I love listening to old songs.  It is so easy to see where my values came from when I listen to the songs I grew up with.  The  other day I heard this line … ”you know I need relating not solitude”.  I feel that way.  I spend a lot of time alone. Writers do … especially when they are writing two books like I am supposed to be doing right now.  Too much alone time makes you protective of that time.  I get to a point where I resent intrusion and even feeling hungry is annoying because I have to stop and find something to eat to meet those interrupting physical needs.  That, of course, is the extreme flow situation which unfortunately is rare theses days.  I am easily distracted and fulfilled by people in my life right now and that is all good.  I need relating not solitude these days.

The cool thing is that it is a balance.  For me the need to relate and the need to be solitary come in waves.  I ride the wave of relating until it hits the shore line and then I swim out and catch the wave of solitude and ride it in until …. you get it.  The seasons and the tides change and the length and strength of the waves change as well as the direction and the shoreline you are likely to hit.  Some waves crash on rocky shores and others lap on to a warm sunny beach.

What kind of waves fill your life?  Where are you now?  What wave are you riding.  Remember you choose the next wave to ride.  Be purposeful and deliberate and wait for the one you want.

and the living is easy… as the song goes.  I am having a great 60th summer.  I have spent most of it with family or old friends and that has been a gift.  It is easy to be with people you know and who know you.  I have spent a lot of time over the past years working with people I may never see again.  The short encounters in training sessions, the years as a teacher… people come and go.  I do feel fortunate that in my life there have always been the connectors.  These are the people who knew you from the beginning or since junior high or since your first marriage.  They have watched your career and your relationships and know who you are at the core of it.  They share your values and your history and that is so important … to have someone in your life who does.

Know yourself, Know others and Know your stuff … that used to be Carol’s and my mantra when we were teaching leadership.  Knowing yourself through others is an important part of that.  I have been reminded this summer of the pieces of me that have not changed, that have continued  … the good pieces of character that I hardly notice … as people tell stories from the past and create memories for the future with me I am struck by what they remember and how they remember it. I believe it has helped me understand again who I really am.

I also have been very conscious of what my view of others is and how it can be influenced by the opinion of others.  Maybe by no accident I was reading Jane Austin this summer.  “Persuasion” is a book about that … about how what you learn from others influences your opinions and your actions toward a person.  It’s a great read if you are in the mood for self-reflection.

It has been a summer of observation and reflection, a time for change and new beginnings.  Warm summer breezes, beaches on both coasts, my wonderful Rockies and people I love and that love me … what more could a girl as for….

How has your summer been? I hope that you have connectors in your life and that you get to see them as often as possible to keep you grounded and reassured. Nothing does that for you  like spending time with people who share your values and your history. Love and laughter, the perfect recipe for living easy.

Last week I was in Nova Scotia at the Shoreclub.  There were people there who I had not seen or even spoken to in more than 42 years.  One old friend recognized me right away when someone said “Do you know who this is?”  “Nancy Love.  What are you doing here?  I thought you moved away?”

So when you have five maybe ten minutes to fill someone in it is interesting what you choose to share.  In 40 years I have earned three degrees and been married three times.  I have worked as a teacher for 20 years and spent 8 of those as a school administrator.  I have also been a mediator and trainer for 15 years in large government organizations in the US and in Canada.  I have travelled to London, Paris, Berlin, Frankfurt, Barcelona, Rome, Venice, Florence, Istanbul, Amman, Dubai, San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angelos, Kansas City, Chicago, New York, Honolulu, Washington DC, Charlotte Amelia in the Virgin Islands all more than once.  I have cruised the Mediterranean and the Carribean many times and have crossed the Atlantic.  I have homes in three cities and one mountain retreat.  I have written and published a number of books and have had some great opportunities to meet exciting people all around the world and here in Canada.  I have been a candidate for federal politics and a town councilor.   So what I talked about was my wonderful grandchildren and their mothers … my two beautiful daughters.  I talked about my parents who are still in love after all of these years.

How would you describe your last 40 years?

There is a book that I used by Julia Cameron as a guide to doing journaling when I first started journaling  in 1991.  it was called Finding Water and it was really based on her struggles to become a writer. In someways I related to her but her story was very different than mine so I just kind of filtered out the parts that didn’t apply and gained enormously from the parts that did.

After the last few days I’m wondering if water finds us.

So much is written about and known about water.  It has been studied and revered in poetry as the very essence of life.  We have had a very stark lesson on the destructive nature of water and on how quickly tides and water levels change.  Cougar Creek in Canmore is bone dry today.  A week ago it was a 100 meter wide raging torrent of destruction.

We are mostly water.  We are effected by the pull of the moon and the rotation of the earth. We ebb and flow through life.  We have floods and droughts.  We deal with high water and low tide in our daily lives.  There are lessons for us in this flood, the destruction that necessitates a new beginning and prevent measures for the next round of high water.

Life is good. Whether it is wet or dry, we notice and adjust looking for the right balance of  H2O in our lives and bodies. Not enough is bad.  Too much is also bad. Find your balance in the life giving water, the positive chi and remain in awe of the potential of water to turn on you and destroy allowing regrowth and renewal in waves. Harness its power when you find water.

Amazing the power of water over the other elements.  I am so lucky to have had somewhere else to go when the lights went out.  The time here in Canmore has been enlightening in many ways.  Yesterday we took a ride in to Banff.  Really …it is difficult to know that anything had happened.  The streets were full of tourists.  The bridge at Carrot Creek has been repaired and although there is evidence of fast, high water, there are very few signs that it is still there.  The Bow Falls were ferocious but the water had receded form the high water marks on the banks.  I was concerned that the yellow caution tape was being ignored and when I saw someone inflating a boat of some kind,  I wondered how smart that would be.  I almost used a Nenshi noun. I think we still need to give mother nature and the rivers lots of room.

Here in Canmore I have lots of books on Feng Shui.  Reading about the elements and how they work together and how they can destroy each other is fascinating.  Now I find myself trying to understand how the chi became so strong and so destructive in the rivers and creeks.  Everything is chi – energy. The killing chi was activated by the circumstances and changed the paths of the waters so that they can meander rather than flow directly and can slow down the fierce, fast energy that was flowing previously.  Fast water is too much chi or Yang energy.  Slow stagnate water is too little and represents Yin or dark energy. the Yin energy needs to be balanced with Yang energy or the stagnating water can kill too.

Balance the energy. Yin and Yang work together to create constructive energy in the right measure to create rather than destroy although both are needed.  Someone at Calgary City Hall should consult a Feng Shui master and figure out what needs to happen to protect it the next time.

When I started writing about Daniel Pink’s ideas for competencies in a whole brained world I had no idea that the world in Calgary Alberta would turn so upside down so fast.  The perfect storm created a record breaking disaster and an awesome opportunity for a city to prove once again that it can survive “Come Hell or High Water”

I have written about Design and Empathy, Symphony and Transcendence.  I have written about Imagination and Narrative and now I want to write about Yin and Yang.  It is not identified by Pink as a competency but it speaks to his overall premise of balance between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. There are so many balances we can talk about – nature-nurture, male-female all of them for me are on a continuum of  of this or that-ness.  It isn’t as simple as either or.  For me it is always AND.

The Calgary Flood 2013 is a curse and a blessing.  It destroyed things and it brought people together.  It brings out the best and the worst in us.  It reminds us of the need for balance in our own lives.  It can all end quickly.  Any state is temporary and soon this nightmare of clean up will be a memory of new friendships and amazing resilience.  Yin and Yang are always together in the same situation.  When you know that and act accordingly you are always prepared for what life has to offer and you can begin to define it for yourself.

DESTINY – are you ready?