That was then, this is now

When I was eight years old I got my first pair of roller-skates.

I woke up on Christmas morning with anticipation that shimmered in front of me like the gauzy curtain of a boudoir. I ripped it aside with nary a thought of how it may have been thoughtfully placed to create a mood, such was my desire and my need.

I ran to the box that was the size and the shape and the heft of the things I had been wishing for since at least November, which of course was the same as forty-seven years in my eight year old chronoestimation. I held the box in my hands and waited a century-second before hungrily tearing off the slippery-gaudy-cheap paper. Skates. At last. Skates.

The wrong skates.

My heart stopped beating for a moment-year, and I buried my face in the remnants of that gaudy paper, ashamedly scratching away the look of horror, before my parents could see what the face of an ungrateful child looked like.

The skates were white, yes. The wheels were red, yes. They were boots, yes. But they were Hang Ten. I wanted Redstones. More than wanted: I needed Redstones. In that moment of complete and total disappointment, I knew that there was nothing I could do, and that I would never have Redstone skates. The part of my forebrain that somehow knew things that adults knew, was aware that this was probably my one shot. My one chance at owning Redstone roller-skates. And now it was gone. So close / so far.

I forced a smile to my mouth and to my eyes, and carefully laced the hideous wrong-skates. My parents were overfrothing with the happy that comes from seeing their child truly love the carefully-chosen gift so much, that they can’t even speak. I couldn’t speak.

To keep my hands from shaking and my from eyes crying, I began the soothing task of lacing, and once done, I slowly made my way down the slick cement front steps. Each step was heavy with the despair of the wrong-skates. I took a deep breath, bent my knees slightly to get my centre of gravity just so, and pushed off down our driveway.

The skates rolled forward like nothing I’d ever felt before. They had a power of their own. I barely needed to push- I was gliding, gliding, flying, gliding.

“Am I flying? I think I’m flying!” I screamed so the people two streets over, behind the Henwood’s double storey house could hear. “These skates are AMAAAAZING.”

I skate-flew out onto the road, and lifted up to the touch the lowest lying clouds with the three lateral fingers of my left hand. From my place above the world I looked back to see my Mum and Dad below: she leaning into the space at the front of his chest where she fitted like a nesting cup, he with a grin that threatened to split his head open like the watermelon on that weird knife ad.

I think I heard him shout, “I know you wanted Redstones, but the Hang Tens have better bearings. They’ll roll better.”

I didn’t exactly know what that meant, but that day I knew without a doubt what considered, quiet, caring, love meant.

It meant Hang Ten skates.

The very best kind of love. Love that makes you fly.

…From The Ashers

*This was created from a prompt from Liz Gilbert’s creativity challenge: What did you most love to do when you were eight? It was supposed to take 20mins. I failed- this took me 37minutes. Oh well. Close, as they say, but no cigar.

What did YOU love to do when you were eight years old? Do you still do it?

Why not?

I mean that- why the hell not?

Sometimes the beauty is in the spaces, isn’t it?

The pause between when you tell him you love him for the very first time, and you wait, one beat, another, and there is that delicious-scary anticipation, before you hear what he will say back.

The gap between the notes in your favourite song. You know precisely how long to hold the silence. You take your breath, before the lyric unfurls the next layer of story.

The very first moment when you become aware of yourself in the morning, when for a second or two you are no-one and nowhere, your brain is furry and unfocussed, and there is no cancer or death or pain that cannot be taken away.

The beauty of the space.

This week two more of my people died.

I know this is inevitable. That with every moment that passes, every beautiful space that passes me by, I draw closer to another death. A bigger space. Another one that can never be filled.

Those deaths take my breath away, every single time.

This week two more of my people died, and there is a space in my heart that can’t be filled, and nor would I want it to be.

What do you say when someone dies? Do you say: passed away, passed over, left this earth, deceased? I don’t like any of those. I say they have left a space.

And so I mark it.

In my appointment book, which is the thing that runs my days, I write their name, where the time for their check up would normally be. My Dad comes in most Saturday afternoons. Hayley comes in every second Tuesday night. Geoff comes in once a month on a Saturday morning, and Bob has 9.15am on a Tuesday, every fourth week. Don’t worry about my tenuous grip on reality, I know they aren’t actually coming in, but I can’t bear to erase them, to take away the space they held in my life.

In the beginning, the space is almost unbearable. The allotted time stretches out from my toes to eternity, and I think I will never endure the tock-tock-tocking of the moments passing. After the passing of months, that if joined together would wrap around the equator eleventy-million times, the space takes on a new form. The time morphs and passes faster, or perhaps it just has less barbs to be ripped out of the gentle skin of my forearms. The space holds itself, it never de-ceases, but I find that I have a fortitude, a fort, that I never knew I’d built, and I can sit in the space, and put the jigsaw pieces of my heart back together.

Some of the pieces are missing.

There are spaces where there once was a picture.

But there is beauty in the parts that are now missing. They are the memories of my very own. Invisible to another, but clear to me.

And they are wondrous.

…From The Ashers

My Oxford Dictionary App defines Persistence as “the fact of continuing in an opinion or course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition.”

This definition may feel particularly pertinent at this precise moment in our collective chiropractic experience. From the conversations I’ve had with colleagues over the last few weeks, I am hearing an array of responses: some of us are energised and excited by the current state of play and can’t wait to step up to the plate, all the way through to those of us who are angry, scared, or even worse, just don’t want to play this game at all anymore.

What can we do to cultivate the inner strength, the grit, to achieve what we want for our lives, our profession, and those of whom we serve? Research tells us that grit is defined as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals” and that grit is the most reliable predictor of success, and is actually more important than intelligence.1. (Whew, saved by science.)

So to be successful, it turns out we don’t need to be smart, we just need to keep on going. I’m sure that sounds okay to all of you out there doing Tough Mudder and Cross Fit until you regurgitate your kale smoothies into the dirt, but how do the rest of us get gritty? It turns out Professor Andrea Duckworth has researched it (Very sciencey of me to find this.)2. and grit comes down to just five things:

1. Pursue what interests you. Let’s be honest, if you don’t really like it, you aren’t very likely to stick with it, are you? So I like it so far: do more of the things you like (See point 3, below).

2. Do deliberate practice. Which means working on weaknesses and making improvements, not shonky, “she’ll be right” and “I’ll look at Facebook whilst I do it” practice. As we used to say in softball, “Practice doesn’t make perfect, PERFECT practice makes perfect.” (Imagine eleven hormone-fuelled girls screaming that in your face every training session. If that doesn’t make you gritty, I don’t know what will.)

3. Find purpose. And this means having a greater sense and meaning to your work. It might even be what separates a job from a vocation. What does your work bring to the world? If the vision is big enough and exciting enough, it’s easier to stay until the final siren (Ohhh how this one warms my heart. Statement of Purpose review anyone?).

4. Have hope. This means not just sitting around hoping things will be better some day/ some how, due to factors outside our control, or because you adopted some slogan from Pinterest, but more of a gritty type of hope, that believes that our very own actions can improve the future. That tomorrow will be better because we will make it so.

5. Join a group of fellow grit-masters. Perhaps my Mum was right when she used to trot out all those old sayings like, “Birds of a feather, flock together.” In fact, Jim Rohn is often quoted as saying that we come to be the average of the five people we spend the most time with. So finding a team of people we would love to be like could be a resourceful strategy.

We can overlay Professor Duckworth’s work with what we know about The In8 Model 3. and the game of life.

Quadrant 1: Why? Having a meticulously refined and useful plan behind what we do. Which would hopefully, be a purpose we can’t wait to live.

Quadrant 2: What? Create blueprint, and then practice it, making corrections as  you go. In the words of our Quest Marketing Guru, Paula, “Just wing it. Something is better then nothing… and then make appropriate corrections as you go.” With appropriate checking an efficient strategy will result.

Quadrant 3: How, and who with? A great team of like-minded people can often do so much more than an individual, when they are on purpose and have well defined ethics that serve the world.

Quadrant 4: What else, and when? This echoes the desire to get things done, and the knowledge that we can do it. In the words of William H. Johnsen, “If it is to be, it is up to me.”

So how are you going on the persistence project? Are you ready to get down and gritty and get the job done?

After all, they do say it takes a bit of grit to make a pearl.

Let’s make a whole treasure chest.

-Alison Asher

1. Pink, Daniel. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. 2011, Riverhead Books.

2. Duckworth, Anglea. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. 2016, Scribner.

3. Postles, Mark. The In8 Model. 2011. Self Published.

You know what is interesting to me? I’ve found that writing a blog every day is kind of easy. Sure it takes time and effort and thought, but among that, it somehow becomes a habit. Something that gets done daily, regardless of whatever else is going on, and the writing space becomes a sanctuary all of its very own. Fingers click away on the black keys, and somehow wisps of ideas and words dance and weave together and organise themselves into something coherent. Sometimes they even become something half beautiful.

You know what is even more interesting to me? Writing a blog sporadically is extremely difficult. It becomes a task that should get done, might get done, will get done later. And later might be in the next hour or the next year. Until ideas become paralysed by insecurity (will it be good enough?) and indecision (should I even post that?). So it seems that Blanche d’Alpuget was onto something when she said, “Your muse shows up when you show up.”

So I’m wondering, what else in life is like that? Some things, most things, all things? What would happen if we didn’t have any structure or demands on our time and our minds? Would we get anything done at all if we had to make a decision about each and every thing in our day? Would we get decision fatigue and have to have a good lie down to the rest of our lives? Where would our muses go?

Today I’m looking at my habits. The good, the bad and the ugly resourceful, the less useful and those who can beat it, and wondering if I actually make any choices at all in my day, or if i just zoom along, habit to habit until I close my eyes for the night.

Perhaps the blog needs a resurrection.

***Erases the Facebook App from phone, for the fifth time today***

How about you? Are you habit powered, or do you mindfully choose your life?

…From The Ashers

Always with us

When we first met you you were sprightly and jumpy and full of a cheeky, playful energy, that just couldn’t be stilled. We descended on your home like a noisy, chittering storm of crickets, and you just smiled and smiled. You took it in your stride as we took over your couch and your floor with our bums and our beds, and still you just grinned and wagged your strange little curled tail.

Stanley ruling The Pit

You were named after The Stanley Cup, a trophy based on a gentleman’s agreement between the two professional ice hockey organisations, and you personified that spirit: a regal gent, a pug among pugs.

Remember your Henry the VIII costume, with the turkey leg? We do.

We would stumble home after an evening of refreshments, and you’d be up waiting for us, twerking that tail for all you were worth. You’d sit with us as we sang and laughed into the small hours, making fun of your grin and your snuffling snores.

Twins

Eventually giggles would make way to groans, and we would fall into slumber, and that’s when you would come alive, taking every.single.toy out of your basket, placing them carefully in piles, and then back to the basket again, and then again, your clickety-clack toenails marking out the placement pattern for hours on end. We wanted to be cross with you, and make a fuss over our lost sleep, but you were too funny to grump at.

You had a way of bringing out a sweeter side in people, Stanley.

When we next met you, your muzzle had gone grey and some of your fur had been loved off, but you captured Liam and Coco’s hearts in a beat. With your tongue hanging out and your failing eyesight, they wanted to cuddle and love you to bits. They wiped your nose and scratched your belly, and you taught them what it is like to love a pet.

When we left, they waved to you as we reversed down the drive, and they said they’d be back in the summer to see you do a “Stanley Float” in the pool.

They won’t get to do that now.

Today when I told them about the peaceful end of your days, they stared at me with big eyes, two brown, two blue, but both with the same shocked pupils, not wanting to believe me, waiting for the punchline.

Unfortunately there was only a punch in the belly.

I saw Liam swallow and then swallow again, then he popped on his helmet and scootered up and down the path for a while, preferring to be in his own thoughts.

Coco’s eyes grew as wide as finger-bowls, then the tears started dripping and dripping as she let her emotions fall onto the pavers at her feet, forming a tiny rivulet between the weeds.

I was surprised at the emotion, but not of the depth.

You had a way with people Stanley. You opened them up and made careful etches on their hearts, Lord Stanley III.

Thanks for all the laughs, and for the joy and softening you brought to people I love.

You’ll be missed S.Gup.

Vale Stanley

…From The Ashers