits me, and am as resistant as the next woman when it does not.  Change seems to sneak up and bite my bum and I will do anything to fend off what niggles and bothers me for as long as possible.

What I seem to want is no change at all once I’m in step with life.  I like routine, even though I say I don’t.  What I know is what I want, not that other uncomfortable thing about which I know nothing, or can remember little, and which looms like a spectre with dark shadows and siren threats and a change of clothing.  And yet, Life herself changes daily, so why the resistance when I know it to be true?

I don’t need routine to keep me upright and smiling, I need change.  I don’t need routine to give me a sense of self or of place, for I am complete all by myself. Nor do I need to control any change when it requires something of me, although it might be nice to get a warning email a month or so before it arrives.  What I need is an open mind, an ability to move quickquick if I need to or slowslow if that is a better option.  I need to loosen up my grip on what I know, ready to let go, ready to grab on to the next set of circumstances, for it is the truth that most change comes unbidden and unsought.

My own little world is very small.  And yet the world itself is huge, littered with people and homes and lives.  Looking out of my window, stepping out of my world and learning more about others, talking, sharing, helping…..these are the ways I learn to accept change in my own life. This is the way I stop thinking about myself, and, as I step out more, my own world expands.  Conversations lift me, I learn new truths, and I find things I can alter or accept inside my own little world.  None of that happens if I stay home, boiling or freezing in my stubborn resistance to change.

This is the season for visits and laughs about runny noses and frozen toes.  This is the time to work together, to pick each other up, to slog through the mud and cold of it all, for we need each other in order to understand who we are.  This is how we define ourselves with stories and songs and cheer-ups and cough drops, and, in defining ourselves we can work more flexibly with change when it comes, sans warning email.

In short, we remember how to laugh and mostly, at ourselves.

Thanks from my heart to all who read and commented on my blog during 2015.  I always hope, in my honest look at life, to give encouragement, as other wise writers do for me.  We are a team, after all.  Below are the stats for last year, ones I wanted to share with you.  Bring on 2016 with all its suprises and delights and please stick with me for I need you all.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 12,000 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Today is an ordinary day with an ordinary name, Sunday, and just saying it chucks me into no mans land where I land with a bump, looking round me for a mark on my year map.   I feel momentarily aberrated because I am uncertain of the date and there are as many possible options as there are leftover cheeses on the Mouse Man board.  I search the caverns of my mind for epiphanies – that AHA! (loud whoosh of relief) thing that happens nowadays when, without recourse to laptop, diary, Iphone, wall calendar or radio, me and my brain find the answer.  It is never a big deal sort of question like ‘Should I cut here or there to put a stent in the patient’s neck artery?’ because I could Google the answer to most of my piddling queries in seconds.  What is important to me is that I tap my own resource supply before seeking help, and, in doing so, I take hold of my power.

I catch myself, sometimes, calling across the room, mid sentence to ask for the spelling of a word, when right beside me sits a dictionnary.  I still have to look up the word, to be sure I write it down correctly, but in rifling through the pages to find what I’m looking for, I am probably employing about 35 muscles, all of which would have remained in a sleepy stupor, had the answer I sought flown across the beig carpet with the worn patches and into my shell-like.

I tend away from ‘lazy’ although it tempts me at times, I do confess and it receives a rap on its knuckles.  I know the importance of personal independence in this life, and once a life gets a bit long in the tooth, it is even more valuable.   It’s so easy to stop bothering, and yet not bothering always brings gloom because we are not built for sitting about all day, and, if we do it, our bodies complain; stiff limbs, skin irritations and loss of muscle strength to name but a few.  All of these lead to indulgent gloomery.

There was not much sleeping going on last night.  As I dressed, long before cock crow, in the weirdest combination of warm clothing, by torchlight, I considered how I would present this very disturbed night when asked How Did You Sleep?  Possible responses are

a) Long face, strained voice, a theatrical sigh and much eye rubbing ‘Hardly slept a wink.’

b)  Brave face.  A tiny outpuff of downward sloping breath.  A slightly faltering, but determined voice through a strained smile  ‘Not very good really, but it’s okay, I can doze later….maybe, if I get through my chores.’ Theatrical stare into space.

c) Upbeat, bright-eyed, elevated voice….’Weird night, very wakeful – so many words inside my head, all jostling to get out and nowhere to lay them down.  I wrote a story, a blog, and began a book all inside my head and could not find sleep anywhere! Must be the cheese!’ Genuine sounding belly laugh, midriff bouncing from too much cheese.

First two, whiney, needy, attention-seeking, heavy with gloom and the expectation that sympathy will arise and enfold me in strong arms for the rest of the day.  In a word, pathetic.  The third response is the truth.  Speaking it out tells me that this day, whatever date it may have attached to it, holds promise, fun, opportunity,excitement.  There is only poor little me in the first two, so why would I ever employ either of them?  I have done, of course I have, even knowing that sympathy has a short attention span.  I think it is that I hold out hope for a sympathy that decides to go along with my drama, and I believe I am not alone in this.  It’s a perfectly normal human need to be intelligently loved but if it is dressed up in the wrong clothes and employed as a form of manipulation it always presents as melodrama and all it ever achieves is a long and tiring day. By pulling someone else down just because I am down, I am poisoning their day too, and what can any of us do with such a day beyond waiting for it to run out?

So this thing I do, this mindful consideration of how I present myself even when almost no-one is looking, is critical, to my health and the health of the home. It dictates the mood and the mood directly affects the flow of good energy.  This positive energy is like a drug, despite sleep deprivation, although that deprivation word bothers me for it suggests that sleep is given or withheld at the whim of some capricious god.  This positive energy will affect others, confounding their attempts (most of the time) to explain in detail their current state of collapse, which is what most people get around to once the weather  and the family visit have been exhausted.  This positive energy will laugh me all the way to evening and all those I meet will be infected by it, as will I all over again, and that is the strangest thing of all.  If I speak out either of the first two responses, I am doomed, I tell you, doomed and so are you if you get in my way, but by choosing option c I lift all of us into fresh air.

It may have been the cheese of course, sampled from the Mouse Man board and taken just before bedtime that kept me alert till 5.30 am but I think it was the words in my head, jabbering away, bumping into each other, shouting and yelling at me to let them out, to lay them down, to write and write and write some more.  Now what could be more positive than that?

That’s what I’ll say, if anyone asks.

Oh flip we get older.  I know it’s pants but we do it anyway.  We can’t seem to avoid it, for all the techniques we employ.  We keep fit, laugh often, love much, that sort of stuff but still the memory lapses and the body dithers.  Mostly we laugh about it, in front of other people anyway, and mostly we can hold that sense of fun as we fight our way to the outside of a king-sized duvet cover, grab both corners to shake the feathered mountain flat only to collapse onto the bed wheezing like granny’s old bellows.  Till now, we never thought about granny’s old bellows much, nor the sound they made as we, young then, pumped gusto into her wet coal, lifting flames into life with our supple arms, sure of an even larger slice of pound cake as reward.  Now, the body remembers that sound and is upset that we are making it, sans bellows.

We remember granny. As we flitted through her high-topped halls, in full play with skates for feet and ghosties round every corner, we remember her for we are granny now.  We watch her smile as we now smile at skidding children full of laughter and sunbeams.

I notice that even mentioning the process of aging brings on a flapping of hands and a mouthful of compliments.  Oh but you look so young, for one, and, another, You’re as young as you feel, and yet I leave feeling exactly the same age as I did before the Let’s Not Talk About Nasty Things thing.  Oh, for a minute or two I could imagine the skates on my feet and yes my heart did twinkle a bit, but what I wanted to do was to have a conversation of some depth and with some contextual relevance to where I am/they are in life.  Aging is not a nasty thing, per se, but merely something we all have coming and it seems to me that the way most folk deal with it is by not looking at it.  Not looking at the inevitable is to turn away from the truth in all its beauty.  Not looking forward sounds a lot to me like I am looking back, at what has gone, at what is lost to me.  I am in No Man’s Land, neither here nor there, stranded on a sandbank without my dancing shoes, without my head on straight.  I am blind and deaf to who I am, to the truth of me in all my beauty.

As we mutter about how dreadful it is to watch an old (that’s OLD) person decline into the apparent powerlessness of a failing body and mind, we lose sight of that person, however dear, however important they have been to us, for they have changed.  This dynamic person to whom we bowed, either in terror or in a loving adoration, is losing the plot and we have no map for the new one.  Is this, I wonder, why we flap and giggle at any mention of getting old?  is it that we see our own self becoming this poor sad creature?  My third question is this.  If we face with pride and humour our own aging process, might we find the last bit somewhat happier to contemplate…..or, even better, might we, by walking with it rather than away from it, actually change the future of getting old?

I am not saying Never Wear Your Tutu again.  I am not saying Stop Dancing, Enjoying Wine or Bouncing on the Family Trampoline.  What I AM saying is that when you forget a name or a number, or your wallet or what you had for lunch, find laughter in it.  I am saying engage with aging for it is a lovely and exciting time.  It is also a time to allow for a slowing of pace, for the inevitable decline of our physical selves, for twinges in the back, sore feet, aching knees just before it rains.  We might feel less inclined to go out at night, more unsure of creating a meal for guests, less able to see the cobwebs in the corners.  We might need to ask for help from the young, as once we were asked for help.

We have stories to tell and our children want to hear them; not that old nonsense about how good it was in the olden days, not that, but stories of our lives, what we loved, how we danced in virgin snow, how we could outrun a deer, how we sailed across oceans, won first prize, fell into a smelly pond and had to walk 3 miles home, how we didn’t get picked for the rugby team and how we sulked for weeks, how jealous we were of an older sister, and that crush we had on the maths teacher that all went horribly wrong when his wife read your note.  All of this, is who we are, who we still are. But let it not be the only country we inhabit.

The sickness queue is a long one and many of the ailments begin in our minds. Depression meds are dished out like sweeties.  Yes, we would rather not be getting rickety-sticks or fluffy-headed, but we are and that’s that.  I don’t think that’s the problem at all.  I believe that, in not engaging with the aging process, of flapping it away, of living in fear of the future, of ending up like that OLD person who has become a sad soul, we manifest the whole thing in ourselves.  Mourning what can never be again takes the joy from life.  Have you watched a young woman run for a bus and just watched her with a smile?  Or have you immediately related her speed to your lack of it, feeling even more sorebones-and-downmouth?  How much youth can you observe without feeling even older?

And yet the watching IS the joy.

Turning to look ahead when you don’t want to see what you fear takes courage, but, trust me, the monsters are quite gone, once you do – oh, and I’ll be there to welcome you in my tutu and a big jumper on to keep out the cold with spares for you in case you forgot your own.

You know when you arrive on a dance floor and just wish you had donned something with sequins, because that woman over there looks like a chandelier, or a firework, and there you are in something that reflects absolutely nothing beyond the fact that it is obvious you can never sit down because that body-hugging fat controller would sever blood flow to your brain in about 4 minutes.

As I lean against a door frame with something fizzy in my hand I ponder my lack of ‘reflectivability’ and I always come to the same conclusion.

I doubted.  I doubted myself inside the dress I actually wanted to wear, hearing, as I always do, those matronly voices tutting at me.  You’re too chunky, too old, too much of a farmer’s wife, too much of a mother of five to actually, seriously (!) consider wearing that!?

And so, the sequins stay wrapped in plastic doubt for another year, two years, and then some.  It thinks me.  To be absolutely honest, the call for sequins nowadays is rare, if it comes at all.  Living on a rain-soaked island is more welly and’mackintosh’ (does anyone use that delicious word these days?) than it ever is sequins and heels.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t love them, even now, and I really believe in holding that love close.  It is easy to forget sparkle and yet sparkle is everything. Okay, not necessarily sequins and champagne, but that wonderful human sparkle that can be held inside wellies and mackintoshes. It’s all in the eyes.  When life feels a bit solid and lumpish, there is someone, always one someone who sparkles.  They don’t always manage it, but that’s also okay, because when they don’t, you can.  It’s a see-saw thing.  One of us is up, one of us is down, one of us light, one heavy…… then it changes.

Today I went to church and heard a lovely positive message, sang good Christmas songs (in a slightly higher key than any of us could ever reach) and then I filled the manger with hay and swaddled Jesus ( they said….. she can do it , she’s had five…..) ready for the school nativity play tomorrow, all the while, laughing and talking and watching the light in eyes all around me. Without doubt I could see the sequins, hear the music, feel the dance.

This is ordinary mackintosh life reflecting a sequinned light.

Light at this time of year is precious.  It comes in suddenly, enough to startle and is all too easily lost if we are texting, or inside a shop, or caught up with sticky children where roads divide and rule.  Headlights are on a lot of the day, and the orange streetlights don’t know what to do with themselves as the sky closes over yet again with dark foreboding clouds.

Indoors, lighting is warm and mood-creating unless the lights are those cold blue fizzing strips.  We had them at school, I remember and they never ceased in making their presences felt by whining and complaining and eventually going out altogether, which was a relief, not least because Chemistry was cancelled for the afternoon.  As we walk past cafes and bars, the light is inviting.  Outside it’s wet and windy and we are in serious danger of being decapitated by flying umbrellas.  We see their abandoned skeletons on the pavements, their skin ripped from their bones.  Dogs ears fly out like wings, their tails firmly tucked in, their legs pushing for home.

This is the winter, not of our life, but of our year.  The fact that we have an extraordinary volume of rain is just how it is these days.  In the past, according to everyone over 55, it never rained.  Snow fell and it was always pretty snow and sparkly and nobody got stuck in drifts or skidded off the road.  Seasons were well defined and the world was a simpler place and there was no violence, no weirdo behaviour, no anorexia or obesity, no drugs and no divorce.  Of course, this is twaddle.  What they mean is that there was no social media, only a handful of newpapers and only 3 TV channels, so that the ordinary folk never got to hear of the nasty things.  Now we all know all the nasty things and we don’t much like it, because it creates in us a fear of life in the big Out There.

I wonder at how much we actually need to know, because all this information can make us blind.  It seems to me that we can be thoroughly appraised of the dreadful situation in Syria whilst at home our own children come home to an empty house and unsupervised TV.  We can wring our hands in grief at the acts of violence and persecution around the world whilst we ignore the agressive rudeness towards an immigrant taxi driver saying it’s none of our business.  We can talk about what should be done in care homes and never bother to visit Granny in hers.

The light is on and we are at home, protected and warm, most of us, and yet it seems to me that we forget our responsibilty to our own values.  We can talk as if we had them all in place, pointing blame everywhere but at ourselves.  Talking is easy, blaming, even easier, because it makes us feel good about ourselves, our values but when we point one finger in blame, the other four are pointing right back at us.

There is enough food in the world to feed every single human.  There is enough money to supply everyone’s basic needs.  There are enough parents to give every child a home.  There is enough light.  We should work on shining it in the right places.

In deference to Maya Angelou, that superbly magnificent woman poet who wrote from where she stood, square and proud, inside her life, I write today on Rising.  We all have to be able to do it, weak or strong, man or woman, adult or child, for, if we stay down we just get squashed underfoot as Life tramps on without us.

What is ‘Down’?  As everyone nowadays is quick to say whenever they hear something they don’t agree with, the definition of Down it is all a matter of perspective.  I only use that irritating and conversation-stopping cliche because it fits.  I suspect that, were I to spend time inventing a new phrase to ‘fit’ it would become a cliche itself and, therefore, just as irritating.

Down is the opposite to Up and, in this life we lead, someone else’s down might be another’s up and vice versa.  I guess Down is when life isn’t how we would ideally choose it to be, when the edges of our very self become wavy lines, vulnerable to weather and cliches, to cold and doubt. Down is when we hit the ground…….not running.

Yesterday, we watched the Mill Girls on tour at the Mitchell Theatre in Glasgow.  Woman were legion in the ticket queue, men, like black pepper, scattered among them, among us.  Many women were there because they had been Mill Girls themselves and were here to walk down memory lane, to resurrect together that powerful energy that kept the line tight through wars and hardship and paltry earnings.  65 pence per week was their wage and yet still they laughed and danced, loved and really lived through their days in damp and draughty homes all lined up together like street soldiers, their little paths sticking out like cheeky tongues.  They moved as one.  They bonded and banded together, they lifted up the Down and stood strong against those who expected everything from them, as if it was their due.

Their song is still here today, even if the mills are long gone, turning themselves into smart appartments for folk who will never know such unity in their lives, who live as islands, alone, lonely, the new way to live, if living is the right word.  The fabric they wove together is musical, strong, flowing, always flowing, beautiful to behold, fashioned with love and care.  Every morning they rose and not just out of bed.

If Down is considered a poor relation to Up, then it’s a shame; a shame, because, in this world, where everyone changes colour just because it’s raining, I feel we might have forgotten our historical roots from which we grow tall, able to move and bend, to flower and fruit, offering shade and shelter to our fellow beings.  From hardship grow heroes, never from ease.  Who needs to call on anything other than a taxi when times are easy?  And yet, the memory of what was, of how it was or is for those less warm and safe than I, is not enough, nor is it the whole truth, because every one of us faces Down at some point.  When I turn to look at it, Down can look like a wet lump of coal.  As I shake its hand, say hallo, sit with it for a while, I begin to notice it has many facets and some of them are reflecting the sunlight.  We rise and walk together each morning, and with each dawning I see new light, new opportunity.  It doesn’t look like coal any more.  It looks like the beginning of a diamond.

And so we begin to pack for our journey back to Scotland.  I hear it’s mild and please forgive my sudden guffaw!  It never gets as low as ten degrees out here so ‘mild’ is more like a warm bath to you or me who know what it’s like to wear sox over sox and a fleece to bed.

As I sit here on the hospital balcony with the sun burning my feet I ask myself how I feel about going home.  Roots is important, my dad’s gardener used to say and he is right, they is.  There is a lot of the inside of a bubble about this trip with its surprising twists and turns, the light falling on this surface or that, turning water into rainbows; the bubble lifting on a sudden luff of warm air, its slow float across elephant grass, the sharp-thorned sickle bush, the back of a sleepy lion.

It was 3 weeks, then it was almost 7 weeks and every moment of it has made a memory, every person, a mark; the girls in the kitchen at Dumela, big strong black african diamonds, every one of them; the volunteers on the conservation project and the team of staff who lead, including Prospect the Pup; the taxi and ambulance drivers, the medics, therapists, nurses, auxiliaries and cafe angels; the manager and the staff at the lodge we went home to each evening to braai, to eat, to fall asleep, to do it all again.  I honour every one of you and thank you right now, for you know not what you gave to us, this precious gift of human kindess and warmth.

I read Brain Pickings, an online paper, one that is all about books and words and wisdoms.  I recommend it highly, and it always give me inspiration or puts into words the way I am, or have been, feeling and for which I have no words, or, more usually, way too many.  Those who can concisely tell me exactly what is in my heart are rare birds indeed.

What I leave this massive and wonderful country with is faith (with a capital F) in my fellow humans.  I had it before, but it could get knocked about a bit, bashed and chipped at the edges.  What looked ugly at first became a thing of beauty.  What looked like loss became a gain nobody could foresee.  My arms were empty, now they are full, for we go back to paint a new canvas, write a new life and, although some things might be no longer possible, at least we did them, at least we took the risk and lived life wildly and crazily.  Now, we might find a different way to get where we want to go.  It’s called thinking out of the box and for me, for us, boxes are for keeping gifts safe.  I don’t keep the box,  but I do keep the gift.

In a particularly impassioned letter to his brother Theo from October 2, 1884, Van Gogh writes:

If one wants to be active, one mustn’t be afraid to do something wrong sometimes, not afraid to lapse into some mistakes. To be good – many people think that they’ll achieve it by doing no harm – and that’s a lie… That leads to stagnation, to mediocrity. Just slap something on it when you see a blank canvas staring at you with a sort of imbecility.

You don’t know how paralyzing it is, that stare from a blank canvas that says to the painter you can’t do anything. The canvas has an idiotic stare, and mesmerizes some painters so that they turn into idiots themselves.

Many painters are afraid of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas IS AFRAID of the truly passionate painter who dares – and who has once broken the spell of “you can’t.”

Today will be one of sorting and packing, of last minute this and last minute that, and a gathering of thoughts and memories to stow away in my heart.  I will be mindful of each moment within it as we prepare to fly back to Scotland, the home of my mother’s people, strong women of dignity and strength, humour, wisdom and an eye for nonsense.  I learned much from them both and, if nature and nurture have come together in me, distilling into a potent life force, then we are all in for a load of noisy fun, for many years to come.

Pack that life you lead back home and bring it here, to Africa.  Wrap the sharp edges of it in soft clothes, pull in the straps and close the lid.  Fly it a thousand miles, and a thousand thousand more, over deserts wide as oceans and oceans deep as a human heart.  Let it spill out into a room, a little, into the space that lies between strangers well met under a burning sun.  We are all seekers here.  Some seek lions, some birds, some moments of light and inspiration.  Some come to find friendship, purpose, change, courage or peace.  From different countries, different tribes, different pasts, we wanderers gather.  We make of it what we can and, as we do, we find that the life we lead back home shrinks from lack of food, water, attention.  What was great seems small when feet away from a lioness and cub, a herd of elephants, a starling the colour of oil on water, or of standing beside a lunch queue of 500 African children, plates in hand.

I was often taught that to wander is a lost thing, something idle, time-wasting.  Forward motion, I was told, is purposeful, marching like boots on parade and yet in wandering I move slowly enough to connect with the air around me, I wear it like a garment, I feel the soft folds of it gentle on my skin;  I hear the sound of it settle in my ears and taste of it on my tongue, its sweetness unworldly.  Wandering, I can see the colour of raindrops, watch their journey’s end around my feet, see them become the earth that holds me up.

It might be possible, you could say, to do this wandering thing at weekends or on holidays, but not inside that trajectory of commuting tension that is my life, where it’s all fire and firings, fears and deadlines, meetings and paperwork, junk lunches and yawning afternoons; where I get so tired I can barely manage a civil word to my spouse, my kids;  where every evening is a rush to Brownies or Tai Jitsu or practice for a swimming badge, and supper is just something to eat before bed.

I sincerely hope that it is possible to wander whilst young, however many demands are made.  I remember it as a complete impossibility for me, even living in one of the most peaceful wanderley places on earth.  Everyone else went for afternoons on the beach, or for picnics, but not me.  Looking back now, I don’t believe it was because there was too much to do, which there undoubtedly was. for everyone has too much to do, not just I.  There are wisdoms fleeing about like wasps that tell us what to do to become wanderley, but nobody can give us the How.  How do I, when I can’t even think straight, when the demands on me are so overwhelming?

Sadly I have no answer, but what I do know is that nowadays there is a greater understanding of the What of living a fulfilled life. We know we must attend to our physical, spiritual, social,financial and cultural needs.  Stress management therapy is attending to a wound way too late, but it is still better than internally combusting on the way to the school sports day.  And, let’s be honest, who really never suffers from stress?  We are pushed and squeezed and contained and controlled and yet we expect ourselves to behave perfectly, no swearing in front of the kids or in the post office queue.  We demand too much of ourselves.

I am learning to be imperfect and I recommend it.  If I could go back and do it all again I would tell myself to lower the standard.  Half mast is high enough. I would let myself be tired and to call for rest.  I would let myself walk to the shore and sit there, not in rebellion as I did (a rebel without a cause) but because I allowed me just to ‘be’.  No need to explain, nor justify, no plan of action, no wisdoms learned, lining up to be listed by rote, just me not judging me.

If you have an apple seed, plant it and wait for the rains and the sun to give it life.

Watch it bloom in spring sending fragrance out like a song, to call in the bees.

See the rich sweet apples in Autumn.

Rise, for it is time now.

Pick the low-hanging fruit first and sell some by the roadway.

When there is enough silver in your hand

Buy a ladder.

We are wild creatures, every one of us, born into captivity.

This is a good thing, for we would not survive well, nor for long without the protection of those who have already learned how to fit inside the world, without their guidance, discilpline, leadership.  Of course, there are varying levels of quality in such beginnings, for not all of us find the perfect launch pad from which to elevate ourselves into adulthood.  However, the common denominator remains, whether parental protection and guidance means two delicious, loving and sensitive people to whom we can always go and whom we always trust, or an atribilious, or absent father, and a bitter, cold or missing mother.  The baby born is completely unknown, to himself, to his parents, to the world.  He, or she, is a wild thing, and not a blank canvas as some might say.   A blank canvas suggests that someone else plans to paint me, and that is never going to sit well with a wild creature.

Each generation makes its own changes.  As awareness develops we consider how we will live out our life.  Will we copy the ways of our parents, our guides and leaders?  or will we rebel and create anew?   I know it really isn’t that simple, nor an ‘either/or’ thing, for there are thousands, nay, billions of hectares in between, with as many opportunities to paint newcolours and shapes, add a personal light, to add new hopes, dreams, accomplishments and mistakes.  The nature and nurture conversation can snake on deep into the night.  If I was born to another family, with other built in rules and standards, would I still be me?  If my family had been cold and unloving, what would I be like now?  It isn’t just nature, nor just nurture, but a combination of the two.  Every single lesson I learned has changed me, altered my course.  Every person met has taught me.  Every painful hurt, moment of joy, mistake made, accomplishment achieved, everything has gone in to the development of me.  I am me because of my life thus far.

So what do we do with the person we are?  We can take this person and make a difference, that’s what.  The alternative, to not make any impact at all, is not worthy of any one of us, nor is it possible.  We would have to not be born at all.  Although the wild beginning inside us – our soul – is faithful and true, always there right up to the last gasp, it appears that we can forget we have one.  It is tempting to whine about what we don’t have, didn’t achieve, didn’t get on-a-plate, will never accomplish, and, in that time-and-life-wasting process, we deny the existence of our wildness.  Oh, it’s been beaten out of me………..I have no choice………….they are too powerful……..and so on.  It’s like a disease, a deadly virus if allowed to spread.

Watch children at play.  Remember being one of those little creatures, full of energy and noise, their voices rising like birds, their imaginative games, the way they sing together, image free?  Well, that’s where we all began.  Even the children who appear to have nothing, have the ability to play.  Nobody told them they should.  It’s a wild thing.

As our awareness develops, we have the brain to consider and reflect on the things we have learned.  Some of us find a wise place for our curiosity to land, a guide who will answer and explain, a parent perhaps.  Some of us move into irridescence (my word for adolescence) with questions squirming inside our heads like a writhe of trapped snakes.  Either way, the awareness continues to develop.  We notice more, we question more, and inch by pimply inch we find answers that resonate with our wildness, although most of us have no idea how that happens.  It just feels right, so we adopt it, fashion it into our developing persona, make it our own.  All of this is grand, as long as it doesn’t get too fixed.  There are many who shoot themselves in the foot by holding fast to something learned years before, refusing to change, even though everything else has changed at least a million times over since the initial ‘aha’.  Refusing to cant in the ever changing winds of life is a dangerous, and often self-imposed limitation.  It pushes away any opportunity for new growth; it pushes people away and the chance for new encounters.  You might say you don’t want that anyway, but your soul won’t agree, that I am certain of. You might say you are quite happy as you are, but you aren’t.  None of us are.  I don’t mean we are dissatisfied with our lives, not at all, although many are, but more that we are often more aware of that exstrinsic to us, the out-there of life and able, with supreme success, to silence our inner voice, the song of our heart, our soul, our very wildness.  And this wildness is not the same as anyone else’s, for not one other living person has lived our life, not one.  Much like snowflakes and zebras, we are each unique.  No two the same.  Ever.

With this knowledge comes responsibility.  There is no time for any of us to lie on the couch moaning.  Just outside the door, there are encounters waiting, unpredictably dotted about, visual, olefactory, verbal.  It’s not a movie in the making, our ordinary journey;  It’s far more wonderful than that.

Learning about the dynamics of animal life out here in Africa is fascinating.  Although we humans have been fashioned with larger brains, in so many ways we are similar.  Everything affects our walk through life.  If we are weak, we must learn how to get stronger, or we become ‘lunch’.  Others of our species can protect or try to destroy us.  There is danger all around.  The big difference, however, is that our real danger lies not in external predation but deep inside.  What we think of what happens and what we do about it, or don’t, affects our whole life.  Nobody can ruin our lives, however hard they may try, if we refuse to let them. I do acknowledge that it is possible to live under the control of another and to allow it for a while, thinking it a safe place, the right place, the best place to be, but, once the heart speaks out, which it always always will, saying ‘this is not what you want, make change’, at that point it is no longer right nor healthy to remain.  It isn’t about packing physical bags.  It’s about the first step down the road less travelled, the road you don’t know, the road that leads to inner acceptance and peace.  Fundamentals may not change, or they may do just that over time, as one metaphysical shift affects everyone else involved, but this doesn’t stop the process.  What does change is the person who decides to begin learning their own heart song, to relocate their wild spirit, whatever it takes.  An invisible change is always the most powerful, and not one living being remains unaffected by it.  It is transmitted in silence, but transmitted nonetheless.

I have met and spoken with people who have suffered horrifically at the hands of others and who shine like full moons.  They were given no explanation, no heartfelt apology, no opportunity for revenge, no closure, so they did it all themselves. They decided to remember the childlike wild inside them and to fan the embers back to life.  Too many of us waste life longing for someone to say sorry.  I’ve done it myself, imagining it would make everything okay.  Take it from me……move on.  It won’t happen anyway.

Imagine this going on in the animal world?  Those wild creatures we love to spot, to watch, to marvel at.  Any of them who paused to re-stock their supply of self-pity, wouldn’t last the night.  And we can learn from them, from the natural world.  It isn’t separate from us, and it never was.  This planet of ours belongs to all of us, and we are just a part of the dynamic and ever changing whole.

So, do we play our part?  Do we really paint our own canvas…….make our own mistakes, wash the colours off when they turn to mud and paint again, and then again and then again, altering lines and hues and shapes according to everything we learn as we travel on, or do we stand still whilst life marches by, immersed in what didn’t come to us, what wasn’t fair, deaf to the song in our heart?

I believe that every hurt and every frustration, failure, disappointment, mistake, every wound, every pain, all of these and more are essential materials for our development.  We must learn to celebrate them, be thankful for them, and to learn the lessons they taught us.  Unmindfulness is a human failing and the reason we live like hamsters.    We must notice everything, try everything with open, and above all thankful hearts.  We must re-kindle the child, the wild one, not to make sense of our lives, for who on earth has ever succeeded at that, but to honour the fact that we are here at all, to be mindfully thankful for everything that happened to us, to celebrate our glorious survival thus far, and then to work out how each one of us ordinary people can live out an extraordinary life.