I set off early on Wednesday morning for the slopes of the Helderberg. I was looking for a bit of space and beauty and inspiration. Once again, the book and I required some alignment and fine tuning. The theory was that sitting on top of a mountain ought to provide my mind with a veritable feast of inspiration. The sun lifted its single fiery eye over the mountains as I set forth. It was still cold yet within a few hundred metres my fleece was tied to the top of my camera bag. As silly as it was to have a fleece on an expected warm day, I was breaking a golden hiking rule. Never hike on your own. But on my own was precisely where I wanted and needed to be. And a jersey could come in handy on a cold mountainside night should a broken limb impede my progress.

This mountain is covered in Fynbos and on the lower reaches the Proteas are plentiful. Each with their large flowers expectantly waiting to open. Birds abound down here busily flitting from bush to bush, Cape sugar birds and Starlings and plenty of others . But then I am not a very good bird spotter. I did take pictures of flowers and tried out some macro techniques for fun. The track I was on led steadily upward and it was hard going. My packing definitely needed refinement, what with a full camera backpack, my lunch, two litres of water and a full size tripod, I was a walking porter.

After a good two hours of walking I ended up in a beautiful tree filled gorge. Some of the original Yellowwoods still grow here. But the sun had not yet warmed them up and it was cool and gloomy. I decided to press on as my inspiration lay not there. After another hour of climbing, I arrived at a pinnacle just below a saddle in the mountain. Nowhere near the top but close enough to enjoy the vista that lay before me. I found some shade just below a leopard’s lair and settled in for lunch. Sadly the leopard did not seem to be in!

I drank it all in, opened up my notes and wrote like a man possessed. Oh I love the inspiration that the splendour of the nature can provide!! It is a tonic for the soul.

This all happened last Wednesday. This Wednesday I took my mom on a similar walk. We climbed to the very top of the Helderberg and it was truly spectacular. More than six hours of walking later, we arrived back at my car. Tired and dirty but fulfilled in a way that only nature can.

I hope my mom will still be able to walk tomorrow....

I had a comment from the Divine Miss M on my last post. Check it out if you like. She wondered if living each day as your last would not add an element of stress. I think it does, but I would add that the benefits of this mindset are soul refreshing! I have a feeling that this is what living in the now is really about.

I am no expert of the matter, but I thought that I would include my approach.

I have started to spend a bit of time each morning reflecting on yesterday. I certainly am not doing it to dwell in the past, as yesterday is gone. I am really trying to appraise the life that I lived yesterday. What went well and why? How did I interact with my kids? How could I have done things differently? And so on. The answers to these questions are things I can use in my day today. Things that I feel did not go so well yesterday, I can correct today. If there are things that were not said, I can do these today. If there were things undone, I can do these today too. The chances I missed yesterday, I can try and grasp today. The things that went very well, I can repeat today!

The other questions I am trying to ask myself are ‘what should I be doing today to improve the lives of others?’ and ‘Do people feel that they are loved by me when they experience me?’ Not easy questions to answer at all on a daily basis. On a very simple level, I know that there are people that I should call and see. I also know that the way I live should be courageously aligned to my values. I hope that by taking this time to think, I will find those small acts of love to perform that are carefully hidden in the clutter and rush that is our lives.

Quoting Robin Sharma again, he says that ‘ultimate nobility is being better than your former self’. What he means is that life is not a competition with anyone at all. Instead, our challenge is to ensure that we are constantly improving ourselves. I hope that armed with the knowledge of how I can improve on yesterday as well as the answer to those more difficult questions I will be able to live a better, more valuable and loving day today.

And if I do die today, hopefully I will have touched your life in some meaningful way first!

I was reading “Care of the soul” by Thomas Moore last night on the plane trip home. This is a book about looking after you soul. It is deep and very thoughtful and filled with some clever psychological insights. It is a very interesting read. I do have to read it very carefully as it is quite deep and I am not well studied in matters psychological.

One of the thoughts that emerged for me was that I do not know everything there is to know about my subject. In fact the deeper I look, the more I find that I do not know anything at all. The more I look back, the more I see how far I have come and this is an interesting paradox because I feel that I know less now that I ever have and yet I have undertaken more soul searching than ever before. Pretty strange huh! Reading the Care of the soul” also makes me feel that I am pretty stupid when it comes to understanding the motivations and rationale for many of my actions and thoughts and emotions. The author as a psychologist (I have been corrected - see comment - Thomas Moore is a psychotherapist amongst other things) obviously has a big head start here in that this is what he does for a living. I myself cannot hope to fully understand or appreciate all of the concepts that he has included. I am going to be writing this book as a broken and incomplete person. I am going to make statements and have feelings that are filled with error or misunderstanding. I am not going to be right in all that I assert. This is interesting as this is what I want other people to go out and buy and then read and then take something out and then act. Is this a dangerous thing to do? Should I be waiting till I am older and more complete and wiser before I actually write this book. Is there also a catch 22, the older I get the more fixed and unwavering become my view points on the world vs the younger I am the more incomplete is my view.

On the other hand, I will be writing about my experience about making this change. I was asked today if I have done extensive reading on this subject. I must admit that I have not. I do understand that I am the only one that can make sense of my thoughts and fears and expectations and longings and dreams. I hope that through sharing this stuff, others will be able to think more deeply about themselves and hopefully together we can build a better world. My ambitions are small as you can read!!!!