Reverse

I find it is always best to step over people to get to where you want and take whatever you wish. You can be as rude as you like too.

It is actually quite funny to find someone’s Achilles heel and cut into it deeply.

Sometimes we all need to vent our anger and frustrations, it is only natural and it can be hugely entertaining to drag people down and belittle them until the sweet reward of salty tears flow bitterly down their cheeks-always brings a smile to one’s face.

We are not here to help or care for anyone and you have to look after numero uno.

Insults are always a reliable method to ensure that we stay one step ahead. Every man is an island and we should never forget that it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there!

So feel free to push into queues, bash people out of the way and never, ever smile.

Ignore the Big Issue sellers, sales assistants and everyone on the tube. Never open up your heart as it will only ever lead to heartbreak and finally, do not, under any circumstances, love or respect yourself.

Have a nice day!(for real) 

Chatter

 

 

Ooh it is nice and warm in here...I wonder if the heating is on or if the chef has the oven door open...this is a good table - I like window seats...I wonder how my hair looks after being caught in the wind...”Thank you. Urm, just a beer please. My friend will be turning up in a minute”...It is quiet in here tonight...nice candle - would be lovely with a bubble bath...everyone else here is in a couple...I wonder if they think I am eating alone? Maybe they are whispering that I don’t have any friends...that would be embarrassing...The wax on my finger is starting to burn a little - just leave the candle alone...If I get my phone out, they will think that I am busy and have lots to do...no new messages...I hope she turns up soon, I feel like people are looking over...Another swig of beer I think...damn, it’s nearly finished already...I remember this song from years ago...Mmm what do I fancy to eat?

We try every trick in the book to distract ourselves. We read, text, hum, think, ponder, remember and wish. Sitting here in this restaurant, waiting, it occurs to me that the one thing we very rarely do is just be. To still the mind and free ourselves from all the chatter which acts as a constant narrator to life. I can’t help but wonder what lies in the silence - the secret to life, eternal youth, this week’s lottery numbers?

 I make a quick mental note to investigate this further before the door swings open and I hear the muffled words from behind “I am meeting a friend, he’s over there by the window”. I smile, welcoming the interruption.

I do

Once upon a time there lived a lonely prince. He longed for true love to come his way and would sit gazing hopefully out of the window across the kingdom for his beautiful princess to finally arrive...

I, like millions of others on every continent, sat watching the happy couple lean in and steal a kiss on the balcony. Everything stopped for a second or two and any cynicism that existed, gently floated away as I smiled for them – a scene straight out of a fairy tale.

I started to wonder about the many different ways we all have of celebrating our unions and stumbled across what must have been the out-takes from the bedtime stories read to me as a child.

The Tujia tribe sees the bride singing ‘The crying marriage song’ in which she weeps in different tones to create her own tuneful melodies in the run up to the big day.

In Germany, the bride is kidnapped by friends and the groom has to buy the help of a search party in the form of drinks along the way.

And In the community of Tidong, the bride and groom are not allowed to use the bathroom at all for 3 days and 3 nights to ensure a life of happiness and success!

There are many colourful examples of weird and wonderful wedding traditions but once the sun has set over the horizon on the special day and all the rituals have fallen away, two people remain who have found their way into each others’ lives forever.

In the end, it’s all love in its many forms and perhaps having an open heart is the one thing that will help us live happily ever after...






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Everything

As I lie on my back with the warm grass tickling my skin, I look up. The sky is crystal blue and the dazzling rays twinkle through the swaying branches overhead. The plane full of people draws a white line 37,000 ft above and disappears behind the trees. I close my eyes and feel everything around me-the slight breeze on my arms, the warmth on my face, the money spider struggling to make its way across my hairy leg. I love those moments where I can shut out the world and just be. Life is so full of ‘stuff’ that we sometimes get lost in it like my eight legged friend weaving in and out.

I watch the family walking past and wonder if, one day in years to come, the little girl will lay on the grass looking up and remember that beautiful sunny Easter morning she took her mum and dad to the park.

My reverie is abruptly shattered by the sound of a screaming girlfriend being unsuspectingly pushed into the lido pool, followed by a big splash and louder laughter. I smile as a bee buzzes past my nose and makes me move my head to the side.

Everything is perfect, and for the briefest of moments, I have everything I will ever need.

Life is beautiful.






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Blue Spandex

‘With great power, comes great responsibility’

Uncle Ben – Spider-man

There is that beautiful scene in Superman where our hero flies right up out of the Earth’s atmosphere and using all his incredible strength and speed, circles our planet to reverse its spin. This turns back the clock and he is able to get to his beloved Lois just in time to save her life. She never finds out what her true love did for her on that sunny afternoon.

I have always been captivated by the power of love and what it can force us to do whether we like it or not. It makes mothers lift up cars to save babies and people run into burning buildings to rescue a perfect stranger.

Heroes come in many shapes and sizes and even in the absence of blue lycra or a truth lasso, we are amazing. We can use our super-powered hearing to really listen to someone who desperately needs to be heard, and tune our X-ray vision to look right into the heart of someone who is hurting and needs a hug. Hell, we can even use our super strength to push through limitations and knock them right out of our way.

None of us are bulletproof and at various points in our life we feel the impact of emotional shrapnel crashing into us, sometimes unexpectedly. Sure, they leave scars, but the wounds remain skin deep. We are stronger and more heroic than we give ourselves credit for.

And sometimes the change from zero to hero can happen faster than you can run into a phone booth and spin around.

Now, more than ever, this planet needs superheroes.

So what is your special power?

April showers

As the darkening clouds churn above and quickly expand, I know what is coming.

Feeling the gusty wind pick up to send the white blossom dancing around me like confetti, all the hairs on my body stand up to greet the change. That familiar scent hangs in the air; a mixture of damp, woodland foliage and floral cardboard. Remembering how the sun had tenderly stroked my hair this afternoon, I quicken my pace along the tree lined street towards home.

I start to think about our beautiful season that has returned once again with a pile of delicately wrapped gifts stashed under her arms and a little surprise. I have missed this old friend.

Spring always fills me with optimism and hope - a breath of fresh air to carry us along our journey. It is the season to forgive and forget, to let go and grow.

I smile as I close my eyes and feel the first few drops of cool spring rain splash onto my face and run down my neck. The heavens open and in less than 3 seconds I am soaked through, but it doesn’t matter one bit. Spring is back!

The woman beside me

Someone is following me.

It has been happening for years. I always feel them right behind me as I am walking home through the abandoned street market in the chilly midnight hours of Sunday, slightly tipsy. And they are there too as I weave in and out of the crammed streets of Covent Garden on a Saturday and even just before I open my eyes first thing in the morning. Sometimes I keep them closed for a few seconds after waking just to see if they make a sound and give up their position. Inches from my fingertips, I could almost reach out and touch them. But I never do and the second I flash open my eyes to the early sun, they have vanished again.

When I was six my beautiful mum made a promise to me and judging by this constant presence in my life, it has never been broken. She stayed true to her word.

I have been blessed to witness the many different relationships that people have with their mothers and the unbreakable bond that connects. It is truly beautiful.

Having this one day a year to acknowledge all that is maternal is a golden opportunity for us to say a heartfelt thank you to those amazing women and to celebrate our connection to the one person who lovingly carried us into being and allowed us to shine our light into the world.

The missing gift

I have looked under the sofa, and in the bed, around the TV and above the wardrobe… Still it eludes me like an invisible city fox.  The worst thing about it is, I have only just realised how precious it was....In the early hours of Sunday morning, 60 minutes went missing!

The absence of this lost hour leaves me with a pocketful of questions and a silver lining of sunny mornings and balmy nights ahead.

Time has a clever way of slipping by unnoticed if we turn our heads for too long. The truly amazing things we can do in those 3,600 seconds are mind-blowing. Everything can change in that moment. You can say ‘I love you!’, ‘Never again!’ and ‘I do!’

Possibilities fill every single minute and if we could just realise how fleeting time is, we would never waste any of it again, not a tiny drop.

Just think how rich life would be for us all if we let go of the past and future and lived for the now. That is where our power truly lies.

As with most things in life, nothing is ever really lost and I feel warmth inside to know that this absent hour is going to fly back to me in a few months time, carrying a gift of a second chance to make a difference.

Size 8

My favourite shoes are a well worn pair of red and white Converse All Star boots with matching double laces. I adore them. I wore them every day on tour in Italy and they have travelled with me thousands of miles like a trusted friend ever since. Sure they are a bit battered and the soles are slowly wearing down but despite walking on pavement, grass, carpet, glass, gravel, sand, steel and snow, they remain. Every inch of wear and tear seems to add a little more character than the day before. One of the bright red laces is shredded at the end following a vicious fight with an angry washing machine. They came out clean(ish) and still smiling at the memory of having once strolled along the Seine at dusk.

We take so many steps in this lifetime that it would be impossible to keep count. Sometimes they are so small they hardly make an imprint, steadily ambling along. And occasionally the strides are so incredibly colossal that we literally vault into a new chapter without so much as a glance behind.

Everyone wears their shoes differently and each pair has their own unique story to tell. Despite all the weight they carry on their journey, they never give up, steady in the knowledge that no one will ever be able to walk a mile in them better than their rightful owner.

Helping hands

At 2:45 pm it was all ok. People were going about their everyday lives. Contracts were being signed, washing was finishing a cycle to the sound of a daytime TV ‘wide show’ playing in the next room and the shop assistant was busily stocking the shelf with a brand new box of Kiri Mochi rice cakes.
In less than a minute life would be turned upside down...
We can go for days without speaking to a stranger preferring instead the conversation with a familiar face. It is easy for us to feel disconnected from the rest of the world....until this.
Even from 5996 miles away, the shockwaves of human despair can be felt beyond any measurable scale. And then something happens...Hands reach across an ocean and people stand to reveal compassionate, beating hearts. Suddenly the World becomes a much smaller place and we are reminded that we are all connected and we are all the same.
My love and thoughts go out to all those who have moved onto somewhere else and to those brave souls who remain.

“We must recognise that the suffering of one person or one nation is the suffering of humanity”
-The Dali Lama

Ripples

There is a time of day that sits just before the sun comes up and the city is still rubbing its eyes that I dedicate to me, just to me and no one else.

I love feeling the cool water rush over my body as I submerge my entire being and for the briefest of moments, vanish from sight like a Vegas illusionist. Everything becomes a muffled echo as I sink deeper into this chlorine scented world. Here under the surface everything feels safe as I am quickly emancipated from the demands and deadlines that hover just above the surface. Despite not having any air down here, I can, once again, breathe deeply.

Limbs moving in harmony to travel a length at a time, the rhythm induces an almost out of body experience allowing my mind to venture outside of its natural habitat and explore the boundaries of thoughts to come up with new, inventive ways of being. I am free and happy.

Life seems to be so full nowadays and it feels as if we never have enough time to do everything. Stress has become the new centre and tiredness is the new status symbol.

So many things demand our attention and the fear of not having ample time to reach our full potential is palpable.

It is so important to have our moment in the day where we can push the panic button on life and just sit in the stillness. Here we can truly listen to the inner voice. The voice that guides us and knows what is important.  The voice that knows we are always going to be ok.

Changes

As the bus trundled slowly towards St Pancras station, a million thoughts pulsed in and out of my mind like a beating heart. It’s funny how one memory leads to another, to another, to another. This snowball of recollection was brought about by being minutes away from a reunion with an old school friend who I hadn’t seen in a while -‘a while’ actually being a decade and a half but who’s counting?

My initial thought was that I wouldn’t recognise her face in the crowded coffee shop filled with people taking refuge from the hammering February rain. How had we both changed? Were we completely different people or still fundamentally the same? Would she even recognise me walking in now with my sodden jacket and dripping hair? I thought about how we vowed to always be friends no matter what...

We all have so many incarnations in a lifetime that sometimes we don’t see the changes happening right in front of our very eyes. Just as every single cell in our body regenerates, the same is true with our experiences, good and bad. Life has a habit of throwing things at us and we all deal with challenges differently. I am not ashamed to admit that sometimes the choices I make are flawed but never the less, make me the man I am today.

We can’t stay the same. It is the nature of being. Everything changes and everything grows whether we like it or not.

I guess the secret is in the acquiescence of that. Rather than fighting the metamorphosis we can accept that it will happen anyway and make a conscious decision to fashion ourselves into the person we want to become.

And yes, she did recognise me.

Journeys

When I was little I used to sit there in my maths class, staring into the distance towards the airport and watch as the planes lifted gracefully into the sky one by one. How I longed to be on them. To be going anywhere, I wouldn’t care. For me, flying equalled freedom, an escape.

Fast forward to me sporting less floppy hair, I find myself sitting in Gatwick Airport eating scrambled eggs, remembering those reveries.

There is something I love about airports. The smell of sweet leather and sanitising liquid mixed with jet fuel, the constant hum of chattering passengers and clinking cutlery and the allure of the Herb Ritts-esque Eau de Toilette posters in Duty Free promising a life of sun, sea and oiled abs (I make a quick mental note to start swimming again before my mind wanders).

Being an avid people watcher (and no that is not the same as being a nosey parker in case you were wondering), I love to observe. I think about the individuals surrounding me and their personal journeys through life. What brought them to this moment in time? Where are they heading and what will they find?

Being in this environment never fails to be a sensory feast for me and always triggers a myriad of ponderings.

Every day, we are faced with challenges and opportunities that ultimately change our lives forever and I can’t help but wonder how my journey today is going to shape mine and all that it means.

Once in a while it is important to stop looking up at our destination board and take a deep breath. It is, after all, just a journey.

Let’s sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight.

Have you ever been on a journey that has changed your life? I would love to hear about it in the comments below.



I heart you

Happy Valentine's day!

It’s that time of year once again when most of us turn our attention to all things lurve.... Whether we are happily married, joyfully coupled or blissfully single*, we can’t help but think about love and what it means to us. It may be our partners, pets, jobs, clothes, families or iPhones which all feature prominently under this umbrella or a trillion things in between.

Love lifts, expands, engulfs, swirls and ignites. It shines a light in a world filled with pain and suffering and gives us a glimmer of hope....a shining beacon of loveliness.

I have always been a champion to love, fiercely defending its existence to the cynics. I can’t tell you the number of times I have heard people declare that the world is an evil place and that everyone in it is wicked! In their reality that may be true. For me, the whole experience is amazingly different. I witness on a daily basis, beautiful, random acts of kindness everywhere I go...... I see the woman picking up a fallen scarf and running down the street with flailing limbs, shouting to reunite it with its unsuspecting owner, and the hand extended to help an old man off the bus, and the smile given to the Big Issue seller sitting on the floor surrounded by crumpled magazines. All of these things prove to me that we are surrounded by love and if we only open our eyes, we will see how brightly we shine.

To everyone who has it or is still searching, I wish you all the love in the world!

(*not leaving out those who are not so happy in all of these things)

The naughty step

Right, that’s it! Go and sit on the naughty step and have a long, hard think about what you’ve done!

Okay so while we are sitting here for a bit I wanted to ask you something. Have you been here before? I have. Many times! Not for refusing to eat my greens or for being cheeky or even for not tidying my room (the floordrobe I have is a walk-in by the way). The step I am talking about is the place we go to voluntarily to punish ourselves. The space in which the internal monologue throws all the shoulda, woulda, coulda’s in our face and tells us how stupid we were. We mull it over until our head hurts. All of that self flagellation leaving deep red marks on our backs and conscience.

So when will we give ourselves permission to get up off the step and forgive ourselves? Crime and time done! Finito!

It seems that out of habit the naughty step has become our home from home. Like a self-imposed prison of guilt which we have refurbished to make the whole beating ourselves up experience more comfortable.

We miss out on so much by looking back at things we may have said or done. If we can’t make things right, then it’s time to draw a line under it, move on and vow never to do that again and congratulate ourselves for being one step closer to becoming a better person with a more open heart.

Right, times up. You may get off the naughty step and come back into the room. All is forgiven.  Now come and let me give you a hug!!!




(Thanks to my beautiful niece Renn for being the best model in the world - you rock angel)