Tag Archives: life strategy

Two things to remember and one to forget

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på sykkelturFinally, a sunny day, a saturday, a lovely day!

“What’s your plans?”, my husband asks.

“To bike to town and buy some buttons, and another errand”, I answer. The button shop is truly special, more than a hundred years old and filled with every ribbon, button, notion and frill you may possibly think of.

“I’ll come too!” he surprises me by saying, and so he does, and so does his best friend.

After a record braking cold and wet summer, the rose buds at last dare to open. The rugosas scent the air, the road to town is like a summer dream as we bike along. First my husband, at his side, Ruffy is bouncing, jumping, running and barking for joy, attached to the bike with his special dog spring. Now and then he looks up at his friend, just to confirm that they are together. Then I come, cruising on my comfy California bike, enjoying the day.

Ruffy hviler i gressetWe buy the buttons, we talk to an travelling student and a Nobel prize winner. We have coffee, Ruffy has water, we do the steep climb past the fortress to go home. Trondheim is at its loveliest best. We sit down to savor the view. I grab my camera to share my town, I take three pictures, and then I remember the one thing I had forgotten, to buy a memory card.

As I store my pictures on the cards, as well as on a spare hard disc, these  pictures are all I got. No funny dog ears flapping while he runs, no cathedral, no friends.

No memory card, just memories, truly worth remembering. Truly worth storing in my own memory. This summer has taken us through some heart breaking experiences and stories, even if they are not mine to tell, it has not been a happy summer. We needed a happy, relaxed day. We got the chance to have one, and we took it. That is what I will remember, both that there will be times of rest, there will be pockets of joy, and that I just have to remember to receive them. I could have stayed at home, waiting for another rainy day to buy buttons. I could have taken the car, and of course I could have remembered my memory card. I did not, and I got a happy day.

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How to look at weeds..

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flyttefotI weed.
Weeds of course, dandelions mostly.
Flowers even, forget-me-nots mainly.

I weed clutter too, things crowding  my life.
I weed my lists every day, by crossing out all the tasks done, by deleting and adding.

I weed my mind too. By making lists of the most mundane details, just so I do not have to remember them.

I keep weeding to make room for the life I want to live, the work I want to do, the love and the values I want to cherish, I may weed and weed, and then the day will be gone, I will go to bed with a clean desk and mind and wake to a new day that presents itself readily cluttered and I might start weeding again.

blå blomstOn that track a whole life could be spent getting ready to live. Even if every thing was in it’s place, there is everything else. Our bodies, careers, relationships, we could always find something that is weaker than it should be, worse than our friends, far from our wishes.Willing or not, most of us weed, we even encourage and admire each other for it. Until we see only weeds, habits to be changed and goals to be reached. Why have flowers at all, isn’t it much easier to weed without them?

There are of course weeds that we should not allow in our lifes. The secret of gardening though is to plant and nourish what will thrive in the given circumstances. The plants that will grow stronger than the weeds.

Or, could it be that my garden would flourish if I turned all the energy spent on weeding, to mulching, tending, digging, nourishing and being amazed and grateful for the beauty, colors, smells and wonders of all my flowers in the middle of the weeds?

Could it even be that my life would suit me more, if the energy spent on getting ready to do, finding time to go, decluttering to find space to be, organizing to make room to create, were turned into just living, reading, writing, creating?

We visited Sofia this spring, guess what, the flowerbeds, the lawns, the woods, were full of dandelions and forget-me-nots, making the perfect backdrop for myriads of tulips.

I might try that!

forglemegei 27.04

 

Chinese whispers and emerging strategies

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spor ivann

If you wrote me a letter, to tell me who you are, would I recognize that person if we met?

If you were able to shadow me for a day, would you see the connection between my words and my acts?

Or do we play an internal game of chinese whispers? To me at least, what starts as a perfectly well-defined intention, might go through tiny alterations through my acts, and end up as something totally different.

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Using my Ipad for instance. I grab it to get some information on a project I really want to do, I just check the news, then Facebook, then my mail…..you know. I would tell you that it is important to set goals and focus on them, my acts will tell you that what truly is important to me is checking out what my friends are doing. Or looking for antiques at eBay or catching up with the news.

Nothing wrong with that. As in chinese whispers, the word coming out at the end more often than not is a perfectly normal word, it is just totally unrelated to the initial one. How fun it is to hear everyone saying, “I thought you said” or “really, that’s not what I heard” .The surprise is fun when playing and disappointing when living.

morgen

In business language we call these surprises an emerging strategy. We may print our strategies on glossy paper and publish them on our webpages, they still are just words. Our true strategy is the one emerging from our choices, priorities and acts.

Happily there are times when our bodies are wiser than our minds, what we do is what we really should do, and will take us to a surprising goal we will be happy to reach. The emerging strategy might be the best possible way. How would we know?

Just now I am backtracking my internal whispers, trying to recognize the first whisper. What is truly important to me, will my acts take me there? Or do the innocent, perfectly normal, diversions take me somewhere else, perhaps the place I should be?

prinsessestol

The crooked path to truth

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IMG_3781We arrive at the mall, and head for the entrance.

For some reason I am always there first, my friend last, and every time she is just as surprised as last time. And no, it is not because I want to go there most. The secret is that I am easily distracted by small things, though never from my goal. She is never distracted by anything, she just waits for it to pass. So I dart here and there, avoid cars and people and weave my way towards my goal. While she stops and waits when somebody gets in her way, never wavering a yard from her true path.

It does not really matter of course, who comes first to a mall. I do try to apply my whimsical walks to other paths of life though.

What if I, discussing truth, life, death, the big questions, am so sure of the right path and just forces my way to my chosen solution?

What if I, not heeding any hinders, just insists on what the best course is?

Or, what happens in real life, when we stop the considering other people as hindering us from our set path, and see each other as our only way of discovering our true path?

 

Where the roses grow and carrots thrive

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Another rose , another time

Another rose , another time

Time is relative, and childhood is the proof. The fact is that I did not spend many summers at my maternal grandparents home, a couple yes, but not all summer, and absolutely not every summer. The truth though, in my heart, is that the greatest part of my childhood was an eternally long, sunny summer spent with my aunts and my grandparents. My parents obviously was somewhere on the scene too, must have been, then again in my memory they were just part of the set up.

Summer at Christmas, with my grandmothers plates

Summer at Christmas, with my grandmothers plates

Then there was Christmas and sledding and skiing of course, but that must be occupying another part of my brain. At least this two parts of my growing up do not share the same olfactory memories. Today, I need only the smell of scraping carrots to take me back to my grandfathers garden. I was allowed to pull the freshest tiniest roots out of the earth, rinsing them under the garden tap and enjoy them at once.

Another happy garden

Another happy garden

That is how summer tastes! And then the afternoons, there was coffee and kringle in the garden. I am sure my aunt would tell me how it was raining and how the Flammentanz did not bloom through the whole year, I know. To me, I need only the smell of a rising dough on my kitchen counter to take me back to the expectation of sitting on the white wooden bench, between some grown ups, listening to their talk and laughter, smelling and enjoying the overhanging roses and biting into the sweet icing on the still warm cinnamon kringle.

In my own garden

In my own garden

It was never so much about doing, as about being. That is what I aim for in making a home for my own family too, not only giving them memories of the things we do, but creating a treasure of homely smells, colors and sounds. Being aware of that what is only a fleeting moment for us adults may be what defines the whole childhood for our children. That will not happen if it does not ring true, no child is fooled by fake happiness. That will not happen if what I aim to do is setting a scene for something rather than making the trivialities of life itself pleasant. Perhaps that is why my memories linger and fills up an inappropriate big place in my heart, these summers were never activities to while away time, it was life itself, being allowed to take part, being useful, being in the middle of it, to belong.

Roses in old pitcher

Roses in old pitcher