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“The hardest thing about ‘everything happens for a reason’ is waiting for the reason to come along.” — Unknown I have started and deleted the opening sentence of this column no less than five times this week, which, for me, is unusual. Usual...

“Nobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am and what I need – is something I have to find out myself.” Chinua Achebe In this journey to somewhere there are plenty of sunny days if we are present enough to recognise them ...

“No good deed goes unpunished.” Oscar Wilde I have to admit I have often wondered what inspired someone to come up with today’s quote, but I actually had no idea who said it. I then discovered, to my surprise, that it is frequently attributed to Osca...

“I learn by going where I have to go.” The Waking by Theodore Roethke As I sit in silence, I say to you this – there is no backwards. Backwards is but an illusion, a game we play in the mind – some might say to amuse ourselves; others might say to t...

Yesterday I was walking in the glorious sunshine with my husband, Bill, on Elbow beach. The sky was an achingly deep blue, the colour of fine porcelain, and the crystal-clear water swirled amongst our bare toes, numbingly cool and pure. We just came ...

Today I have an interesting question for you – can self-belief ever be “selfless”?

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” — T.S. Eliot In case you are still hesitating to come outside, winter is over, the longtails are back and it’s time to take a long slow deep breath of fresh air an...

“Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change.” Frequently attributed to Albert Einstein Continuing last week’s analysis of fishy quotes, let’s take a look at the well-known one above which is f...

Has the technology of the moment stolen your focus? That is the question being posed by bestselling author Johann Hari in his new book Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again. The idea that the human attention span is ...

I remember a friend from Sweden telling me that Swedish is a very difficult language for non-native speakers to learn because a correct understanding of the language depends not so much on knowing the vocabulary as it does on understanding how to int...

My all-time favourite television commercial depicts a small child standing at the edge of a swimming pool. Her father is standing in the water attempting to encourage her to leap towards him, but rather than simply admit that she is too afraid to jum...

As part of my ongoing series of video chats with Project Heaven on Earth author Martin Rutte, this week we recorded a segment on the subject of "building community". Interestingly, Martin and I share a similar experience of the concept of “community”...