Monthly Archives: October 2012

For fed up folk in car queues, this blog could be titled ‘Wake up and smell the… er, exhaust fumes’ but shall call it instead…

Posted on by vegsoupforthesoul

‘Find yer talent an’ get busy buzzin’…!’

A few years ago I supported a charity called ‘Hope Africa’.  What particularly struck me were the unusual gifts sent out with each appeal for money.  Once, I received a lovely recipe for chilli jam, a beautiful card that still sits in my recipe file; on another occasion, a paper clip whose top had been fashioned into a flower.  I reflected on the hands that had patiently bent a length of wire into this intricate shape, no doubt for some meagre wage.  Fingers that fiddled hour after hour, probably day after day, doing this monotonous work.  I couldn’t help but feel, though, that love went into the making of each and every one.  This was something to be treasured.  So I did and I do.  Such an attractive way to keep my papers together.  A paper clip wouldn’t usually get a second glance… getting blog space though… this office sundry, deemed worthless, that’s far more likely to get shlooped up a Dyson at the end of a day.

But one item they sent out, went way beyond ‘food for thought’.  ‘Life changing’ in my opinion; a small card with these words attributed to Leo Buscaglia, quoted with permission from www.quotationsbook.com :

‘Your talent is God’s gift to you; what you do with it, is your gift to God’ 

Without treading on anyone’s toes/feelings here, please replace God with whatever fits your belief system.  The ‘Higher Power’ used within the recovery programmes cannot offend anyone but I like to think of God as The Universe; this Universal energy that pervades all things, all beings, and is working right now in our favour, if only we allow it to and… as long as we BELIEVE that it will.  Registering Leo’s words was one of those ‘Wow’ moments that I not only took to heart but tell others as well.  This card is always with me, on display within the plastic photo section of my purse… I mean which of my 4 kids would I put there anyway?

I believe that each and every one of us is incredibly talented.  We’re all awesome in fact and I’m convinced we know where our talents lie.  It could be an aptitude for certain subjects at school; maybe a passion for sport or photography or gardening.  We just have to find what gives us that ‘buzz’ and follow its path.  There are those… and I don’t wish to demean this in any way… who simply have an ability to listen.  How many of us just need a willing ear?  Even better if that person is understanding and compassionate; better still if they have the knack to somehow ‘suss you out’ within minutes.  You know.  Those people who tune directly into your wavelength and know exactly where you’re coming from; make you feel comfortable right away.

Unsure of my talents as a teenager, I felt drawn to a life working with animals and my father, give him his due, did get in touch with Sir Peter Scott and Gerald Durrell (whose ‘Jersey Preservation Trust’ I’d supported for many years.  He’s the guy who wrote ‘My Family and Other Animals’… One romp of a read).  Dad was advised that I’d need at least a degree in Botany to take this up seriously and, as I’d already failed Biology at ‘O’ level, this was rather a non-starter.  My parents knew I was a creative child but because I couldn’t come up with anything, suggested a career as an Air Traffic Controller in the RAF(!)  Fortunately, I can say now, I failed the 3 day ‘interview’, so next on their agenda was nursing.  That was so I could marry the doctor… instead of the RAF Officer… and thereby hangs another tale.  To say that I didn’t have a mind of my own or much of a clue at this stage of my life, is an understatement.  Anyway, my ‘A’ levels in Maths, French and Spanish proved most useful at this juncture!  While I don’t dislike caring for people, it’s hardly a creative occupation.  We were, for instance, taught ‘regulation corners’ when bed-making (this was the ‘stiffly starched apron’ era with Matron at the helm), so no scope there and there are only so many ways you can wipe a bum!

Creativity and giving injections don’t go hand in hand either… paralysis a likely outcome!

Target practice!

Target practice!

Remember my first time (no, not that, but that too!) and my patient asking whether I had done this before, as I fingered a cross on his buttock.  Not quite the time to tell him that till then, I’d only practised on oranges!  So whilst I did achieve those letters after my name, S.R.N. could p’haps stand for ‘So Right… Not’.

I believe now, that any of us can achieve our dreams which will naturally be in harmony with our talents and that we can get involved in anything we want to, starting at the ‘grass roots’ level if necessary.  I believe too, that we are all created perfectly for the ‘whatever’ we are supposed to do with our lives.  Those of us who prefer outdoor work should not be stuck in offices.  Those who operate best alone, shouldn’t work within a team.  It all leads to unhappiness and frustration.  I mean, how many joyful, yes ‘full of joy’, commuters do you see on the average morning?  We spend by far the largest chunk of our day ‘at work’ or not, if we’re not, so why keep busy being miserable?  I know… possibly stuck in that rut of having to do something/anything just to keep the bills paid but…

we have to find the time to follow our passion 

even if it’s a few minutes each day.  Liken it to crowbarring our way into a wooden box.  Making that start can be difficult; it’s easy once we get the leverage.  This is our box of joy.  It’s already ours but gets sidestepped or ignored; likely stubs our toes.  But it’s our birthright.  We should wake up with a zing, excited to get on with the morning but having some ‘buzz’ time to look forward to, is a start.

Every day I receive an email from The Universe… well, not quite every day.  The Universe takes weekends off!  Sent from Heaven, Cloud 4(!), they are the inspiration of Mike Dooley (of ‘The Secret’ fame) and I would recommend anyone to subscribe to these gems from his ‘Truly Unique Thoughts’ website.  I save the good ones in a separate folder but have so many now, that I’m rapidly running out of gigabytes.  Here’s one from July 18th (this year) and quoted with permission:

‘Blazing desire, even when it’s all you’ve got, is all you’ve ever needed.  But mind you, if your blazing desire has not effortlessly thrown you into action – preparing the way, taking baby steps and doing all you can – then it’s just a smouldering desire and you’re thinking other conflicting stuff as well.

Always hot for you,

The Universe’  (copyright Mike Dooley @ www.tut.com)

 

And another ‘Note from The Universe’… again quoted with permission.  This one emailed on July 23rd, also this year:

‘When you move towards a dream, it moves towards you.

When you move every day, it moves every day.

Someone pass me a calculator.

The Universe’  (copyright Mike Dooley @ www.tut.com)

 

Don’t you just love this guy?  His zany humour?  “Thanks Mike. We love you!”

Many years ago an astrologer friend told me that my very promising aspect of Mercury and Neptune indicated a potential to be a successful writer.  I was at that time running a business with my now ex-husband, so kind of pooh-poohed this suggestion.

Mud sticks!

Mud sticks!

Besides, some English teacher at school had assured me I had little writing ability.  Mud sticks wot.  But I wasn’t enjoying many aspects of this job, the huge amount of associated stress (the physical repercussions came later) and especially the entire night’s sleep I had to sacrifice once/twice a week just to keep on top of it all… plus I had the children to supposedly look after as well; half a football team by then, including two step-children and our baby.  (Yeah right, we had time for that!)  But how can you run a business from home and attend to their needs?  Emotional needs don’t even get a look in but you try your best.  “You do what you can, with what you’ve got” so they say, or someone said!  Looked it up… Where would I be without Google?  It’s actually a quote by Theodore Roosevelt:

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

So I managed the ‘relaxed’ breast-feeding with my neck crooked round the phone and pen and paper in hand(s) to deal with orders.  Expert positioning of pillows needed.  Didn’t use I.T. then.  Didn’t know how, and hubby was always too busy to show me but good old-fashioned  accounting worked well and I found it quicker to access someone’s account (i.e. PULL RELEVANT FILE OFF SHELF, FLICK TO NAME) than wait for a computer to load up/download/whatever.  But in trying to be housewife/mother/career person and find ‘Me’ time (What was that?)… something had to ‘give’.  The kids did, much of the time (and we were struggling to make ends meet*, by the way, not ordering gold-plated taps)…

*Our delightful fridge magnet read: ‘Just as you’re about to make ends meet, God moves the ends.’ 

… so days spent doing child-orientated activities meant going without the sleep (above) to catch up with the business.   It saddens me to this day that my eldest son only ever wanted to fly his kite with me and by the time I had the time, he was more interested in a pint.  Was it all worth it?  In the grand scheme of things: NO.  People who say they can do/have ‘it all’ will compromise big time or they have help in the shape of a Nanny.  (Psst… She’s the one reading your kids their bedtime stories).  Just a thought: Is that when ‘children’ became ‘kids’… The Victorian ‘Nanny’ era?!

But I don’t believe any of us can really multitask.  Yes, it’s true that, technically, we can cook the dinner whilst on the mobile or eat, while doing the same… the flat I shared with my last partner, was so small that landline calls could be taken not only from the sofa, but also from the bathroom, whilst cooking and, at a ‘stretch’, even from our bed, all from the one socket… but we cannot give both activities 100% of our attention.  This can only ever be divided between the number of activities we’ve taken on.  Think about it.

Can you really listen to a phone conversation while counting the number of pepper twists a dish needs or while making the culinary mental gymnastics to ensure all aspects of the meal are completed simultaneously?

This is my "If you're gonna buy a peppermill, make a statement, Mum" baseball bat aka corm-grinder!

This is my “If you’re gonna buy a peppermill, make a statement, Mum” baseball bat aka corm-grinder!

Can you truly savour a meal whilst doing justice to a phone conversation?  This invites the question: Should meals be eaten in silence?  This was something my ex advocated but it never happened.  I mean, it was that ‘get the family together’ time.  But if you’re out on a date or with company, perhaps with people you haven’t seen for a while, you will naturally want to talk, won’t you?  And that delicious soup will get lost among the consonants and vowels like I’m being sidetracked into these syllables.  Where was I?  Finding your talents…

It wasn’t till much later then, when we finally gave up the business, that I realised this astrologer was right.  Began to pen my first poems, learnt to understand that ‘less is more’… Hard to believe that coming from me, eh?  I drafted short stories and came up with endless ideas for books.  Have even outlined a film script, though most of it’s still in my cerebral cortex!  I rediscovered my love of reading poetry, especially the contemporary stuff.  But since my last (aye, not the first) divorce, I’ve been busy doing ‘anything and everything’ just to keep my head above the proverbial.  A year off ‘to write’ wasn’t an option.  During the recession (we’re still in it, aren’t we?) my various jobs began to dry up; an opportunity then, to finally overcome my fear of technology, grab hold of my crowbar/computer illiteracy and prise my way into that local library… which I did, firstly to open up an email account.  Quite an achievement at the time… Soon I was surfing the Internet(!), opening documents, cutting/pasting… and beyond, which meant I could finally get busy buzzin’.  Tell me though, which idiot (the genius!) decided that the ‘start‘ key would stop/close down a computer!   Yeah, it’s obvious when you know but when you’re new to this game, you spend ages clicking this, that an’ t’other in vain.  ‘S all right for you youngsters… Technology’s second nature, though I reckon pre-school children will eventually lose their ability to choose crayons and colour in pictures (neatly of course).  These days it’s ‘move mouse and click’!  But hey, I’m now freed from the restrictions of the library with a laptop of my own which now keeps me up half the night in a different way… emailing, Facebooking, Youtubing (sometimes), sorting photographs, searching Google Images, getting involved with the blogging community plus typing this lot at 2 in the morning… but I love it.

So if we want to find out what makes someone tick, we perhaps shouldn’t ask them what they do for a living but rather what they enjoy doing in their spare time,

a much better indication of a person’s interests/skills.  If they light up when they tell you, you’ll know you’ve hit the spot.

 

COPYRIGHT FOR IMAGES / QUOTES:

The three photos of the paper clip, the oranges and pepper mill are my own.  Permission needed to reproduce please.

The quote attributed to Leo Buscaglia is courtesy of www.quotationsbook.com

The photo of the ‘crowbar and box’ by kind permission of Mark @ www.mashkulture.net

Both ‘Notes from the Universe’ courtesy of Mike Dooley @ www.tut.com

Image of ‘muddy boots’ licensed to me from www.123rf.com as follows:

Image credit: <a href=’http://www.123rf.com/photo_4718766_muddy-work-boot-isolated-on-a-white-background.html’>Cole123RF / 123RF Stock Photo</a>

This lot (above) ‘s all gobbledygook to me but it’s what they advised me to do (copy and paste)… unless I’m supposed to do something else with it/put it somewhere else?  Anyone know?

The ‘To-do’ List

Posted on by vegsoupforthesoul

In my mobile menu there’s a section under ‘Organiser’ called the ‘To-do list’ which I use, amongst other things, to remind me to water some trees of mine planted at the College… not had to do that too often this year.  I set reminders to make certain phone calls, to renew library books, to pack my passport if flying up to visit the kids (an internal UK flight.  For overseas I’d remember.  Anyone wanna try me?)… Sounds grand but (plug for ‘Flybe’ here) flights are often cheaper than ‘training’ it, even if you don’t book in advance.  I have reminders to ‘check-in’ online the day before I fly, reminders to rendezvous for coffee, to leave for appointments… not the Doctor kind, remember.  I don’t do the W.C. Brigade (White Coat)… because, folks, I get so engrossed in this lot, I completely lose track of time!  Even set reminders to text my ex to remind him not to forget to dig out our son’s passport whenever he flies down to me!  God, it gets complicated.  Often too, I have to reset these reminders since, being reminded of something in the morning is no guarantee I’ll remember it by the afternoon!  So my phone’s replaced my memory!  Just need to train it to remember names and faces… and especially where those faces were before they moved to the place where I now can’t place them… Happens all the time… Drawback to living in such an intimate city.

Am meandering and rambling as per…

My ‘To-do list’, however, is primarily for birthday reminders.  How ‘The Kidz’ manage to forget mine I never know.  I mean they’re all so competant with today’s technology, they should just programme it into the ‘whatever’ section of their multi-tasking phones.

My reliable old brick has ONE advantage over their iPhones, though…

It can be dropped!  All I’ll ever lose when my batterey flies oot, is the date and time.  Soooo… if Mum can do it, they can.  Maybe it’s because I’m one of those annoyingly organised people!  Yeah, there is Facebook but being eternally young an’ all, I don’t advertise my birthdate, so no reminders from that quarter.  It would actually be simpler to shunt on my birthday.  Am considering it… Have to admit though, that this year was a first.  They all remembered… though I did hear about a last minute panic getting cards in the post, chasing my address.

Of course, memory never was my strong point, whether it was remembering patients’ names in a 36 bed ward… (associating someone with a certain location, a nightmare when he/she was mobile enough to be up for meals)… or remembering dates for History… the only one that stuck was… yep… 1066.  Needless to say I failed that subject.  I do have a way to remember the alphabet part of postcodes, though.  Places I’ve lived, for instance, include Jam Doughnut (JD), Beautiful House (BH) and Juicy Fruit (JF)… This is a clean blog site!  What I do for birthday reminders, however…. yes, that is where we were… is to type in a date that’s two days preceeding a given birthday.  This is because in the very (of course) unlikely event that I forget, I’ll still have enough time to get the birthday card in the post.  Not necessarily the gift.  Bigger/awkward items do take longer than a couple of days… and Second Class is not next day delivery, kids!  I could also remind my youngest that ‘post persons’ don’t work on Sundays either!  Bless him.  But 10/10 for effort, son.  Should a birthday fall on a Sunday, using my system, I can get a card bought/posted on the Friday and it should, ‘Snail Mail’ willing, be on their breakfast table (whoops, that was eons ago)…, their lunch table… (nope, that’s unlikely too, as postmen/women are delivering well into the afternoon these days.  Not their fault of course, it’s the system and no, I’m not even going there).  Let’s just say it would be delivered by the time the average teenager surfaces!

My lot have possibly… and I have to give them the benefit of the doubt here… keyed in my actual birthday so when their phone bleeps or squeaks, it’s too late to post anything.  Then I get the texts… ‘Oh Mum, sorry, I forgot and by the way, what’s your address?’  Well the city ain’t changed even if I have moved a couple of times in the last 18 months but when I had the same address for over 3 years, it was still the same scenario.  Maybe the reason’s because they rely on their memory which probably got drunk the night before.  Hey kids, a question: D’you forget your friends birthdays as well?  They know I’m only kidding… and may actually respond to this blog to remind me they remembered this year.  Well, there’s a first time for everything and I have been around a while!

So here I am with my birthday list and of course as soon as the date has passed an exclamation mark pops up till I reset it for the following year.  By doing so, I’m poignantly reminded of my assumption that this person will still be around in twelve months time.

We take this for granted, don’t we, this gift of life?

It’s always with a flutter in my heart then, that I press ‘Edit’.  And it’s not just a consideration for the older persons on my list… You kids had better outlive me!  I love you all so very much.  So when the exclamation mark vanishes from the screen for another year, I thank The Universe for my family and friends but acknowledge a time when that birthday card will be futile; the day I’ll need the courage to press ‘Delete’.

 

 

COPYRIGHT FOR IMAGES:

All 3 photographs courtesy of Moi (i.e. Cassandra Scott)… Not the best but easier than tracking down people for permission to download their stuff!

Water Crystals

Posted on by vegsoupforthesoul

This is an unusual topic: that of water crystals and a certain scientist called Dr Masaru Emoto.  While a few of you might prick up your ears at this point, I’m addressing the rest of you who are about to move your cursor to that cross in the corner!  Well DDI.  (Don’t Do It!)

So what d’you know about water crystals then?  Do you realise how extraordinarily beautiful they are?  Like snowflakes, no two are the same.  Invariably six-sided they parade in infinite variety.  Some seem formed from fern fronds caught in the deepest frost and are as detailed as those in nature; some have crystal clumps at each hexagon point; others are more geometric with solid columns and regular shapes but most can best be described as clusters of the most exquisitely cut diamonds radiating from a hexagon or contained within it.

We can’t imagine how problematical it was for Dr Emoto to produce and photograph ice crystals.  I mean they don’t hang around while you fiddle with your lens.

Crystals can only say ‘cheese’ for 20 or 30 seconds at most before turning to slush. 

Crystals can’t speak of course but they can speak to us and we’ll see later that water can even listen and read!  Bear with me.

Anyway, within a few years, Masaru had perfected a system of producing crystals which necessitated a walk-in fridge.  This was kept at a temperature of -5 degrees Celsius.  He used water from different sources from all over the world: water from the South Pole, water from the Columbia Glacier in Canada, tap water from cities such as Sydney, Vancouver, London, Paris, Buenos Aires, and even the spring water from Lourdes, to list but a few.  He wasn’t surprised to find that water from natural sources such as underground streams would always produce complete crystals.  Tokyo tap water, though, was a disappointment… I mean, millions of his colleagues drink the stuff… its composition changed by those ‘health and safety’ chaps who’d added chlorine to it, so no crystals showed up at all.  Rather surprisingly, New York tap water formed beautiful crystals, attributed perhaps to the cedar storage tanks then being used in Manhatten.

Many crystal pics later, Masaru’s young researcher came up with an idea to expose water to music.  Mother called my music ‘noise’ and today you can call it ‘garage’ or ‘house’ or ‘shed’ (my daughter assures me there is no ‘shed’) but all music can be classified as ‘vibration’.  After much trial and error, Masaru and Co. found that the best way for water to sense this vibration was simply to place the bottle between two speakers.  The results were astonishing.  Water exposed to beautiful classical music produced equally beautiful and well formed crystals while heavy metal that rocked with foul language, yielded only deformed crystals, implying that water responded less to sound than to the lyrics within it.

They then exposed water to words by writing ‘Thank you’ and ‘You fool’ on separate bits of paper which were then pasted onto the bottles but facing ‘in’, so that the water could ‘read’.

You may wonder at this juncture whether we’re heading into Monty Python territory.  I mean we’ve had bottles of water listening to music and now we’re expecting them to ‘read’… We can’t even achieve that with many of today’s kids!  Yes, it sounds completely ludicrous and implausible but it’s all set out in Dr Emoto’s gem of a book ‘The Hidden Messages in Water’ (Beyond Words Publishing Inc.): how the written word also sends out a vibration which water can detect and surprise, surprise, positive phrases such as ‘Thank you’ and ‘I’m sorry’ will yield perfect crystals whereas ‘I hate you’ literally breaks down the water structure to produce grotesque shapes instead.

Negative words, you see, have the capacity to destroy.

Of course these words were originally written in Japanese but ‘Thank you’ in any language has the same positive vibration which is what Masaru discovered in his research.  Later on, he visited a Junior School and got children to say “You’re beautiful” either a few times or several times to different samples of water.  The more times, the more perfect the crystal!  Interestingly, the water that was ignored produced a rather incomplete crystal.

In all these experiments, Masaru found that the most flawless crystal came about when water was shown the words ‘Love and Gratitude’.  ‘Love’ by itself was wondrous but ‘Love and Gratitude’ was unparalleled.  Later, water previously ‘wrapped’ in ‘love and gratitude’ was exposed to a computer, microwave radiation, a mobile phone and a TV programme, with startling results.  This water was actually able to, partially or wholly, resist their damaging influences, unlike the distilled water also used in this trial.  He next presented his bottles with photos of natural beauty such as waterfalls, rainforests, mountain ranges and our Sun.  The resultant crystals are some of the most stunning in the book.

Masaru also discovered that water can be transformed by chanting and at the end of the last century, he created an opportunity not only to pray for world peace but also to clean up Lake Biwa, Japan’s largest lake, some 40 miles long (that’s 62kms to you youngsters).  Funny that metrication doesn’t extend to newborn babies.  We continue to weigh them in pounds and ounces yet market traders have been prosecuted for doing likewise with vegetables!  But an 8lb baby actually means something to us… its equivalent 3.62874kg doesn’t quite have the same ring to it!  Anyway, back to the event around the lake which was presided over by Nobuo Shioya*, a man whom Masaru regarded as his master.  Nobuo understood the sheer power of words and was unremarkably active and healthy for his very advanced years.  So the chanting of 350 odd people (no, they weren’t odd, though some may think so!) was carried round the entire lake and one month later, reports came in that…

…there were no signs whatsoever of the foul smelling algae that had for years scummed its surface.

But this book expounds far more than these experiments.  For instance, Dr Emoto begins by asking whether we’re happy, whether we bounce out of bed in the morning, eager to start our day.  He discusses the chaos in our world and we wonder what bearing this has on ice crystals.  It is a book of startling revelations especially when you realise, if you haven’t done so already, that if words and thoughts and music can do this to water, imagine what they can do to ourselves.  Wow!

On another note: Saying grace before a meal makes sense then… I try to remember to address any food or drink with the words “I love you”… spoken/whispered with conviction and reverence… NB No dead animals on my plate!  Yes, it seems strange at first but makes what we ingest healthier for our bodies and I am aiming to live to 100+ remember… (you’ll need to refer to my previous blog!)

*Nobuo Shioya was born in 1902!  Yes, do the maths.  A lot of fascinating stuff online about this amazing man.

 

 

COPYRIGHT FOR WORDS / IMAGES:

ALL (5) photographs of the water crystals plus the cover of the book ‘The Hidden Messages in Water’ by Dr Masaru Emoto are published with permission of the Office Masaru Emoto LLC… Thank you, Hiro.

Permission granted from Betsy Chasse, co-creator of ‘What The Bleep (Do We Know)’, for my adapted use of these well-known words which featured in a scene from this life-changing film:

“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? If thoughts can do that to water, imagine what our thoughts can do to us.”

Thank you so much, Betsy, and good luck with your movie ‘Killing Buddha’.