Give yourself a little treat

My Dad adored opera. When listening to the music he would go into a sort of trace and hum along, badly out of tune. He introduced me to this music when I was quite young and we had this little joke that we thought was so clever; if Giuseppe Verdi was English his name would be Joe Green…hahaha. And my Dad had heaps of those thick 78’s (for the younger readers – very old vinyl records, played at a fast speed). Included in this collection were recordings by Caruso and Gigli about which I still have nightmares; I am sure we used them for clay pigeon shooting or melted them into ashtrays...horrors.

Moving on: Treat yourself.
At least one a month there is an opera movie at Nu Metro Cinema Nouveau. They come from the New York Met and are the most incredible productions. They are new ie. I saw Tosca the other week and it was filmed earlier this year. The singers, orchestra, set, costumes…..everything, are just out of this world. The voices are so spectacular I get all dizzy and have to remind myself to breath. The singers are amongst the best in the world. I can assure you that if you haven’t listened to an opera before, watching one of these productions will change the way you feel. During the intervals you get to go backstage and meet the stars and you also get to see how they change the really enormous sets. It is fabulous. And you don’t even have to know the story…. There are English sub-titles which are actually very funny – and incredibly corny - to read. But it really doesn’t sound so corny sung in Italian.

Aida is being shown on Friday night (27th Nov) in Jhb – I have seen the trailer and the set alone is enough to keep you spell bound! Enjoy.

Thanksgiving

The Americans are about to celebrate Thanksgiving. This is a really important holiday for them; more so I think than Christmas. I don’t know a heck of a lot about the tradition – but I do know that they eat pumpkin pie and turkey. And every time I think of turkey these days I am reminded of Nassim Taleb’s turkey graph from his book The Black Swan (*see below).

I do however know, that Thanksgiving is a time to give thanks. This part of the tradition is very appealing. Isn’t it nice to have a special day when we can all give thanks for the people in our lives, the things we have, the things we have done and will have the means to still do.? I think it is wonderful that this is an opportunity to also say thank you to the people around us who make our lives easier, who love us (warts and all), make us laugh, who are always there for us.

But, we don’t have to wait for “a thanksgiving day” to say thank you. There is a lot of research around at the moment that says that you will be much, much happier if you practice gratitude, understand being grateful and express your appreciation.

Thanksgiving in the US is celebrated on the 4th Thursday in November. – which is the 26th November this year. Co-incidentally – we are having our Poker Club Christmas dinner that night – a nice time to be thankful for good friends, lots of laughs and some very bad poker that has been played.

*The Turkey Graph : paraphrased by me

Taleb says: imagine a turkey that is kept in a special pen and it gets fed every day a certain time and receives a certain type and amount of food. This happens every day for 1000 days. And on the 1001st day some guy comes into the pen, grabs the turkey and chops its head off. Moral of the story: you can’t predict the future from past known behaviors/activities. Liz’s moral:- don’t get stuck with what has happened in the past and past experiences, move on, enjoy the present and make your future great.

Stamina

In his book The Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell talks about why little Chinese kids are so much better at maths and science than their Western counterparts. One of his theories is that it is much easier to do “sums” and count in Chinese. But his major theory is that the Chinese kids spend much more time per year at school than our little darlings. They have a much longer day and much shorter holidays. And they have homework as well and none of them seem to have died from overwork. There is also a school in new York City that runs along these lines and is churning out well rounded, well educated scholars who are also getting phenomenal results in the maths and science arena.

My school teacher friends will remain friends because I am not advocating longer school hours; I am using this as an example that if people (children in this case) are trained to work longer hours then they will be just fine. They wont be tired, pooped out, exhausted, fit to drop….

They are like athletes…. You cant expect to run a marathon unless you work at it, put in the time and effort and train for it. You have to build up the stamina. You may feel a bit worn out at first but you will get used to it.

And I also believe this is why we “give up” too soon. You have to develop the stamina for a new task. Lets face it, the first time you sit in front of a PC for the entire day, you’ll feel like hell – sore eyes, arms, back, knees….in fact everything will ache. The weekend gardener will suffer from planting seedlings.

It takes a bit of time to build the skills, the muscles and stamina to do the new job. You need to get working fit, studying fit. You need to get past the discomfort zone.

Little Snippets

Every now and again, I get all sorts of little snippets and quotes from other blogs, papers, friends etc that just seem to hit the spot. I sometimes copy and paste the snippet into a word document and file it under a title like “nice quote”…. And then promptly forget about them.

This last week I got these ones and I am passing them on immediately this time – I think they are great.

About Fear:

“What gets in the way of wisdom? Fear is the biggest culprit....Fear can get in the way of compassion, gratitude, and seeing the goodness in other people, which in turn can make our relationships more difficult. Fear makes us cling to a picture of how we think things should be, making acceptance of what is almost impossible....In short, fear makes us go through life with our guard up, wasting energy that could be put to better use. In contrast, both serenity and courage are based on living with trust.” From: The Wisdom to Know the Difference by Eileen Flangan

About Listening

“Listen naively. But don't just "listen," also "hear." ... The listening part is relatively easy. It's about hanging out, dropping in, leaving your office door open (or, better yet, not having one). Hearing is about empathy.” Tom Peters

About Problems

"The problem is rarely/never the problem. The response to the problem invariably ends up being the real problem." Tom Peters

Seeking a life unplugged

by Lisa de Speville

Creative thinker Dion Chang (although he is often associated with fashion, he isn't a designer - just a trend analyst) was on the radio last week, talking about his new book '2010 Flux Trend Review'.

The one item in the radio interview that caught my attention was 'The unplugged revolution'. I recently addressed the whole adventure/expedition issue in a post and how these brave adventurers are answering a natural calling to explore and make their own tracks across the globe.

From Dion's perspective, we start our day with gadgets and clutter (alarm clock, radio, electric toothbrush, processed food, traffic, telephones, computers, printers, paper everywhere, emails...). We're always 'on' and although these tools have been created to make our lives easier, they weigh us down instead.

This topic has actually been in my mind for the better part of two weeks. We send emails getting answers with a day. In years long gone we would have written a letter, which takes time to get a response. And while speed is good for productivity, it has created a rush-rush-rush lifestyle. We probably do more in a quarter than our grandparents (or parents) did in a year. Dion quite rightly says, of the information that bombards us daily (news, emails, advertising), "the quantity of messages has long superceded the quality".

So this is where Dion's 'Unplugged Revolution' comes in - 'people going back to nature, exploring spirituality and embracing traditional practices like craft and gardening'.

I think this also explains the success of multiday sporting events (get away from it all association) and, I suspect, a greater number of explorers.

This busy pace of life also ties in with something else I've been thinking about - 'time to think'. For the past few years I've been chasing my tail, non-stop. Races, training, work, organising, admin, club, email... it just doesn't end. It was only when I left my day job in June and got a bit of free time in early October that I was able to think about some things.

Also, being in a fairly creative industry (PR, media, communications), time to think is important. When you're chasing your tail and rushing from one client to the next, you cannot possibly have time to come up with creative solutions and fun ideas - they're only half there. This is what it was like at the agency I worked for - no time to just think.

From experience, good intentions are often just that - but I am trying to make sure that I keep some open time in my life specifically for thinking (running is good thinking time too).

Philosopher, Winnie the Pooh, has this to say on the topic...

"Here is Edward Bear now coming downstairs on his head bump bump bump behind Christopher Robin. It is as far as he knows the only way of coming down though he feels there really ought to be a better way if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think about it." – A A Milne, Winnie the Pooh

Have you got time to think?




If you had time to think you could have come up with this too...

(and yes, I did sing through all the options too)

Didgeridoos, cellos, hangs and nose flutes

On Sunday we did a family get-together day at my cousins’ house. I had been warned June that there would be some people I hadn’t seen for while and I was looking forward to this surprise as well as seeing Derek and June. We live in the same city but at opposite ends and add to that the normal demands on our time; we never get to see that much of each other.

The surprise was my cousin Barbara and her partner Bruce. I hadn’t seen Barbara since we were at a family wedding about 4 years and I hadn’t met Bruce before. Barbara and Bruce live in the Cape and had been here for business.

There were about a dozen of us for lunch and as usual June produced a feast – but the thing I am always amazed with is how she managed to make salads into little impressionist masterpieces – almost too beautiful to mess up. So we sat around and ate, drank wine and laughed and told funny stories.

After lunch, June started moving the furniture around and out came Barbara with her cello and Bruce with a didgeridoo. You have no idea how complementary these two instruments are…really stunning. After the first little piece things hotted up and we listened to some music by pop group Hotwater – in one number Barbara provides some very beautiful cello backing….. pop and cello also goes together beautifully. And then Bruce brought out an instrument called a Hang (pronounced Hung). This thing looks like a weber braai! But the sounds that come out of it are magical…. From flute sounds to soft strings and mellow steel drum sounds. In the meantime June and Brenda couldn’t keep still and were dancing up a storm. Kevin leapt up every now and again, stomped his feet and let out a whoop or two. We were all laughing, clapping hands cheering on the dancers and musicians and joining in a chorus or two.

Would you believe it: Bruce brought out another couple of instruments – a bit of pvc piping tuned to C that he makes sing. And then he gave us nose flutes to practice on and after a bit Lisa managed to play along really well. I had a cold – you really can’t play a nose flute with a cold… but mostly everyone got the hang of it and was playing little ditties.

What a fantastic day. And what made it so special? We were with good friends and family; we had good wine and food. We had great conversation, amazing music, dancing and lots and lots of good laughs. Happiness is all of this.