I know, I know, another succulent… But this one was actually requested by a colleague because her desk looked lonely.

And then my mug cracked, and instead of being sad about (yet another) mug breaking before my very eyes, I decided it was happy timing and filled it with some dirt and a plant. Because sometimes when things you love break, you just have to accept that they’re broken and make the best out of a bad situation.

Yip, I’m trying to insert a little philosophy into today’s succulent post, did you notice?

We had the most wonderful Practical Philosophy class last week – the final in our 5 week Happiness course. There have been a number of gems in the class, and I’ll be writing about them in weeks to come, as I process them and start practising them in every day life… but one idea really stuck out for me.

We were listening to a speaker and he said to us, “If I offered you a hundred rand, or a thousand rand, or even ten thousand rand for your happiness, you’d laugh at me, wouldn’t you?” Think about it – your present and future happiness, for a lump sum? Not a good deal. “But look at the way you’re living your life,” he says. And then proceeds to explain how we sell our happiness every day, and for a lot less than a thousand rand. If our breakfast is cooked badly, if the garage door won’t open, if someone says something unkind to us, if the weather is bad, if there’s a drill going on in the background – we sell our happiness for all these things, every day.

It really got me thinking. Because there are times when I’ll get thrown off by the smallest thing without even thinking about it, and it’s only hours later that it will occur to me that this whole mood started from something tiny and insignificant. I’ve caught myself literally selling my happiness for a bag of chips (they don’t make me feel well, yet every so often my will power crumbles and I eat them. And then I feel bad about it. So bloody stupid! But human, I suppose).

Yes, yes, that’s all very well, I hear you say, but what can we do about it? Let go. Let go of all the little things that bug you, and don’t pick them up again. It is faar easier said than done, but it’s possible. On a day to day, moment to moment, irritation to irritation level. What do you think?

Don’t sell your happiness. There’s no price tag that could be worth it.

Mmm… crisps.

“People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone may destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is all between you and God.
It was never between you and them anyway.”

Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

We’re doing a course called ‘Models of the Mind’, which sounds quite complicated, but actually isn’t.

In fact, there was only really one thought that stuck with me and is demanding some attention. You ready for it? Apparently each of us operates from a certain ‘model’ in our minds. We each have a specific way of seeing the world. That makes sense, right? Some people think the world is a harsh place, others think resources are limited and you have to fight for them, others think everything always goes their way.

What’s so fascinating, though, is that whatever model you hold (and often we hold models unconsciously), it will colour what you actually see. Whatever you believe changes not only the way you see things, but the things you actually see. How? Well, your experiences feed into the model and strengthen it, but at the same time they create the experience. Two people looking at the same incident will interpret it completely differently.

Continue this thought further and it means that the glasses you look at the world through create, to a large extent, the experiences you are looking at.

What do you think? Possible? Probable?

The one thing I keep returning to, though, is this idea that if we can just stay present in the present, that if we can just be here right now, without worrying about the past or future, that’s the space where enlightenment (and happiness and peace) can be found.

But crikey moses! It is hard to do. My mind is like a rabbit on speed.

Still, it’s a worthy goal, I think, to keep drawing our busy minds back from wherever they’ve wandered off to. I find that focusing on my senses is the best route to presence, focusing on what I feel or hear or smell or taste. For example, I was in the shower this morning, and my mind was a million miles away – thinking about this and that, planning my day in a lackadaisical way, remembering what I saw on TV last night. And then I caught myself, and brought my attention back to Now. And now was so great! It smelt like raspberries and there was hot water falling on my back and a great view out my window. I was missing out on all of that because I was so wrapped up in my head! Of course, there are times when you need to plan and think ahead, but to do that consciously, to sit down and with all your wits about you to think about the future, is far more powerful than casually letting your mind wander down future paths while you’re in the shower.

So this is my challenge for the moment: to be right here. Now. And now. And now.

I wish I could say I came up with it myself, but I actually stole it from my practical philosophy teacher, and the whole thing was: “Allow others to be responsible for themselves. Forgive yourself and others.”
She gave it to us as a suggestion for peaceful family holiday time. It worked.

I don’t know about you, but I often feel like I have to organise things. Like I have to make sure everyone knows what’s going on and is in the right place at the right time and happy to be there. The problem is, although I used to love organising things (the control freak in me would shiver with glee at any organisational task) I no longer do. I don’t like the weight of responsibility that comes with it, I don’t like encouraging other people to be useless and depend on me to make a plan, and I don’t like the guilt that descends if something goes wrong. Because I had convinced myself that I always had to be responsible for others, though, I never gave them the chance to be responsible for themselves. I thought that if I stopped organising, that if I stepped back and let people screw up by themselves, that’s exactly what they’d do – screw up.

Boy oh boy was I wrong!

I heard this fascinating theory a little while ago that spoke about the necessity for balance in the world – that there always has to be, for example, blue and red in every situation. Say you’re in a meeting and everyone is spewing out red red red, one person has to mention the blue. The problem comes in when it’s the same person over and over again always mentioning the blue. What’s so interesting about this theory, though, is that they did tests to see what would happen if the blue person didn’t say anything, if they went against their urge to be blue (or responsible for others, or bossy, or organisey – fill in the blank). Amazingly, the weight of red was too much and someone else in the meeting had to mention the blue.

It’s a long story for a simple idea – if you step back and allow others to be responsible for themselves, it’s the darnedest thing, but they actually will!

Try it… And let me know how it goes. It worked for me. As soon as I stopped feeling like I had to be responsible for other people, they stepped up and became responsible for themselves.

I have so much to write about – spending the holidays with my entire family, travelling all over the country with my man, the incredible book I’m reading at the moment, the many realisations that hit me over the last three weeks… But perhaps, seeing as today is my (and many other people’s) first day back at work, I should write about something a little more pertinent: The art of the everyday.

Because it’s easy to be calm and spiritual and happy when you’re on holiday, isn’t it? You can sleep as much as you like, you can read for hours (if you so wish, which I always do!), you can pretty much do what you want. I have to say, this has been one of my most peace-full holidays ever. I’ve been focusing a lot on staying present, on being here while I do this, and then moving on to the next thing and being fully present for that too. Amazingly, it’s actually much easier than trying to do ten things at once, while having imaginary future conversations in your head that relate to the eleventh thing. My head feels clearer, I have more energy and I feel, essentially, lighter in spirit.

As I said, easy to do when you’re on holiday.

But when I approached my computer this morning – full of 3 weeks of unreplied-to-emails, requests from people, things to think about, and work to do – my mind started up its chatter all over again. All of a sudden the urge to open five tabs at once and flip between them while the pages load became irresistible. I started thinking in fast forward again. The imaginary conversations with people I have to call later came flooding back in.

And what do you know, I immediately started feeling tired. Drained, sore eyes, tired, despite it only being mid-morning. Isn’t it amazing how our bodies communicate with us?

So I stopped. I sat on my verandah for a while watching a couple of butterflies flitting in and out of the flowers. I did some yoga stretches. I remembered to breathe. And slowly the noise in my head quieted down and my energy returned.

So what am I on about? Finding the balance in every day, the moments that make our days sing for us, the art of the everyday. Because life is like our own special work of art, and what kind of artists would we be if we only knew how to paint on weekends and holidays?

Now don’t give the answer you think I want to hear. Be straight with me… Fantastic? So-so? Quite bad?

I’ve always thought of myself as an honest person. I don’t bandy words, I’m not deceitful, I don’t willfully mislead people. That said, I also don’t like that brand of brutal honesty that leaves no space for kindness and leaves people offended and hurt in your wake.

One of our pieces of philosophy homework for this week is to ‘love to speak the truth’. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? But I needed to chew over it a bit, to see how it actually works. Because there’s speaking the truth, and then there’s speaking the whole-truth-and-nothing-but-the-truth. Being brutal.

My teacher gave me one line that made it all a lot easier to digest. Are you ready for it?
Speak the truth pleasantly, not pleasant untruths.

Which, as far as I’m concerned, makes the whole bang-shoot a lot easier to do. What do you think?

There has to be a balance, of course, and obviously you can’t be swinging from the happiness tree 24/7/365, but I’m beginning to think that if I lighten up and really enjoy what’s going on around me more, a flood of happiness might just whisk me away. How’s that for mixed metaphors?!

So I’m off to pick up my best friend from the airport, how exciting! He’s spending two days with me (a whole two days, this is an unimagined luxury!) and then I’m off to the Cosmo Awesome Women event on Friday, which should be lots of fun (We get goodie bags. Enough said!) And then, on Friday evening I’m going to Knysna for my man’s grandpa’s 90th birthday, and to meet his nephew for the first time.

Happy times ahead! Here’s wishing you a bolt of happiness. Round about now!

But I’m beginning to think that’s a somewhat foolish approach. Because as soon as you take yourself out of whatever is happening, you take yourself out of it. It loses some of its flavour. One of the most difficult challenges my practical philosophy class ever set was to ‘just’ do something. When you’re driving, just drive. When you’re eating, just eat. When you’re reading, just read. This is bordering on impossible for me! When I’m driving, I’m singing. When I’m eating, I’m planning. When I’m reading, I’m humming. And all along I’m thinking, thinking, thinking.

So the past few weeks I’ve been trying to correct the balance (and becoming a bad blogger in the process, I apologise!) It’s an extraordinarily eventful time for me, all of a sudden. I was sick, then my man was sick, then my parents came for a lovely lovely weekend visit, then I found out about the US book (which I’m still over the moon about!). Now I have work to do and an impending trip to Namibia (for work! Before the end of the year!) and we’re going cherry picking and lawn bowling and 80s partying this weekend, and next weekend I’ve got the Cosmo Awesome Women event in Joburg and then a 90th birthday in Knysna (5 hours from Cape Town). The day I arrive back I’m probably off to Namibia for a week, and when I return my best friend is coming to stay with me. Then my man and I are going back to Knysna for a wedding, and when we get back my brother and his girlfriend arrive to stay with us. And then we’re driving back to Durban (a mini road trip which will take  couple of days) for Christmas with the whole family.

So, as you can see, if I didn’t stay centered and in the moment, my head might be flying off its hinges!

And the one thing I keep returning to is that I want to enjoy this time of year. It’s frantic and full of people and probably lacking in the alone time I like so much, but it’s so exciting! And I want to be fresh and rested and firmly in the present moment so I can enjoy it. I don’t want to be stressed.

Don’t you want to join me? Join me in this experiment to see if you can ‘just’ do whatever you’re doing right now?