What still remains - Day 31 (New Year's Eve)

Day 31 (Sunday 31st December, New Year's Eve 2017)

31 December is known as Hogmanay in Scotland and is a night of celebrations
that have become famous around the world. Many view Hogmanay as a bigger
party than Christmas. It is thought that the word originates from the French
"hoginane" meaning gala day and was first used in 1561 on the return of Mary
Queen of Scots to Scotland. At that time, in Normandy, presents given at
Hogmanay were "hoguinetes'. An alternative derivation of the word is the
Scandinavian "hoggo-nott" meaning yule. A tradition linked to Hogmanay is
"first footing" - the first guest to cross your threshold after midnight - it should
be a tall, dark stranger (to Scots many years ago the surprise arrival of a blond
often signified a dangerous Viking trying to cause harm). A first footer should
bring gifts of coal (for heat), rich fruit cake known as Black Bun (for food for
the year), salt (a symbol of friendship), and whisky (for good cheer and hospitality).

It's the last day of the year. Happy Hogmanay! I have had a memorable year - full of precious moments shared with loved ones, new colleagues and friends coming to help me do things I need and want to do, some recognition (which is much appreciated) and visits to amazing places and events. I know that I am fortunate. I hope that you have been too.

The start of a New Year is seldom dark and dull and the year ahead does not have to be dark either - as David D'Souza points out in his post below. 

I am fortunate to have had David as a colleague and to have him as a friend. He is a true polymath, with a thirst for learning and a passion for positive innovation (especially technology - his latest fascination is cryptocurrencies). David is globally recognised as a thought-leader who is not afraid to challenge the status quo. You can get a taste of his views if you follow him on Twitter (his handle is @dds180). He is a devoted husband and father and a loyal friend (although, as Head of Engagement for the CIPD, a job that takes him around the globe, he is so busy that he is seldom able to spend the time he and others would like have with him just to catch up and connect). I strongly recommend that you read his blogs, he writes his own under banner on 101 Half Connected Things and also posts pieces often on behalf of the CIPD (the UK-based professional body for HR and Leading and Development professionals).

Because of the personal nature of this post I have not added any pictures - the photograph was provided by David.

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"In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of ev'ry glove that laid him down
Or cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame
"I am leaving, I am leaving"
But the fighter still remains"
The Boxer, Simon and Garfunkel, 1969

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There are some years that are better than others. There are some years that are definitely worse. The relatively arbitrary unit of the year gives us a chance to reflect and renew. Why January 1st? It doesn't really matter.  Our lives are made up of these little units. They actually seem big units when we are young and then they seem to rush by, barely allowing us time to process their impact.

I remember listening to The Boxer by Simon And Garfunkel being played live on an acoustic guitar in a vineyard in South Africa. My late mother was drunk. She would have said she was tipsy. She was certainly tipsy enough to be drunk... She was conducting a crowd of strangers in making the distinctive noise heard in the latter parts of the song. Everybody was grinning.

Wikipedia describes the creation of that distinctive noise in the original recording thus

"The iconic crashing sound in the refrain was recorded by setting up a drum kit in front of an elevator shaft, which provided the proper reverb"

That seems a very elaborate set up when all you had to do to create that noise was give my mum a bottle and a half of white wine and some sunshine.

I can't listen to that song now without it being bittersweet. Google Photos threw up photos from that day recently as part of its 'do you remember this happened on this day?' type function. A function that can still catch me unawares, but that I don't turn off. 

I recall my mother on that day smiling. Grinning.  All Google can offer me is this photo of her with her 'if you take a photo of me you'll be in trouble' face. I was also very familiar with that. 

Anyway, I digress...

The point is that the memory both hurts and cheers. That will be true of so many memories for people of this year. It's been a tough one for many. 

We are shaped by our past and our experiences, but also by those experiences yet to come. The past does not determine the future unless you let it.  And we have control over the here and now and how we react. 

As people get set to write their resolutions for the New Year they will focus on diets and budgets or spending time with others. 

Here is what I hope you resolve. 

Let it be a genuinely New Year. Let it be unencumbered by the weight of past memories. Let it be a new day and a welcome dawn. Take with you into the next year the things you want and need and none of the things that hold you back. Shape the future, rather than being anchored in the past. Have the year you want. And if it doesn't turn out that way, well, there's normally another one in a few months. 

It's a whole new arbitrary unit to make the most of. That's a beautiful creation, one of our best inventions.

Ubele - Day 5

Day 5 (Tuesday 5th December 2017)

Five British pounds  - the face value of the Royal Mint's 2017 commemorative

uncirculated Christmas coin (they are selling for £13). It has been designed

by Edwina Ellis. Last year, The Royal Mint struck the UK's first official Christmas coin, 

which was the Christmas Nativity Story £20 fine silver coin. Only 30,000 of these were issued; 

it was designed by Bishop Gregory Cameron, who created the design for the last 'round pound'.

According to the Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BC, the Lydians 

were the first people to have used gold and silver coinage, 

illustrated on only one side with a lion or other sacred animal. 

The days are pounding by - I don't know about you, but I seem already to be embedded in seasonal cheer and events. I know that I am fortunate to have so many  wonderful friends and contacts. However, I hope I make it to 2018.

Today's post is a treat. It has been written by the extraordinary polymath Hilary Gallo. A precocious and highly intelligent child/adolescent, Hilary commenced his career as a lawyer with a top global firm. He soon realised that for personal satisfaction he needed to do something more creative and so founded his own business - in a way this initial venture reflects his on-going passion for enabling individuals to stand out and shine. He returned to the law within a tech environment, solving problems (something his is good at) prior to stepping into the world of commerce and outsourcing, where he honed his negotiation skills, before jumping ship to become a consultant. Increasingly he found himself focussing on people-related matters. In 2011 he founded Consensum and spends his time on enabling people and helping encourage power without power. He holds retreats for executives looking to change the way they approach work and life, is a trained mediator and runs confidence-building workshops in schools. He is an exceptional writer, speaker and coach. He is a CEDR Accredited Mediator and a Meyler Campbell Executive Coach (accredited by WABC and the SRA) and a Realise2 Accredited Strengths Coach and is also Lumina Spark, Emotion and Leader Accredited. His detailed career history on LinkedIn is here. 

Hilary lives in North Hertfordshire in the UK with his family. He loves the outside and is often to be found on water (or helping people who are on it), or walking in the glorious countryside near his home. It is great to have him here as part of this community.

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Sometimes it is OK not to know. Sometimes it can even be good to be confused and lost for a while. Times of not knowing, of feeling about in the dark, are a place we have to go through in order to find something new. 2017 has felt like this to me at many times and in the all too frequent dark moments I keep reminding myself of this; darkness is only an interim stage.

In the confusion, some events stand out. One happened this autumn as I opened our front door to Shelia. Shelia looked me in the eye resolutely with stiff backed purpose, as she always does, and said “I suppose you are going to be all difficult this year again?” Stunned and somewhat lost for words, I simply responded to my near neighbour in our quiet village, “Good morning Shelia”.

I’d seen her coming down the path for this yearly event and, as I’d learnt to do over the years, had gone upstairs to get a heavy supply of change from my bedside table. This meant at least that I was able to respond by dropping a decent weight of coins into her collecting box whilst I asked how she was; trying to avoid her tray of poppies.

The year before I had tried to explain to Shelia that I’d happily give money to the collection but that I’d rather not have any poppies. I told her that our family didn’t wear them any more as we weren’t so sure about the tradition of remembrance and its purpose in the modern world.

Knowing Shelia of old I’d trod carefully and we’d had, what I thought of, as an honest exchange of views. I’d hoped that she’d at least understood me as I had sought to understand her. Now, I knew that this wasn’t so. I’d upset her. Also, just like last year, I’d failed in another sense; I still came away from the encounter with the poppies I no longer wanted.

A few weeks later, on Remembrance Sunday itself, I was sitting with my daughter, Anna, who is 15 and we started to talk about how she understood the idea of remembrance and how it had been presented at school. Put simply she didn’t get it. I explained how I understood it and she was clear. “I get that” she said “But how is that helping us going forward?” she asked as we both went on to question the divisive behaviour and the rising levels of violence in the world that we’d seen in 2017.

With Anna’s question in mind my thoughts went back to another woman, equally as strong as Shelia but very different. I’d met Mama D when she’d stood up to lead an exercise at a gathering I’d attended in North London in the weeks after the Grenfell Tower disaster. The event had been a coming together of community groups seeking answers to change at the grass-roots level.

The group descended into the very talking we’d promised to get away from, and Mama D, bursting with energy, had suggested we get up, get moving and do something physical. Several of us got up with her and followed her instructions which were to close our eyes and to take ourselves back to the first dawn on a barren planet, stripped back of anything we knew.

Once we found ourselves fully in that space Mama D encouraged us to feel the first stirrings of the morning as the sun made the promise of impending light to us and, as the sun rose, to move physically into possibility of the new world that was dawning before us and of which we were a part. My whole body felt warmed through with fresh possibility as I reached forward to embrace the light of that first dawn.

When we all opened our eyes together all of us went through a surprised and startled moment when we realised that we were all making the basically the same shape. All of us had our hands up, outstretched with our fingers spread in the shape of a tree. Our bodies were open, stretching out for possibility, for light and for connection. This wasn’t just me feeling this; this was a thing we all shared.

I later learnt that Mama D works with a community organisation called “Ubele” which is derived from the Swahili for “The Future”. Ubele is a community-building organisation that seeks to increase the capacity of the African Diaspora community in the UK to lead and to create their own social initiatives from the ground up. Tired of waiting for the central or local government to help people, they are helping those same people to help themselves.

Moving forward into 2018 I don’t want to repeat my mistake of unnecessarily upsetting the Shelias of this world or of forgetting the lessons of the past, but I do think that the ways of seeing that we have, and the framing narratives we live by unquestioned, do have to be looked at and that not everyone will always agree. I say this because I don’t believe that fiddling with the answers we already have will solve the systemic problems the like of which we saw at Grenfell Tower.

As I gather my thoughts in this traditional period of Advent my feeling is to be mindful of tradition and of the past but to be fundamentally where I was with Mama D. on that day. I want to build things afresh, keen to embrace a new dawn of a new day. In an openly embraced new dawn we all have the opportunity to be feeling good.

A Light at the end of My Tunnel - Day 47

Day 47 (16th January 2015)

47 has become an in-joke in Star Trek, making regular appearances in dialogue,
on computer screens and equipment. The practice originates with Joe Menosky,
a script writer, who was a member of the 47 Society as a student at Pomona College.

Today's post comes from an individual who would like to remain anonymous, as he does not want to upset members of his family and fears that his words might impact his job search. In the post he refers to the Anonymous author who wrote about their experiences on the 18th December. He was unaware of yesterday's post until reading it yesterday - there are some similarities, in that both have independent paths ahead. I would like to wish both writers a happy, successful and rewarding 2015.

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No matter what you're going through, there's a light at the end of the tunnel and it may seem hard to get to it but you can do it and just keep working towards it and you'll find the positive side of things. 

If you are reading this I made it, I made it through 2014 - a year that I will never ever forget.

I have never wished for a year to end as much as this one. It is probably not right to wish away your life and/or years but, when you come to the end of this blog, I am sure you will understand where I am coming from. 

January started with where I left it in 2013 - Dad was in a nursing home suffering from dementia and was deteriorating daily. Although we had Christmas 2013 at my place and I managed to persuade the nursing home to let him out for Christmas, I and the family, were not game enough to do the same for New Year’s Day. Little would I know that that would be Dad’s last Christmas with us.

We had such a lovely time on Christmas Day 2013 and I recall I took a video (his last interview with me) with him telling me stories of the village and his younger days - you see, once Dementia hit, all Dad was able to remember was his youth - he recalled nothing of his life post his teens - his wedding day, his migration to a country on the other side of the world, the weddings of his two boys and the birth of his five grand children. Dad was not getting any better but he was managing because he was eating and sleeping.

Impact of Dementia on the brain

From a personal perspective 2014 started with the rumours that the Civil Service, as a result of changes in government, was to offer a huge number of voluntary redundancies.  The rumour was strong for my agency and was further confirmed by the fact that the HR department was to be targeted as part of a work re-design review and the notion that we were “top heavy”.

I had a lot to think about and ponder - do I jump and take this opportunity to cash in? Do I hang around and work in an area where I was starting to feel a little uneasy? Was this my chance to fulfil my dream of finally doing what I wanted to do? My age would be a factor, but I yearned to explore the bigger world of consulting and see what I could do on my own. Either way it was an opportunity to finally do what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it.

The path ahead

Mid February arrived and we had to make a decision - so I lodged my expression of interest - I will never forget the feeling that day - such a relief , such a weight was lifted off my shoulders, I already felt free even though there were months to go. I was confident of being successful, due to the thinking by the Executive that the HR department needed to be cut back - I knew I had a very good chance!

So as expected, knowing I had expressed an interest in a package, my heart was not in my current work and I managed to float for a month or so until the decision was made. Then, in early March, I heard  - I was told I would be offered a VR (Voluntary Redundancy) package and that the final date was not yet determined.

I started feeling excited - I had nothing lined up but similar to Anonymous on a pre-Christmas Advent Blog - I had confidence in my abilities, plus it was also time to smell the roses - I needed a break - after 32 years it was time to rest.  My youngest daughter was in the last months of her final year of high school - I could be there for her. Mum was needing some assistance with visiting Dad - I could be there for her. My heart yearned for a different life, foolish maybe, but my heart said it was right.

Time to smell the roses?

I was offered a May departure date and thus I worked towards that - I started making some connections, put some feelers out - not much coming back - maybe I should have spotted the warning signs and the writing was on the wall - but I was determined to go.

It was nearly my departure date in May and I visited Dad with my family.  He didn’t look great, he was not eating, he was hallucinating; he was in his own world - he hardly opened his eyes to see me. I left knowing that Dad was going downhill. In the morning I rang Mum and arranged to pick her up to visit Dad and be with him for his lunch. One thing we prided ourselves on as a family is that during the time Dad was in the nursing home he had a family visitor every day. He always had someone to chat to, see how he was and make sure he was fed and relaxed.

However, this day was going to be different. As we arrived and headed to his room, I saw Dad in a very bad way - he was not going to make it - he passed that day, in mid afternoon, but before he did he left us a sign.  As Mum and I were comforting him, he opened his eyes, looked at us, shed a few tears and then he let his last breathe go.  A moment I will never forget and so grateful to God that I was there to witness it - whatever it was, one thing is for sure, it was closure for all of us

So here I was planing a funeral whilst also clearing my desk, packing my possessions and bringing to an end a 32 year career of Public Service - it was a one of those “pinch me I am dreaming moments”. I do recall though a senior colleague of mine, who made an amazing comment, one which I thank her for today:

 “ Just think what a blessing your father has given you - he wants you to start your new life without a worry in the world, without a need to concern yourself with his daily care. He is setting you free from all his worries”

Once I reflected on it and really thought about it, it made sense. Dad was actually in his own way saying to me "son go on your way with my blessing - it is time for you to expand your wings and find your voice and passion".

We buried Dad - on a grey and drizzly day that suited the occasion - although it was a tough day, we had been mentally preparing for this day for the last two years.

That same week, my eldest son was moving out. Although we knew this was happening early in the year when they (he and his girlfriend) had made the decision to live together, the commitment to the new flat was for the same week as the funeral and thus the timing was not great - but how would they have known that? With all the emotion of Dad’s passing and my eldest son leaving our house, I broke down. In a moment of privacy, whilst others were packing boxes, I took some time to video myself in his room and recount the times I read him his bed time story after his bath, the times we did homework together, the times we put up the shelves in his room to hang his NBA caps. It all came flooding back and boy did I cry. I think I cried for a while thinking of how his grandfather, his namesake, loved him so much and was always so proud of what he had achieved. 

I was losing my two best mates in the same week! I pulled myself together and continued the packing and he moved in smoothly to his new home.

Very soon after Dad passed away, my spouse was undertaking some routine check ups and was asked to undergo a more thorough check up. I will not go into too much detail suffice to say that the next 6 months were hell - waiting, contemplating and taking a final decision.

This all on top of the last year of my daughter’s high school education. The most important academic year in my child’s life and she had to deal with her grandfather’s passing, her Dad leaving the workforce and now her mother going through a tough medical journey. I was worried for her and was concerned that these issues may distract her from reaching her optimal best. Well, I was proven wrong, not only did she overcome all these issues, she managed to do very well and we were all elated - to some extent one of the few shinning moments for the year!

So with the new year ahead, I am looking forward to ramping up my consultancy business and looking forward to making new connections and enhancing my PLN !

But more importantly, I am looking forward to being a son, a brother, a husband, and a father to my three beautiful children. 

So as my Annus Horribilis comes to an end I know there is a “little light” at the end of my tunnel - it is shinning bright and it is awaiting me to come through and receive its warmth.

Light at the end of the tunnel

I hope you enjoyed a Safe and Merry Christmas and here’s to a New Year that surely has to be better than 2014 !

D-Ream - Things Can Only Get Better

 Life can be very tough at times