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Right, so it’s school holidays and my house is a construction site. Therefore I’ve been going over to help as much as I can. Gordon and Graham, each with over 30 years experience, have been doing the actual building, I’ve been mainly picking up coffee and waiting for there to be a mess for me to clean up. They arrive at 7am, I get there just in time for smoko around 8:30. On Tuesday I spent much of the day, after getting the coffees, pulling staples and nails from the timber floors. This was very enjoyable, and involved a lot of crawling and sitting on the floor. Meanwhile Graham dug 4 massive piers into the earth by hand, prepared cylindrical formwork and replaced a junction in a half submerged pipe. At the end of the day I was pretty sore. Graham didn’t seem to be. On Wednesday I could only stay for a half day as I needed to take Dani to the physio. There was a large pile of sand that needed to be moved from one area to another so I went over and picked up some coffee, and then found the shovel. Graham worked all day and moved at double the speed for twice as long. I was strangely less sore than the day before, but in a concerning numb kind of way. On Thursday the old bricks that had come out of the wall needed to be cleaned and re-stacked down by the back fence. I did this and felt like I was moderately accelerating the progress of the job. Gordon and Graham built the timber form work, finalised the piers and trenches, positioned the sand bed, calculated the concrete requirements and repositioned all the equipment. It was my last day as I would be busy with school work on Friday. At 4pm as I nursed a back twinge up the half disassembled staircase I said to Graham “Thanks for having me this week mate.” “Yeah” he replied, “short week.” On Friday I dropped Pan at daycare, came home and immediately slept for 3 hours. Felt pretty long to me. Respect to the builders. 
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 If you want to view paradise Simply look around and view it Anything you want to, do it Want to change the world? There's nothing to it - Willy Wonka This, I think, may be easier said than done - step one: look around, step two: see paradise. Perhaps when you are the worlds greatest chocolatier that is how life really is. What I also think is that there is a real nice note of truth in the concept of choosing how you see your world. Here is a theory that I manage to subscribe to in my good moments: Your reality is a combination of the circumstances in your life, and how you choose to view those circumstances. Clearly there are challenges with the idea of choice in the concept above. It places a lot of responsibility on the individual for their health and happiness. There are accidents, poverty, disaster and inequality in life; some are born to privilege and others not - it’s unfair to ask people to simply choose joy in the face of adversity.
There are clearly parts of the external world which are beyond our control. There is also an internal world that each of us has some influence over. It seems to me that on occasion it is possible to view a mistake as part of learning, to see that a challenge is also an opportunity and to take the stance that in many ways the life around us is something to be grateful for. Life isn’t a paradise, it is a series of complex elements and happenings swirling around beyond and within us. One of those elements though, may well be your perspective. “Two people died today,” she said. I walked around the bed to see her face while she continued. “They died at home.” “Do you mean they didn’t go into a hospital or get any medical attention?” I asked. “Yes.” “Why would that happen?” “The article said they didn’t want to report it because everyone in their family would have to quarantine and wouldn’t be able to go to work.” “Where they elderly?” I asked. “One man in his 30s, another in his 40s.” “Pressed.” There are hard circumstances in the community. People are pressed. Hedged in between responsibilities, needs and necessity. What an terrible state of affairs for someone to make that choice.  “A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.” Frank Herbert, Dune. My father is more of an Isaac Asimov man when if comes to Science Fiction, and yet when I read that line from Dune I think of fatherhood and beginnings. I’m probably the person I am now in part because of the beginning I had with my mother and father. There was a formative time for me as a young person when I was a real hungry boy, and a real pain for my Dad. He made many of the meals during the week, I ate a lot of food and would sometimes complain afterwards that I was still hungry. What a pain. One night Dad’s sense of mischief took hold and he decided to send a message. There was an event happening up at school and we were setting up to eat early and then race up for the concert. When we came in to dinner there were four sensible Wednesday night meals and one ridiculous statement plate of gluttonous proportions. Two meat pies, green veggies and a straight-up massive deposit of mash that looked like it had taken the majority of a potato bag to make. The family exclaimed, my father grinned and I steeled myself for a rite of potato passage. I set in with determination, and long after everyone had left the room I toiled and shovelled. I remember taking a break to go and collect my nice clothes then returning to the table to keep eating while doing up my shoes and wrestling with my tie. I took the second meat pie into the car and finished the last bite as we walked toward the school hall. I strode in triumphant, and in an acute state of suffering. So certainly I’ve learned that beginnings, delicate care and balance are important. But Dad, as Asimov wonderfully said in Foundation, “Childishness comes almost as naturally to a man as to a child.” Thanks for the parenting lessons and happy father’s day.  |
AuthorHigh school teacher 
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