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I personally believe that the iPod is a frankly corrosive device because it encourages you to surround yourself with your favourites. The whole idea of a playlist is to surround yourself with your favourite things, and the interesting thing is that when you do that, they cease to be your favourites. Would you rather eat only your favourite food or never eat it again? Who is your favourite child mum? What can we DO today that's my favourite? Ask three guys girls... finding favour. fa·vour·ite (fvr-t, fvrt) n. 1. a. One that enjoys special favour or regard. b. One that is trusted, indulged, or preferred above all others, especially by a superior: a favourite of the monarch. 2. A contestant or competitor regarded as most likely to win. adj. Liked or preferred above all others; regarded with special favour. Now that we have added to lists of them, pinterest folders of them, favourite friends and favourite flavours are our lives more fulfilled or empty by the pursuit of what is preferred? Are our favs the things we already have or the things we think will bring us happiness if we ever manage to achieve them? Once we have them added them do we still favour them? Or are we fickle, wanting more, the newest, the latest, in the pursuit of our elite status? When we have to much of our favourite things do we feel blessed and indulged or overloaded? Constant comparisons drive competition. Is that our favourite leader, our favourite product or our favourite memory and who cares? If I indulge one over another who is the loser? Can I not enjoy the pleasure in all things simple or otherwise? In all people in all experiences and most particularly in the here and now. My favourite things in life don't cost any money, It's really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time - Steve Jobs. OMG - My BFO - our favourite things define how we spend our lives, what we surround ourselves with, what we long for adore and trust. I decided it was time for a self check. What would I like to save to favs today. My life play list. The things I would most like to prefer above all others, those most likely to win. 1. Synchronicity is my favourite thing. Those signs that we really are in the right place at the right time. The stars have aligned we are getting the message and what the point is. The AHA moment, the big tick, when you leave your laptop behind and have to drive three hours to collect it only to find a weather bomb would have you wiped you out had you continued forward on our journey without it. You read an article or a blog, run into a person or hear a song that matter just to you at the perfect time because you get the point at last. 2. LOVE - love of life, breathing love, feeling love - receiving and giving love. Because it's the one fav I really hope I'll never get sick of, could eat every day and enjoy always. 3. Faith - that there is a higher power, that everything happens to us for a reason. That we can trust that things are happening perfectly according to plan. Faith in my partner, my children, my god, my country, my government. This morning Miss 6 asked why the Prime Minister doesn't just sort out the wars? There are wars everywhere mummy? Will we have a war here mum? I hope not I replied, I've got a fair degree of faith that we are going to be ok. Even though the new leader of our opposition throws out his rhetoric daring to use the word war in a country where we all hope we have enough faith in our leaders to not have to experience one of any kind here on our soil ever. Then she reminded me - but we already have mum - there have been the maori wars. At six she has no faith in our leaders - wise child? Perhaps if faith is added to our favourites it will become the ideal that is trusted, indulged and preferred above all others. 4. Hope - Hope for the future, the triumph of anticipation often over reality. 5. Charity - Pay it forward, give it back. Contribute to a cause. The best way to lift your mood and those of others. Selfless. Volunteer for something. Work for free. Help someone less fortunate than yourself not just with your cheque book at a charity gala but by getting your hands dirty, do the leg work, hold someone when they cry, make the phone call, pop in spend a moment in their shoes. 6. Vintage - being part of something's story. I look at my favourite purchases, the material things that I love the most and will horde forever. A 1950's green wooden kitchen stool, it was my nana's , my dad carved an R in it and it has a deep gouge where he sawed a piece of wood. A $5 ginormous bound children's Websters Universal pictorial dictionary circa 1968 found at the recycling centre - word of the day gems steer me clear of all gewgaws. The surprise treasure within pressed flowers between the pages captured moments of someone's summer that fills my imagination with the story of what for them may have been. A ten euro gold thread dress from a Finnish thrift shop my best ever overseas designer purchase - I know I will never see another ever, it weaves and plays with light just so catching the eye as other pass me by and reminds me every time I wear it of the beauty of Helsinki and fossicking through her back streets it makes me feel like a Nordic goddess. 7. Whanau - all of them the blood and the water, that flow through our lifetimes, soul mates, twin flames, randoms in a bar somewhere. Those that touch you heart and stay in your mind for ever and a day. Those we have laughed with , cried with live and died with. Back slap when you meet again kindred spirits. Family. 8. Integrity - Linking what we think say and DO. Life's magnifier. Shows up the gaps who can you trust, who can you work with. It may not always be the nicest approach but it is the most real. When we are out of integrity we feel it. Life's compass spinning out of control, your out of alignment you know it - it shows. 9. Creativity - Art, creation, contribution, legacy. What can you create towards a better future? My clever Dads inventions and patents. My hospitality guru mums talents with food and friends. My children's drawings, skills with animals. My husband's painting 'the arrival" with it's formula for wave theory a reminder of the engineering genius inside the artist, time to brainstorm with an individual on what they may be able to create for themselves. The smallest, cost free as precious as any high end value item. An art work worth thousands or the legacy of improving infrastructure outcomes a precious trail delivered around the country, one of my workshops attended by 600. It is when I look at what I have created, my children, my writing, my work, my garden, and each of my life lessons that I feel fulfilled. Favoured, gifted, blessed and special. Hidden talents, being able to call a deer, play the trumpet to make music or magic - what do you have to share? 10. Generosity - Kindness, Pay it forward, Forgiveness and Sharing. To see a friend offer their home free of charge to a holidaying family without quite knowing why only to find that family have lost their mum to cancer warms a whole village with the story. To pay for someone's parking even inadvertently like when the text to park didn't quite work for me the other day and then happily informed three times over the next three hours that my payment/s had been accepted made me warm to think of the stranger arriving at the machine to find the ticket printed waiting for them. When we offer a ride, a hand up or our time. When we extend a leave pass, a way out or an olive branch. What we put out comes back threefold. I hope that in putting out these thoughts about my favourite things it goes just a little way towards somebody somewhere realising that when they remember there favourite things they really don't feel so bad.
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I have had prayers answered - most strangely so sometimes - but I think our heavenly Father's loving-kindness has been even more evident in what He has refused me. - Lewis Carroll Fathers day today - did you ring yours? Is he still alive? Did you catch up over a fish or beer or brunch at a trendy café. Do you wonder who he is or where he went or why he had to go away? Milestone dates like these - fathers day, mothers day... where we are bombarded by Hallmark moments and Bunnings ads that are so mass generated as to be cringe worthy.Do they have any idea of the potential customer base they may be alienating. I long to hear of the teacher who acknowledges that the fathers day card activity may need some tweaking to meet her class demographic of 2013. The nuclear family is hardly the norm. What of those who sit today or on mothers day or any other culturally inept example of celebration missing their dads without the soch-med-cred of fitting the event to a tee? There are dads who may never be known. Or those who have been taken too soon or confusingly by cancer, alcoholism or prison. The suicide's, the workaholics, the ones that are unnamed on birth certificates or lost at sea. There are dads whose babies have died before them who must face today without a child. The truth is we all had one. A sperm donor a contributor to DNA pool. Was he tall dark and handsome? An entrepreneur or engineer? In todays mix of blended families we may be lucky enough to have more than one. A step father, a foster dad, a grand father great or otherwise. How we know them, love them and connect with them may define us, bind us or blind us. We do our dads a disservice to lump them all together and expect them to be here today, wearing the socks we've bought them and eating the breakfasts we have prepared. I believe that before we incarnate we choose our parents. For the lessons they will teach us and what we decide we would like to learn this lifetime this time around on this planet. If you incarnate to a couple of teenagers ill prepared for parent hood it's no great surprise when the relationship doesn't show longevity. Perhaps if the early loss or death of your dad builds your character, your fortitude, your compassion and your care you have an opportunity to DO things you would not have chosen to DO otherwise. To connect with other people, to champion a cause. To give love to another dad whom you may not have had space or time for before. If your dad was a hard task master what did you learn? If he was a softie, a push over, a woman on her own wat and how does that make you? Our dads are there to teach us, by their presence or by their absence or even by the fact that we may never know who they were or where they came from. I was reading through an old journal today and I found two fathers day gems. My first babies first word was uttered on fathers day it was Dada. It was a special thing to share with her today her first fathers day without her dad. A life lesson - that has stuck with me was also noted. My dad reminding me that when I didn't get something I didn't want it bad enough. I'd been turned down for physiotherapy school and was very woe is me. Expecting comfort and consolation I still recall the fury at being told it was all up to me. But I got it. Yep I should have studied more, not gone to the pub, chased the boys, thought I was good enough to get in without the work. And every time since when I miss out on anything I know more and more clearly my dad is right. If I really want anything I can create it. And when I miss out it's ok - I can't have really wanted that thing anyway. The picture above is my darling dad. I love you x x And I'm really really glad you are alive today. Today I have been thinking a lot of my own dad and a lot of the dads who are not here and the dads that are. My kids were scrapping tonight and I had to cut my phone call short - it's ok I know he heard what I wanted to say. My dad is lighting a candle for my brother in law - a dad I've thought of today who is on the other side. There are many of them. All my grand dads, the closet person I had to a step dad, my daughters dad, dads of my nieces and nephews, mum and aunties. Maybe your dad or a dad you have loved too. Dads of friends and friends children who through misadventure, mismanagement or mystery are not with their children here on earth today. Dads who lead good lives, full lives and long lives. Dad's with lives cut short too soon. They are all here - larger than life, in our thoughts, our memories and our circumstances. Our heavenly fathers. Those who seeded life as we know it. Today is the day we in New Zealand hold them in our hearts and thoughts and thank them for being the ones we all chose to have as our parents. Happy fathers day everyone - x |
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