Pink bellied aeroplanes cross a cold peerless blue sky this campervan morning. It’s chilly on fingers and face, heralding I feel a shift in the weather. The strong winds and rain of the last day or so have gone, replaced by stillness, dryness and birdsong. Starlings in the Ash and a couple of Blackbirds are in conversation. A single Blue Tit patrolling the berry bush looking for food is soon joined by a partner, far off Ducks continue to fill the air. The sky is quite busy with planes which sit as the backdrop to the early morning bird song. The sun is just breaking above the roof tops and trees reflect autumnal colours of green, brown, red and yellow. I picked up an old journal of mine yesterday looking for something and came across some work I had written some time ago. It was based around a quote from the sadly departed Ken Robinson and his seminal book ‘The Element’ and I quote :
“ Doing the thing you love and that you do well for even a couple of hours a week can make everything else more palatable “
and :
“ If the conditions are right, people grow in synergy with the people around them and the environment they create”.
There has been a sense that the work I have been doing for the last 14 years has been bringing those two sentences closer together. And of late helping other people bring these two sentences closer together too. Doing what I enjoy, be it drumming, writing, taking pictures, listening, filming and building community, by creating the conditions for people to grow and create environments where others can grow too. I think one of the most important lessons for me has been the impact this has had on myself, my growth and particularly on watching other people flourish, grow take up the cause and spread the work. Sometimes I forget this, and over the last few days it’s been like that, but happy to say that the debris has cleared and a sense of reconnection has returned. Lovely days people.
“ The best moments usually occur when a persons body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”
Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi.
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