serendipitous coincidences

Tags

Albert Einstein, coincidence, laugh, miscellaneous, night out, rambleings, ramblings, serendipity, thoughts, wine

Last night over a bottle or two of delicious red wine I was asked what I thought of coincidences. I had to pause and think because while I do believe that things happen that can lead up to events that can effect you, I also am a great believer in choice. However, I also believe in serendipity, not just because I love the way the word sounds and moves around in my mouth, but for its lovely meaning of “a fortunate accident” or  “a happy surprise”.

Still faced with this conundrum niggling away at me I choose to look up what coincidence really means. It is derived from the Latin words cum (with, together) and incidere (to fall on, to happen). And in science coincidence is only use to to figure out whether things are related or not, not considered proof of causal affects but just a higher possibility. And statistically speaking coincidences are bound to happen, in a group of 23 or more people there is a more than 50% chance that two share the same birthday. This is not a coincidence, but a mathematical equitation.

Serendipity in comparison is quite a new-ish word. The first person to use the term in English was Horace Walpole in 1754 when he wrote to a friend about the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip. Funnily enough serendipity is also one of the ten hardest English words to translate … coincidence or just a happy accident?

Feeling a little smarter but not wiser I think when it comes to coincidences I will quote Albert Einstein from now on “Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.” or maybe I will follow writer Simon Van Booy and his “Coincidences mean you’re on the right path.” 

But overall be it a coincidence or serendipity I had a lovely evening last night, enjoyed myself, laughed and had charming company. So hopefully I will fall upon another happy accident, or chosen event that mathematically will lead to a repeat.

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in-between spaces

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family, freidns, random, reading, space, thoughts, time

On the second attempt my sister and her kids finally made it home, well I hope they did, I haven’t heard anything to the contrary yet, so they could be camping out at the ticket desk for all I know.

On the car drive back from the airport I felt very tired, sad to see them go and joyous to have my space back to myself. Although I am a very social creature, love the company of my friends, family and sometimes strangers I do need to have time and space to myself. Moments to be me, think and sort through my emotions.

Maybe that is why I always wandered off as a child, far enough away from my parents to still be able to see or hear them, but hidden away so that they couldn’t see me. I also loved to hide away in our large garden, climb a tree and read, out of sight but with a brilliant vantage point. My favorite tree was right on the border to the next property and it had this lovely curved branch that I could snuggle down into perfectly. Sadly my love affair with said tree only lasted one summer as the next door neighbour saw me up on the branch on day and thought I was spying on him while he was sunbathing naked. He took a hose and a spray of cold, hard water surprised me in the middle of a page, making me yell, drop my book and scramble down the tree as fast as I could and run back to the house with a naked angry neighbour yelling after me. I was allowed to go back and retrieve the book, but not to climb the tree again and I lost that special space forever.

However I still love to hide away from the world every now and then, seek out some space in-between work, friends and just generally rushing around with lots to do. A place to take a deep breath and recharge my inner-self. A solitary walk on the beach or a stroll through the woods works too, but I have to admit that lowering  the blinds on my windows, putting on music and curling up to read, write or just be, while ignoring the phone is the perfect fit for me.

So with my family gone and the luxury to be able to post-phone the load of work on my desk for a bit I think I will spend a few hours with myself today. Well, after I have put my home back together as the German invasion has left their paw-prints everywhere. I can’t wait to find that moment of in-between space and just be me.

 

 

Missed flights and other timing issues

Tags

family, hours, love, momo, psychology, random, thougts, time

When I asked my sister at what time she and the kids needed to be at the airport she told me we would have enough time if we left at half five in the morning. Not looking forward to a very short night and a long, busy day ahead of me, I set my alarm for the nighttime start of today.

I got up, woke the sleeping Germans and made a pot of tea … my normal choice of morning stimulants. With a lot of hussel and bussel going on around me I waited till everyone was ready to go and then piled  up the car with bags, suitcases and very sleepy children. As I dropped them off at the airport, one eye on the clock I saw that time had advanced much faster then I thought, but we were still on time.

Still feeling warm from all the good-bye hugs and kisses I watched as the trio passed through glass sliding doors and I drove off feeling a mixture of sadness and relief. What I didn’t know was that due to a combination of much too long bag-drop-off queues, to few and very unhelpful flight assistants and the utter lack of speakers my sister and her kids were told they could board the plane but their bags would be left behind. After all that shopping not an option so my family missed their flight home.

As I drove back to the airport I started wondering about time and how we measure it. As I have gotten older time passes so much quicker than it did when I was a kid, I remember the year between birthdays and Christmases being unbearably long. Now it seems they crop every few months or so. And why is it that when something captures your attention or you are enjoying yourself completely an hour passes by in five minutes but when you are waiting for a bus to arrive the five minutes you are standing there feels like days?

Research shows that our brain processes time in relation to our age, so a year is never-ending when you are three, but at thirty it just flies past. And if we keep or brain active, by being busy or doing things that engage us body, mind and soul our brain is too occupied to keep us thinking about something as mundane as a minutes, hence flies because we forget about it.

It also seems that there are all sorts of “times”, each depending on who our brain process what is happening. For instance when we are stressed, have lots on our plate we are in “mind time”. That means that are brain is coping with all the stuff going on but we are not emotionally processing it. Sadly that means when we slow down and try to forget all the stress of the day our brains switch over to “emotional time” and we feel all the fear, anger and stress that we suppressed earlier.

As i can’t go back in time and change what happened this morning (even if my sister is more than just annoyed) I am going to enjoy the additional time I get to spend with my family, see it as a gift and not waste the extra time given.

As I write this my mind wanders to a lovely children’s book I read when i was 12/13. It was called Momo or The Gentlemen in Grey (also known as The Men in Grey) by Michael Ende. the story is about time and how you use it. It is a beautiful story and well worth a read even as an Adult

Momo

The Psychology of Time

Time-Shifting

As I write this my mind wanders to a lovely children’s book I read when i was 12/13. It was called Momo or The Gentlemen in Grey (also known as The Men in Grey) by Michael Ende. the story is about time and how you use it. It is a beautiful story and well worth a read even as an Adult

Momo

The art of breakfast

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breakfast, family, food, health, love, pyjamas, ramblings, thoughts

Since my sister and her kids have been staying I have been making breakfast the old-fashioned way … boiling eggs, setting the table with napkins (even if they are the brightly coloured, paper kind) and having a selection of cereals and bread ready for every taste, want and need. I even make herbal tea and normal black tea and I have both apple and orange juice ready to be poured.

We sit (still in our pyjamas), chat and take our time in getting the day started. No rush, no pressure just people sitting together in (more or less) harmony being a family and enjoying each others stories, squabbling over who gets the last piece of toast or dropping jammy knifes onto laps and floors.

I love these little comfy family session, possibly because as a single meals can be a lonely time and more often than not I will put on the TV to keep me company. I love the warm feeling of community and love that sits in my tummy while I chat, eat and just enjoy the people around me.

Interestingly enough studies do show that by sitting down as a family, children are less likely to develop bad eating habits or even disorders, they also learn manners and how to interact with others. But what really is surprising children who have regular family meals are also less likely to smoke or take drugs … who knew?

So as I remove the remnants of another lovely breakfast, I am happy about how my day started and it looks to continue in the same way

 Family Dinners

Eating Together

 

familiar smells and other odours

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family, fragrance, love, memories, memory, nose, odours, smells, thoughts

My home is no longer my home, not only do I trip over stray shoes and find alien things lying around on my counter-tops (my nephew assures me they are tiny robots called Hex-Bugs) but things even smell different.

It was strange coming into the bathroom to find the familiar scent of my sister lingering in the air, a mixture of Nivea, toothpaste and just her … fresh, clean and a little bit minty.  As soon as my nose picked up the scent my mind raced back to when we where both in our late teens, getting ready to go out, arguing over mirror time and reminding me of how much fun we use to have in that care-free age.

That sudden flash of a memory made me think of how funny it is that smells can take us by surprise and transport us back to places in just one instance. For me, whenever I smell hot summer air with fresh hay mixed in, I am six years old again, spending my summer holiday with my grandmother and aunt in Germany. Or if I catch a  whiff of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves it is Christmas time no matter how hot it is outside. Some smells even just make me feel a certain way, the smell of grass after a summer shower makes me smile, sea salt on the air makes me content and the scent of freshly baked bread is like a happy, hungry hug.

What many people don’t know is that we smell things much quicker than we see or hear them, the nose is our first sense to pick things up. And because our hooters are so closely linked to the brain’s limbic system (this is where all our emotions are born), the nose works like a little time machine taking us back to times and places to when we first became aware of certain scents and odours. In addition to the strong impact smells make, our nose is like an elephant, never forgetting when we smelt what first, making it hard, nearly impossible to change associations.

So with the smell of freshly brewed coffee in the air and the fragrance of french toast tickling my nose I think the day is off to a wonderfully smelly start.

How smell works

The Nose, an Emotional Time Machine

letting sleeping Germans lie

Tags

cuddle, embrace, family, hugs, humour, love, ramblings, thoughts, touch

Just a quick entry today as I have three sleeping Germans upstairs and I am not sure how long the peace will last. And a they say it’s best to to let them lie.

After a lovely day in sunny Dublin (a rare treat in itself) we all made it back to my tiny cottage safe and sound, carrying many, many bags filled with t-shirts and other garbs. Everyone was happy, if tired and I was on tea duty. Between boiling several pots of tea and enjoying the teenage fashion show in my own living-room I was able to up my normal cuddle quota.  I read somewhere (a good while ago) that to be a happy person you should enjoy at lest ten hugs every day. As a single bilingual living on my own I sadly often spend my days hug-less. And although I am not sure if an emotional-hug bank exists I try to get my cuddles when I can, hoping there is enough love stored up to hug me through those sometimes lonely times.

I love hugs, not the sideways-step and pat on the back kind, the one that heterosexual men do to signal they are not gay … each pat a word: pat I’m pat not pat gay. Nor do I enjoy the leaning-forward, only embracing the shoulders kind of hug, this kind of hug is normally topped off with air-kissing and high-pitched “lovely to see you” screeches. I love a full-on hug, an unselfconscious embrace in which both parties just jump in and hug  tightly, with abundance and joy. A hug that you just want to stay in, feel loved and safe in, a hug that helps you through those tricky moments in life or even just lets you really feel how the other feels about you.

Touch is such an important factor of human life and studies done into the field of trust and touch and how they are linked. If we are touched (not in the inappropriate way) our brain kick starts love-hormones called Oxytocin into action. These loveable hormones don’t only help us feel empathy and reduce anxiety but they also help us bond with others. And research has even shown that hugging can reduce physical pain, even if it is just you wrapping your arms around yourself in a me-embrace.

As I hear the pitter-patter and thud of large and small feet upstairs I am ready for my daily hug-doses, feeling loved is a great way to start the day.

Why we touch

The art of hugging

summer time and home invasions

Tags

Dublin, family, German, humour, kids, love, mess, summer-time, travel

The Germans are coming and that in full force. In three hours my sister plus her two kids will be landing in Dublin airport and my homes invasion will begin. For four days the four of us will share my tiny home and that does scare me a little, I am still not even sure how and where we will all sleep and I think I will have to devise some sort of shower schedule! I do have  a tiny guestroom that doubles as a study,  but all it fits is a build in bed and a plank of wood attached to the wall disguised as a desk, and for the next few days this is where I think I’ll hide when I need a moment to myself.

I love my sister and her kids and am looking forward to spending time with them but the whirlwind of things that seem to clutter up everything in their wake is a complete other matter. As my niece and nephew have grown up the mess that they make has expanded. My gorgeous niece is now a teen and lives a life filled with accessories, fashion and those twilight dudes. My lovely, cuddly nephew is, unlike Pinocchio, a real boy… smelly runners, stinky socks and electronic stuff hover around him, filling the air with that very special boy flavour. And I know my sister has a few shopping trips planned, as there is not much that can beat the prices of Penny’s, so if you add in all those additional items, chaos is sure to ensue.

But not being able to see the floor for a couple of days and being unable to sit without having to remove obstacles first, is a small price I (at times begrudgingly) am happy to pay to spend time with the people I love. And I am sure they will be carrying some liquorice and other German goodies to lull me into a happy mood. Now all I need to do is get over my summer-time-jetlag to be able to enjoy the experience in full.

PS: If you don’t hear from me by Friday please send in the troops to check if I’m still alive

duster dance

Tags

clean, dance, dust, fun, home, humour, mop, music

The sun is streaming in through my windows, catching in the prisms dangling there, making rainbows dance around my home.  Sadly, that is not the only thing the sun brings to light. Dust and dirt that have been hidden through cloudy skies stands out. It’s time again to do the duster dance.

I hate cleaning, it always seems such a futile chore, but I hate the way it tickles my nose, activating my dust allergy even more. The runny redness may bring out the blue in my eyes, but add in loud sneezing and itchy skin and you have a walking disaster area. So, like it or not my day will be spent doing the mop merengue, scrubber samba and toilet tango.

Trying to make the best out of a bad situation I own cleaning utensils that cheer me up. The long fluffy duster that dutifully hangs waiting behind the door is bright red with lovely little images of green pears and flowers, lovely red hearts and cherries with tiny yellow blobs thrown in for good measure. My mop bucket is related to the duster and it shows in the decorations on the front, I even own brightly coloured scrubbing cloths and sponges.

Armed against the dirt I put on music, something I can sing along to and my feet often decided to dance, making me twirl, slide or even skip around the house while catching cob-webs and banishing dirt.

Once I’m done with stripping the beds and putting on a or three load, I’ll be able to have a steaming hot cuppa while I’ll admire the gleaming floors, the sparkling surfaces and the lingering smell of cleanliness. Sadly I know that once I walk across those floors it will be the first steps towards the nest day of the duster dance.

past, present and future

Tags

black and white, family, future, letters, love, memories, past, photos, present

A lovely, nosy friend of mine told me yesterday that she loved Post (traumatic stress) Syndrome but felt a little let down that she never found out, what was in my two surprise parcels. Some questions that are asked deserve answers and the answer to this one is, hours of escapism and a journey into the past.

As a free-lance writer I do reviews every now and then and for some reason a lovely, small Irish publishing house mailed me a book to read, unprompted and happily received. A rainy afternoon in the near future (in Dublin they are always near) is already saved.

The smaller package was the bigger surprise, filled with something I never expected to own, yet I was thrilled to have. My aunt who lives up North sent me some old black and white photos of my father and his family, ones I have never seen before. As they fluttered out of the padded envelope my eyes grew wide, my heart made a tiny quiver and a little tear appeared in the corner of my eye to enjoy the view. My father died quite suddenly last year and as my parents have been divorced since I was ten I do not know very much about him growing up in Northern Ireland. The photos show a side of my family tree that I have yet to discover, tickets into the past for a trip I never thought I’d take.

I have always thought that my father in his twenties had a striking resemblance to Harold Lloyd (a black and white comic actor) and the new photo evidence only supports this. But the two photos that caught my eye are of my grandmother and great grandmother. One is from the 1930’s the other from the 1950’s.  What I find so interesting is that they are wearing such similar clothes (a long, six buttoned, knee-length coat with one large rever) and holding themselves in such a similar way. Hands by their side, face on to the camera, straight back and a small fixed smile. And an another odd similarity is that the men by their sides are not their husbands. Labeled as uncle and great-uncle on the back of the photo I can only presume that these more casual looking men (one is wearing flamboyantly patterned socks and knickerbockers) are their brothers, as both women were widowed early.

So, as I wander down a memory-lane that should be mine but is new to me, I can’t help but think about all the memories I keep in boxes: photos, clippings and keepsakes all jumbled up together and only important to me. We all know how pictures, sounds and even smells trigger thoughts of special times, places and people from our pasts and we need these prompts to keep our memories alive, form a puzzle of our history into its very own unique picture. So while adding these new, old photos into the kaleidoscope of my life, I am grateful for this unexpected present of the past that I’ll even enjoy in the future.

Photos and memories

Lady in waiting

Tags

gratification, life, love, time, wait, waiting, worth waiting for

Someone said something to me yesterday that stuck with me all day, made me happy. And the echo of those five little feel-good words still lingers with me today.

This someone (who may or may not be reading this blog) told me I WAS WORTH WAITING FOR, well I got a lovely text with those generous words. You see I had arranged to meet this someone and was terribly late in arriving. I felt (still feel) really bad about it, I don’t like to keep people waiting as I hate waiting myself. I always feel as if I am taking their time for granted, which is uncaring, unkind, unmannerly and often unnecessary. So to be forgiven and considered ‘worth it’ was a lovely, unexpected and rare surprise.

We wait for so many things in life, for me it’s often the bus or for the kettle to boil, but as R. Emerson put it so eloquently “How much of human life is lost in waiting.” Thinking back, I can’t remember a time I haven’t waited for one thing or another: holidays, birthdays, Christmases, letters, tickets, answers, love, on or for someone, to be let in, on, off or out of something, sometimes even just for life to really start. Yet it is also quite clear that if the something or someone turns out out to be what we wanted or hoped for, the wait is quickly forgotten and considered time well spent in anticipation.

Research has shown that standing in line waiting for something can actually cause your blood-pressure to rise and stress-levels to increase. A few small tricks can help us in our waiting process, if we know for how long we are going to wait, or if we fill the time with something (that is why a menu is thrust into our hands as soon as we sit down in a restaurant … to keep us busy while we wait) and allowing ourselves plenty of time, make us feel more in control and time passes “seemingly” quicker. All good and well but wouldn’t it be better to not have to wait at all? It seems that waiting has its purposes, too, as we think of time as something valuable. So by waiting, delaying our gratification, we often think something has more worth. Okay, maybe not the smelly, crowded bus that arrives to ferry us home but the degree we worked for three year to get certainly qualifies.

Maybe the trick in waiting is to only wait on things we really want and otherwise try to follow this quote I once read “I took a course in speed waiting. Now I can wait an hour in only ten minutes.” … not sure how that works but for me reading, chatting and daydreaming seems to help time tick a little faster.

The Psychology of Waiting Lines

The secret of self-control : The New Yorker