Home, UK 28 November, 2010 9.20pm GMT
Donations for Movember gladly accepted at http://uk.movember.com/mospace/789888
Today has been a weird day. I’ve not felt like doing anything whatsoever, and have just wanted to stay under a duvet! Of course it is not what I ended up doing, but I think the cold weather is now getting to me. Weird thing is, the cold weather and the shorter days never used to bother me… so what has changed in the past year or two?
Mind you, lots of things have changed in the past year or two… some forced upon me, whilst others have just been a natural progression – everything happens for a reason. The only constant and certainty in life is the inevitable change and we must learn to embrace it.
At some point in our lives we move away from our instincts and become ‘reasoned’. We tend to go through life resisting change, not following our dreams. We lead our lives by fear. What if this… what if that… I have responsibilities… and before we know it we feel stifled but it is then too late. Or is it? Do our fears make us think it is too late?
On this topic, some excerpts from Paulo Coelho’s book The Alchemist. I read this book a number of years ago and it had a profound effect on me:
“My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer,” the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky.
“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.”
“Every second of the search is an encounter with God,” the boy told his heart.
“Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him,” his heart said. “We, people’s hearts, seldom say much about those treasures, because people no longer want to go in search of them. We speak of them only to children. Later, we simply let life proceed, in its own direction, toward its own fate. But, unfortunately, very few follow the path laid out for them—the path to their destinies, and to happiness. Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out indeed, to be threatening place.”
This topic requires much more of my time so at this point I will have to say to keep an eye on my blog because I will touch on this again.
Today’s Mo photo… again, did not get a chance to attend to the tidying up of my moustache.. and once again postponed… until tomorrow…
Only two more days remaining in the month of Movember… so please put your hands in your pockets and donate whatever you can to this cause. Thanks to those of you who are already supporting me in this.
I hope more of you can support my ‘Mo’ growth by donating (even if it is just £1 / $1 / Eur 1) to the Prostate Cancer charity via my Mo Space at
What an intense, yet basic to life topic… I always said I will comment on your blog topics but couldn’t get round to it before – sometimes didn’t get the time and then thought it was too late to write something later – other times I’ve just been without my computer whilst it was being fixed, so didn’t have full access to the Internet..
Anyway, there is a lot that can be written upon this subject but I will keep it short and sweet for now. My initial reaction when I read the quotation was that ‘treasures’ was a beautiful way for Paulo Coelho to word it. The treasure would be the contentment you get with the realisation of self and true purpose in life, as I would interpret – don’t know what further you can say about this. My understanding is that it’s true that we all have treasures to find here, we all have a reason for being here – it’s just a matter of being open to searching. The answers will come when we seek them… and I believe that sometimes even the intention to seek has a profound effect on what comes.
🙂