Lessons from Eddie the Eagle who never gave up

Posted on by nyamazela

“What is courage?

As Ordinary discovered, courage is not the absence of fear; rather, it’s choosing to act in spite of the fear. You could say that without fear, you can’t have genuine courage.”

The Dream Giver by Bruce Wilkinson

Eddie the EagleI come from a running family. My father, uncle, brother, mother, sister and many cousins run – some are serious runners, tackling marathons and off-road trail runs, some dabble in short and medium distance running. For my family, running has always been the best way to a sense of achievement in fitness, a good sweat and an endorphin injection. Continue reading Lessons from Eddie the Eagle who never gave up

The story of a life well lived

Posted on by nyamazela

“The world isn’t just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no?

Doesn’t that make life a story?” 

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

kenneth pridhamLast week I attended my first funeral.

At age 17, I went to a memorial service for my Latin teacher who had died of cancer at a relatively young age, but never had I been to a funeral. The funeral was for my father-in-law’s cousin – the last of his father’s generation though far younger than his own father. Kenneth Pridham died at age 93. He attended our wedding and I’d seen him fairly regularly at lunches with my in-laws. In my limited times with him I had begun to get to know a somewhat fragile, quietly-spoken, tall elderly man who enjoyed discussing history, politics and current events, who had a lively sense of humour and loved cheese, but didn’t eat much lunch. Continue reading The story of a life well lived

Life’s little contradictions

Posted on by nyamazela

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Tea always helps

I started writing this post on Monday. It began with:

“Devastated. Test taken. Test failed.”

I walked away from that draft to do something too unimportant to mention and when I came back to it this morning, I find myself removed from the lines I’d written. It’s a strange anachronism to be confronted with my very own ‘ghost of Christmas past’ – ‘Nyamazela yesterday’ was ready to give up, ‘Nyamazela today’ has picked herself up again. There is no rhyme or reason to this. Continue reading Life’s little contradictions