Month: January 2007

What makes your heart sing?

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For me the New Year started in Venice Italy, the place I
love most in the world and the place that has wrought the most far-reaching
changes in me.

Now, I do not believe that change is linear or even
regular. Change, as far as I can tell,
happens in fits and starts, twists and turns. There are, additionally, two kinds of change: the change that is thrust
upon us and the change we choose for ourselves.


The change that is thrust upon us is, almost always,
awkward or painful, dramatic or alarming, because it takes us out of our
familiar comfort zone. The change that
we choose for ourselves can be exciting, empowering. Only as a general rule
we don’t know that, because nobody tells us that.

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No regrets – “Je ne regrette rien”

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This morning, I found myself unexpectedly with extra time
when a colleague didn’t call as planned. As I pottered off to vacuum the carpet (that’s extra time stuff rather
than top priority) I heard Edith Piaf singing, “Je ne regrette rien” on the
radio and I was blown away.

I’ve always loved that song* – hasn’t everyone? It has always struck me as being a personal
statement of courage and faith in the future. Today it did so more than ever.

Now, you could argue that Edith Piaf was doing pretty
well, at least by the time she sang that. But in the end it’s all a matter of perception.

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Start With The End In Mind

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A young woman I know fell in love about 10 days ago. ‘Falling in love’
may be a slight overstatement or it may not be. She saw him quite a lot
for a few days and she was certainly very taken. He’s tall, dark, very
good-looking, dresses well, he’s courteous, affectionate, he rushes to
open doors for a woman and does a nice line in gazing deeply into her
eyes and making her feel special.

They made a great couple. Everybody said so; all her friends and the cast of thousands that young people have around them.

The romance was as beautiful as it was brief. The first evening she
couldn’t spend with him she asked: “What are you doing this
evening?” He replied:

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On Shame

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A bright, funny, professional woman I know struggled with a personal dilemma
she could hardly bear to name. She was paralysed by shame. There were new
directions that she wanted to pursue in her professional life, but she felt she
could not because it would have meant owning the skeleton in her cupboard. That
skeleton was a bad relationship.

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Bring Back The Cilice Belt

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Among Dan Brown’s many accomplishments is bringing the cilice belt
to popular attention. Silas, Brown’s tonsured hit man in "The Da Vinci
Code", wears one and also flagellates himself with The Discipline, a
knotted rope. The image of this tall, albino monk performing ‘corporal
mortification’ is a shocking one that stays with the reader.

Curiously,
it was the image that sprang to mind yesterday when I was talking with
a woman about the issues she is facing right now. Yvette (not her real
name) is not, fortunately, at risk physically, but the situation in
which she lives is spiralling out of control.

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