Today is Father’s Day in Australia. It’s a beautiful day outside, and while I’m supposed to be concentrating on wage work, my thoughts have wandered instead to families, fathers, sons, grandchildren and all the complicated little threads that somehow tie us together.

Some of those threads are beautifully neat.

Others resemble the back of one of my craft projects.

And today, rather than pulling at the tangled ones, I have decided to leave them alone.

Because perhaps we don't celebrate enough.

We tend to save celebration for the obvious things — birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, Christmas, graduations and those wonderful occasions when someone brings out a cake large enough to justify having a second piece.

But life is filled with smaller things worth celebrating too.

A beautiful morning. A good cup of coffee. A conversation that makes you laugh. A grandchild doing something ridiculous. A flower appearing in the garden when you had completely forgotten planting it. Finishing something you have been putting off. Beginning something you've been dreaming about.

And sometimes the celebration is a little louder — like watching a grandchild and his footy team win their grand final. Those are the moments worth making a fuss about. The excitement, the proud faces and the knowledge that all those training sessions and weekends on the sidelines led to one very happy memory. That's worth celebrating.

Even simply reaching another Sunday.

Celebration doesn't have to mean everything in life is perfect.

I think that is something I sometimes forget.

There can be things we wish were different, and people we wish would find their way back to one another. There can be situations we cannot fix, no matter how much we would like to gather everyone together, sit them around a table and tell them to sort themselves out.

Tempting though that may be.

But those things don't cancel out everything that is good.

So today I am choosing to notice the good things.

The people I love. The people who love me. The memories that still make me smile. The things I am creating. The ideas still rattling around inside my head waiting for their turn.

And the rather lovely fact that life continues to give us reasons to celebrate, even on days when our hearts feel a little more tender than usual.

A Thought to Take With You

You don't have to wait until everything is right before allowing yourself to celebrate what already is.

Maybe today deserves a tiny celebration of its own.

Make the coffee. Eat the cake. Play the music too loudly. Laugh when you can.

And leave the tangled threads alone for another day.

Namaste 

Deb xx

Thoughtful writing across life, mind, and meaning.

Spring has arrived, and apparently that means my mind has already started making plans for the garden.

Today is quite warm here in NSW, warm enough to finally shed a few of those winter layers, but the strong gusts of wind aren't exactly inviting me outside. For once, wage work may actually be saving me from myself. Had it been a calm, sunny day, I'm fairly certain my thoughts would be somewhere amongst the garden beds rather than where they're supposed to be.

Still, I've started wondering what I might do in the garden this week. What needs pruning? What survived winter? What could be planted now? And, inevitably, what little project will I discover that wasn't on the list at all?

That's one of the things I love about spring. The garden begins waking up, but perhaps something in us does too. There is an urge to open windows, clear things away, wander outside and see what might grow.

A Thought to Take With You

Perhaps spring isn't asking us to completely reinvent anything. Maybe it's simply inviting us to notice what is ready to grow.

Namaste 

Deb xx

Thoughtful writing across life, mind, and meaning.

Coffee beside me and something to read. It's such a familiar way to begin my day that I rarely give it much thought. But this morning I did.

Last night I was still thinking about The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. There is so much in that film about getting older and what happens when the life that once kept you busy begins to change.

And it occurred to me that I don't think I'll ever have nothing to do.

Not because I'll always have jobs waiting. I'm quite sure there will always be washing somewhere, although that's hardly the sort of future I'm talking about.

It's because I write.

Writing has done something rather unexpected to the way I look at ordinary life. The more I write, the more things I notice to write about.

A sentence in a book can do it. A line in a movie. Something somebody says. Something they don't say. An old memory that suddenly turns up for no apparent reason. Even sitting here watching the rain while the sun attempts to break through it has me thinking about something.

Perhaps that's one of the gifts of having something you're genuinely interested in.

We talk a lot about keeping busy as we grow older. Find a hobby. Join something. Keep yourself occupied. All sensible advice, I'm sure.

But I don't particularly want to spend my later years merely keeping myself occupied.

I want to remain interested.

There is a difference.

There are books I haven't read yet. Things I know almost nothing about. 

Questions I've never thought to ask. Ideas I haven't encountered. And probably hundreds of little observations that will arrive while I'm doing something completely unrelated.

Some of them might become proper pieces of writing. Some might become one of these little thoughts.

And plenty will probably disappear before I remember to write them down.

That's okay too.

Maybe purpose doesn't always have to be something enormous. Sometimes it might simply be having something that makes you curious about tomorrow.

A Thought to Take With You

What is the thing in your life that you can't imagine ever running out of interest in?

Namaste
Deb xx

Thoughtful writing across life, mind, and meaning.

It's a clear and sunshiny day, although a little on the cool side after yesterday’s warm and windy day. One of those mornings that feels fresh and uncomplicated — until something you hear gives you reason to stop and think.

I was listening to the radio this morning when I heard about a young Hunter nurse sentenced to a two-year jail term that is expected to be served in the community after violence against elderly people with dementia who had been entrusted to her care.

Two years.

I found myself genuinely appalled — and when I later read more about the individual incidents behind the charges, that feeling only grew.

I won't recount those details here. They are available for anyone who wishes to read the reporting for themselves. For me, it was enough to wonder how such treatment of people so vulnerable could result in a sentence like this.

I know a radio story cannot give me everything a judge heard in court, and sentencing involves considerations far beyond a headline. Still, based on what was reported, I struggle with how two years can adequately reflect violence against people who were particularly vulnerable and dependent upon others for their safety.

Perhaps that's what troubles me most. 

There are positions in life where trust carries an enormous responsibility, and caring for someone who cannot easily defend themselves must surely be one of them.

It also made me wonder what our sentences say about how seriously we value and protect people as we grow older.

A Thought to Take With You

Growing older should never mean becoming less worthy of protection, dignity or justice.

Namaste 

Deb xx

Thoughtful writing across life, mind, and meaning. 

This morning, coffee beside me as usual, I started reading Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder.

I haven't travelled very far into it yet. Just those first few pages. But already I can see why this book has endured.

It asks us to think about things we rarely stop to think about.

Who are we? Why are we here? And perhaps more importantly, when did we stop wondering about it?

Children seem naturally good at this. They ask why about everything. Why is the sky blue? Where was I before I was born? How big is forever? Why do people die? Who decided what words mean?

Then somewhere along the way, most of us become accustomed to everything.

We wake up. Make coffee. Go to work. Pay bills. Complain about traffic. Decide what we're having for dinner.

Meanwhile, we're living on a planet spinning through an enormous universe, conscious of the fact that we exist — and somehow that's the part we've come to consider ordinary.

I find that rather funny when I think about it.

Perhaps philosophy isn't always about finding complicated answers. Maybe sometimes it's simply about remembering to be surprised by the questions.

I've only just started Sophie’s World, so I'm interested to see where it takes me. But if a book can make you stop after only a few pages and look at something familiar a little differently, I'd say it's already doing its job.

A Thought to Take With You

When was the last time you questioned something you've simply accepted as ordinary?

Namaste
Deb xx

Find more info about the book Sophie's World in Deb Eternal's Book Library at the top of this page.

This morning began, as most of my mornings do, with coffee and something to read.

There's something about those first quiet moments of the day that seems to make room for thoughts that get pushed aside once life properly gets going.

And this morning I found myself thinking that hindsight is a marvellous thing.

We say it so casually. If only I'd known then what I know now. If only I'd made the other choice. Said yes. Said no. Stayed. Left. Asked the question. Kept my mouth shut.

But that's the trick of hindsight, isn't it?

We're judging the person we were with the knowledge of the person we've become.

Last night I was watching The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a film filled with wonderful little observations about ageing, love, disappointment and starting again.

One thought in particular stayed with me: no amount of longing can bring back the past.

Perhaps that's what hindsight eventually has to teach us.

We can look backwards. We can understand things differently. We can even wish we'd done things differently. But we can't walk back into yesterday armed with everything today has taught us.

And perhaps we shouldn't want to.

The person who made those decisions back then hadn't lived what came next. They didn't know yet.

Today I do.

Tomorrow, perhaps, I'll know a little more.

Namaste

Deb xx

Thoughtful writing across life, mind, and meaning.