Nostalgia. It's a beautiful soft, sepia-coloured word, isn't it? Comforting, cushioned and universally understood, although in terms of nuance, it punches way above its weight. Unlike terms that refer directly to longing, or regret, nostalgia isn't really about wanting to return to the past, or somehow have the past return to us, but much more subtly, it suggests a profound and meaningful gratitude that the past actually happened at all. Nostalgia has inherently soft edges. I

There is a recognisable sort of chap standing beside a very clean car outside a top hotel. He wears two principal things - a peaked cap, and an expression of professional, unbothered serenity. He opens the door. He inclines his head. He says "Sir" and "Madam" with the respectful deference of a fellow who has said it many times. And when you have spread yourself across the leather interiors, he glides you smoothly across town without, it seems, doing anything so vulgar as maki

Closure. It's one of those words that sounds like it should solve something. Firm, clinical, faintly medical - the sort of word a doctor might use, or an estate agent. Somewhere between stitches and stitch-ups...It has the satisfying sound of a door shutting properly, seat belt fastened, an attaché case - closed and clicked. We reach for it constantly and perhaps a bit unconsciously. "I just need some closure..." "She never got closure..." "It gave me the closure I was lookin

If there is one subject guaranteed to unite humanity, it is the weather. We simply cannot stop discussing it. It doesn't matter whether you're in Paris, Perth, or Pyongyang, "weather chat" is the small talk of choice. The ice-breaker, the introduction. The attempt to bash down the barrier of language, and a chance to stand on some familiar, common ground, where souls that collide in the far-flung corners or our little blue rock, can meet on the level. And what better leveller

Yes... we all of us like to imagine that judgement is simply something that other people do. That we don't judge. That our opinions are as neutral as a Swiss watch. We even use qualifiers like "I am not judging here, but..." in celebration of that marvellous expression, "Everything that comes before "but"... is B.S." We are persuaded that it is only other people that are so critical... Other people are so narrow-minded. Other people are sitting somewhere, in deep Facebook, ma

There is something very unsettling about regrets. With me, they have a score of almost zero on the mental, feel-good scale. A bin of despair, out of which we must occasionally haul ourselves, using the ropes of clever mantras and helpful sayings, like "Well if I hadn't have done that, I wouldn't be where I am now" - wordy platitudes, which while indisputably true, barely contain the comfort of a decent slice of chocolate cake. Regrets are our mental, feel-bad reels. Wholesale

Comparisons... just one more item, on an ever-expanding buffet of human habits, capable of turning a perfectly good morning into a very bad one, in the blink of an eye. We might wake up, feeling relatively chipper, coffee in hand, birds-a-chirping, hair acceptable, with a B+ for emotional stability. And then Wham!.. Your online scrolling uncovers some bloke you sort-of-knew at school, standing shirtless and barefoot in a Tuscan lemon grove, beside his perfect CEO wife who res

From a fairly young age, I always felt the need to choose a direction. A kind of path. A version of myself that made the most sense to whatever situation I found myself in. We moved around more than most, so adapting was a key skill I had to learn early. And once I chose that direction - once I rearranged my room to suit me, I set my personal sails to suit the local wind, the expectation was simple: stick with it, Vanessa. There was a comfort in that idea. One that I definite

I like looking up quotes. It is nice to see who wrote what and where it came from. As well as being little wordy gems, that represent "things I really wish I had said", quotes give us an anchor to a thought, or a state of mind - perhaps even a way to live life. Mostly, they are either clever or beautiful or deeply deep. And I think deeply deep down, we all crave a life that is quotable... Good quotes - the ones that resonate the deepest - engage us the mostest, because the p

There is a very sober, serious show on the BBC called "Panorama". It covers studious subjects, in great depth and head-nodding sincerity. On April 1st, 1957, Panorama ran a segment calmly informing the British public that spaghetti grew on trees. Literally. It showed a group of Swiss farmers (you might think that would have been a red flag..) harvesting strands of air-dried spaghetti from the low hanging branches of, well...a Spaghetti Tree. The BBC, certainly then and I thin

The word "Status" is probably still synonymous with a centuries-old meaning around something that can be physically seen . Things like rank, title, land, or visible wealth. It comes from the Latin verb "Stare" - to Stand. It is where we much more than figuratively stood. Status was a marker of position - worn outwardly and instantly understood by all. The trappings of status were the Bentleys, the Castles and the cash.. ..Our status symbols. It's a bit quieter these days. We

Vanessa and I were recently speaking to a company that was offering some service provision around "Digital Marketing". It's a curious term, which commands respect from me, simply because I have no idea what it actually means. I think it might be a buzz-phrase that we just need to have access to, conversationally. It deals mainly with harnessing the might of Social Media. Digital Marketing is a quiet power, that sits beneath almost everything we scroll and scan and click. A po

Being still, looking, and listening activates the non-conceptual intelligence within you. Let stillness direct your words and actions. ~Eckhart Tolle The world is testing our mental soundness. Fueled by the dramatic and life-changing weather patterns, coupled with disinformation and misinformation propagated by mass media, the collective atmosphere has thrown many off-kilter and left many feeling out of sorts. Yet, the quest for Equilibrium is always present, and a quiet call

Have you ever been told you weren’t listening… when you absolutely were? It’s a strangely frustrating accusation. You were there. You heard every word. You could probably replay the conversation back if asked. And yet, somehow, the conclusion is the same — you weren’t listening.The difficulty, of course, is that you don’t get to decide if that is true, or not. Listening is one of those curious things that feels entirely internal, but is judged almost exclusively from the outs

Everyone makes mistakes. We recognise them on a bit of a sliding scale of real-time. Often they are seen immediately as glaring errors of judgement, sometimes only after months or years of emotional, financial or physical investment, give way to a proportionate sense of "Ooops".. and of course, an important learning and growing opportunity. A mistake is something we generally only recognise after the fact. It's often accompanied by a "wake-up" moment - both literally and figu

Guest Writer - Dr. Stephanie Burchell Take a second to look at everything in front of you right now. If you’re like me, you’ve got at least a few browser windows open (each one loaded with tabs you “ need ”). Your email inbox is steadily filling up in the background. Teams keeps popping up messages from different teammates. And of course, your phone… In other words, you’re multi-tasking. The problem is, there’s no such thing as multi-tasking! As multiple studies have confirm

I think we are all sufficiently familiar with the concept of 'conservational re-wilding', for the subject not to require a lengthy intro. In an eco-nutshell, it's designed to help prevent species extinction and restore balance to our ecosystems that have suffered as a result of human activity. We have priotised control over nature for centuries, with a rather obvious disrespect. So how is that all going? Humans love dominance. It's in the soup of our DNA. The rank of an indiv

"To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance". Oscar Wilde When asked why I did not write about relationships, I thought, but I do. Everything I write is about ‘relationships.’ Not in the traditional sense of couples or coupleship, but every interaction is related to something or someone. So I pondered, and here’s what emerged. We are connected to all things: friends, family, coworkers, animals, nature, the world, and ourselves. Being a part of a

There is a particular kind of lonely discomfort that comes with one-sided friendship maintenance. I mean it's certainly better on paper than having "no one at all" - hopefully none of us know the depths of that sorry pit. It comes more from actually having people - important friendships with

Being single on Valentine's Day, is not everyone's dream scenario. We are bombarded with noisy, brass band-volume messaging around the normal of being smack in the middle of chocolate box relationship land, where heart-shaped balloons are such fun , and a piece of heart-shaped toast pops out of the hearty toaster and you both giggle at the sweetness of it all. Valentine's Day sucks so badly for some of us, that it has an actual negative, psychological effect. Of course Sain