Pay It Forward Day

Thursday April 25, 2013 - Pay It Forward Day

Please join me on Thursday and let's create a ripple effect that will last all year.....until 2014 when we can do it all again.......like Ground Hog Day!

Pay it Forward Day has now spread to more than 50 countries around the world. It's mission is simple - together we can change the world - one good deed at a time.

One good deed might not seem like much, but if everyone did something good for someone else then the cycle of generosity and kindness can spark us to become better people.

Operating on the premise that we all have it in our power to help another, one individual truly can change the world.

A day of giving....how great is that! And kindness is contagious!


"They say don’t believe your own hype, but if you don’t why would anyone else? To be great you have to believe you can do great things."
~~ Charley Johnson

Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi, Sydney, Australia - November 2008

Rainbows, Happiness and Risk

The more money and material goods we have, the more we want - and the less they bring us satisfaction.

The real key to feeling good it seems is to give and keep on giving.

When we stop putting a monetary value on what we do, it is immensely liberating.

We also have an obsession with happiness as though it were yet another purchasable product.

As a child I once tried to stand in the end of a rainbow to feel the colours on me. I ran back and forth across a wet field with friends shouting directions across the cow pats.

But rainbows can't be seen from close up.

And the irony of happiness as a product is that it disappears when we look directly at it, as ephemeral as that rainbow.When we are young we jump into a pool whether we can swim or not.

We have no fear.

Either we swim or we drown.

Before the age of thirty important things happen to us which shape the rest of our lives.

The first is:
We become aware of ourselves and our own thinking. We reach the age of reason.

The second is:
In our new-found maturity we begin to think in a more adult way.

We become grown up.

Recklessness and risk are not compatible with age.

Risk becomes something which must be carefully considered.

Or is it!!!

We all have a negative voice in our heads that stops us from taking risks. Ask yourself what you really have to lose.

Most of the time it's about ego and less about any real loss. Go first. Have the courage to do something before waiting to see if others are willing.

“Two bubbles found they had rainbows on their curves.
They flickered out saying:
"It was worth being a bubble, just to have held that rainbow thirty seconds.”
~~ Carl Sandburg

Cockatoo Island Art Exhibition, Sydney Dec 2011

Is Print Dying?

Print — literature, journalism, you name it — has experienced an extended obituary over the last decade, alongside the rise of digital media.

Having survived 500 years of technological upheaval, Gutenberg's invention may withstand the digital onslaught as well.

There's something about a crisply printed, tightly bound book that we don't seem eager to let go of. Holding a book in my hand and the visceral act of physically turning a page that, for me at least, can't be matched with pixels on a screen.

Printed books are universal – anyone can read them today or at any point in the foreseeable future. What guarantees are there that you’ll still be able to read the Kindle book you pay for today in five or ten years time? Will you have to buy a fresh library if a device comes along to displace the Kindle?

Books are timeless. When you present a book as a gift, you do not have to worry about it going out of fashion. Also you cannot loan an eBook to a friend without physically giving them your e-reader, which really isn't an option.

Somehow, books are not the same when they are in electronic format. Perhaps one day in the future when e-books become obsolete and are replaced with even more high-tech alternatives, the children of this generation will say the same.

And so I hope that printed books never die. I doubt they will anytime soon; convenience has not killed other markets but made those markets revisit their roots. Perhaps the eBook revolution will ask publishing to reinvent itself and we will all come out for the better.

When the machines go dark we’ll need a written record of all that has transpired here.

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” 
~~ Haruki Murakami  

British Library, Camden, London, July 2008

My Bookends

Picture from Pinterest