Category: Wisdom

Shelter in Place in style

Oh, what a world, what a world! moaned the Wicked Witch of the West in her wonderfully creepy castle on the hill, having unexpectedly been thwarted by a random bucket of water.

You had to admire her style. Although her world was in chaos – her sister and partner-in-crime had been crushed by a house, the powerful ruby slippers were out of reach on Dorothy’s feet and rival Glinda was helping Dorothy reach the Wizard – the Witch could torment Dorothy in the comfort of her own home through the magic of the crystal ball. Her servants, resplendent in their uniforms, were completely cowed by their mistress. A whole troop of devoted winged monkeys waited to run her errands.

Since we’re all staying close to home for a while, while the global media vigorously chases its tail, let’s make like the Wicked Witch, shelter within our castles and make the best of things.

If things start getting to you, it can be easy to start spiraling downward, but there are some effective ways to break that pattern.

Laughter is a great medicine

The cliché is actually true. Fortunately we have lots of resources to make us laugh, on television, funny memes and videos on the Internet, a humorous book… I find the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards website delightful, and each year I look forward to seeing the entries in the annual photo contest.

One of my own favourite wildlife photos from my travels captured a baby baboon giving its mother the classic ‘I didn’t do anything’ look.

Surround yourself with things that make you smile

Feather your nest, as it were, with things that cheer you up. Maybe it’s fresh flowers, or your favourite colours. I have a friend who collects anything penguin-themed; she has a small set of penguin figurines which get costumed for different holidays just because they make her smile. A long time ago I came to terms with being one of those people who’d live in a Halloween world year-round, and I do have a small number of select items that stay out all year, like this cute nesting measuring cup set I stumbled on a few years ago. How can you not smile when you’re measuring flour for a batch of cookies with a cheeky little skull?

Plan for something special down the road

Like the Witch cackling over her crystal ball, it’s a feel-good exercise to plan ahead. Indulge in some daydreams about putting together a post-pandemic celebration – a special family dinner, a nice trip – or even something sooner. My birthday is coming up next month, and as the likelihood of going out to a restaurant is slim, and as I love cooking and currently have the time to do it, I’m already planning what I’d like to make. Just because we’ll be eating at home doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy something delicious. Coming from a German background, I’m thinking of making sauerbraten, a tangy beef roast that needs marinating for several days. My recipe is from a German cookbook, but this one on All Recipes looks fairly similar. I went out today to pick up the roast and store it in the freezer.

Distraction/a little healthy Escapism

I consider myself something of an expert on this subject, having had chronic illnesses since I was a child and some deep family troubles in early adulthood. Sometimes you just need to take a break from the world. I love to read, and have a handful of favourite novels that I reread when I really need an engrossing escape. Sci-fi/ fantasy is my thing, so here are a couple of my older favourites:

The Eight, by Katherine Neville, a wonderful adventure about a female computer expert solving a mystery involving a mystical chess set belonging to Charlemagne across history and continents;

Summon the Keeper, by Tanya Huff, a funny and eerie story about a woman charged with sealing a tear in the fabric of the world inside an old, odd Victorian mansion in Kingston, Ontario, along with her crusty, old and very sarcastic cat — it has the best depiction of Halloween I’ve ever enjoyed;

and the modern Fever Series by Karen Marie Moning, about a young woman from Georgia who goes to Ireland to try and solve the murder of her sister, only to find herself in the middle of a world of nasty Fae and enigmatic, mysterious allies — brilliantly creative and well-written.

There are lots of movies that make me feel better – Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, The Mummy (1999), Death on the Nile (the amazing scenery in this movie actually spurred me on to book a bucket-list trip to Egypt, and the ensemble cast is a delight to watch). I also love some older movies like Jason and the Argonauts, pure adventure and wonderful special effects by the late great Ray Harryhausen, and Forbidden Planet, also a favourite of tv crime-writer Richard Castle.

Practicing Gratitude

March 20 is the International Day of Happiness. While that might seem like a pretty tall order at the moment, studies have shown that the practice of ‘gratitude’, of reflecting on and recognizing things in our lives to be grateful for, even tiny things, can significantly improve our mood. It may seem too simplistic, but thinking of things you’re grateful for seems to press a kind of ‘reset’ button in our brains. If you’re skeptical, you read up on the neuroscience of it on psychology.com.

The theme of this year’s IDoH is Happier Together, “focusing on what we have in common, rather than what divides us”. That seems to be especially appropriate right now.

www.actionforhappiness.org/coping-calendar

Things I’m grateful for:

  • The Internet, which allows me to keep abreast of the pandemic situation where I live, as well as global news (in small doses only!), to stream television for some entertainment and relaxation, and to work remotely as per the college where I’m currently employed
  • The burgeoning spring weather, with some sunshine and milder temperatures to elevate our moods
  • I also have the time to resume weekly blogs and share some thoughts/tips on how we can all weather these times until things start to get back to normal. There’s so much gloom in the media, I’d like to offer the alternative!

I particularly like this suggestion on the UK Telegraph’s 365 + 1 blog, to go to sleep in a better frame of mind by thinking of three good things that have happened that day. Give it a try, it really does help.

Being nice to yourself and others

These are stressful times. Be kind to yourself and to others. It feels a lot better than being grumpy and mean. Be considerate and polite when you’re out buying supplies. Check on elderly or ill neighours to see if they’re okay or need anything. Have phone or video chats with friends and co-workers as an antidote to the social distancing we’re practicing, and share a laugh together. Go out in the fresh air and walk around where there’s some nature to absorb the peacefulness.

And finally,

here’s an excellent article by the BBC, Coronavirus: How to protect your mental health.

Next week, a virtual trip to Africa, one of the most amazing, stunning, evocative places on earth. In the meantime, if you’d like to share some of your favourite ways to keep your spirits up, or a few of your favourite books/movies/resources, please do. Also, be silly a little 🙂

What lies ahead?

Twenty years ago my husband and I celebrated New Year’s Eve with family on the cusp of the new millennium. It was a momentous turn of time’s great wheel. We brought out the china and crystal; I made a special dinner with beef tenderloin; our aunt suddenly manifested signs of a winter virus just after dinner when she vomited in the bathroom, and she had to go home before we cracked open the expensive champagne at midnight. So, a fairly standard wacky holiday meal.

We all wondered what the approaching century and millennium would bring as half the world seemed convinced that our own technology would doom us as soon as the computer clocks ticked over to a year with a new configuration. We even had acquaintances who sold a profitable business to live completely off the grid.

Hubby and I weren’t as convinced of impending disaster, although we did prudently stash a small stock of supplies in case the electricity system failed for a few days – all things that we could use anyway if nothing happened, which is exactly what happened. Arguably the greatest non-event in history.

It didn’t take long for the 2000s to become tumultuous, and we’re now in a time of great uncertainty about the planet’s future.

Having grown up on Star Trek, I prefer to keep that positive vision of the future, but here are trends I’ve noticed that aren’t helping anything:

  • Overpopulation – our planetary ecosystem can’t support our current level of population growth
  • Rampant profiteering – we can’t continue stripping our planet of critical natural resources, so (among other things) someone has to put a stop to big corporations who don’t seem to care that that they’re destroying the future of their own families along with all of the rest of us
  • Divisiveness – we all need to become truly global citizens, tolerant and accepting of everyone, every life form on this planet, and the planet itself as our magnificent and precious home
  • The “it’s all about me” attitude that seems to prevail now – we need to return to values of kindness and consideration for others, and to understanding that all of our actions have consequences and that we’re responsible for those consequences
  • Unbridled materialism, which I believe is a symptom of deep cracks in our society that no one’s addressing, along with things like increasing rates of depression, anxiety, irritability and stress-related illnesses

I think people around the world are frightened, but letting our fears govern our actions isn’t the answer.

If more and more people resolve to put the welfare of each other and the entire planet on a par with themselves, to become the light-filled beings we have the capacity to be, I think we can turn the tide. If you feel the same way, let’s start something!

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to our American family and friends. It’s important that we all take the time to realize the good things in our lives and be grateful for them. Verbalizing some quick gratitude thoughts in the morning can turn around a bad start to the day — it seems to rewire our emotions. If you don’t believe me, try it. Wherever you are, dear readers, I hope that you have things in your lives that you can be genuinely grateful for. If you’re of a mind to share some, please do in the Comments.

All the best, Erica

Valuing every day

Ancient headstones, Glendalough, Ireland

I often feel that it’s sad how quickly we want Fridays to arrive (and the fact that there’s an entire restaurant chain called TGI Fridays speaks for itself), but some weeks are legitimately dismal and call for a drink by their end.

This has been one such week for me, still feeling poorly from a virus, and attending the funeral of a friend’s life partner, who died suddenly sitting in his living room chair (from a heart attack). I am heartbroken for my friend, who lost her beloved of more than 35 years with no warning or time to prepare, and for his family as well — at the service, everyone just seemed shell-shocked.

There’s not even very much we can do to help our friends under these circumstances, apart from being company through the grieving afterward, and these events have a ripple effect, prompting us to feel insecure about the safety of our own partners in the wake of the devastation we can see in our friends’ faces.

Grief is gut-wrenching and painful, but I offer you this excellent essay, The Awe of Being Alive, that I happened to come across this week. The writer talks about what value such traumatic events have in our lives, having lived through one himself. For my part, feeling deep grief affirms the love we have had for a person, or even a beloved pet, and that it was a great gift to have had them in our lives.

These events also remind us to cherish every moment we have with a loved one, because life can change in an instant, and to try to make the most of every day.

Go out and do wonderful things now, as many as you can. Don’t wait for a day in some misty future that may never come.

Don’t sweat the small stuff, or spend your time worrying about what other people think. Be true to yourself, be a nice person, in some small measure leave the world a better place than when you entered it. Those are the things that truly matter.

World Kindness (Every) Day

Image courtesy of https://www.randomactsofkindness.org/world-kindness-day

This will be a short post, as I have a virus and my head is on strike, but I did want to mention that yesterday was World Kindness Day, and that’s something I really believe in.

In a world with a lot of daily stressors, it’s easy to be grumpy, short-tempered and so wrapped up in your own issues that you forget to take other people into consideration. I think we’re all guilty of it from time to time in varying degrees, but sometimes you run into a person who is so toxic to deal with that it taints your entire day.

My best antidote to that is to go out of my way to be kind to someone. I’ll make someone a nice cup of tea, or make a point of chatting with a stressed store clerk to make them smile, or give a Tim Horton’s gift card to a homeless person so they can get a hot meal. These small acts of kindness are my way of putting some good karma back into the world.

If each of us can take the time to be kind, to give someone a break or the benefit of the doubt, even just to smile at people, we could make the world a much nicer place.

In the words of Brooke Jones, Vice President, The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation, ” Kindness starts with one. One smile. One compliment. One cup of coffee. One conversation.” Find out more about being kind at the Random Acts of Kindness website.

We are sorry…

Waiting for a flight, Heathrow

You’ve probably seen the many headlines. With those words, 144-year old travel company Thomas Cook announced abruptly on Sunday that it was closed for business, leaving about 600,000 travellers around the world in the lurch and a lot of employees suddenly looking for work, including airline pilots.

How could such a thing happen to the most veteran travel company in the business? Rumours of sky-high executive salaries are rife, and a gigantic reality show will play out over the next while as investigations get underway and some dirty secrets likely see the light of day.

Along with the vast personal and economic repercussions, it’s a sad time in the travel industry as we watch this once-great company die. Thomas Cook, the founder, led his first escorted tour in 1841 — about 500 temperance campaigners, if you can believe it, to a rally. He continued organizing a variety of tours around the British Isles, and within four years was taking people to Europe.

1922 Thos Cook poster, By 90 years old advert, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32011543

He officially opened shop on Fleet Street in London in 1865 and began making connections abroad that allowed him to, with his son as a partner, form the first commercial touring company. He made tours to exotic lands, like Egypt, accessible to the masses.

In our early days of travel, it was one of our pre-trip rituals to buy some Thomas Cook travellers’ cheques, until better forms of travel money came along.

It’s my feeling that in a situation like this, the travellers already abroad should be taken care of before any other legalities, but until/if that ever happens, here are two things you should always do to prepare for overseas emergencies:

  1. Buy travel insurance, both for trip cancellation and possible medical needs. We were all set to go to Mexico with friends in November a number of years ago, when a hurricane swept through the Gulf in September and took a number of resorts with it, including the one we were booked at. Afterward the clean-up and repairs, the resort was supposed to reopen the day we were due to arrive, but we had our suspicions about how good the facilities were going to be (having seen first-hand how quickly things often got done in the Caribbean back at the time), so we cancelled and in short order got our money back with no difficulties.
  2. Make sure there’s room on your credit card for emergency expenses. Many of the travellers in the current crisis have suddenly found themselves being charged by their hotels just to avoid getting kicked out — although, frankly, if a hotel I was staying at didn’t handle the situation with due tact and consideration, I’d be giving it a very bad review.

In all cases, don’t panic. Contact your travel agent for assistance — they will likely already be aware of your situation and be putting plans into place. You can also check in with your country’s local embassy (find information for Canadians here).

Livingstone airport, Zimbabwe

Beyond that, keep yourself comfortable and safe while you wait to return home. I was leading a trip to Botswana and Zimbabwe when the volcano in Iceland erupted in 2010. We were able to complete our safari as planned (and had a fabulous time), but as we were getting ready to leave Livingstone in Zimbabwe for our flight to Johannesburg on the first leg to return home, we heard that the damn volcano had gone off again and we might not be able to get past South Africa for a few days. My travellers were getting nervous, but I told them, “Look, if we’re stuck in Jo’burg for a night or two, I know a really nice hotel attached to a mall with great shops and restaurants — we’ll just remain comfortable there until we can fly again.”

As it turned out, the volcanic plume drifted eastward out of our flight path and we were able to make it home with little trouble.

So how can you avoid a travel problem like this Thomas Cook fiasco? You can’t, sadly — one of the most established names in the business tanked unexpectedly, at least to the rest of the world. Where there warning signs before that? Apparently not where most of us could see them. The best you can do is, like the old Boy Scout motto, Be Prepared. Don’t let something like this put you off travel — it should always be a great adventure!