I started a business. It made me want to drink copious quantities, smoke myself into oblivion and hit my head against a brick wall. Instead I wrote a blog.
Yesterday I met the most amazing woman. Here on the tiny island of Brännö, there are pockets of amazing-ness secreted in almost everyone I meet - from the woman who teaches Ghandi's strategy of non-violent protest, to the lady who runs workshops on mindfulness and the guy that is single handedly extending his one bedroom house to 4 (in the evenings after his other work).
My latest discovery is of the winner of the home baker award of the year 2009 for her Tit Muffins (...only in Sweden).
In case you were wondering Tit means exactly the same thing in Sweden as it does in England. The amazing part is not that she created a delicious muffin as a joke and won the whole bloody competition but that she did it whilst undergoing tests and treatment for breast cancer in the two years between the birth of first and second son. And she did it to support pink awareness month...which most probably saved a lot of lives (ladies, check your tits NOW...;-).
When life changing events happen through tragedy it can open our minds to the greater good or turn us into victims. But which way the cookie crumbles depends only on us, on our mindset and on our strength of character.
Strength of character isn't available for purchase or won in the lottery. Despite my belief in making things easier for families to be together, strength of character is built through the difficult choices. Rather topically yesterday, Seth Godin's blog contained the following passage:
When someone says, I had no choice, it's probably more accurate to say, "the short-term benefit/satisfaction/risk avoidance was a lot higher than anything else, so I chose to do what I did."
Remarkable work often comes from making choices when everyone else feels as though there is no choice. Difficult choices involve painful sacrifices, advance planning or just plain guts.
Saying you have no choice cuts off all options, absolves responsibility and is the dream killer.
If you absolve yourself of responsibility on a regular basis it becomes a habit and you become a victim. But if you look in the mirror and address the flaws, chances are you'll pull through.
The tit-muffin inventor asked me whether it was scary writing a blog that was so personal, whether it led to any repercussions. My response was this:
'Blogs are both an easy and hard type of authoring. As mine is more or less a daily diary I have nothing to hide behind.
How I feel, what I go through - I can't invent or cover anything up. I don't design a fictional tale nor do I recount events in the third person. It's therefore pretty easy and straightforward. But being honest and true to yourself, in public, day after day is also difficult because it exposes your weaknesses.'
The truth is a difficult pill to swallow. Bet a tit muffin makes it go down a little easier though....