The right time

Last year I started two small projects that didn’t come to anything. The work was done but the fruit was not born.

One of the projects was related to my garden. I turned the earth, removed loads of rubble and old dead roots, filled many flower pots and garden patches with earth and compost, and planted seedlings, seeds and bulbs. A bit too late to the season. They have grown to an extent but unfortunately never revealed its full beauty. Never blossomed.

This little incidence taught me something: Timing in life is important. It seems to me that many of our projects or endeavours in life have their time bracket. Ultimate conditions for growth. The right time. Perhaps it takes a failed attempt at making something happen to recognize that right time and to make use of it.

In the coming months I’d like to be a bit more aware of time (its presence, limitations, seasonality, etc.) and work with it and within it. Not against it.I think that time and I may even become friends this year.

What’s your relationship with time like? How do you stay in beat with it?

A blank canvas to start the year

“I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says “Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

These photographs were taken during my stay in Poland. A day before our flight back to the UK snow began to fall. I was thrilled. I had what I waited for and I’ve captured our little walk around my dad’s orchard above. I think that it was in my childhood that I have somehow persuaded myself that the snow needs to fall for the new year to begin. It’s as if a blank sheet was put on my old scribbled paper and I am now allowed to start again…. with lungs full of refreshing air.

Where would your bundle go?

After most christening or wedding parties there is a custom of preparing something for the guests to take home with them. Usually it’s a small bundle of sweets or cakes, sometimes accompanied by a quote or a thankful message, to let the guests know that their presence was welcomed and appreciated. It’s a symbolic way of sharing with them the goods of the feast.

Throughout the last year I have been trying to cultivate a giving heart. I have supported various charities and community events. I was trying to resist buying new items for myself and my son in order to support humanitarian, rather than consumerist, objectives. While I was doing this project I was observing myself and others around me and one observation struck me very hard: being able to give, in many cases, does not really depend on the state of people’s bank account but on their perceived lack of capacity to share. I observed people who refused to support causes because they say they don’t earn enough to be charitable, and then I saw the very same people discarding goods that they had bought the previous week. How is it that we don’t earn enough to give but we earn enough to throw?

There are people in the world for whom what we spend and consume every day would constitute a lavish feast. In every form. The electricity we use. The food we eat. The many pairs of shoes we wear. The books we read. The clothes we have. It is likely that we are feasting in one area or another, or in all those areas.

The Nothing New Project made me realise that I feast in quite a few areas of my life, but for one of them I am particularly grateful: healthcare. Last year I was diagnosed with a life-long illness but because I live in the UK my medicine is for free. Through the Nothing New Project I was able to support many charities, but Doctors Without Borders (MSF), the charity that heals those who would otherwise be left without treatment, was my priority. The charity deals with challenging situations and extraordinary tasks, the Ebola crisis among them. Could you imagine yourself being in Liberia right now? Being a patient or trying to help? Doctors Without Borders are uncommon people whose courage is not of this earth. They deserve our respect, our support and certainly my feast bundle.

Where would your bundle go?

May we grow

I have started this year strong and vibrant, with a head full of ideas and projects to implement. This would probably not happen if it wasn’t for my visit to Poland and the kind heart of my mum who has really helped me to reset my brain and energy levels. She did pretty much all the cooking and that was such a blessing. She gave me time and thus granted a lot of mental space that I happily filled with dreams and ideas for this new year.

I have got a friend in Poland who I love visiting. She’s a very beautiful and a very independent woman who has this fabulous ability to make things happen. Like a magical fairy with some secret golden powder that she scatters around, invisible to ordinary mortals, she creates beautiful things around her. Wherever she goes, wherever she’s present, she carries that charm with her. When you talk to her, it’s just a matter of seconds before you start noticing a change within yourself. You feel that you are surrounded with positive energy that gives you the confidence to do things yourself.

I hope that this new year will give you all this magical powder to work with. May you see growth and beauty in all areas of your life and in all your pursuits. I hope this year we will blossom together.

Happy New Year Friends!

Waiting for change

Sometimes we look for winter and we find autumn. Forced to take a step back. Forced to revisit what has happened before. Disappointed that the past is actually the present. Disappointed that things do not change quickly enough. But the past is never fruitless.The past can still give more…