Is it really possible “to have it all”? From my own experience, I have never really wanted to have it all if it pertained to having material things such as lots of money, a big house, a late model, fancy car, a huge closet filled with designer clothes, travel to exotic places and staying in luxury hotels.
For most of my life, I have always been attracted to learning more about myself resulting in numerous courses (a major in psychology), workshops and retreats, books, and even sessions with good astrologers and psychics. From all of this, I have learned that if we want to have a good life where we can honestly say, “I now have it all” then we must take the time and work it requires to first learn who we are and accept the fact that we have imperfections but forgive that and try to make ourselves better.
If we can do this and get to know, accept and love ourselves, then we have a better chance of bringing more abundance into our life such as more money, loving relationships, a happy family, or whatever else you might want that will ultimately make you happy. Fame and fortune as we all know don’t always guarantee a peaceful and happy life. Having it all for me is about love of self and others which I know is the way to achieving a sense of peace about myself. It also gives me a purpose for being on this earth at this time because if I can spread positive energy to all those people I meet then I’ve done something worthwhile. Just think what kind of world we could have if more people could change their focus on not gaining more material things but those things we can only see if we open our hearts to love rather than fear and hate.
It can be done but it won’t be easy because it will take changing how we have been taught to be be, think, and love which we are now realising is why our world is in such a mess.
Daily writing prompt
What does “having it all” mean to you? Is it attainable?
What constitutes a risk you might ask? For me it’s about doing something that could be done on the spur of the moment when suddenly I get a notion that this seems right. I guess you would call it a knowing that comes from inside you and not from the outside as on a dare or because someone has said you should do this or that. For some people taking a risk could be carried out after thinking about what they must do to attain it. That would be called a calculated risk. However, most people tend to risk doing anything because they overthink it. I have discovered that the more I think about doing something that could be risky, the less successful it has turned out.
A risk to my mind is doing something new which you haven’t done before. There is usually some fear attached to it. It could be something like jumping off a diving board into the water for the first time or climbing a mountain. Or how about crossing a street in Viet Nam where the rules around traffic and giving way to pedestrians are non-existant. I have been to this country and will never forget the first time there in Hanoi when I had to go outside my cozy hotel room and face the main round about in the centre of the city to get to the nearest coffee shop. As I waited with a couple from Britain on the curb hoping the onslaught of motorbikes would slow up and give us a chance to cross, it finally dawned on me that I had been warned about Viet Nam’s chaotic traffic but never did I think it would be like what I saw. Finally, I looked at the English couple and said, “Shall we go”? They looked at me in agreement. We stepped out into the traffic and just kept walking but keeping our eyes looking forward to the curb ahead. To our amazement, the traffic seemed to gracefully manoeuver their way around us allowing us to reach the other side safe and sound.
This was a risk to my phyical body and one I won’t forget. When I think about what risk is all about, I realise I’ve taken many in my life. In fact, doing anything new could be called a risk. My most recent risk was one I took last August when I volunteered to take on the responsibility of managing the community garden where I live. This garden was founded about fifteen years ago by a woman who saw a vacant piece of land which she wanted to make into a community garden for the residents and a nearby elementary school. Last year she decided to retire after suffering various health problems forcing her to neglect the garden. Unfortunatly, no one responded to her reaching out for someone to take it over for her. Since I was renting a plot there, I took the risk of saying that I would try to fill her shoes. I have to admit I gave it about a week’s thought before I made the committment. I had no idea what lay before me which is probably a good thing. If I had known how much of my time it would take to get the garden back into shape, I probably wouldn’t have taken on the responsibility. Now as I look back over the last eight months, I am happy to say that it’s been successful for me. I have learned how wonderful it is to work with a team of gardeners which has given me a useful purpose for being here on this planet. I feel like I am helping this community to pull together. Four of us who have formed a committee are working hard as a team which is more than enough to say in all honesty that taking the risk when no others would has paid off in spades for me. I have learned more about myself and others than I ever could have by taking the risk of reviving a dying community garden.
Daily writing prompt
When is the last time you took a risk? How did it work out?
As soon as I saw this question on WordPress, I knew immediately what my answer was going to be. It’s not the many wars causing hoards of refugees, our changing climate, housing shortages, famines, civil unrest, and a myriad of other problems facing us today, but our ever evolving technology. Yup, sitting down at my computer or using my smart phone is too often the cause of my anxiety. Why? Well because of the constant changes which Microsoft and WordPress have thrust upon me for one. I know that the younger generation would laugh at this confession when their greatest cause for anxiety is probably the present state of our world and the future that lies before them. My grandson laughs at me when I seek his help with some of the problems that appear on my phone when for him it’s obvious and fun. Why don’t I know how to use it and why do I get so frustrated, he wonders? I have had to explain to him that when I was his age at fourteen, we had dial up phones with no apps that would take us to games and just about every place around the world. We also had to share our phones with other people. Our parents made darn sure that we didn’t eavesdrop and if we had to make a call to our friends, we had to make it short or else!
Even though we had been aware that our Queen Elizabeth was showing signs of coming to the end of her long reign as well as her life, when the world was told on Thursday, September 7th, that she had passed on, many of us were left with a feeling of shock and sadness. Wasn’t it just a few days before that she had inducted the new Prime Minister of England into office, a tradition that has been carried out by the reigning monarch of the UK for eons?
No matter what anyone may think about the value for maintaining the monarchy these days because of its cost at a time when a large part of our world is suffering from famine, climate change disasters, war and terrible injustices, the Queen’s death has revealed to us that there is something very worthwhile about it after all. The debate about abolishing the monarchy has been ongoing for almost as long as the Queen’s 70 years on the throne. The fact that she, a woman who wasn’t the next in line but unexpectedly inherited this responsibility because her uncle abdicated the throne so he could marry a divorced woman, put her in the position of ruling over one of the world’s oldest empires.
Seventy years is a long time to have to reign over an increasingly more complicated role as the British monarch for the “Commonwealth of Nations” which reached to the far corners of the world. Gradually as the world population increased and became more connected, many of the countries conquered by the Brits no longer wanted to be ruled by a distant relative who knew little about them and their customs. Wanting their freedom from the monarchy’s tight control, they either set up their own monarchy or elected their own leaders to form a republic. Despite her efforts to connect with her far flung family with more frequent visits and in some cases a first visit from a monarch, she was dismayed to see more than 30 members leave the commonwealth during her reign. Nevertheless, she handled every crisis within her dwindling empire with grace and understanding. On top of this kind of pressure, she also had to handle the precarious position she was put in as a Head of State demanding she be supportive of the numerous changes of government and Prime Ministers in England whether she liked them or not. Again, she was able to handle every political crisis and leader with an astounding knowledge and understanding of their roles. I think there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that she was born to be both a Queen and a Head of State. Totally dedicated to her job with its responsibilities and changes, she revealed such dedication that at times the media blatantly accused her of neglecting her own family. No doubt she did but she never faltered. She came through both her personal and her public life with aplomb.
We, being her people you might say, have always taken a tremendous interest in her personal life. Unfortunately, the media may have expressed too much interest in the the Queen and all the Royals. Many of us will remember the time when Princess Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997. Unfortunately, the Queen was instantly chastised for the how she handled the tragedy. Why had she waited so long before issuing statement after the tragic news to the people, and why did it take her so long to return London from Balmoral where she was taking a holiday? Did she not care? Was she that much out of touch with the public that she was not there to mourn with all her subjects the death of a young woman who inspired all those she met with a freshness that the monarchy had never seen before? All of this kind of publicity was probably one of the worst times of Elizbeth’s reign. I remember distinctly listening to her annual Christmas speech that year when she described her year as a “horriblis annibus”. Well, to her credit, she took the message from the people to heart because from that time on the whole mood at the palace began to change. She made more appearances and somehow appeared to be more vulnerable as a person whom they could connect to. Yes, she had listened to her people and had learned from them.
During this time, I wasn’t paying much attention to what was going on with the royal family. I had other, more important things on my mind. I remember thinking, however, that the media were making far too much fuss over Diana and being almost cruel to the Queen. I could understand the difficulty Diana would have had dealing with her role as wife to the future king, the protocol that this role required, and worst of all realizing that she had married a man much older than she who was in love with another woman… Camilla…his first love. Of course, the media had a hay day with this family affair making it into a sordid event which must have been extremely difficult for Elizabeth.
Somehow the whole tragic story got absorbed into my subconscious because one night I woke up from a dream I had about the Queen. It went something like this. I found myself enjoying a beer in a typical British pub and sitting across from me at my booth was the Queen! She was casually dressed with no hat and purse. She seemed relaxed and to be enjoying herself. All I could think of was how natural she was and how normal she appeared. Our conversation…can’t remember what we were talking about…flowed so naturally that I felt I was talking to one of my close friends. Not long after that dream, I heard on the CBC news that the Queen was making a huge effort to visit some of the small villages in England that she seldom got to, and that she had actually visited a pub or two. Wow! To this day I fully believe that our dreams sometimes do foretell the future, not just for ourselves, but for others we may know or events that are about to happen.
Now almost two weeks later since her death, the out pouring of love for this remarkable woman has been phenomenal. England hasn’t seen anything like this since the death of her father, King George VI, and the invincible Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister who carried the British through WWII to victory over Germany. There have been many great men, including past Kings of England, who have been proclaimed as heroes but few women. Elizabeth II will be the first to have ever succeeded in her role as Queen for over 70 years making her the longest reigning royal in the world. She will surely be missed for her undying sense of responsibility to a job she never asked for. Once she revealed her vulnerability to her people via the media, we came to see her as a human being dealing with the trials and tribulations of life. She became better at her role as Queen and as a person as she grew older. She never gave up. We have been moved by her death more as the person she was than what she represented in a way that we never anticipated. She has been a great role model for us all and will remain in our hearts for a long time.
“God bless the Queen and God save the new King”– A quote from an anonymous admirer.
Where has the time gone! I can’t believe that my last blog was published at the end of April over three months ago. It’s no wonder that feelings of guilt have been knocking at my door. Of course, I am as guilty as any decent human being for making up excuses about why we aren’t doing what we know deep down we ought be doing. Okay, perhaps I am being a bit harsh on myself because I need to acknowledge the fact that with the arrival of spring, I needed to get my veggie garden started. By June my transplants had to be put in and before I could catch my breath lettuce, spinach, and other greens were all begging to be picked. My days were consumed by my gardening and attempts to do a bit of landscaping around my property. Dare I compare gardening to a battle that just seems to get a little bit more difficult every year? The other battle I had to overcome was the plain and simple fact that I had lost my mojo to write. I could blame this on COVID, rampant inflation, unpredictable weather, along with myriad other reasons, but I won’t because the truth of it was that I felt I didn’t really have anything to write about. I hadn’t travelled anywhere for over a year and was faced with the glaring reality that my travelling days were probably over forever.
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