Tag: Hope

The Power of Words

Never give up is so much more than just a cliché.

Regular readers will know that fellow LfD author, John Lewis, has been posting regularly on the subject of remarkable people.  I have found them inspiring, to the extent that I’m going to depart from my usual safe area of economics and tell a personal story.  It’s a story of family dynamics, the power of sibling bonds and why hope and trust in the future, especially for young people, is so, so important.  I have called my story the Power of Words.

—–oooOOOooo—–

I can hear it like it was yesterday, resonating in my head, crowding out the doubts and negative thoughts, filling my mind with possibilities:  yes, I CAN do it!

Then ....

I was in my junior year of college and had no idea what I was going to do with my life.  It was becoming quite a burden.

Because I had always been good in school, i.e., the “smart one,” everyone had expected so much of me when I went to school.  I really envied my older sister; she had always been the pretty one, the popular one, the one who got invited to the prom by not one, but three young men.

And, it seemed to me at the time, she was so lucky because no one expected her to go out and conquer the world after high school.   She didn’t go to college; she went to secretarial school and studied to become an airline attendant instead.

I envied her in every way possible!  But at least I had something: I was “the smart one,” or so I thought!  Years later, my sister went back to school to study psychology.  She earned a 4.0 [four straight ‘A’s. Ed] and was invited to continue on to earn her Ph.D.  I’ll be darned if she wasn’t the smart one, too! And she is a wonderful and thoughtful person to boot! But I digress.

Read more of my story

Our next generation.

Here’s a great role model – and she’s 16!

Jessica Watson is a teenager.  She is hoping to break the record for the youngest person to sail solo, non-stop and Jessica Watsonunassisted around the World.  Whatever modern materials and technology can do to make sailing easier, sailing solo for weeks on end is grindingly tough at any age.  She’s a wonderful example of the next generation!

Jessica Watson2

Jessica left Sydney Harbour on October 18, 2009 sailing her sloop Ella’s Pink Lady. Her course is an estimated 23,000 nautical miles requiring her to be roughly 230 days at sea.

As was said, this is no mean feat for any person. Read more about her on her website and her Blog.

Wish her luck and fair winds.

Jessica Watson3

Setting the lead – for whooping cranes!

This makes me proud to be human!

Operation Migration

Index_8990

As their website explains:

Operation Migration has played a leading role in the reintroduction of endangered Whooping cranes into eastern North America since 2001. In the 1940s the species was reduced to just 15 birds.

Operation Migration is a founding partner of the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership (WCEP), the coalition of non-profit organizations and government agencies behind the project to safeguard the endangered Whooping crane from extinction.

Want to get involved? Here’s how.

Remember the film ET? Just look at this next picture …

Continue reading “Setting the lead – for whooping cranes!” →

Dolphins – will you help them?

One man’s mission to stop the killing and capture of dolphins.

A dolphin is one of the most beautiful creatures on this planet.

dolphin

I was going to write a very long Post setting out the reasons why everyone who cares for these creatures needs to get involved. But, in the end, a few links and extracts achieve that much more effectively than several hundred words from me.

Read more about saving and protecting Dolphins

Transformation

These are hard times for millions – transformation is the only practical option.

I’ve been working with most of my clients recently through painful transformation brought about by the recession.

An interesting metaphor really because, since the first wave of uncertainty in the UK banking system triggered panic, I deep riverhave been picking up on that uncertainty.

That uncertainty feels like it’s stalking the globe at the moment; one has been aware of an underlying fear that was difficult to name and source in me. It has been rather like a deep river in that whilst the surface feels slow moving, currents are moving things powerfully below.
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Postscript on reasonable men

In praise of thoughtful, articulate people who reason their way through life.

Let me say that I know no more about the person who is Neptunus Lex than anyone else who takes the time to read his Blog.  And after I justify the sub-heading of this Post I will give you those links to Mariner Lex.

If you have come into the topic just now, then you may want to read the two Posts on fate.

The first Post was published on October 6th, the second Post the next day.  In a sense, these Posts connect with the Carrier series by PBS that you can link to here.

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Fate is the Hunter, part one

A theme about flying, pilots and fate.

Many, many pilots whether civil or military or private, have read the book by Ernest K. Gann entitled Fate is the Hunter.  Ernest Gann was born a little under a hundred years ago, on October 13th 1910 and died, aged 81, in 1991.  HeGann is known, in the main, as an aviation writer and airline pilot pioneer but achieved much more besides.

Fate is the Hunter is a book about the workings of fate. And this Post is more than a reminder of Ernest Gann’s book and the message it carries, it is also about fate, as Part Two published tomorrow reveals.

Fate or serendipity has happened along to cause a number of recent Posts to be about flying.  We had the Post about low-level RAF flight training in North Wales – Mach Loop.  Then we had three Posts about air carrier operations prompted by the PBS Series, the first one being published on the 2nd October.  Today, circumstance brought me to the Blog  of another naval aviator, published by Neptunus Lex.  More about him and links to the Blog later.

I want to set the scene by using the words of Ernest K Gann as he starts the preface to his book.

Read more about this Post

The G20 summit.

Baseline Scenario publishes an interesting post and triggers a wise comment.

Regular readers of Learning from Dogs will know that we greatly admire the job done by Simon Johnson, James Kwak and others over at Baseline Scenario in debating this global economic crisis.

The comments that flow in are fascinating and often deeply educational.  Not surprising! Baseline Scenario has nearly 12,000 readers!  But many of them show the level of anger and frustration felt by so many.

Anyway, a Post published by them on September 24th reminded me that hope is so much a more profitable emotion than anger.  The Post starts like this,

Read more of this Post

What really matters – to you!

Sometimes we need to remind ourselves what is really important.

We went to a funeral last Monday. It was special in that a friend of ours had died and her husband had phoned to tell us.

They had emigrated to Spain 12 years before to become self sufficient in growing their own food, putting on workshops and working with ‘holistic management’ techniques. I have the feeling that it was quite tough as the climate was becoming more and more arid in the mountain area that had moved to.

She had decided to come home to Totnes (Devon, SW England) to die and had obviously planned the whole thing.
The service was lovely and relatives and friends had written poems and the vicar had been briefed on her life which was quite amazing. Born in Africa, boarding school in the UK, rose to be high up in a large company and then had decided with her husband to follow a completely different holistic route to self fulfilment.

The vicar had asked her how she wanted to prepare for her death and he she had answered that she wanted to saviour every moment whilst she was still alive and had asked him to recount this tale at the service.

A man who was being chased by a tiger and had fled up a tree to escape. He looked down to see the tiger pacing up and down, looking longingly up at him. After many hours, the man must have fallen to sleep and awoke as he found himself falling towards the tiger, waiting eagerly below. As he dropped, he noticed a beautiful fruit and grabbed at it focussing intently on every fine detail of it.

After the church service we retired to a nearby woodland where we all took it in turns to carry her wicker coffin up a hill, into the woods and after music and a blessing, we buried her.

It was a truly beautiful day and one that had echoes back through the millennium. It touched me deeply, not because of sadness but about putting things into perspective – what’s important and what isn’t.

By Jon Lavin

Starting a business

Looks like a nice series from USA Today newspaper.

Just happened to be staying in a hotel last week that offered free copies of USA Today.  Too mean to buy my own copies!

Anyway, that Monday was the start of a small business entrepreneur’s series running for 6 weeks.

Don’t worry if you missed the paper version, all available online.  Week One is here, Week Two here.  Bookmark it if you want to follow all 6 weeks – seems well thought out and mostly relevant to both sides of the Pond.

By Paul Handover