Life in Ireland

How flexible is my thinking?  I have noticed as people around me get older they become less flexible, it is something that I did not notice until it got to a certain level.  Perhaps that is what life has in store for all of us who manage to live long enough.

There does though seem to be ways to keep flexible.  It is all too easy to fall into patterns, habits, sticking to the things I know and enjoy, reading the same newspaper, reading the same kinds of books, eating the same type of food, walking the same road to work - and getting annoyed when someone moves something to a different place on your desk.   I see me in these sometimes and then I feel the need to shake things up a bit.

It’s not like I have to change everything.  Recently feeling like this I decided to go out on a motor boat in Dublin bay.  We enjoyed ourselves, we met another couple and went and had coffee with them afterwards.  Since then I play tennis with one of them weekly.  Stepping out of the box is good for me, meeting new people, doing some new things.

I met someone once a few years ago who decided for their New Years resolution to meet and have a conversation with at least one hundred new people during the next year.   I thought it was kind of crazy at the time, they keep a list of the people, and they had decided what exactly constituted a conversation.  At least it is thinking about things, getting out of old patterns and routines.

There is one thing that I hear many say “well, that is just the way I am.” Oh, it drives me crazy, and that I could do with stopping.  However just accepting that you will be a certain way and that is it, it makes life seem so inevitable, that a person cannot change? - not true.

People are capable of so much.  It does matters what has happened in your life up to now, but that does not have to control the rest of your or my life.  I like the example of Winston Churchill.
A man that had a very bad stutter when he was younger - a man who struggled against depression his whole life, but a man who did so much and became an inspiration to many others.

Shake it up today - talk to someone different in the office, read a different kind of book, buy the Sun newspaper and have a laugh.  And don’t take it all so seriously, or take it seriously - whatever you don’t do right now.

Life is not the enemy…

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