Ask a Child

The older we become the more we tend to be influenced by our experience and set in our ways.

Children on the other hand have a much less tainted view of things. They tend to see things from a totally different perspective than adults.

Because children have fewer assumptions (if any) and are less inhibited they tend to give a more honest and black and white view of the world.

Often they'll give us a totally left of field response without any concern for convention.

SO ASK A KID!

Mind you you'll need to phrase things in a simplier way - which in it's own right is a good thing!


"Adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up because they're looking for ideas"
~~ Paula Poundstone

This young boy is my teacher! (Three photos of Joseph in 2010)

Choosing Happiness

I can honestly say right now I am the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. And what I know for sure, is that happiness is a choice.

I did a lot of work to get where I am. But before the reading and research, before packing a camera in my purse every day in the hope of capturing interesting images, came making up my mind to be happy.

The first step, in everything in life, is making a choice. We make choices in every moment. Right now, you are choosing to read this article rather than fold laundry, watch TV, or give the dog a bath.

Right now, because I want to spread joy, optimism and inspiration, I am choosing to write this article rather than wander into the kitchen and fill a bowl with chocolates for a late night snack, which would really only bring joy to me (at least until regret sets in and I begin calorie counting).

The point is, we choose every second. Even when we lay about doing nothing, we are making a choice every moment to continue to lay about, rather than getting up and doing anything else.

We seem to equate choosing with changing. Often when we stay the course we feel as though we’re not making any choices at all, yet we are making choices - we’re just not making different ones.

It has been said that we think 60,000 thoughts every day. And ninety percent of them are the same thoughts we had the day before. With that kind of habitual thinking it’s no wonder choosing different thoughts can be challenging.

What you have to ask yourself is, are you happy now? And if not, what are you willing to do to be happy?

For me it was a matter of becoming so uncomfortable where I was that more than wanting change, I felt it was necessary. I got to the miserable, prickly place where staying the course I was on was no longer an option. I didn’t like myself depressed and feeling worthless. At the moment that realisation overtook me, I made a different choice. I chose to be happy instead - to enjoy my life and be a joyful person.

It is through choice that we begin to create our lives. Through choice we grow and feed and prune our days into the life we want.


"Choose your friends by their character and your socks by their color. Choosing your socks by their character makes no sense, and choosing your friends by their color is unthinkable."
~~ Anon


I came upon this ancient Moreton Bay Fig tree while walking in the Botanical Gardens in Sydney on 28th August 2011. I stood and admired its beauty for some time.

Quality of Listening

I came across this beautiful story narrated by the prominent Buddhist teacher and Psychologist Jack Kornfield. It touched my soul and I felt I needed to share it with my blogging friends.

"In Africa. There is a story that illustrates the quality of listening that can come through meditation.

In a particular East African tribe or village when a child is born they don't count the birthday of that child from the day the child comes from its mother’s body or even the day it is conceived as in certain other cultures, but rather from when that child was first a thought in its mothers mind, that is the real birthday.

And as soon as the mother realizes that she would like to have a child with this particular partner, she will go off and sit out in a field under a tree, and listen, and wait until she can hear the song of the child that wants to be born in her heart that will come from the wedding or the coming together with this particular man.

And when she hears this song, she sings it to herself, and then returns back to the village and teaches it to her partner so that when they make love together, joined together in love, they sing this song and invite this child to be born.

And later as she is pregnant. She sings the song to the child in the womb and teachers it to midwives so that when the child is born the first song or sound that it hears is those gathered around singing its own unique song.

And as the child grows the people of the village learn the song of this person so that when he falls or she falls and hurts herself someone picks her up and sings her song to her, or in the rites of passage or rituals of the village the song is sung, the wedding ceremony where both songs are sung until finally even at the end of life, the song of this child now as an old man or women is sung for the last time, and say their last words...

When I first heard the story in it touched in me a longing to live in a place where we heard one anothers songs, where we were so in tune with ourselves and with one another that we could greet each other in that way, to meditate allows us to hear the song within ourselves and to be respectful and hear the song of those around us."
~~ Jack Kornfield

Do you know your song? Can you hear the song of others?

Take the time to listen.


"Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. When we really listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that we never get tired of each other. We are constantly being re-created."
~~ Brenda Ueland


My gorgeous friend Joseph, one day old - August 2006. We sing his song together every week.

Gudju Gudju - The Great Rainbow Serpent

Back in the dreaming when everything was dark and cold, lost dreaming spirits were wondering the land. Gudju-Gudju, the great rainbow serpent spirit roused from his sleep decided to create a world of beauty and purpose. The process of creation began.

He rubbed the coils of his body so hard fire was created for the first time. He called on the spirit of the Kookaburra to call the sun to rise and to create the first day.

All the spirits marvelled at what stood before them. With one great flash of light they came before the Rainbow Serpent and found him pulsating with magnificent colour. The spirits were told to go into the world and to create beautiful living things, animals, birds, trees and fish.

The earth rose into shapes of mountains and hills, rivers and creeks, then he blew on the sky and his breath formed feathery white clouds. The trees began to turn various shades of green, the mountains to violet and purple, and the birds began to display colours of the rainbow.

He told his people: What you are witnessing is part of you, and you are part of it, you must respect everything you see, hear and feel. Without this respect you will drag yourselves back into the freezing darkness for all eternity. I will now sleep forever but will guard the treasures which were created this day.

Story told by Paddy Jerome an elder of the Undami people North West of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

Another Aboriginal dreamtime story which is part of the curriculum that we teach to the kids who attend Mt Druitt Learning Ground in Sydney.


"Somewhere, over the rainbow, way up high, There's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby"


Above mural photo of a serpent taken in Treagear, Western Sydney in August 2006.

Be Here Now

When I studied Practical Philosophy for 3 years the words BE HERE NOW were repeated over and over. There was a very simple reason why these three little words became my mantra.

In the chaos of the modern world, there is a beauty in simply doing.

We’re buffeted wildly by whatever emails, conversations, news, events, demands, that are going on around us.

Our minds become a constant deluge of thoughts dwelling in the past, worries of the future, distractions pulling us in every direction.

But all of that melts away when we focus on just doing.

It doesn’t matter what the doing is: sitting, walking, writing, reading, eating, washing, talking, snuggling, playing.

By focusing on the doing, we drop our worries and anxieties, jealousies and anger, grieving and distraction.

There is something profound in that simplicity. Something ultimately heart-rendingly breath-takingly gorgeous.

So when you are caught up in the sandstorm of thoughts, feelings, to-dos, meetings, readings and communications.

Pause. Breathe. Let all of that fade.

Now focus on doing one thing, right now. Just choose one thing, and clear away all other distractions.

Seriously, clear it all away. Turn off your Internet. Stop reading this article (OK, read a couple more sentences, then close your browser!).

Let all thoughts about anything other than the doing also fade away. They’ll come up, but gently make note of them, and then let them go. And return to the doing.

If you’re washing a dish, do it slowly, and feel every sensation. If you’re eating a fruit, taste it, feel the textures, be mindful of your hunger or lack of it. If you’re writing something, pour your heart into that writing, become the writing, inhabit the words.

Just do.

The rest of the world becomes meaningless distraction. It’s just you, and your doing.

And you realize: this is all that matters. In this, there is everything.


"Before enlightenment - chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment - chop wood, carry water".
~Zen Buddhist Proverb


This sign caught my eye when I was walking in Paddington, Sydney today - 7th August 2011.