Ewan's Corner

Posts Tagged ‘life’

(with thanks to Brigs who pointed this out, and the wizard who wrote it).

Have you ever noticed how unhappy people always want to share their unhappiness with you? It may come in the form of a whine, a complaint, a rant, or sanctimonious “constructive criticism,” but come it most certainly will.

The thing to remember when an unhappy person begins spraying unhappiness is this: It’s not really about you. It’s about them. And the wounds they carry. So try not to internalize it.

Do you remember the Jewish father played by Roberto Benigni in Life is Beautiful? He illustrated the idea that happiness can be chosen in spite of unhappy circumstances; you are not a product of your environment. You are a product of your choices.

Even weirder than unhappy people wanting to share their unhappiness with you is the fact that happy people generally keep their happiness to themselves. Why are we like this?

I have a theory about leaving tips on tables at restaurants: the size of the tip isn’t really an expression of your judgment regarding the quality of service you’ve received. It’s an expression of your generosity, the bigness of your heart. It’s not really about the waiter or waitress. It’s about you.

This idea can be especially fun when you receive truly abominable service. That’s when you can leave a tip that’s totally over the top and then smile all the way to your car as you contemplate all the different ways the story might end:

1. The waiter, recognizing the tip as a gesture of love, pulls himself together and has a much-improved day, giving everyone exceptional service. Your ray of sunshine touches 276 lives before it fades into the memory of yesterday.
2. The waiter, misinterpreting the tip as proof that it doesn’t really matter whether or not he does a good job, continues his slacker attitude and reaps the life of mediocrity he deserves. But sometimes, late at night, he is haunted by the memory of the strange day he received a 20 dollar tip for serving a 7 dollar sandwich. What was that all about?
3. The waiter, shamed by the monster tip he knows he didn’t deserve, assumes it must have been meant for the cook. Your gift has now triggered a crisis of conscience. Will the waiter pass the tip along to the cook and grow as a human being? Or will he “steal” it and forever know himself to be a thief?
4. The waiter, desperately needing the extra cash, accepts the tip as a gift from God. Congratulations, you are now an angel, God’s messenger, a finger of His divine hand.
5. The waiter, truly stupid, believes he deserves the tip and pockets it with bravado. Let him have his sad moment of glory. There won’t be many like it in his life.

The bottom line is this: People need love. Especially when they do not deserve it. And in the words of Iome Sylvarresta, “Love isn’t something you feel. It’s something you give.”

Do something good today for a person who has done nothing to deserve it. Better yet, do something good for someone you don’t even like.
I promise you’ll have a better day.
Roy H. Williams

I have a wonderful wife, who is my best friend and the best mother in the world for our little boy. Each week I am reminded just how hard it is for her to deal with Mommy Madness, and she does it all with a smile and a laugh – and still finds time to love and keep me sane and so very happy.

I have my Caleb, who keeps growing and learning and laughing and adding a whole new dimension and meaning to my life. He reminds me how fun the simple stuff can be, and how your inner child is someone you want to keep close.

I have a great job with a great company. It keeps me mentally stimulated and challenged, growing my skill set daily, surrounded by interesting and intelligent people, and of course there’s the fast ‘net access :)

I have two wonderful parents, who on March 10th will have been married for 32 years. I am so grateful to them for being the parents they were, bringing up four boys with so much patient energy and dedication, and giving us a fantastic head start in life. I look around and see broken families everywhere, kids and adults who were changed and sometimes scarred by a divorce (or more than one!) and who don’t trust in marriage and loved ones as a result. Thank you MaPa.

It’s not hard to look around and see proof of how blessed I and my loved ones are. Lenn Pryor’s emotional post about his sister Lori earlier this week really made me reevaluate what I have.

I have a wonderful church filled with wonderful caring, loving and deeply spiritual people who support and help me grow every day.

I have my health – and I try not to take for granted the fact that I can go for a run in the morning if i want to. I live in a country with issues, but it’s a beautiful country full of beautiful people and places. I’m blessed with talent and skills, and people who love me. Battlestar Galactica is on to its second season.

Life is good. Thank you Lord.

I’ve learnt a lot about little humans in the past 9 days. I can’t believe it’s 9 days already. I’ve totally lost my sense of time, it seems like only yesterday when we were driving home from the hospital on a cold night. “Infant” derives from the latin “not able to speak” – but he can, letting us know his nappy needs changing, that he’s hungry, grumpy, cold, uncomfortable, needs burping, or all of the above :) Listening to the radio – loudly – helps you keep your sanity at 3am when you’re awake, emotional and exhausted. There is no way i can express my feelings of love for this little human being i helped create. He already has a huge range of facial expressions (and often tries them all out in sequence in 30 seconds). You know you can – and will – do anything to love, help and protect this little person. Going back to work on monday is going to be very, very hard – I don’t want to leave my family. My love for Clair has also gained a few extra dimensions – i feel so grateful, so in love, so filled with awe whenever she feeds my little boy, and stops him crying.

My son :-)

Caleb James McPhail, born at 14h44 on July 14th 2004 – 3.5 kgs, 10/10 APGAR scores :)

Mom and Caleb are both fine and happy – I’m so proud of them both – and grateful to an Awesome God!

Recently the Flash team @ work decided to thank a truly good-guy co-worker who is always helpful, cheerful and willing to go the extra mile to assist us. He’s part of the Desktop Support team, which means he gets some really horrible assignments :)… since he’s rather fond of good whiskey, we bought him a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black to take on a much deserved break. This was his wonderful reply.

YoYo Flashers.

Last Monday, guess what I did ? I got up very early from bed in my log cabin in the beautiful thick pine forest that touches the beach of Cape Vidal and ate my meusli. I then took my mountain bike, my wife and her bike to the beach where the tide was receding and the sand was rock hard near the water’s edge. Ever seen Cape Vidal’s coatline ? F*ck me – its nice ! You can see south until the sand meets the sky because the beach reaches 1 km in width and there are no peninsula’s. You also cannot access the beach for about 35 km from Cape Vidal southwards because the dunes become dense Amazon. So we kicked into high gear and cruised effortlessly south at about 25km/h amazed by the solitude and the expanse of the place. Not a friggin soul. And then we were joined by a huge kudu that tore out of the Amazon and on to the beach next us and galloped across the sand in confused zigzags for a while till it found another opening back into the dense undergrowth. For over an hour we watched a perfect day starting, being joined by Duiker and Kudu in this way.

I realised as I looked out to sea, that this ocean was going to offer some serious surfing over our pending week here. Backline thundered down about 300m out and the waves broke VERY favourably for riding purposes. So back to the log cabin for a big fat fry up feast breakfast, and then time to load the surfski (which is very long and thin like a canoe, as opposed to a waveski which is short and fat) on to the car and off to the launch area of the beach. You know what its like that first day you feel truly healthy and full of energy again, after having had flu. That was this day. It was awesome ! There is no price that equates to feeling healthy again !

That was totally terrifying, trying to get out to sea. Surfkiis are very fast but don’t like waves. Especially not tidal waves. They are meant for cruising behind backline. But you gotta get there. So I thought I timed it right, went for it and realised at that horrible moment that I had got it wrong. I watched a beast developing and coming towards me as I paddled frantically out to sea, straight at it. Obviously the trick is to get over it while it is still a swell. I didn’t. Until you get past backline there are rocks directly under the water surface and at the moment that I realised the approaching monster was going to smash the living f*ck out of me I stopped paddling and looked pensively down into the water at those rocks. I was 250m from shore and this is also shark infested water. Fishermen on shore pull them out almost daily – there are no nets.I got smashed in the chest and face, lurched with my boat backwards, thrown upside down, my head bashed the ski, and then the ski was violently removed from me so that the monster could tumble-spin and hit me without some great heap of fibreglass inhibiting it. I was without air and without any idea of orientation for yonks and two things were going through my mind. I need air and I’d love to keep not hitting any rocks. Eventually I was released. My head was bleeding but that was all. My surfski made it all the way back to shore – I had to locate my paddle and make my cumbersome way there independantly. It was awesome ! I had been in a war and survived. I stood bent over on the beach with my hands on my knees to allow a large percentage of the Vidal ocean to pour out my nose, and probably the very last green gooey remnants of my flu too. I felt exhilirated. My head wound was mild actually and there is only one thing to do when you fall off a horse ….

I went for it again, and again I was 250m out and thought I had mistimed it. There are no words to describe how scary it is to know that what has just happened to you may happen again. I paddled hard – very hard and made it over a very big dude with inches to spare, but that was it. None would break further back than that. It was mandatory for me to stop and turn my head to watch that wave smash its way down and away from me, and ofcourse it was mandatory for me to ram out my middle finger at it in aggressive jubilation and scream “F*ck you – I beat you you f*cking bastard !!!!” I paddled straight out to sea for about 3 km and the water was like glass behind backline with astonishing visibility. Apart from the sea still sporadically gushing out my nostrils (which is unexpectadly cleansing and rejuvenating in a sick kind of way) I was in heaven. The sun was well up and this was a day for a tan. What a paddle, and I made it back in safely too.

Sam, my wife, was rocking. As I returned to the log cabin, I found an animated note from her saying I had to get to the area of beach where we had started our cycle earlier. I found her there with our diving gear (no tanks, but the rest of it). She had found a series of reefs in a protected section of ocean near shore that was more brimming with fish life than Aliwal shoal. It was incredible. We dived and snorkelled for a full hour amongst a myriad of gyrating colour. Nice one bruv va !!! It really was beautiful. I lay in the sun with her for a while and looked out across those white dunes, amazed that more people don’t come here. But lying in the sun ends when you see dolphins suddenly. They were lazing around just behind the big backline break, in that calm glassy water, and I dashed back to the cabin to fetch the short fat waveski. The dudes were still there when I got back and I decided to paddle out to them right from that spot which wasn’t a launch area. But I really didn’t have too much respect anymore for the protection that a launch area was supposed to offer. I made it out with absolute ease and was surrounded by these beautiful creatures that were actually nudging my ski as they caressed around me. I spent a full half hour amongst them, and when I eventually bode adios and turned back to catch a wave, three of them turned and came with me. I caught a beautiful wave (which waveskiis are designed for, unlike those long things) and for the entire ride, those 3 dolphins rode the wave with me. I have never experienced that before. I know it is fairly common, but I have never had it, and will never forget that connection I had with those animals for those 30 minutes. The holiday makers that had been tanning along the beach were standing near the waters edge and were all watching those dolphins, I noticed. They must have seen me ride that wave with them too then – what a rush ! And what a wave – it was a great great wave – honestly one of the nicest rides I have ever had, even excluding the dolphin factor.

Sam made us an awesome lunch accompanied by beer bread that she potjied up in the pine forest outside our cabin and then we decided to shower and catch an afternoon sleep. We went to bed (didn’t sleep of course) and all I can say is that those surroundings are perfect for going to bed with your wife and not sleeping ! The main bedroom has its own door leading straight on to a wooden deck looking into the forest, and its nice to “not sleep” with that door wide open ! Awesome !!

I had brought some gym weights with me because I wanted to get fit this holiday if I could shake the flu quick enough. Even brought a gym bench, pull up bars, the works. So with the flu clearly gone and the short daylight of this time of year meaning that at 3:00pm we had just 2 hours of daytime activity left, Sam slept (as in properly) and I had a great gym work out. I went for a run on that deserted stretch of beach to the south after that, and even drove the surfskii back to the beach for one last paddle just before sunset. That was truly amazing – the waves were gone and it was like silk out there. There hadn’t been a breath of wind all day.

I returned to shower (we had an outdoor shower in the forest and one indoors – I used the outdoor one) and then settled in for a bit of SQL. This was another aim of mine for this holiday – to start to get to grips with Microsoft SQL. I had the books and laptop and hit it hard for 2 hours till 8:00pm while Sam read a book next to me. It was an excellent study session, and now with the mind and body belted into a beautiful state of peaceful relaxation, it was time to crank up a braai on the deck and slap the thick slab of rump on.

Flashers, as we sat in our deck chairs watching the coals redden, then cooking the meat, chatting, eating, playing a few games of cards and, still in our deck chairs, side by side and hand in hand with Pink Floyd powerfully seranading us through an incredible speaker system from the lounge that we moved on to the deck – as we did these things for the four hours that we were on the deck that evening, we sipped a top class whiskey out of expensive glasses that I brought just for the stuff, and with lots of ice. Yet another experience on this day that was like heaven. We had drink after drink – we must have eventually had at least 5 drinks each, and somehow we didn’t get drunk so much as high. Pink Floyd went from good to inexplicably phenomenal and Momentary Lapse of Reason gave me goosebumps, took my breath away, and then made me cry. Twice. We slept around midnight and I have no idea whether I dreamt or not. It doesn’t really matter.

I have been racking my brains to think whether I have ever had a better day than Monday the 14th of June. I don’t reckon. And this is just a quick thanks for the whisky !