Monthly Archives: April 2019

Every Day Should be ANZAC Day

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I wonder how many of us went to the dawn service and commemorated the spirit of our ANZACs and today go about our business somehow not remembering what brought a tear yesterday at dawn. Can we still remember and live the feelings we had, the pride, the respect and the some how feeling part of a community greater than ourselves.

Well, every ANZAC Day I think about these things.

What’s more I think about them most days. When I see the petty squabbling in day to day life; when I hear our politicians speak; when I see big business take from the needy; when I hear the media (the Merchants of Misery) create and ignore news; when I see someone struggling and needing help that would cost most of us almost nothing.

I think about the spirit of the ANACS everyday and a few years ago sat down and wrote the following.

I really hope that in the morning and the going down of the sun you will always remember what it really means to celebrate and more importantly live the spirit of the ANZACs.

Why can’t every day be ANZAC Day

Bravery would be commonplace
Loyalty would be volunteered
We would fight for those
who could not fight for themselves

We would love our country

We are just glad to be alive – today

You carry everything we own
We write each other letters
Good fun, is just good fun
Our leaders lead
and we follow

Coming home is the most important thing
We volunteer
Sacrifice is given gladly
Life is short, often horrific
but we face it with our mates
and we all stand fast

Heroes; really are heroes
We don’t do things to be remembered
Medals are earned
often with our lives

And probably most of all
every sunrise, and
every sunset
We would remember those that have fallen
and
every day
We would live our lives to honour the values
That we have fought and died for

 I wish everyday was ANZAC Day

The Gift of a Day

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I was looking in the book shelf the other day to find something to read….  okay I know you are thinking I am looking for a book to read on the toilet….  WRONG!   Let me assure you I do not read books on the toilet – everyone knows that toilet time is YouTube time!

Anyway I was standing there completely underwhelmed by the majority of the books which were mainly self help books (Note to self:  Write a self help book about finding self help books in your bookshelf!) when I saw a little book called “The Ultimate Gift.”  Well I actually saw two copies of it and wondered why I would have two?  So curiosity got the best of me and I had a little read…

Without destroying the very basic plot of this self help book which is written as a story so that you don’t feel as if you are being preached at because the loser in the book is fictional and not a complete representation of you and your life……  there basically is no plot.

There is however, a very interesting chapter called:

The Gift of a Day
Life at its essence boils down to one day at a time – today is the day.

Pretty profound beginning to the chapter (you have to have snappy headings when you have no plot… it really needed pictures as well!).  In essence our hero was telling a young lad about his idea of “The Gift of a Day” which he summed up as:

“When you face your own mortality you contemplate how much of your life you have lived versus how much you have left.  I know at some point I will live the last day of my life.  I have been thinking about how I would want to live that day and what I would do if I had only one day left to live.  I have come to realise that if I can get a picture in my mind of maximising one day, I have mastered the essence of living because life is nothing more than a series of days.”

Well, I have faced my own mortality just recently so this sentence rang a bit of a cord with me.  Not that I haven’t contemplated that one inevitability in life, that being death, a few times in the past.

I have thought about our time here being the only commodity (click here to read “Better with the Only Commodity”) or what would we do if we actually got a real taste of death and how that would effect how we would then live (click here to read Better at “Wishing You Were Dead”)….  but, this little story today, and that one chapter seems so obvious yet so universally ignored and forgotten about.

I know we all wander into this life with an unknown amount of life.  We get to spend our time (the only real commodity) any way we wish to.  Some may spend it quickly and buy all the big ticket items and live like a rock star (especially rock stars)…. and others may spend frugally and find that all their savings can’t be cashed in when they are needed.

I actually thought ‘that day’ had arrived a few weeks ago.  I didn’t get to spend it how I planned – actually as there was no time to plan and the day was thundering ahead towards my demise and I wasn’t thinking about my bucket list, I was only thinking about the kicking of that bucket I appeared to be about to take….

It would appear that death didn’t always come a knocking and say “Hey you better get your shit together because you need to get a couple of perfect days under your belt before I come swinging with my sythe!”

As it turned out death wasn’t something I was fearing, I have my beliefs, and they sit well with me.  If you have watched the movie Crocodile Dundee you will understand my take on the after life as being a bit like Mick Dundee when he is asked if he believes in God and he replies “I reckon we’d be mates.”

It wasn’t my fear of dying, it was my fear of not living that worried me.  I didn’t get to plan my last day and there was still some shit I had to do.  So, I now have the time to do it…. but, life gets in the way… and unfortunately it appears to be getting back to normal… important shit is happening everywhere and my days are getting full again… I just don’t have time to die there isn’t a gap in my schedule.

And as I wrote not long after ‘surviving’ when my main priority in life being filling out forms:

Afterglow of tragedy,
Fades in direct comparison to the minute by minute
Requirement to deal with the mundane

I realised that my almost death was not that important, or after a few days, probably wouldn’t even be noticed.  I realised that I had a bit more life to live because I realised that the gift of a day, is everyday.

“DING”

I lost the moment of the profound life
When mine almost ended
And it was not profound.

I saw it,
My friends and family saw it
Not only in my life,
But in their own.

It is not a sad moment
But a lonely one.
At the moment where you almost sleep
For eternity
You wake
To the booming sound of nothing.

And your muses are silent
And the profound extension of your existence lost
You are nothing

Your achievements and possessions dust
Your struggles but the small ding of the triangle
At the back of the orchestra,

                            Unheard.

 

 

Russell Brands’ 12 Steps

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In my last post I spoke about Russell Brands’ new book – “Freedom From Our Addictions” (Link here for it on Amazon Australia)…

Russell in this book describes his own version of the Alcoholic Anonymous 12 Steps Program and uses it in everyday life to overcome all his problems. He speaks interestingly about how many of our ‘addictions’ are the way we behave.

For me personally this has been my ‘Scorpion Attitude’ towards others, especially those close to me and I am supposed to love and protect. I describe the story of the Scorpion and the Frog in a previous blog you can read by clicking here if you don’t know it.

It always meant for me that it was in my nature to sting others and I used this as an excuse – along with a few work related stress, anxiety and depression issues which invaded my life and head. All really were just excuses to justify sometimes pretty damaging behaviour. See, I did it then – lessening my involvement – thinking back most time… make that all the time I let the scorpion win it WAS damaging behaviour!

Well, after reading Russells’ book and a bit of soul searching I realised the 12 Steps as described by him can work in a lot of life’s challenges.

I have set them out below alongside the original AA 12 Steps Program – but I must CAUTION here that Russell like me has a tendency for, well, COLOURFULL LANGUAGE.

I hope this may help you on your trek in life…. the hardest step is always the first one….. and this is no different.

AA 12 Steps Russell Brand 12 Steps
We admitted we were powerless over
alcohol—that our lives had become
unmanageable. 		1Are you fucked?
Came to believe that a Power greater
than ourselves could restore us to sanity. 		2Could you not be fucked?
Made a decision to turn our will and our
lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.		3Are you, on your own, going to “unfuck” yourself?
Made a searching and fearless moral
inventory of ourselves.		4Write down all the things that are fucking you up or have ever fucked you up and don’t lie, or leave anything out.
Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to
another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.		5Honestly tell someone trustworthy about how fucked you
are.
Were entirely ready to have God remove
all these defects of character.		6Well that’s revealed a lot of fucked up patterns. Do you
want to stop it? Seriously?
Humbly asked Him to remove our
shortcomings.		7Are you willing to live in a new way that’s not all about you
and your previous, fucked up stuff? You have to.
Made a list of all persons we had harmed,and became willing to make amends to
them all.		8Prepare to apologize to everyone for everything affected by your being so fucked up.
Made direct amends to such people
wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. 		9Now apologize. Unless that
would make things worse.
Continued to take personal inventory and
when we were wrong promptly admitted it. 		10Watch out for fucked up
thinking and behaviour and
be honest when it happens.
Sought through prayer and meditation to
improve our conscious contact with God  as we understood Him, praying only for
knowledge of His will for us and the
power to carry that out.  		11Stay connected to your new
perspective.
Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs  12 Look at life less selfishly, be
nice to everyone, help people if you can.

Mindfulness Meditation

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Just a very quick post to say you may wish to try it!

Meditation that is.

If you’re not a believer I’ll just let you know a few people who regularly meditate, do not wear orange robes or live on a mountain:

  • Richard Branson
  • Bill Gates
  • Katy Perry
  • Hugh Jackman
  • Clint Eastwood
  • and the list goes on if you click here to a full list of famous people who meditate

I just pulled a couple of names above as examples that it’s not just for hippies and Buddhist Monks….

I started off using an App on my phone which has this wonderful female voice with just a hint of a Scottish accent to guide you through meditations from 3 minutes to custom settings as long as you want – it also keeps track of your progress, over the days, months, years.

Yeah, of course there are ‘In-App Purchases’ but I don’t do that!

You can find the App I use or have a look for something that suits for you and your phone or tablet platform (e.g Mac or Android).

The App I use is on the left in the photo – and yes I know I have a few updates to process.

The type of meditation in the App is what is known as ‘mindfulness meditation’ which has no religious connotations and in really about concentration.

This app is good in the explanation of starting and going through the meditation and you get to listen to that lovely Scottish accent. I do use it for relaxation but also use it to get my mind a bit centred and stop all those random thoughts bouncing around against each other in my head.

I did a quick consultation with Dr Google and found this definition of mindfulness and mindfulness meditation – I am not sure if it explains it or makes it more confusing (I’ll have to meditate on that one):

Nowadays, mindfulness and meditation are often used to mean the same thing, which can be confusing, while not many are clear on what ‘mindfulness meditation‘ is and how it differs from either of the above. … “Mindfulness is theawareness that arises when we non-judgmentally pay attention in the present moment.

I sort of love the above definition because I once said to someone “Mindfulness changes nothing and everything” and they agreed.

I am not sure if you meditate with a simple App like the one above will take you on a new path to spirituality, but I am sure it can’t hurt to give it a try – just remember Clint Eastwood meditates – so give it a try and let me know how you go.

“Go ahead make my day”……


Russell Brand – “Signs”

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I have just finished reading Russell Brand’s book “Recovery – Freedom from Addiction”.

Yeah, I have a few addictions as most of us do…. food, TV, Social Media etc etc etc

What Russell does in this book is uses the 12 Steps Program of Alcoholics Anonymous to tackle most of life’s problems – particularly the ones which are making our lives unmanageable…. e.g. drinking, gambling, being a shit partner in a relationship.

I will let you decide if this is workable for you or not – just buy the book. Try Amazon (the Aussie site) as it is pretty cheap and mine arrived in a couple of days – I still think shopping on line is a bit like magic.

Anyway, the point of this brief post is to say one of the things Russell looks for in his life of 12 years sober, off the drugs and off the chicks is ‘signs’. The often difficult part of the 12 steps program for your average skeptic is the ‘God’ part. This is fantastically addressed in the book – bloody hell I should be getting so sort of kick back for this but I am not. I am a great believer in ‘signs’ in our lives but I’m more of a follow your intuition, follow your gut type guy as opposed to the burning bush – who knows they may come from the same sourse.

So, the point is the other day a mate was having a few hiccups in hospital and struggling so I paid him a visit and we had a chat about dialectic thinking (just thought I’s chuck that one in to confuse you and now I can’t remember if I have ever written a post on it – note to self, check if I have, if not write one – also you might want to try Dr Google on that one!)…..

…. I then went to a local football Club in Adelaide (I will name it – Kenilworth!) where a mate had raised a heap of money and the new Club rooms were open…. it’s the old Panther Park at St Mary’s I think, but if you’re around check it out. Love seeing my mate and the tour of the fantastic new Club rooms…. a lot of how are ya mates and quick introductions and even a snag and a piece of bread – actually the perfect end to the day and I reckon I had a few ‘signs’ to say I was doing the right thing. Thanks Universe, God, etc etc whatever you’re flavour is…..

I then get an intro to a bloke; we have a moment ….. not in a gay way and not that if it was there would be anything wrong with that…. but, we then had that laugh at the same time when we realised we knew each other. Yeah, the catch was we hadn’t seen each other for 35 years.

This blokes name is Alan Stringer who was a Glenelg footballer back in the day. Married to a mates sister and a few cans we had in our early 20’s.

We sat and chatted and my jaw dropped. We had the same struggles and it was like he was talking about my life.

There is a pod cast with Graham Cornes which is worth every minute of the time you take to listen to a man that went into the dark places and came out the other side – yep, there was damage and he owns it. Click here for the link to the pod cast.

Alan is now helping other footballers who are tackling the ‘black dog’ and the Advertiser did an article on it. Click here for the link were you don’t have to subscribe – it is via Twitter so just click on the article.

So, time to finish this post which is really about ‘signs’ – and most of all as it turns out connection to an old mate, who fought his demons and not only won, but is helping others. We exchanged numbers and had another sausage and bread and knew that fate, the Buddha etc etc etc etc may have just aligned the universe for us to meet up.

I know one thing: that is just what I needed that day.

I need to sit and have a think…. maybe Russell is not only funny as anything but may have just pointed me in the right direction in a lot of ways.

There might be 12 Steps, but I think at a local footy Club the Universe pushed me forward on my first couple.