Happiness

The importance of relationships

Valuable legacy
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Someone I knew passed away last week. I know this happens and is always a sad event as you realize you will never see that person again in this lifetime. This one was special though. This person was far too young to die, but managed to squeeze as much as possible out of the short time left.

He ticked off his bucket list in spectacular manner and made sure that all friends knew they were appreciated and loved by him. He always had a smile for everyone, always trying to uplift and share happiness, despite his illness and suffering. The result was that everyone had huge respect and love for him. His life was celebrated with a massive party, featuring live music and spontaneous jam sessions, that felt more like a family reunion than a wake, and brought friends from all over together. There was a sad undercurrent, especially for his closest relatives and partner, but the emotions I felt most, were love and determination to let his legacy live on. To live life as he did, not dwelling on sadness, but living in “radness”, because you never know when your time comes. It made me think about the value of all relationships in our lives and the effect we have on the people we interact with, whether they are relatives or acquaintances.

I contemplated the importance of uplifting rather than complaining and making sure that when our time comes to an end, we leave a legacy that will inspire and be beneficial for all left behind. This is what makes us immortal, for we live on in our legacy! This is the “butterfly effect” in action.

This morning I found a friends post on Face Book as follows:

“I’m going to be watching to see who cares about friendship. Thank you for being a part of my life! So, if you read this, leave ONE WORD as to how we met. . DON’T SHARE!! . Once you respond, if it’s the right answer, I will inbox you this post to post on your wall. Only one word!”

I normally ignore those posts that you see all the time calling for attention that only serves to satisfy the ego’s neediness, but after the above event I could not resist responding to show my friend that I did indeed read his posts and cared. The result was that I had to repost it of course. I felt a little annoyed at this, bothering my friends on Face Book, and explained to my friend in PM that I’d only do it for him and not because I thought it was a good reflection of how many people read my posts, knowing that most will ignore to comment for a variety of reasons, that do not include lack of love.

How wrong I was! I am unsure if the fact that I added a small vague sentence at the start referring to the earlier event that made me realize the importance of relationships had anything to do with it, or whatever the reasons were, but I was blown away with the amount of friends that responded! The words they left brought back so many happy memories! Not only that, but I ended up talking/typing with an old friend on the other side of the world, who I had not spoken to for decades, in PM for half an hour, before we decided to continue talking on Skype for another hour and a half!

This made my day and I can’t help but think that this all resulted from the legacy of a friend who knew what is really important in life, which is not what you do for a living, the car you drive or the clothes you wear! It is how you appreciate and interact with the people you encounter in your life!

I am so Glad to have the friends and family I have! Thank you all for sharing the love and experiences together, because that is what will be remembered and valued most in the end!

With gratitude, Pollyesther

P.S. Feel free to share your thoughts on this in the comments.

Christmas… and stuff

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I normally write about my own thoughts and experiences, but found an appropriate blog post by Cristian Mihai this morning and felt I could not have said it any better, so enjoy my first “reblog”. Merry Christmas and the same for the coming year!

How I had fun hanging out the washing today

Fun washing
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Last night I felt a bit down for about half an hour due to late nights, early mornings and hard work in between and thought to myself better to practice what I “preach” today. I was hanging out the washing in a bit of an improved mood already, because I had a better night sleep and it simply was a gorgeous day to be out there with the sun shining happily upon our back yard and a stiff sea breeze keeping things very pleasant.

That does not include hanging out the washing on a hoist! I was struggling to put the pegs in the right spot while hanging onto the lines for dear life in an attempt to keep it still for long enough to accomplish that. The large towels I put up from the load before were catching a lot of wind and made the hoist turn like a chairoplane! That was it! I had enough!

I gave up my resistance and decided to go with the flow and use my Glad Game. I stopped for a brief moment and looked around the garden, said thanks for the beautiful day, looked in appreciation at all the beautiful flowers beaming smiles at me and proposed a little game in my mind. If thoughts really create reality, prove this to me again and stop the wind for long enough to peg down my next item in a perfect spot for it.

Next I grabbed a piece of clothing and stepped back from the laundry basket. I looked up and to my amazement found a perfect empty spot of line and sufficient time to do the pegging in comfort! I giggled to myself saying: ” yea right, that was just a coincidence!” I tried again, same thing, grab the first item on top, step back, looked up and found another moment like the one before! Now I was giggling even louder! Ok, This is a really fun game! It kept going till the basket was empty!

Not only did I get my task done in no time, I also had a ball doing it! The feeling of lightheartedness stayed with me until now! I am normally not a fan of chores, but they need to be taken care of and you may as well have fun, go with the flow and see what happens playing the Glad Game while you are at it! Where can you use the Glad Game? Feel free to share in the comments below.

Happy Thanksgiving!

My apple tree in November
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“Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada as a day of giving thanks for the blessing of the harvest and of the preceding year. Several other places around the world observe similar celebrations. It is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States and on the second Monday of October in Canada. Thanksgiving has its historical roots in religious and cultural traditions, and has long been celebrated in a secular manner as well.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving

It does not make much sense for Australians to celebrate Thanksgiving in November, seeing that we are moving into Summer and still a long way off harvesting. My apple tree in the back yard has just finished flowering and is starting to show the tiny apples that will not be ready to eat for quite a few months yet. Despite this fact, I feel it is important for everyone to look at the effects of this holiday.

Thanksgiving is really a celebration of gratitude, which is in my opinion the most important mindset we can cultivate for our own wellbeing and happiness. This opinion was formed by my own experiences in life and seeing the differences it has made for me cultivating gratitude on a daily basis. Further research has only confirmed to me that this is just the beginning of the effects it has, as you can see in the following excerpt from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratitude):

“Association with well-being[edit]

A large body of recent work has suggested that people who are more grateful have higher levels of subjective well-being. Grateful people are happier, less depressed, less stressed, and more satisfied with their lives and social relationships[15][18][19] Specifically, in terms of depression, gratitude may serve as a buffer by enhancing the coding and retrievability of positive experiences. [20] Grateful people also have higher levels of control of their environments, personal growth, purpose in life, and self acceptance.[21] Grateful people have more positive ways of coping with the difficulties they experience in life, being more likely to seek support from other people, reinterpret and grow from the experience, and spend more time planning how to deal with the problem.[22] Grateful people also have less negative coping strategies, being less likely to try to avoid the problem, deny there is a problem, blame themselves, or cope through substance use.[22] Grateful people sleep better, and this seems to be because they think less negative and more positive thoughts just before going to sleep.[23]

Gratitude has been said[by whom?] to have one of the strongest links with mental health of any character trait. Numerous studies suggest that grateful people are more likely to have higher levels of happiness and lower levels of stress and depression.[24][13]

While many emotions and personality traits are important to well-being, there is evidence that gratitude may be uniquely important. First, a longitudinal study showed that people who were more grateful coped better with a life transition. Specifically, people who were more grateful before the transition were less stressed, less depressed, and more satisfied with their relationships three months later.[25] Second, two recent studies have suggested that gratitude may have a unique relationship with well-being, and can explain aspects of well-being that other personality traits cannot. Both studies showed that gratitude was able to explain more well-being than the Big Five and 30 of the most commonly studied personality traits.[18][21] 

Relationship to altruism[edit]

Gratitude has also been shown to improve a person’s altruistic tendencies. One study conducted by David DeSteno and Monica Bartlett (2010) found that gratitude is correlated with economic generosity. In this study, using an economic game, increased gratitude was shown to directly mediate increased monetary giving. From these results, this study shows that grateful people are more likely to sacrifice individual gains for communal profit (DeSteno & Bartlett, 2010). A Study conducted by McCullough, Emmons, & Tsang, (2002) found similar correlations between gratitude and empathy, generosity, and helpfulness.[26][27]

Psychological interventions[edit]

Given that gratitude appears to be a strong determinant of people’s well-being, several psychological interventions have been developed to increase gratitude.[13][28] For example, Watkins and colleagues[29] had participants test a number of different gratitude exercises, such as thinking about a living person for whom they are grateful, writing about someone for whom they are grateful, and writing a letter to deliver to someone for whom they are grateful. Participants in the control condition were asked to describe their living room. Participants who engaged in a gratitude exercise showed increases in their experiences of positive emotion immediately after the exercise, and this effect was strongest for participants who were asked to think about a person for whom they are grateful. Participants who had grateful personalities to begin with showed the greatest benefit from these gratitude exercises. In another study concerning gratitude, participants were randomly assigned to one of six therapeutic intervention conditions designed to improve the participants’ overall quality of life (Seligman et. all., 2005).[30] Out of these conditions, it was found that the biggest short-term effects came from a “gratitude visit” where participants wrote and delivered a letter of gratitude to someone in their life. This condition showed a rise in happiness scores by 10 percent and a significant fall in depression scores, results which lasted up to one month after the visit. Out of the six conditions, the longest lasting effects were associated with the act of writing “gratitude journals” where participants were asked to write down three things they were grateful for every day. These participants’ happiness scores also increased and continued to increase each time they were tested periodically after the experiment. In fact, the greatest benefits were usually found to occur around six months after treatment began. This exercise was so successful that although participants were only asked to continue the journal for a week, many participants continued to keep the journal long after the study was over. Similar results have been found from studies conducted by Emmons and McCullough (2003)[10] and Lyubomirsky et. all. (2005).See also gratitude journal.

Recently (2013), the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley, has been offering awards for dissertation-level research projects with the greatest potential to advance the science and practice of gratitude.[31]

Conclusions[edit]

According to Cicero, “Gratitude is not only the greatest of the virtues but the parent of all others.” Multiple studies have shown the correlation between gratitude and increased wellbeing not only for the individual but for all people involved.[24][32] The positive psychology movement has embraced these studies and in an effort to increase overall wellbeing, has begun to make an effort to incorporate exercises to increase gratitude into the movement. Although in the past gratitude has been neglected by psychology, in recent years much progress has been made in studying gratitude and its positive effects.“

There you have it! Happy Thanksgiving! Start thinking about your coming New Years resolutions. Play the “Glad Game” daily (more on this in my first post: https://happypollyesther.com/2014/05/13/introduction-to-happy-pollyesther/) and your life and the lives of those around you will be better for it, not just today, but the whole year round!

Feel free to share your experiences with the “Glad Game” in the comments below.

With love and gratitude,

Pollyesther

Life lessons found in unexpected places

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“When Yates cut the rope, Simpson plummeted down the cliff and into a deep crevasse. Exhausted and suffering from hypothermia, Yates dug himself a snow cave to wait out the storm. The next day, Yates carried on descending the mountain by himself. When he reached the crevasse he realized the situation that Simpson had been in and what had happened when he cut the rope. After calling for Simpson and hearing no reply, Yates made the assumption that Simpson had died and so continued down the mountain alone.

Simpson, however, was still alive. He had survived the 150-foot fall despite his broken leg and had landed on a small ledge inside the crevasse. When Simpson regained consciousness, he discovered that the rope had been cut and realized that Yates would presume that he was dead. He therefore had to save himself. It was impossible for Simpson to climb up to the entrance of the crevasse (because of the overhanging ice and his broken leg). Therefore his only choice was to lower himself deeper into the crevasse and hope that there was another way out. After lowering himself, Simpson found another small entrance and climbed back onto the glacier via a steep snow slope.

inside a crevasse

inside a crevasse

From there, Simpson spent three days without food and with almost no water, crawling and hopping five miles back to their base camp. This involved navigating the glacier (which was scattered with more crevasses) and the moraines below. Exhausted and almost completely delirious, he reached base camp only a few hours before Yates intended to return to civilization. Simpson’s survival is widely regarded by mountaineers as amongst the most amazing pieces of mountaineering lore.[4] “ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touching_the_Void

Base camp

Base camp

Over Winter my friend and fellow blogger Felicia wrote a post about a movie that had inspired her. If you like to read it here is the link: http://embracethesoul.com/2014/08/05/yes-when-opportunity-calls/. This post reminded me of a movie I watched over a decade ago,  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touching_the_Void_(film)) that taught me an important life lesson, which has served me well since the day I watched it, that I wish to share here with you.

What impacted me the most about Simpson was his approach to the impossible task ahead of him when he realized that his climbing partner had left. The movie (I can only give you a link to the trailer for copyright reasons: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9Y6MNyWp6s) goes into a lot more detail about his trip back to base camp than the above article I found on Wikipedia, so if you have the time, watch it first (from your own trustworthy video rental places on line or local stores), before you read on and find me spoiling all the suspense.

At the time I watched the movie I was a different person to what I feel I am today. I was nervous, insecure and easily overwhelmed by the multiple tasks I felt I had to do every day, so you can imagine my awe for Simpson as I watched him crawl his way back to base camp with his broken leg in such extreme conditions! My awe for this achievement has only grown with attending several incidents involving broken legs, seeing the resulting pain first hand in casualties, as a first aider in the last 7 years.

What I remember most was how he dealt with it. Contrary to my own way of looking at tasks, he first set himself an achievable one. He said to himself: “If I can drag myself to that rock over there, I improve my chance of survival”. Then, after he managed to do it, he looked for the next section he could see himself making. He did not dwell on the big picture ahead, but chose to focus on what he expected to be achievable at that moment. The result was an amazing achievement that saved his life!

There are many more benefits that came out of this ordeal as a result of him sharing his experience, that are impossible to see and measure in it’s entirety, with so many people that have seen the movie or read his book. All I can do is share what it has done for me since I have started implementing this life lesson in my own life. I now understand the importance of setting a small achievable task or in other words segmenting the big ones. I do not get overwhelmed any more, feel happier, live more in the “now” and look for more inspiration and life lessons in stories about experiences of others that successfully dealt with their hurdles! You can always find someone who went through more than yourself! This has helped me grow as a person, realize how strong people can be and has even given me better tools to help ease the suffering of the first aid casualties I come across.

I did not realize the full impact this movie had on me until years later, as it took some time for me to change my old ingrained habits, but I am so GLAD I watched it when I did! Have you seen any movies or doco’s that made a big impact on your life? Please share in the comments below. I look forward to your suggestions 😉

With love and gratitude,

Pollyesther

Enjoying the journey

Sunrise in the mountains
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I am looking at the glistening gums outside my window. After a warm, humid sunny day yesterday, I woke early to see a beautiful sunrise surrounded by some patches of blue sky and puffs of streaky clouds. Not long after, the thick and heavy looking cloud band came over the hill and it started pouring. This is not surprising, after all it is Spring in Australia at the moment. It is the long weekend of the Melbourne Cup, when most Australians either fully focus on horse racing, or their weekend away with an eye on the score in country pubs near their camp sites in the bush on a river somewhere.

I decided to drive up to the house in the mountains, where I also spend 3 Months in Winter. Every year we hold our annual Cup Weekend trout fishing competition there among friends. Apart from being an informal fishing competition, it is also an annual social get together and a lot of fun catching up with people you don’t see every day, but have known for years.

Even though it is a fair drive of at least five and a half hours, excluding the necessary fuel and toilet stops, I have come to enjoy it. The first few times I drove it on my own, it felt like a tedious waste of time and I could not wait to arrive and get it over with. Slowly over time my attitude towards this regular journey changed. At first I started to love the last two hour leg of the trip on the narrow winding road, that followed an old river through the mountains for a long way. Occasionally you had to slow down for a small settlement, but it was generally extremely quiet and in the middle of nowhere surrounded by seemingly untouched nature. On some of my late night trips up, I saw more wombats (they look like oversized nocturnal guinea pigs on steroids) than cars on the road. It made me feel like I had already arrived at my destination and was just taking in the views and nature surrounding me.

One day, a while back now, I was stuck behind an over size truck with an unusual load that had me curious in an earlier part of the journey. I think it was some kind of large water tank, but looked a bit like a rocket ship, that was in front for a long way and slowed the trip right down. There was no way around it, so to my relief it finally turned off the main road I was following and allowed everyone to get on with their journeys. That day was a busy day and it took a bit of time to get through the next town, due to congestion. By the time the following town came in sight, you guessed it, the truck was in front of me again! The slow moving truck must have somehow bypassed the busy town where ever it had gone! This made me look up the maps of the area and find my next favorite leg of the journey, so much quieter and more scenic as well! Driving on these secondary roads made me realize I liked driving through nature and on quiet roads and as a result I slowly started finding more and more country roads that did not hold up at all, to break up the boring bits, naturally, without consciously looking for them.

Yesterday was another one of those days! Police had shut off the main road (a half hour long mostly straight and boring drive) between two towns and was directing traffic onto a country side road. I was a little unsure at the start as it veered off a long way in a different direction to where I thought it should go, to get to the next town, and felt slightly nervous this could possibly add a lot of time to the already long trip. There was no need, as it took about the same time and was amazingly scenic and quiet. I loved looking over the rolling hills and long distance views with the sun starting to get low in the sky. There were a few farms and sheep dotted around and the landscape varied so much more than the usual drive! I’ll be back there again!

This event reinforced to me again that if we relax, enjoy the moment, focus more on what we enjoy and trust things to fall into place to our liking, this is exactly what eventually happens. Not just on actual road trips, but also in every other part of our lives. Every road block is at first met with resistance, only to turn into an opportunity to find a better way in the end! I am so glad the road block forced me to find this gem of a D-tour yesterday, for it made my journey so much more enjoyable! Please share your experiences in the comments below.

Storm Lovers

Wispy Clouds
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First I would like to apologize for my lack of action on this blog over the past few months. Between working full time in the snow and managing a busy lodge, socializing with the guest at night time, I have not had much time to dedicate to writing at all. My fickle prepaid stick connection allowed me to post one story I had prepared earlier on a “good reception day” off. Despite that, I was pleased to still see regular visitors reading my stories and would like to thank everyone that stuck by me.

I did find a moment of inspiration again while doing the towies lunch relief shift, sitting in the top lift hut for an hour. That is the only time that I get a chance during my working day to “zone out” and relax to some degree, while keeping an eye on the poma’s and making sure they retract properly and not tangle around the cable, which would stop the lift until the technicians come down to fix it again.  Besides that I also make sure the few midday guests get off okay.

I love looking at the view over the valley’s and the sky from this tiny hut on top of the hill. In all the years I have worked there, I have started to notice a pattern in the weather, about which I wrote this recent poem:

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Storm Lovers

Wispy clouds looking like a feather,

talk to me about a change in the weather.

Next, the wind will come,

which can be quite scary for some.

Trees will blow over, branches will snap,

lifts will close and powder lovers… will clap!

For they all know that what comes after,

is the cause of so much fun and laughter.

They weather the storm just knowing,

their turns in the Powder will soon be flowing.

Big airs aloft,

with landings real soft.

Get your bases waxed,

because you know what is coming next!

_______________________________

Yes, we did get some nasty storms this season, with one blowing over at least 6 trees across the track I use to get from the lodge to the main road and back. Thankfully this happened while I was at work and no one got hurt, but it did make for an adventurous trip home, attempting to get through. Lucky there was only one massive old gum tree, that left just enough room around the hole, where the roots used to be, to create a new path around it. Most of the others were small enough to drive over the thinner branches on the end of the trees. I stopped to try and drag one a bit more out of the way, because the branches were a little high and I was concerned they might snap and bounce back up, damaging the car in the process. As I did this, I was surprised to see headlights coming up behind me. Someone else as crazy as me tackling a four wheel drive track with obstacles in the dark! It was my friend and neighbor, who came through to check out if it was passable, because his partner had to go to work that night. I was pleased he turned up and helped me, because the tree was a lot heavier than I would have thought looking at it from the car. After saying my thanks and goodbye we both proceeded to drive home, grateful we made it there safely.

One of the snapped trees along my drive to work

One of the snapped trees along my drive to work

As I looked around the house, it became clear that this storm had been the worst one I had seen in all those seasons I had lived there. I found the cover of the chimney in the middle of the driveway with the pipe almost in the dam below the house. The couch, that used to be under the roof on the back deck had moved itself over to the deck behind the woodshed. The recently emptied recycling bin was completely missing, despite the fact that I had weighted it down with a few logs on top before I left for work in the morning. The old broken washing machine that had been up against the wall on another deck, awaiting a trip to the tip, was almost falling off the edge and the lid had detached itself and was a long way up the drive! There was a tree across the main drive to the house (I came up the other one) and a few more down around the house. I was so glad there was not more damage to the house! After I was satisfied with my efforts of tidying up for the night , I put my torch back in the car and made myself something for dinner.

The next morning I woke up to the pleasant surprise of fresh snow on the ground. Despite now being an adult, this still gives me the same excitement as when I was a child growing up in Europe. For those that have never seen snow, the closest thing to this feeling I can think about is when you wake up early as a child on Christmas Day to find Santa has visited and there are so many presents under the tree, you don’t know which one to open first! Snow on the ground may make the drive to work a little more hazardous, but the fun of playing or working in fresh snow far outweighs this issue. You just know that it is only there for a short time and have to enjoy it while it lasts.

Waking up to fresh snow is always exiting for me

Waking up to fresh snow is always exiting for me

This is not unlike life itself, where everyone has to get through numerous storms, but once the storm clears, we have to see and grab the opportunities it leaves us at the right time. As a result we can get exited about life again and look forward to this new chapter with gratitude. For if it was not for the storms in our lives, we would not appreciate and enjoy the good times as much!

I am so glad the storms of the past Winter season brought us so much fresh snow! It allowed me the to get plenty of work, complete my level 2 Alpine certificate, meet loads of beautiful new friends and guests and ski more miles than in any other season before. Of course practice makes perfect, so I also enjoyed it even more with my newly learned improved techniques.

Please share your thoughts on storms in your life in the comments below. I look forward to reading them!

Why I am exited about the coming snow season!

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I am going to start off with a flashback from last season:

August 29, 2013
Today l was sitting in the lift hut on top of the small beginners run, looking at some showers over a distant valley, thinking about the forecast for the coming week when the following poem came to me:

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“Wishful Thinking”

Grey clouds gathering above,
surrounding us with warmth and love.

Sending down some precious rain,
while I am wishing here in vain

for the cold air to return real soon,
to cover our hills once more in a fluffy white cocoon.

______________________________________

This was the last day of that run being open for the season that ended in a fizzle for most Australian resorts with some closing a week prior to the end of the official season, which is normally the last weekend of September, due to lack of snow.

I had been enjoying working on this beginners run for 6 years now and knew what was coming, but tried to stay positive. Over the years I had dropped a few hints here and there on how snow making would make the run much more reliable for a large group of customers, that preferred the family atmosphere there, to the much larger and more crowded main resort. These hints were generally met with comments similar to the well known flying pigs one… In other words, the resort had a lot of other priorities to spend money on, before this was even a consideration.

The hole

Why is there a hole in the ground?

Easter this year, while up there to make preparations for Winter, like getting fire wood and cleaning the house, I went past the run to have a look if anything had changed. I noticed that someone had dug a big whopping hole, below the lower lift hut, right next to the fire hydrant connection! I could not help but wonder and hope. Was this a sign of preparations for snow guns to be installed?

Shortly after writing the above poem and thinking about how snow guns would have made my job easier and more reliable over the last few months, I had a conversation with a local council member about the possibility and talked about the positive impact I expected from having snow guns on the continuity of customers and revenue. This conversation was suddenly met with a little more hope raising response than any of my previous ones on this topic.

Snow Gun

Newly arrived

A few weeks back my attention was drawn to a post on Face Book, in which the announcement was made that confirmed my suspicions. The snow guns had arrived! I felt extremely exited! I am eager to find out what the coming snow season has in store and am so glad we now have snow making for everyone to enjoy!

Testing

Testing commences

It is difficult to prove what had changed, that all of a sudden people in charge decided that snow guns are an important asset for the revenue of the small slope, but I can’t help but wonder if my thoughts and poem had something to do with it. Was it just wishful thinking? Or can thoughts, like the ones mentioned in this story, actually become a reality? Through my own multiple experiences with this phenomenon, I have become convinced this is the case. Please share yours in the comments below. I am glad I never gave up on my dream to create better conditions for everyone on “my beloved ski run” and am looking forward to the coming season.

The lesson my dog taught me

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Gibbo

Gibbo

My dog, “Gibbo”, an 8 year old black and white Kelpie cross Labrador managed to totally surprise me in the last few days. I have been busy digging in the garden to create room for some old bricks that I want to move and pave under the old woodshed roof. This will be the floor of my new potting area, which was previously under the car port. Seeing that all the posts are rotten, I am expecting it to fall down sooner or later, so it is best to prepare for that day and move things away. The roof of the new potting area is not very high and I just fitted under it, standing up straight, leaving only about 3 cm’s to spare, so in order to put the bricks down, I had to lower the surface. It is a pretty massive job, seeing the clay is very dry and of course rock hard, so it feels like I am carving rather than digging!

Towards the end of the afternoon, Gibbo always gets a little restless in anticipation of our evening walk and indicated that he wanted me to stop digging and play with him instead. Unfortunately he does this by barking loudly, so I jokingly said to him to come and help me dig to shut him up. To my amazement he started digging! Not quite in the spot where I needed it most, but in one of the softer corners. That showed to me that he’s not silly! The last time I asked him to help me dig anything, was at least 7 years ago, when I had to dig some holes for the tree ferns I was relocating in my back yard. So he showed an incredible memory as well!

Next, my husband came home from a short visit. He yelled out to me over the gate, because he did not take his keys and needed me to open up the front door for him. I had locked it, because I could not hear if anyone would come into the house from the back of the yard. I went to open the door and as usual Gibbo followed me there to welcome my husband. He always greets you at the front door by picking up his favourite tennis ball, to show he is ready to play with you and excited you are home again, so he dropped the one he was playing with in the backyard and picked up a tennis ball. I went back to what I was doing and shortly after, Gibbo comes out again to check what I am up to. He decided he wanted to play some more and started his annoying barking routine again. This time I said to him to go get his ball. He looked around puzzled as to where it could be. Because he gets so excited about what is happening he does not seem to realize where he drops it, so I told him where he left it. I said: “You left it at the front door where we go out to do walkies”. I pictured it in my mind as I said it. I went on with what I was doing and he disappeared into the house, through his doggy door. A moment later, he was back with his beloved back yard ball! I was totally amazed at his comprehension and praised him for his cleverness and started to play with him and his ball.

This event proved to me that pets understand a lot more than we generally give them credit for! If you look into their eyes, you can see their soul and how they feel. If you respect them as an entity with feelings, just in a different body, they know this and you will be rewarded by their love and respect. You will gain a special bond that is different from any human interaction. I feel very blessed to feel so loved by Gibbo and have this understanding and communication with him. I am glad he came into my life, not only to learn this important lesson. What are your experiences with this? Please share in the comments.

The Lady in the Supermarket

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A little while back, I was not very motivated to go to the shops all day and kept putting it off. I finally got to the small local Supermarket late in the afternoon. While I was there I thought of dinner for that night and decided to keep it simple, because of the hot weather, and just buy a tin of (dolphin friendly) tuna and add cold steamed rice, lettuce from the garden and a few other bits and pieces from the fridge, like home made dressing and a couple of boiled eggs. So there I was with my one tuna tin in hand lining up to pay. Waiting in line I observed a small lady in front of me and found myself wondering about her story and looking at her packed basket.

 

Next she turns around and looks at my tin and me. She starts to point at me and the register saying “You Go” with a warm smile. I said that I was not in a hurry, but she would not take no for an answer. So I went up to the register and finished my business as quick as I could, so her ice cream wouldn’t melt. I made sure to thank her very much for her kindness as I walked out of the shop smiling.

 

When I started to reverse my car out of the parking spot, right out the front, she came walking out with her smile lighting up some more when we made eye contact. Then I drove off to go home while returning her smile and waving goodbye and thanks again. I felt really happy!

 

On my short drive home I thought about this encounter with a total stranger, How often do I look at people behind me in a queue? How such a small gesture can make two people both feel really happy? She felt great for her good deed and so did l for the warm hearted gift! Not only that, upon arriving home I went on line to write this down and spotted an old friend logged on, that I had not spoken to for ages, so I had to share this story with her and guess what? It even made her feel good hearing about it!

 

This event reinforced to me why I am writing these stories and my mission to try and make this world a better place. I am glad I put off going to the supermarket all day and went there when I finally did!