Tag: inspiration

Howdy, 2014

This morning as we enjoyed our first cuppa of the new year, I noticed the wife’s a bit teary.

“What’s the matter?” says I.

She responds, “I’ve just managed to finish one year, and now I have to do another one!”

One doesn’t think of it like that, does one? Once the partying is done and the hangover has subsided, there’s another whole three-hundred and sixty-four days lying ahead in which to push and fight and grin and bear it and fail and get knocked down until you no longer want to get up.

It’s enough to bring one to tears. But there’s also another whole three-hundred and sixty-four days lying ahead in which to be kind and show compassion and take risks and have adventures and tell stories and make art and laugh and love and learn. Another year in which to give hugs and hold hands and make friends and be amazed at the wonder of this universe in which we live.

That’s the year I’m wishing for you all. May 2014 take you on the wildest ride of your life and leave you completely changed come its end and may you look back three-hundred and sixty-five days from today and say, “Damn! I wish I could go again.”

Happy New Year!

P.S. We’re headed to the in-laws (again) tomorrow (apparently they have another snoek needs cooking), and I’m foreseeing another lack of internet over there, so if I don’t respond to comments, please don’t take it personally. The first book review of 2014 will still go up on Friday and I’ll be back by Monday for the year’s very first Song Title Challenge.

A Tale of Two Funerals

It was a beautiful day, it was a terrible day. It was a day of celebration, it was a day of mourning. It was a day of great joy, it was a day of deepest grief.

There were two funerals in South Africa on Tuesday. One was for a great man who had touched the lives of millions. He had passed away at a ripe old age, having achieved in his lifetime what he had set out to do. He died peacefully in his bed, surrounded by his loved ones. And while we are all sad that he is now gone, Tuesday was marked by a spirit of celebration as we remembered a man the like of which comes around perhaps once in a generation, if we’re lucky.

The other funeral was for a mother and daughter who were violently ripped from this earth in a senseless accident on the highway. Their deaths were sudden and unexpected, their lives incomplete. There was no celebration at their funeral. Instead, there was wailing and sobbing, and the daughter’s former colleagues singing hymns as the coffin descended into the Earth to remind her loved ones and themselves that God was there, even if it didn’t feel like He was.

I attended the other funeral. Continue reading “A Tale of Two Funerals” →

Happy NaNoWriMo

Today is the official start of National Novel Writing Month. My trauma counselling course ended yesterday and the wife and I are spending the weekend at our in-laws (both her parents and my dad and stepmom live in the same town, yet we met 1500km away and only after my folks had already been living there for three years), so I probably won’t get much writing done. But today I’m sitting next to the pool with the laptop and am planning to make a decent go of it before the wife joins me here this afternoon.

In the meantime, may your NaNoWriMo not be characterised by moments such as this…

Chasing the Muse Continue reading “Happy NaNoWriMo” →