Life Changes You

I’ll start with the obvious changes before I launch into a tirade of philosophical rabbiting on that some (many?) of you will likely skip, scrolling down only to see the cute new pictures of the three gorgeous females I share my day to day existence with. That’s fine by the way. I write because I enjoy it, not just for other people to read it.

Abbey continues with a flurry of words. The vocabulary is daily being added to and more and more gaining a semblance of sentence structure. Well the nouns and verbs anyway. “plane… flying… sky” is an obvious example. “Daddy… com’ere…now!” is another… which funnily enough has recently been followed by “Ryan (pronounced rye…yannnnn)… com’ere… NOOOWWWWW!!!” Very funny. Even with a Nottingham accent which misses the ‘h’ sound! And yet I can see why some parents wind up calling each other mum and dad… to prevent their kids referring to them on a first name basis! My reply: “It’s dad or daddy to you!” Problem is that it has the desired effect from her perspective - It gets me moving… fast! Both Abbey and Lucy are absolute sponges, taking in everything in the world around them.

Lucy’s world mostly centers around her big sister. Hmmm maybe that’s just Lucy’s observation of the world she lives in! That her big sister occupies the centre and all other traffic (parents included) is directed to her purposes! Anyway Lucy watches Abbey with all the wide eyed wonder one could expect from… well a doting younger sister I guess. Abbey can do no wrong. The daily pounding body slam is met with laughter, Abbey’s wrestling hug of Lucy onto the ground is met with more laughter, and rolling around, on the floor with all the abandon of a dog with a rag doll – you guessed it – more laughter. It seems we breed these girls tough!

Lucy’s motor development seems much quicker than Abbey’s ever was – which is probably because she’s got more motivation – Lucy was proud as punch a week or two ago when she mastered rolling from one side to the other, beaming us her trademark grin time and again. She’s now managing to get up onto all fours and even get the occasional bunny hop forwards which means she’s moving around the floor now an alarming amount. I don’t think it will be too long before she’s crawling as her hand eye coordination seems to be pretty good. Whole body coordination should follow. Actually no, it’s more her hand – mouth coordination (than hand eye) that’s good! On that note, she’s this week started on a few very basic weaning foods as we attempt to get back our sleepless nights which are currently being invaded by her need for more food at 5am. (Then again at 7am!). Ah well she made it to 5 ½ months without any solids, so that’s not too bad!

For me, business is occupying an unreasonable amount of time at present, though that should settle once a lot of the infrastructure of the business has been built/developed, so I’m happy to devote the time, especially as I stand to benefit personally from the investment of my time! Mez has an exciting opportunity that she will find out more about later in the week to be involved in a website that is about travelling with kids. Kinda appropriate I think! Her playgroups all seem to be going well and she’s been getting out and running in the mornings despite a batch of wintery weather we’ve had lately, which has left the ski-field operators and firewood sellers rubbing their hands in glee and the rest of the country rubbing their hands to keep warm! A songwriter (Paul Colman) sang: “Life is where you are”. Where we are is good. So life is good!

And if the mechanics is all you’re interested in, that’s where I’m going to leave it. For all those interested in some of the philosophy behind the mechanics, don your intrepid outfit and read on!

Another month has been and gone and it almost feels as though the die-hard explorer part of us that has for the past four years dominated our collective psyche has been banished, and replaced by an ever more time hungry beast. The beast of productivity. Since we’ve been home, it seems like the majority of our conversations have drawn us back to what we want to achieve… and while that’s not at all different from the last four years, the flavour of where those conversations go now is so markedly different from the past four years. It’s become less about where we want to go and what we want to see and more about those endless ‘questions’ that seem to surround a settled existence.

What schools our kids will go to? How they will be educated? How much it will cost? Where we should live? Will we ever buy a house? If we do, what sort of house would we buy? What car should we buy? And for what reason? (price, looks, functionality, environmental impact, safety, comfort) What should we be attempting to build? A private fortune? A business empire? A not for profit organization? Where should we invest our time? With family? With friends? In a church community? In business? Should Mez go back to work? What kind of work? What new things do we need to be working towards with our kids? (better manners, better language skills, Ability to crawl, or throw a ball, being quiet when asked, self confidence to give new things a go, more playtime friends). There are endless questions. With many right answers.

I guess in whatever we do, we want our experience to be authentic. We don’t want to be doing things we don’t believe in, or things that we don’t think are absolutely right for us, right now. We want to be the right people in the right place, doing the right things at the right times, with the right (other) people, for the right reasons! And it takes constant re-evaluation of the status quo to be truly sure of the answers to those kinds of questions. The reality of course is that our answers to the questions change. Which is really a reflection of the fact that we change. And have changed. And will continue to change.

I recall a line from a CD I listened to that outlined the vision and values of a Church in Nottingham… The leader of the church said something very simple, yet incredibly profound (well I thought it was!) certainly the thought has continued to be foremost in my mind since I heard it. You know how as you move through life you have certain moments that help you define your life. Where you realize that this new piece of information you’ve acquired will ever change your experience of the life to come.

I had one of those moments when at the age of 13 I won a scholarship to go to boarding school. I knew it would change me. I had a similar moment when a Priest forewarned me on leaving the college that I was going to find some strange people at university – people with similar values but different faith, people of similar faith, but different values. Forewarned is forearmed I guess. And he was right. I changed my outlook again. I’ve had loads of similar moments in between. There have been many people who have influenced how I view the world. How my faith sits. What I respond to, and what I don’t. Some of those people I’ve met, some I’ve listened to either as teachers, or as a reader of books. Thoughts that have come and helped me define the meaning of life as I then saw it… or see it now!

Anyway, I digress. This most recent life changer was the notion that in life, anything that is healthy will grow. Simple. Yet profound. There are some obvious limitations from a medical perspective (growing cancers, growing atherosclerosis plaques, growing fat to name a few) yet for the most part, I think the allegory is correct. If everything is healthy in a church, it will grow. If everything is healthy in a business – it will grow. When we are healthy personally, we grow. Perhaps not up, (or out!) but in terms of our moral character, our dignity, our relationships, our maturity, our emotional fortitude and more.The counter to this would of course be that where there is a lack of growth there is evidence of some form of disease or something else that’s not so healthy… It’s a very interesting idea to think about in my humble opinion!

The link in all this to us personally, is that a lot seems to have changed, and since change is an essential part of growth, I would therefore add that this is certainly a season of growth for us… (Which is not to say whether that growth is positive or negative - It could theoretically be either, though the implied is that it is positive!!!)
But it’s funny as some parts of us grow and flourish, there are other parts that seem to settle and achieve a degree of homeostasis… to borrow another useful term from the biomedical field. For us as humans life is all about homeostasis. Which is a fancy way of saying perfect balance. The balance between too much and too little. In the body this is about things like temperature, ionic concentration, pH, salinity etc etc. In the wider context of human life there’s just so much that this encompasses. For me, one of the questions I’m currently asking myself as I embark on a journey into business is: How much is too much? As in: if I were to assume infinite possibility in my business endeavors, would I put a ceiling on how much I will personally earn from those endeavors? Should I? Will I put a ceiling on how much I am willing to give to those endeavors (in terms of time)? I don’t think there would be too many that can’t see the sense in putting a ceiling on what you give. But I think it’s a more interesting thing to ponder putting a ceiling on what you get!

A lot of these questions boil down to worldview, a sense of social justice perhaps, concerns for sustainability, wise use of resources etc etc.
So life is certainly changing us. We have a home base. We have a degree of stability – if there can ever be stability in an ever changing world, in a family with four ever changing variables (Lucy, Abbey, Mez and Myself)!!! Time continues its (seemingly) endless march forwards and we, our lives with it. I have no idea what tomorrow will bring. But I have a funny feeling (as I wander my 12 minutes or so home along the beach) that it will be different, and that it will be good.