Anger

Yesterday we were jolted out of our busy ness by a loud violent exchange on the street just outside our office. A group of school kids were fighting. One of us stepped in and pulled them apart as the teachers run up to intervene. Whatever tensions were building inside, between or around these kids were expressed and given the opportunity to be released. Heated exchanges, threatening abusive words and violent physical punches created the classroom lesson for the day - for our business team, the neighbours and both the schools at the bottom of the street.

We all feel anger and we all have a need to express our rage. This is our nature. What strategies can we put in place to facilitate this expression?

This is less about the kids and more about all of us. This is feedback for a world in transition in a cycle of create and destroy.

Law suits, community groups, political lobbyists can easily leverage this experience to capitalise on a social issue. Through the ages at no time has this not been expressed or experienced. It is our nature.

Better out than in - that's what my Grandma always said. Get it out. Feel it. Say it. Let it out. Be listened to without judgement criticism or ridicule. Appreciate the expression form and teach our children how to be effective resource managers with their own shit so they can utilise it in their lives without shame. Lopsided perspectives where there is a victim a perpetrator and a hero room the basis of our heroes journey mythology and is the key to our function as consumers. 

If we teach our kids how to process their own nature imagine - if they could learn to use their power for good instead of evil :) - woe imagine what the could achieve.

Tomorrow is a Beautiful Day!

“Your heart is a bloom. Shoots up through the Stony Ground. “ It’s a Beautiful Day – U2.

2013 has been the year of opportunity.

Opportunity to see who we really are in the face of change.

Opportunity to appreciate our metrics past present and wish list.

Opportunity to break down and break through old stories and value the subsequent pain for its true purpose.

Opportunity to sneak a peek behind the green curtain and marvel at the familiar naughty old wizard pulling the levers all along.

Opportunity to see ourselves in the faces of those around us expressing all the stuff we brain f*ck ourselves into believing we couldn't or shouldn't.

Opportunity to thank them for getting their hands dirty where we simply wouldn’t!

It’s been a year of hospitals and ambulances and discovering the depth of the human body’s ability to endure and to heal.

It’s been a year of THE wedding and THE engagement and THE celebration.

It’s been a year of passports stamping and airport collecting – arriving, departing, and returning.

It’s been a year of peeling back the ancient layers of a house and discovering its hidden beauty while uncovering hidden talents within ourselves in return.

It’s been a year of expanding and connecting into new faces and new communities and new projects with simple outstretched hands and the celebration and appreciation of the nature that surrounds us – even in a historic inner city pocket of the world.

It’s been a year to marvel at the audacity of the human spirit. J

As I stare into the face of a looming 2014, I wonder what delicious exploits await us next year?

How do you feel entering into a new cycle defined by the questionable structure of those seemingly separate from us?

What plans dance in your new year head?

What goals tease your Christmassed out pocket?

What dreams are ready to burst from your heart?

If 2013 were a bank balance what would the numbers be?

If 2013 were a blood test what would the results be?

If 2013 was a color, smell, taste and texture, what would it look like to you?

If 2013 were a marathon, where would you place?

For me I will review my metrics by completing The Metriculus™ again for myself to redefine my vision mission and purpose for the parameters of 2013 have shifted the foundations in significant unexpected ways. 

I wish you all a new year of taking action on the catalogues of endless possibility you have collected over the past few years.

I wish you the courage to step into unfamiliar territory flexing previously underused muscles as you adventure your way into uncharted waters.

I wish you a deep peace emerging from the depths of your soul as you move closer towards your goals inch by inch step by step knowing and trusting that you are on the right track.

Felice Anno Nuovo!!!!!

“And see the bird with a leaf in her mouth. After the flood all the colors came out. “It’s a Beautiful Day – U2.

Good Enough

“Once you have lived in New York and made it your home, no place else is good enough”  John Steinbeck

Slience

“Silence? What can New York-noisy, roaring, rumbling, tumbling, bustling, story, turbulent New York-have to do with silence? Amid the universal clatter, the incessant din of business, the all swallowing vortex of the great money whirlpool-who has any, even distant, idea of the profound repose......of silence?”  Walt Whitman

In My Heart

“I carry the place around the world in my heart but sometimes I try to shake it off in my dreams”  F Scott Fitzgerald

Born Again

“What, indeed, is a New Yorker? Is he Jew or Irish? Is he English or German? Is he Russian or Polish? He may be something of all these, and yet he is wholly none of them. Something has been added to him which he had not had before. he is endowed with a briskness and an invention often alien to his blood. He is quicker in his movement, less trammeled in his judgement...The change he undergoes is unmistakeable, New York, indeed, resembles a magic cauldron. Those who are cast into it are born again.”  Charles Whibley

Aint Going

“When you leave New York you ain't going anywhere.”  Jimmy Breslin

Innocence

"The wanderer in Manhattan must go forth with a certain innocence, because New York is best seen with innocent eyes. It doesn't matter if you are younger or old. Reading our rich history makes the experience more layered, but it is not a substitute for walking the streets themselves. For old-timer or newcomer, it is essential to absorb the city as it is now in order to shape your own nostalgias. 

That's why I always urge the newcomer to surrender to the city's magic. Forget the irritations and the occasional rudeness; they bother New Yorkers too. Instead, go down to the North River and the benches that run along the west side of Battery Park City. Watch the tides or the blocks of ice in winter; they have existed since the time when the island was empty of man. Gaze at the boats. Look across the water at the Statue of Liberty or Ellis Island, the place to which so many of the New York tribe came in order to truly live. Learn the tale of our tribe, because it's your tribe too, no matter where you were born. Listen to its music and its legends. Gaze at its ruins and monuments. Walk its sidewalks and run fingers upon the stone and bricks and steel of our right-angled streets. Breathe the air of the river breeze."  Pete Hamill