GRATITUDE + CONSCIOUS LIVING Page 5 of 22
Life According to Mr K: When good people go and we are left behind
A tribute to my friend Glen
When you strip away everything that doesn’t really matter, you are left with people. Family. Friends. Other humans. Connections between us, some deep and long, some fleeting but remarkable. And every now and then, if you are really lucky, you get a friendship that is both deep and remarkable, which changes you forever, which fills your life with laughter and stories, and makes you a better person for knowing the other. That’s how it was with my friend Glen.
Five weeks ago Glen passed away, aged 39, and the world is a sadder place for it. But in writing about him, and writing a tribute to him, I am determined to find something I can hold onto, a fragment of goodness and hope that I can carry with me in the years ahead, as I grow older, and as his tiny daughter grows up.
I have put off writing this particular post for a while. I guess it was because deep down I thought writing it would mean that I have accepted that one of my dearest friends has left us. Even as I write this I get a shiver all over my body. I still don’t want it to be true.
Tea with a Lord and other Sunday stories
It’s not every Sunday afternoon that I take tea with a real life Lord, but that’s what happened yesterday. Oscar-winning film producer Lord David Puttnam was the President of UNICEF UK when I worked there a decade or so ago, and he became a great mentor and a friend. He’s one of those people who makes you think anything is possible, every time you talk to him.
David is an impressive man on so many levels – before his work in education and international development, he spent thirty years as an independent producer of award-winning films including The Mission, The Killing Fields, Chariots of Fire, Bugsy Malone and Memphis Belle. His films have won ten Oscars, 25 Baftas and the Palme D’Or at Cannes. He also has more honorary degrees than I can keep track of.
But the thing that made him such a shining light for me wasn’t actually any of that. It was his deep-rooted commitment to furthering human potential. We worked together on one huge project which brought sporting opportunities to over 12 million children across the world. Together with David Bull, the inspirational Chief Executive of UNICEF UK, we pitched it to the government and a host of sporting bigwigs. We then spent several years building a complex partnership to make it happen, and its legacy lives on. Time and again in the process we came up against brick walls, but instead of banging his head against them, Lord Puttnam always kept the end in mind, and found a way round or over, or reconstructed the wall completely.
What I have learned from him: Keep your eye on the prize. Fight for what you believe in. Don’t let bureaucracy stand in the way of big, brilliant ideas.
Will you thrive in your third act?
Within this generation, an extra 30 years have been added to our life expectancy — and these years aren’t just a footnote. In this inspiring TED Talk, Jane Fonda asks how we can re-imagine this new phase — the third act — of our lives…
Why getting older means getting better
Is the best really yet to come? Definitely! We love these articles in The Huffington Post about why life gets better with age…
- Getting Older Does Not Suck by Amy Selwin
- 7 Awesome Things About Getting Old by Jane Watson
- What Is Your Emotional Age? by Ellen Dolgen
- Here’s Scientific Proof That Life Gets Better As You Get Older by Carolyn Gregoire
Conscious Living and Sustainability: The Capacity to Endure
This is a guest post from Claire Le Hur who is cycling to China with her fiancé Stuart Block. The couple will start their journey in East Africa where they will follow new ‘silk roads’ charting the journey of key natural resources as part of an exciting new education project. Claire will be riding a bamboo bike, built by an African social enterprise and Stuart will ride a tandem, keeping the back seat free for those they meet en route. They will also be raising money and awareness for two great educational charities. Find out more about Claire’s big adventure here.
Our endurance challenge has opened our eyes to the ubiquitous issues of drought and deforestation and the importance of doing our bit to help protect the Earth’s natural ecosystems and contribute to sustainability.
Here are a few of some of the small sustainable enterprises that we have encountered on this trip…
On my 39th
I want to take a moment to be grateful today, for this day, my 39th birthday which I am spending in a beautiful yoga spa in the Costa Rican jungle and on a white sand beach at the edge of the Pacific Ocean.
I have spent most this week working on my book, which will be on the shelves this time next year. I came here eleven days ago with a rough structure and an inch-high stack of notes. I now have nearly 30,000 words of a first draft to send to my editor. It’s still a long way off the final version, but it’s in a completely different place to the day I landed, and I am so grateful for this time.
I couldn’t have done it without the incredible care of the staff here at the Costa Rica Yoga Spa. They couldn’t have done more to make me feel at home, and give me space to write and write.
Dream a little dream
An Update From Do What You Love HQ – April ’16
I sat down to write this month’s update and whilst considering what to tell you about – I’ll get to that soon – I glanced at my calendar. It read April 16. Three years ago to the day since I started with Do What You Love.
I had just returned from my honeymoon and the magic and romance of Tuscany was fast being replaced by one very real and overriding thought:
“Was it really a good idea to give up 12 years of a good career… especially now?”
Not only was the world trying to come to terms with the worst global recession in recent history, we were about to start our new life as a family. Is there a bigger adventure? And the main security we had, I had discarded without remorse. The reality now was that our immediate future was a complete unknown and our family’s wellbeing was in the hands of a fairly whimsical concept – Do What You Love.
Had I been completely selfish, foolish and irresponsible?
Why it’s worth caring about fragments of handwritten memory
I have been spending a lot of time up in the attic lately, going through old journals and letters, finding snippets of memories caught in real time, in crinkled pages, on blue airmail paper, via postcards with exotic postmarks.
A couple of the letters were from an old friend from university, who was editor of the uni newspaper and has gone on to produce ‘Today’, the BBC’s flagship news and current affairs programme. I used my very modern iphone to send him photos of the handwritten letters he sent to me when I was a student in Kyoto, Japan, aged 19, half a lifetime ago. It was a fascinating snapshot of student life – the things we cared about, the things we spent our time on, the people we fancied, the embarrassing and often hilarious capers we got up to. True to the career he would follow, he had sent detailed dispatches from Durham, letting me know the goings on of college life in full colour.
I remember when those student days, when I spent a year abroad in a very foreign land. The anticipation of coming home to my homestay family’s house after school, and looking on the bottom step of their winding wooden staircase to see if there was a letter for me from home. And often there was – I received and sent over 100 letters and postcards that year, in the days before email.