The Eight O’Clock
News July 2018
Ka Pun Kha, Lord My recent holiday in Thailand was not only restful but energizing as
well. The exquisite seascapes will remain in my memory and I will recall the thrill of diving into the turquoise ocean and swimming with the fish. A lasting impression will be of the Thai people and their gentleness. Softly-spoken, always-smiling and eager to please, most of them exuded a serenity despite their circumstances. The polite and friendly way of greeting each other by saying Sawadee with putting your palms together and gently bowing, generated in me a feeling that the other person really mattered. I enjoyed participating in the custom and also bowed with my palms together on saying Ka pun kha—thank you. I think this holiday was so particularly good for me because I lived each day in the moment. The day-to-day stressors largely contributed by the corporate workspace were absent as my emails and mobile were disabled. I had time for prayer, mindfulness, contemplation, rest and fun. It appears that this is the kind of wholehearteded living that Brene Brown writes of in her book, The Gifts of Imperfection. I am aware that we cannot live in a Thai paradise forever but we can in our everyday lives endeavour to embrace the gifts of imperfection: courage, compassion and (k)connection (CCK !). The book explores the power of love, belonging and being enough and the things that get in the way of this. Researcher and academic, Brene says, after interviewing numerous people on what it is like to live wholeheartedly, ‘I now see that cultivating a Wholehearted life is not like trying to reach a destination. It’s like walking towards a star in the sky. We never really arrive, but we certainly know that we are heading in the right direction. I now see how gifts like courage, compassion and connection only work when exercised. Every day’. ‘Wholehearted living is about engaging our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion and connection to wake up in the morning and think, No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It’s going to bed at night thinking, Yes I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes I’m afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging’. In the book, 10 Guideposts are outlined and express what we should cultivate and what we should let go. #1 Cultivate Authenticity—let go of what people think #2 Cultivate Self-Compassion—let go of perfectionism #3 Cultivate a Resilient Spirit—let go of numbing and powerlessness July 2018 Eight O’Clock News
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#4 Cultivate Gratitude and Joy—let go of scarcity and fear of the dark #5 Cultivate Intuition and Trusting Faith—let go of the need for certainty #6 Cultivate Creativity—let go of comparison #7 Cultivate Play and Rest—let go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth #8 Cultivate Calm and Stillness—let go of anxiety as a lifestyle #9 Cultivate Meaningful Work—let go of Self-doubt and ‘Supposed To’ #10 Cultivate Laughter, Song and Dance—let go of Being Cool and ‘Always in Control’. Ka pun kha, Lord—that You can show us all these things and bring us to a place of courage, compassion and connected wholehearted living.
- Cheryl Anderson
A walk on the Wild Side… Last month I visited Thailand and one of the things that I most
wanted to do was to walk with the elephants. The elephants that I spent time with are rescued from a hard life of trekking and logging and some still bear the physical scars as well as the emotional ones. Researchers say that elephants are right up there on the intelligence scale with man, chimpanzees and dolphins. The saying goes ‘elephants don’t forget’ but I would hope that they have forgotten the horrors of their past enslavement. Our guide instructed us how to behave around the elephant group—the oldest elephant was 50 years old and the youngest 10 months. We fed them first to gain their trust—bananas with the skins on and huge sticks of sugar cane. An elephant eats up to 10% of its body weight per day—that can be 300kg or more. It was amazing to offer the food to them and watch the trunk come out so deftly to grab the food and eat. They therefore poo a lot too but ingeniously down the road is a Poo Paper factory where beautiful notebooks and paper are made out of elephant dung. We followed them down to the river where they rolled in the mud and we then bathed them with river water. After that we walked through the lands with them and observed how they ate more roots, small trees, bamboo and grass. Back at the camp we fed them more sugar cane sticks. Elephant keepers called mahouts often exploited elephants and did not treat them well. The rescue organization has not only rehabilitated the elephants but has cleverly designed a programme whereby the mahouts are now employed in the organization and taught how to properly care for and respect these great creatures whilst at the same time securing a living for themselves and their families.
- Cheryl Anderson (photograph on p3)