The theme of the series is ‘Stuff that You Wish You Had Known Earlier in Your Life’ but there are so many of those I decided to pick only five of them.

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

Before I go any further I’d like to make clear this is not a ‘Things I Regret’ article but life lessons. I don’t believe they were ‘mistakes’ but rather choices, assumptions or periods of my life that might have been different if I’d known then what I know now. I didn’t know then what I know now so were necessary and important and I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I hadn’t lived them.

I would also stress that these are all works-in-progress.

1    My Parents Are Wonderful People

Humans are not proud of their ancestors, and rarely invite them round to dinner.

At a certain point in my life I discovered, and there was no real trigger but more a growing realisation, that my parents are not to blame for all the bad decisions, personality defects and problems that beset my life.

In fact, my parents are quite wonderful human beings and I’m very proud of them. They did (and continue to do) absolutely the best they could to raise me, love me and be relationship role models. They’re perfect just the way they are and around the age of 18, when I left home, would have been a good time for me to see that and start to take full responsibility for my own life.

Actually my life turned out pretty well, I have to say, and I sometimes wonder how much different it might have turned out if I’d learned that it is me who is responsible for my life and nobody else. Certainly not those who gave me the gift of life in the first place.

2    I’m not always right

… and even when I am it’s usually not that important.

Reality is frequently inaccurate.

I used to be a person who wanted accuracy above all else, and I would gladly show people the mistakes they made.

I discovered over the years, winning an argument about whether I’m right or not is almost always a hollow victory.  I may prove a point but do very little for the relationship with the person I’m victorious over. Usually it’s rather damaging to the relationship … especially when I’m arguing over something small and insignificant (read ‘Being Right’ for an example of what I mean!).

There are matters of principle and values that are worth fighting for, so I learned to choose my arguments better.

To check with myself where the energy to argue comes from. If it’s to fuel my ego then I try to let it go. If it’s from a deeper place then I choose to stand up for what I hold as important

3    Deal with things as they arise

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at and repair.

For the last three weeks we’ve been without hot water in the kitchen because the pipe corroded and I had to turn it off at the source to prevent a leak. With the hot water pipe broken the cold water has a tendency to come out both through the nozzle of the tap and back down through the hot water pipe into the cupboard below the sink. This has happened at least 10 times in the last three weeks resulting in minor floods of the kitchen each time.

It’s an easy job to fix but one I haven’t got around to.

I’m a great procrastinator. Sometimes this works well but often it’s rather destructive. If something is bothering me, something is breaking down or things are changing, holding onto the way things are and not dealing with it just makes things worse.

Having not said anything the first time, it was somehow even more difficult to broach the subject the second time around.

I’ve learned this is especially important in relationships where holding onto ‘stuff’ is just unhealthy. It burns and festers away inside, until when it does come out it’s expressed in an unconstructive way that can make things worse.

I’m learning to procrastinate less!

4    I’m attractive enough .. and love matters

He had personality problems beyond the dreams of analysts.

I spent most of my teenage years worrying about whether I was attractive enough, interesting enough or desirable enough to ever attract a woman. When I was 15 I was so delighted when I found one person who did find me attractive enough to be with I held onto that relationship like it was treasure.

With the passing of the years I realised rather too late that I stayed with that relationship out of fear (of being alone and that I’m not .. you know .. attractive enough etc.). I’m sad to admit it wasn’t out of the deep love you need to make a relationship flourish in the long term.

I say ‘too late’ because plenty of wonderful people got really badly hurt when I left the marriage (as it was by then) – not least of which my wife. And it took me a few more relationships and a trail of wounded people to learn the lesson.

I wish I’d known known earlier about love, relationships and that I’d had enough confidence in myself that I feared neither being with someone or being alone.

5.   There is no God

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

There … I said it!

I’ve spent so much of my life trying to work out the truth behind the Christian version of God I was brought up with, I wish I’d realised there isn’t a God much earlier. Then I could have used that time on the real journey of discovering the meaning of life and the meaning of my life.

I have no intention of offending anyone but no matter how hard I try, I just can’t believe there is a God (a deity, creator, intelligent external force or entity).

I don’t need a God, ‘sacred’ text or religion to give me purpose in life or to give me a moral code by which to live. Those are things I’m perfectly capable to work out for myself.

I’m sure there are plenty of people reading this (and even more who won’t read it ) who vehemently disagree and have discovered the exact opposite. If belief in a God works for you then that’s great. It doesn’t work for me and that’s great too.

You live and learn. At any rate, you live.

Isn’t the nature of life lessons that we all reach different conclusions?

And that’s just wonderful!

In case you’re wondering, all the quotes on this page are by Douglas Adams.

Post from: Quantum Learning

5 Things I Wish I’d Known Earlier

I happened to be pushing a baby in a buggy and accompanied by Mona (proud mother of baby, tolerant wife of me).

I could be dramatic and say I was almost hit by the large BMW but integrity and a certain standard of honesty prevents me making such exaggerated claims. The truth is my foot was definitely on the crossing and clearly I wanted to cross the street. The BMW in question drove straight across in front of me and, had I not stopped, there might have been a nasty accident.

Mona turned to me and said,

“Expensive cars never stop at crossings.”

As a huge generalisation it probably doesn’t warrant too much investigation and it would be really pedantic to say it’s not the cars but the drivers that never stop.

Despite that, her comment did get me thinking about how much we’ve given over the world to the all powerful motorcar.

Stopping at Crossings

Haven’t we got this back to front?

I reached a point where I regard a driver who decides to stop to allow me across the street as doing me a favour. Many times I wave a hand of thanks to the driver who goes out of his/her way to slow down and let me pass. Walk down any busy street and you’ll see people patiently (or not) waiting for the traffic to stop so they can pass. Usually those on the street well outnumber those driving cars, particularly as most motors seem to only have one person sitting in them.

This is especially true in towns and cities – places having the purpose for people to live, work and relax.

Yet it’s the rare city where the pedestrian rules as we’ve given over the places we live to the automobile.

If we were to start over again I would strongly push for an approach whereby it is the driver who waits and it is the driver who waves a thankful hand to those of us on the street for allowing them to pass by.

Or better still, eliminate cars from towns and cities completely. These are places for PEOPLE not for cars!

The only places where this currently happens are a few historical cities and shopping streets. I suspect for the former this is more to preserve the old buildings and for the latter to make it harder for the shoppers to escape.

Fuelling the Monster – Part 1

No-one really knows how many motor vehicles are cruising the streets of the planet today:

Around the world, there were about 806 million cars and light trucks on the road in 2007; they burn over 1 billion m³ (260 billion US gallons) of petrol/gasoline and diesel fuel yearly..  (Source: The always reliable (!) Wikipedia)

Is it only expensive cars that don’t stop at crossings?

Whether they stop at crossings or not is largely a matter of social culture. In Romania they rarely stop unless you are spread-eagled on the tarmac in front of them. In other countries you only have to look at the crossing and they stop.

What is true, though, is ALL cars are expensive.

The purchase or lease cost is just the small tip of the iceberg (or oil field!). Add to that maintenance, fuel and insurance.

And the continual depletion of our fossil fuel reserves.

And all the resources used in vehicle manufacture and maintenance.

And road building.

And don’t get me started on the cost of air and noise pollution, traffic accidents or the accidents resulting in massive damage to the oceans (BP, anyone?).

Fuelling The Monster – Part 2

Someone has got us convinced we need at least one car each, or ideally, more than one car. Call me crazy but, personally I suspect the oil companies and car manufacturers.

Whoever it is, they’ve somehow got me to believe the car I drive says something about who I am as a human being. Am I successful enough to drive a big, flashy car? And a family car to use when no-one is watching?

It’s quite amazing how much my ego can be fuelled by driving.

One car I had some years ago was a very sexy, sleek white monster that went very fast indeed. And I felt GREAT driving it. Honestly, though it didn’t change me as a human being – only when I was behind the wheel when I myself became a very sexy, sleek white monster that went very fast indeed. And, really .. how on Earth can a car be SEXY???

These days I don’t own a car and my ego is no longer fuelled. Except when I borrow one from time and the boy racer comes out to play. Unless it’s my Mum’s car I’m borrowing!

Losing The Use Of My Legs

I enjoy driving.

It also makes some aspects of day to day life much easier. After all it’s pretty hard to do some things these days without access to a car. Not impossible but usually very inconvenient.

Perhaps those same people who fuel my ego with images of sleek, white monsters are also in collusion with those who plan our living spaces. Some living spaces are worse than others in this respect.

My parents visit the US from time to time and one place they stayed was a residential area just over the other side of the street from a supermarket. They naively thought they could just walk across the road to the other side but found there was no physical way of doing so. They had to drive there despite being only 100 metres away.

It’s so easy to get about in the car it becomes a habit. The price we pay is we lose the use of our legs. Is it coincidence the countries with high density of motor vehicles are also those with high densities of overweight people. I know it’s not a simple as that, but when I see people jump in the car to drive a kilometre down the street I wonder how long it will be before their legs drop off through inactivity.

They Are Here To Stay

Of course they are wonderful inventions and they are here to stay. I’m not suggesting any different.

What I would like is moderation and awareness.

Consider these questions every time you choose to drive in favour of other alternatives:

• is driving the only way, or are there alternatives? (walk, bus, train, ask for a lift?)
• what’s the total cost of this drive in financial terms – to you? (fuel, maintenance, depreciation) and to the world (or your share of all the hidden costs)?
• remember that pedestrians are not a nuisance but people, just like you, who chose to use their legs instead of their wheels
• is your choice of car really your choice? or is your choice influenced by the mass media? (be brutally honest with yourself!)

Drive safely!

Post from: Quantum Learning

Expensive Cars Never Stop At Crossings

A picture was all we needed to take (see above!!!), make some declarations and collect the passport later that same day.

A Passport Story

Several hours we waited in a hot, crowded hallway with no sign of even rudimentary organisation such as a queue (yes, we British love to queue!). Eventually we were sitting in front of a uniformed lady who checked our documents and entered some details into the computer.

Then she passed me a form to sign and told me to write a declaration that I agreed, as a British citizen, for Sara to be issued with a Romanian passport.

No problem.

Except she wanted the declaration in Romanian – a language I know virtually nothing about.

The solution was easy, Mona wrote out the sentence and I copied it onto the form. I had a few challenges with Mona’s handwriting but managed to reproduce it to the satisfaction of the passport-issuing-lady. She told us to go to a different office in 2 hours to collect the passport.

I’ve learned over the years that most bureaucratic institutions are based on a platform of form filling and neatly segregated into jobs inhabited by people who rarely communicate with one another. As an example, we needed to make three small payments for the passport with each paid to a separate segment of the civil service. Each segment operated a separate bank account, each with a different banks. This meant trips to the three banks with no chance of one-stop banking as we needed the proof of payment stamped by each of the three banks.

As you can maybe tell, I was building up a picture in my mind of a highly inefficient, illogical and confusing system designed to make things as difficult as possible for the average person. Kafka’s writing come alive!

A Story Of Stupidity …

Final part of the story.

Back to collect the passport at the appointed hour and more confusion, still no queues, still crowds of people and still very hot.

Two hours after the appointed time we’re called to the front to face the passport- issuing-officer, a slightly rotund lady in a crisp uniform. Beside her is another lady telling us that the declaration (the one I wrote out in my very best Romanian) was incomplete and I need to add a sentence stating that I both speak and write Romanian fluently.

Hmmmm!

Mona stands next to me and spells out letter by letter what I need to write down with me following her instructions as best I can, feeling not a little intimidated by the massed crowd watching every stroke of the pen, to say nothing of the two officials not half a metre in front of me.

We hand over the form and receive our passport in exchange and I’m almost hysterical inside at the craziness of the system and the stupidity of these two people. It was obvious I didn’t know Romanian, yet here they were telling me to write a declaration we all knew to be false so they had their precious forms completed correctly.

I left the place intent on telling everyone how stupid these people are.

But Who Was Being Stupid?

Last night I joint hosted our first discussion group as part of our LightWork initiative. The topic for the evening was ‘How to make space for Kindness at work’. Half way through the discussion I suddenly realised something.

Those ladies in the passport office were not stupid at all.

What they did was to offer an act of kindness in turning a blind eye to my language deficiency. It was kindness to help us through the system so we could have our passport. It was kindness that pushed them to bend the rules which in many ways define their work. It was kindness that allowed them a simple human touch of understanding and generosity.

Without their kindness we would not yet have a passport for Sara. We would not be on our way today to the UK for Sara to visit her family there for the first time. We would be somewhat poorer after hiring a sworn translator, having everything translated for me at a notary office and having to change our flights to the UK.

And I missed it!

I interpreted this act of kindness as stupidity.

Who’s the stupid one?

An Apology

So dear passport-issuing-ladies.

I am deeply sad that I not only didn’t notice your act of kindness but that I went further and interpreted it so negatively. I would like you to know that I now see what happened more clearly and I am very grateful to you both.

And I want to apologise to all those people who have ever offered me an act of kindness I was too arrogant and stupid to see. I wish I could have noticed your beautiful act.

I am deeply embarrassed as I’m sure there are many of you out there.

Post from: Quantum Learning

Dear Passport Ladies

It wasn’t the colour of the world that shocked me. After all, Spring started here a couple of months ago and that’s what tends to happen in the Spring, isn’t it? Especially late Spring!

Everything is supposed to turn green.

What shocked me was I could have sworn that yesterday the park was dead and grey with no green in sight.

Now I see at least two possible explanations for this.

1. A Miracle Happened

There could have been some miracle in the floral world whereby all the trees sprouted leaves overnight while my eyes were closed in sleep. I don’t discount this possibility, though my previous close observation of the plant world is things tend to happen a bit more slowly than that!

I do, however, believe in miracles so when I got home I carefully scanned the local news looking for some mention of this phenomena. Finding none I had no choice but to move to my second explanation.

2. Sleep Walking

It could be they had indeed sprouted leaves while I slept, and that I’d been sleeping for some days, maybe even weeks. Only this form of sleeping was with my eyes open and my mind and heart closed.

What Do I Fail To Notice?

It got me wondering how many other changes around me do I fail to notice because I’m either so wrapped up in other stuff or I’m just not taking the time to experience the world around me.

What changes in my children do I fail to notice?

My eldest daughter grew up. She transformed from a little girl into a grown woman of 18, not suddenly, but with many small delightful steps. My middle daughter turned 7 a couple of months ago – again, what have I missed?

What changes in myself?

Another year on and what have I experienced that passed straight through me because I wasn’t paying attention. I notice a few aches in my body to remind me I’m not getting any younger but I tend to assume those are passing things and nothing to do with the years of wear and tear on my physical form. What joys have I let go without fully putting myself into them?

What tears have I failed to shed because I was thinking about yesterday or tomorrow and forgetting that life is here and now in the small moments?

What world events out there have I not noticed?

And I’m not the only one. This may be a shallow example but I had a debate with Mona a couple of weeks ago about Bob Dylan, of all people. She was sure he had passed away and I was sure he hadn’t. Sorry, Bob if you’re reading this and I apologise for my wife writing you out of the world before your time. I heard many people were at your concert in Bucharest last week so I’m assuming I’m right on this occasion

Being Here v Being There

The point is how much we miss because we’re in other stuff.

Could we be better prepared for life if we open our eyes to the small changes? Could we prevent things that seem to happen in a moment, but in truth grow in front of us in small changes that eventually reach a tipping point so they seem like an event?

Things rarely happen suddenly – though that’s often how we perceive them.

Wars don’t start overnight – they build up. World poverty and hunger isn’t an event but a process. AIDS didn’t suddenly become a problem but has been around a long time. Volcanoes don’t just erupt – the tension in the earth builds bit by bit – unnoticed but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. People rarely turn to crime on a whim (it happens, but it’s rare) but the seeds are sown long ago and we allow them to grow like weeds.

Once weeds have taken hold they are difficult to remove.

Are wars, crime, disease, poverty or climate change really in the hands of an individual who takes them over that tipping point or brings them to our attention?

Or are they in all our hands because we fail to notice them and take action by removing the weeds early on? Or worse – we do read the signs and leave it to others to do something about it?

And it’s not just the terrible things but the wonderful things happening around us each moment. Do we really appreciate and celebrate them moment by moment?

Has the world suddenly turned green or, more likely, has been turning for some time and I just didn’t notice?

Post from: Quantum Learning

Everything Turned Green

I’m often overcome with moments of sheer joy and love for the world – mixed in with the not so subtle reminders from my body that I’m not as young as I used to be!

Out Of My Head

Apart from the hoped for health benefits it’s a great time to be in my skin and not my head.

I’m not what you might call an ‘athletic type’ (no, please don’t write in to tell me I’m wrong .. I am NOT an athletic type!) so any form of exercise doesn’t come so easily for me. Which means a lot of my energy and attention is taken up with the physical exertion of running. In turn that means my thinking has far less power over me and is much slowed down.

Running has become my meditation practice.

To some extent I can focus my thinking towards getting something done .. but that takes some control. Usually my head is full of a jumble of different ideas, thoughts, fleeting glimpses of a memory, visions of the future, advice to myself, reminders of things to do – all mixed up with the background noise of thoughts that are impossible to catch. Running quietens my thoughts rather than making them disappear completely, so those I do have are much easier to catch.

Running, or anything that gives me something physical to focus on, allows all that background crap to take a break.

What’s left is much clearer. Much easier to distinguish.

So …. Do I Look Good?

This morning I caught this particular thought as I passed some other runners going in the opposite direction.

“I hope I look good!”

Objectively speaking I’m a slightly overweight 46 year old in running gear that was thrown together from whatever was to hand this morning. My legs are long and my running ‘style’ could never be described as elegant. When I had this thought I’d been running for about 15 minutes, so my face was red, sweaty and wore an expression that says something like ‘I’m sure this park was smaller yesterday’.

Objectively speaking there is no way I ‘look good‘ while running.

More than that, one of my beliefs about myself is that what I look like doesn’t matter to me, so it was a shock to catch this thought popping up.

Thoughts Come From Somewhere

Usually what I do with a thought that I don’t like or doesn’t fit with my world view is simply to discount it as a random aberration. On reflection that’s not necessarily the most sensible thing to do as my thoughts, even the crazy ones, could just be telling me something.

The trick, I believe, is to:

• notice them
• listen to them
• step back from them a little
• see if there’s a message

And always be very wary of believing them to be ‘true’.

The Message

I noticed the thought, listened to it and stepped back from it a little.

Do I care more about my physical appearance than I care to admit to myself?

I arrogantly like to think of myself as ‘different’ and ‘Bohemian’ and that I’d like to be seen for the human being I am and not judged for what I look like.

In truth I keep my head shaved and often look a little scruffy, preferring casual to smart and old to new. If I’m honest with myself I tend to dress down as a way of getting noticed and demonstrating my individuality and rebellion against other people’s standards. I often deliberately choose ‘a look’ that’s designed to attract attention but in doing so I’m just playing the same game.

For example this morning I chose a running vest and told myself it was to keep cooler. I think I was lying to myself .. it was to show off the small tattoo of a scorpion on my left shoulder.

In our world, rightly or wrongly, looks count for a lot. I don’t like the extent to which this is the case but I do understand it. After all, what I look like is the first thing that anyone meeting me will notice. They have little else to go on other than my appearance and I’m perhaps more influenced by this than I care to admit.

Anyway, it got me thinking about what other messages there might be in those aberrant thoughts I only catch while running.

I’ll just have to wait until tomorrow to pick them up!

Post from: Quantum Learning

Do I Look Good …?

If anyone had asked me I would have said it was about three weeks since I wrote something. In fact, the date of the last article is 20 March 2010 – definitely longer than 3 weeks. And that time just slipped by.

No-one did ask me, which is a little disconcerting, but I’ll get over it.

I didn’t intend to take a break and was just planning to slow down while Mona and I got used to being parents together – maybe writing once a week, maybe a little more. No way did I plan to stop entirely.

Plans for Quantum Learning

I’m going to restart publishing in twice a week (Monday and Thursday) and to make it a bit more explicitly focused on what I consider to be the essential dimensions of peaceful living:

• Inner World
• Family Life
• Work Place
• World We Live In

Inner World

Sometimes I experience huge inner peace and self acceptance, even self love. These are what I might call ‘flashes of peace’ and is certainly not a steady state. I wish it was! I’m often stressed about day to day stuff, often paralysed by indecisiveness and often wallow in self pity and doubt.

Sometimes I forget everything I’ve learned and revert to a shallow, mean-spirited creature.

Yet those ‘flashes of peace’ show me that there is another ‘me’ bursting to get out. Finding ways of freeing that ‘me’ – the person I would like to be, is what I mean by Inner World.

Family Life

Even if you don’t have children, you were a child once upon a time. Even if you live alone, it wasn’t always that way. You were, for better or worse, part of a family of some kind.

How I live in intimate relationship and raise my children are two of the most nurturing experiences – and can also be two of the most challenging! I don’t often  think in terms of ‘my legacy’, yet through my kids, part of me will carry on when I die.

I’ve made many mistakes along the way and many people have been hurt by some of the choices I made and decisions I took. On the other hand I can look back over this first part of my life and celebrate some of the wonderful things I’ve contributed to myself and those around me.

I’ve struggled many times with the idea of ‘family’ but I discovered that a firm family foundation supports peace within me, in the connections with others and, through my children, the future of peace on the planet.

Plus, for a site devoted to self development, I can’t ignore the huge amount I learn from my 3 children. The oldest just turned 18 and no longer a child. The middle  is 7 and no longer a baby. My third is 3 months and no longer a newborn.

Work Place

I’ve been working with three dear friends on a concept for a new business venture I’m very excited about.

We believe there are plenty of people in business looking for respect, kindness, compassion and meaning in their working lives – and rarely finding it. We’re hoping to bring those people together and to support them through coaching, consulting and workshops.

We’re calling it ‘LightWork’ and wanting to play with the double meaning of that name.

Where is it written that work has to be ‘hard’ and heavy and a sacrifice? Who decided that competition needs to be tough and aggressive? When did we separate ‘work’ and ‘life’, as though work is not really part of living?

Interesting times ahead. For me anyway, and I hope you’ll join me!

Post from: Quantum Learning

AWOL and Future Plans

How you react to that will probably depend, in part, on whether you see death as an end or as a beginning. Personally I believe it’s both but I’ll only find out for sure when it comes. I react to the thought mainly with peace with some moments of fear (maybe I’m wrong, and it is only an end).

Scars On the Journey Of Life

The good news is, for now, I’m alive and well in a physical body, subject to emotional ups and downs, learning new stuff all the time and gradually connecting with a spiritual dimension to my life.

Part of this journey I call ‘life’ are the knocks and bruises we all suffer. Accidents and diseases damage my physical form, emotional traumas leave their invisible scars and my intellect gets misled by wrong thinking or factual mistakes. The other part of me – my spiritual dimension – is , as yet, unfamiliar to me and so far less tangible. Many traditions teach that even our souls can get damaged, for example, through ‘sin’, though I prefer to believe that my soul is pure and untarnished whatever happens in this life.

The quality of my life, the inner peace I strive for, is heavily influenced by my overall health.

If I’m un-healthy in some way, then my energy is used dealing with that rather than getting on with life. We’ve all experienced the need to rest after an illness – our energy goes on recuperating.

The Healing Power Within

If I fell over and broke my leg I’d probably go to the doctor to fix me up, right? She/he would align the bones, put on a cast to keep my leg rigid and after several weeks the break will be mended.

Who healed me?

Neither I nor, in this case, the doctor do anything to heal my leg. Realigning the bones, administering chemicals (natural or otherwise!), resting, paying attention to how I’m moving are not ‘healing’ but all things that support the natural healing process and allow it to work smoother and faster. The healing takes place at a deeper level from within my organism and is really quite extraordinary – the other stuff is just helping this invisible process.

For me this is vitally important.

Keeping Healers In Their Rightful Place

• Doctors don’t heal our bodies.
• Therapists don’t heal our hearts.
• Religious leaders don’t heal our souls.

No-one can heal me, no matter how much I’m told the opposite.

Healing is what happens within each of us and not something we receive from the outside. We can receive many things from the outside that can help the healing process, and those trained and experienced in healing different wounds have a lot to offer. But doing the healing is not one of them.

I want to keep so-called ‘healers’ in their right place – as people who can offer potential support to the healing that happens within.

I want to take responsibility for my own health and not abdicate to the ‘health’ industry in its myriad forms or to anyone else, for that matter. Nobody cares as much about my health as me and that’s exactly as it should be. I know plenty of people who go running to the health centre at the first sign of illness, for example, or whole communities living their spiritual lives by rules laid down by their local priest or guru.

Doctors, therapists and priests are not gods but most of them deserve respect for their experience and expertise in particular aspects of health and healing. I want to know when and where to seek the support and guidance of others – including those from the health industry with relevant expertise – but not pass responsibility to them.

I confess I don’t yet take as much care of my health as I would like and I’m not very well informed about the support available. I need to be in order to make sensible judgements. My own apporach is to avoid the health industry wherever I can and I don’t take especially great care of my health in all its forms.

Not yet anyway!

Taking Responsibility

What this means for me is:

1.   Recognise that most wounds (physical, emotional, spiritual) will heal

2.   Honour and respect the remarkable capacity for my being to heal

3.   Support the healing by creating the right conditions to allow the inner process to work its magic

4.   Give patience and time to the healing

5.   Call on those with relevant experience and never pass responsibility to them

And I want to always remember that nobody will ever care more about my health than me.

Post from: Quantum Learning

Healing Ourselves

This is the last of a trilogy of articles related to this life changing event to bring closure to this chapter of my life and, of course, start a new one! (read The Miracle of Birth and 5 Questions While Waiting For A Baby).

I’m not one for sentimentality and I certainly do not enjoy hearing baby stuff from others. I love my three kids more than anything, but I draw the line at extending that beyond my blood family.

I’ve heard plenty of men say ‘what an amazing experience’ it is to be present at birth. I was present at Sara’s birth, and throughout labour, as I was with my first two daughters. It’s definitely an honour to be there when new life enters the world, but I can’t say I understand the ‘amazing experience’ when applied to the rest of it.

Am I a freak to be glad I don’t have to experience it myself and to say the whole thing is actually quite unpleasant?

A quick recap

Mona decided she wanted as natural a birth as possible which in many cultures is perfectly well supported and even expected. Natural, for us, meant no intervention – unless absolutely necessary for the safety of mother or child. No chemicals, hospitals, cutting or any other ‘improvements’ on the well-designed-by-nature system for delivering new life into the world.

This was always going to be challenging in a country where 90% of birth is by planned Caesarian, it’s generally assumed you must be a masochist if you choose natural birth and where breastfeeding is considered to be for those who can’t afford formula!

Right time

Everything happens at the right time

Sara was due on 9th February by the doctors’ calculations but Mona’s innner guide told her it was going to be 31st January.

Both days came and went, which just proves that neither doctors nor inner guides know everything and babies do exactly what they want, when they want!

Now I’ve never been pregnant so I don’t know first hand what it feels like. From my observations of mothers, the physical side gets more and more uncomfortable as the last month passes. Everything takes longer with the extra bulk. Sleeping is difficult. You start to forget what it felt like to be not-pregnant. Water starts to get retained in places it’s never been retained before. The growing baby makes its presence felt with greater vigour.

No matter how much you want to just get on with life as normal, it becomes less and less possible and more and more frustrating. I’m just waiting on the sidelines. Unable to do anything other than take care of the apartment and reluctant to start anything of significance, not knowing when the big event will happen.

What I do know is that giving birth itself is very painful and no amount of Hollywood ’30 seconds of pushing and they’re out’ can change the reality of it. You have to be very frustrated to want that! Indeed by the time the day came Mona was so frustrated she was desperate to give birth – pain and everything.

The right time was 00.27 on 17th February 2010.

How do I know?

Because that’s when she was born!

Right way

The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray

Our beautiful vision of natural, home birth and providing a warm, cozy welcome for the little one lay in tatters. It was very hard to let go of this vision but when faced with potentially life or death situations, stubbornness is not always a very helpful trait.

The first part of labour was manageable. I kept out of the way, bobbing in and out when I felt I could be helpful and, according to our midwife, it was a text-book labour.

Until it stopped being so. The story moved to those dreaded final chapters of the text book and the pages about the things that can go wrong.

Basically the labour froze.

For 6 hours the contractions had no effect at all – unless you count the excrutiating agony. They should have been pushing the baby, opening the way and moving to that final stage of ‘Push …. Push … PUUUUUSHHHHH!’

If you’ve been there yourself you’ll remember counting the centimetres (or inches). We got stuck at 5cm and even I can work out that 5cm is not enough. Babies are small – but not that small!

So off we went to hospital.

For Mona it was a desire to get some relief from the pain.

For the midwife it was a desire to be closer to the technology available to help in these rarer situations.

And for me? I hate hospitals – but I’m not the one with a baby inside my body trying to get out.

After a little more waiting and hoping that things will start to move along naturally it becomes clear there will to be no easy way out. No-one seems to know why things are stuck – but stuck they are.

It’s close to midnight and we’re presented with a choice. Continue with a long, painful labour that’s likely to end in an emergency C-section or …. skip the painful part and go straight for the C-section. The staff leave to allow us to have a moment to discuss what we want to do.

I’m starting to appreciate how the baby feels right now – stuck and very small. Mona even more so.

30 minutes later we’re in the middle of the scenario we most wanted to avoid.

Mona is strapped to the table, surrounded by machines and what could be an entire soccer team all wearing masks. There are tubes, needles, scalpels and suddenly the baby is pulled out and whisked away by strangers.

Every cell in my body is screaming this is WRONG! I forget to breathe as I’m trying to comfort Mona who is shaking and crying. This is as invasive and impersonal as you can get.

I have to leave, I’m almost fainting. I feel so utterly helpless.

But.

This is the right way.

How do I know?

Because the cord was wrapped several times around the baby, making it impossible for her to be born the way nature intended. If it was not for the invention of the C-section, probably neither mother nor child would have lived to see the dawn.

All Right Now

All’s well that ends well

This whole experience taught me several very important things I was maybe missing before:

1    I have very little control

I knew this already and it’s been proved to me over and over again but I’d pushed it to one side for the last months and thought I could decide how things would be when it came to the birth. In reality I control nothing. I can help things along, ease the path and gently steer direction. Any illusion that I am in control, though, is just that – an illusion.

2   Humility

Honestly speaking I had very little respect for doctors or the whole medical profession. I believed I knew more than they. This experience proved I’m wrong and I have no shame in admitting it. There are times when they are absolutely wonderful and what they do saves lives. Everyone we met (except one sour faced nurse) was great. I’ve found new respect for the medical world and less certainty that I know better.

3   The Journey

Over the years I’ve been developing a much greater appreciation of the importance of the journey over the destination. This was a reminder that there may well be times when the result is more important than how one gets there. We now have a healthy, beautiful daughter and a fast recovering mother. The path was not the path we wanted .. but it did get us here safely. The other paths might have ended in disaster.

Impossible Not To Love

You can’t always get what you want

… or the way you want it or when you want it.

At the time it was hard to accept this.

We wanted a natural birth, soft lights, gentle music and a lot of warmth and gentleness. As I was sitting by Mona’s side as she lay on the operating table I had this thought,

‘Am I ever going to be able to love the baby?’

We wanted Sara’s first hours to be laying on the safety of her mothers chest. We wanted the cord to be left and not cut straight away. As they opened Mona under the bright lights, as they pulled Sara out, cut the cord and took her away to clean and check, I wondered,

‘Will this damage her in some way? Will I be able to look her in the eye, knowing that I wasn’t able to protect her at this most vulnerable point of her new life?‘

Three weeks after the birth, as I hold her in my arms or watch her face as she’s sleeping peacefully those thoughts are long dead. She’s safe, warm, happy and cared for.

It is impossible for me not to love her.

Post from: Quantum Learning

You Can’t Always Get What You Want