Gong Xi Fa Cai; is a blessing commonly given upon greetings during the Chinese New Year; roughly meaning, I wish that you will be prosperous.

Prosperity during this time has many connotations; luck, success, peace and joy.  It is your chance to leave behind all of the past year grudges, to reconcile and sincerely wish peace and happiness for everyone. It is the time of year that every home, place of work, office, right down to desk drawers are thoroughly cleaned to sweep away any ill-fortune in hopes of making way for good incoming luck.

This is our third Chinese New Year here. The first was two weeks after we arrived, the second we enjoyed in peace in our new home in Chiayi, and the third is this year, the year of the dragon. The dragon is considered the luckiest of all the zodiac signs for a dragon symbolizes power and excellence, valiancy and boldness, heroism and perseverance, nobility and divinity. A dragon overcomes obstacles until success is his. He is energetic, decisive, optimistic, intelligent and ambitious.

The longer we’re here the more I find us adopting this cultures way of life. From the way we cook our food, to madly cleaning our home this weekend, to learning the stories of the holidays and telling them to the children with excitement and enthusiasm. And this year I’m embracing the spirit of the dragon.

I plan to release my inner dragon and tackle every obstacle with the egotistical confidence of the dragon, knowing that I will succeed. So whatever obstacle you perceive to be in your path this year, ignore it, for you have to power of the dragon this year. With ease the dragon can swim to the depths of the ocean and to the heights of the heavens. With the ferocity of your dragon you will achieve.

So once again, Gong Xi Fa Cai.

Two years ago Albania suffered a massive flood that displaced a lot of families and lost lives. A year after they had rebuilt they held an educational activity for over 600 students that encouraged children’s rights and education. They played games, danced, sang songs and wrote poems about education and their rights as children. They were given a forum, encouragement and added power to their voice.

Education does not yet have a strong foundation in Albania. It is a poor country that often needs their children to drop out of school to find work and help provide for their family. Girls still struggle against old ways and traditions of the Roma and Egyptian rural communities ; struggling to get out from under the belief that girls don’t need to be educated but rather married off young and start a family.

But Albania is newly out of Communism, having only lived under a democratic government since 1992. They grew up in a society that dictated their direction in life but Albania is now walking on their own two shaky legs. But walking forward they are, gaining in strength and confidence like an excited toddler who’s discovered the giddy thrill of inertia of plunging forward. They are digging themselves out of poverty, pushing against organized crime, creating loud public forums for children and filling little girl’s heads with possibilities of their future.

They are educating, they are a member of the United Nations, voices are being heard, ideas are being generated and life is getting better by the sheer determination of its individuals. Changes are being made by single minds joining together by the common desire to improve.

It was rather inspiring to research, a country bursting forth, so young in its freedom and so appreciative in its ability to choose, finding drive in the knowledge of their own power as an individual mind or as a collective and deciding which way to look, run, create and grow.

That’s all life is, a string of choices that lead us in certain directions. We dictate our course through decisions, reactions, apathy, desire, belief, fear, laziness, excitement or resolve. Our choices decide if we’re a good person or a bad one, patience or foul tempered, if we demand respect or allow disrespect; what difference we make contributions we give or the people we interact with. We are the direct result of choice.

Albania is embracing themselves and showing the world that change begins with the awesome power to choice.

It has only been in Taiwan that I’ve got myself diagnosed and treated for this reoccurring infection I get almost yearly around this time and it’s about fun as it sounds. My doctor did comment that it had been such a long time since he’d seen me and the pharmacist giving me my meds at the doctor’s office made the same comment. I replied that it was a good thing, he agreed saying it ‘means you’re taking good care of yourself.’

It’s not easy taking good care of you; it really isn’t, I get up at 5:30 in the morning, five days a week to do work out videos, I walk four days a week, I’m vegan, and I drink a lot of water, take proper vitamins, do my research and drag my husband along with me to do the same. Hey, I’m keeping him around with me. All of that is years of educating, perfecting, dedicating and telling myself over and over again that I am gifting myself the joy and benefits of health.

I know you’ve all have known or know someone now that is suffering from some form of illness and every time I hear about someone else getting cancer, watching co-workers suffer through four weeks of colds, being surrounding by constant germs of my students, my conviction becomes stronger. Stop being apathetic about your health people, and take yet another health message, this time from the grumpy girl eating her pus in Taiwan, and love yourself enough to say, I am worth the effort.

If I could have avoided embarrassment of appalled faces or the attention of airport security I would have fallen to my knees there in the Toronto airport and kissed Canadian “soil.” It’s hard to describe the elation I felt to be back home for good after two and half years in Taiwan. It had only been the last nine  months that was so difficult for us, but it was a year of daily count downs, turning stomachs, hateful mind laser being directed at our bosses and missing everything about Canada.

“Never, never, never, EVER again are we coming back!” I exclaimed to Craig wanting to tell my boss how I really felt, but Craig in his infinite patience with me and trusted intuition calming replied. “Let’s not burn our bridges, you never know, we may come back someday.” “NEVER!”  was my mature response.

It will be two years this Monday, January 2^nd 2012 that we’ve been in Taiwan. After six years Taiwan was put back on the possibility plate because life had surprisingly turned us around and faced us in the direction of the East and we saw what we had vehemently turned out backs on for six years.

I’m a big planner, I love list, and schedules, routines, goals and direction, but I also do adore life’s surprises, nudges in better directions, flashes of insight and the exciting magic of the explained. Of course I’ve had my anxiety attacks of “what are we going to do?!” (I’ve had a couple these past two weeks) but typically once the fog of those anxieties are cleared the answer to that question is given, just as it was revealed with decision to move to Taiwan again.

I’ve found a lovely balance between steering my own ship and placing trust in uncontrolled winds. It’s only natural to feel fear when you don’t have a clear view of how things are going to work out, but then I let go of the helm, stop fighting the winds and consent to be directed.

It’s a wonderful feeling when you choose to let go of that turning black tar in your chest that you’re huddling in your struggling arms and trying to see through, trying to find the answer and command a solution. It’s hard to relent what you perceive as your power and control, to trust in something that is not being directed by your hands, but it is being received with your open mind and influenced by your faith. You choose whether to blind yourself with panic and anxiety or free yourself to the possibilities constantly floating around us waiting for us to see them and reach out to grab them.

This new year of 2012 I choose to be the best captain of my ship, but also to work with the waters and winds of the open sea. To steer to towards unknown destinations to explore and learn and to be guided to places I didn’t know I was meant to go. I will trust in myself and have faith in everything beyond me. I will learn life is a relationship between self and the unknown and the lesson is to embrace both and accept both unconditionally. In a healthy relationship one does not possess all the power, rather it is shared and you work together and have confidence in each other. 2012 is my year to find a satisfying balance between what I can do with my life and allow life without anxiety to display what it can do for me.

Happy 2012 family and friends, it’s going to be an amazing one.

Now that the difficulty of the holiday season is two years behind me, I am no longer struggling financially, nor feel embarrassed to have to tell people we can’t afford to give gifts this year, or feel angry that no matter my good intentions I still felt the immense pressure of the culture to consume, give and spend, now that all of that is removed I am starting to re-experience the joy of childhood Christmas’s. I’m looking back, leaping backwards over all the Christmas’s after I left home and re-entering what Christmas was with my family growing up.

Living in a large family is literally living amongst a group of many unique individuals. Small groups form, girls and boys separate, playmates are those close in age or who you share a room with, it’s dictated by interests, humour and likeability of those individuals. But Christmas was one of the few times that age and differences were put aside and we all enjoyed the day together. The mysterious older brothers would suddenly talk to the younger siblings and show interest in their gifts, the mean brother was full of smiles and cracking jokes, young and old got along without fighting, pushing, pinching or name calling.

I also remember Mom laughing a lot, most likely from the sheer giddy relief that it was all finally over and there were no tears over bad gift choices (well except perhaps the salty peanuts you gave to Josh!). Dad cooking breakfast to the tune of Christmas carols on the local radio station, that no one wanted to eat because we had filled up on jujubes, cheap foil wrapped chocolate and Pot of Gold.

Yes, if you ever questioned if the Christmas magic existed, it was clearly evident in the Martin household that was full of smiles, laughing, us getting along and playing the family board game together. There was shared warmth and happiness that was present in all our hearts, which beat in tune with the other and its drumming began Christmas morning. I assure you, this was a very rare occurrence and one that abruptly ended around the 27^th, but one I’m looking back on with immense fondness, love and appreciation.

There is one vague Christmas morning experience I recall from early childhood that has stuck with me all my life. The younger we were the more excited we would be to run downstairs and begin experiencing Christmas morning together, but the rule had been we were not allowed to go downstairs until Mom and Dad were up and ready to lead the way. My memory recalls one Christmas morning when I was around perhaps five years old and I sat huddled at the top of the stairs with all my brothers and sisters, gazing longingly down the dark stair case that lead to the living room and evidence of Santa’s visit. It was still dark out, my oldest brother had my baby sister on his lap and we whispered and giggled and shushed each other as all eight of us were sitting outside of our parents’ bedroom door. Of course two parents can’t ignore the strained, high octave voices and giggles of their eight children, so they got up and jolted us to fully active, ready children when their door popped open.

I don’t remember the gifts that year, nor do I recall much of any gifts on any given Christmas (except not receiving salty peanuts) but what I do remember and now feel and see much more clearly this holiday is the joy we all experienced together on that morning. It didn’t happen often growing up and it certainly doesn’t happen now since we’ve all left home and have become fully developed individuals outside that group dynamic, but I can warm myself with that wonderful, beautiful old memory of times when ten distinctive, exceptional people felt love, happiness and magic all at the same time. Humorfully, but aptly, the image of the Who’s in Whoville circling the town Christmas tree and singing comes to mind: Fahoo Fores, Dahoo Dores. Welcome, welcome Christmas Day.

Merry Christmas Mom, Dad, Dan, Christopher, Damien, Heidi, Josh, Nicholas and Meghan, I cherish those times when I never felt closer to you; all my love during the holiday season.

“Cong, cong, cong,” (their sound effect for knocking on a door here).

“Who is it?” I ask my student with a big grin on his face at playtime.

“It’s Santa, I have a gift for you.”

“Santa! I’m so happy to see you! You brought me a gift? What is it?”

“Salty peanuts!” I laugh uproariously.  “Your wish came true!”

“You’re right, my wish did come true, thank you Santa!”

The students showered me with block salty peanuts, LEGO peanuts, they filled boxes with them; they drew pictures of Santa coming to my house as I slept and leaving salty peanuts under my Christmas tree. Why salty peanuts you may ask, well one Christmas about 17 years ago a chubby 16 year old teenager had one wish for Christmas, she wanted salty peanuts.

I swear to you, that’s all I wanted. I got a taste for them at some cousin’s house and I became obsessed. It was the only item on my Christmas list that Mom asked of us every year, it was all I talked about, dreamed about, craved and desired. When Christmas morning finally arrived I was relieved that I would no longer have to wait, I let out my held breath and dove into my stocking…Nothing. Torn paper, eager fingers, happy voices around me and still nothing! “Heeeey, Becky, look what I got.” My younger brother Josh, with a mischievous grin plastered on his pimply 14 year old face held up a large bag of salted peanuts. Then he proceeded to laugh at me.

Thankfully he was one of my more generous siblings who didn’t tease me with it (well not after laughing at me when he first revealed them to me) or make me beg, though of course he didn’t give them to me, Mom had given them to him, he kept them in his room and I had to demean myself to ask my younger brother share my gift with me. And to my credit I didn’t react the way 3 year old tantruming guitar smashing Josh did when he didn’t get a drum set for Christmas. I have more pride than that.

I don’t blame Mom (but of course I did), she had a family of ten to provide for on Christmas and keeping everyone’s gifts straight must have been a nightmare (though I reiterate, it was the only thing on my list marked Becky’s Christmas List, I’m just sayin’) and she was extremely generous to a family that had no idea how difficult it was to make ends meet. And I guess, thank you Josh for not being too big of a jerk and sharing them with me.

So this brings me back to my students giving me salted peanuts. It being Christmas time and I often tell childhood stories that connects to themes being taught I had told them this story, and clearly they had all intuitively felt my bitter pain that had transcended those 17 years and felt it was I who deserved to be gifted the one thing I had wished for Christmas. So my wonderful students made sure I received it and even exclaimed “Your wish come (came) true!” I can finally let it go now!

This example is one of the reasons I love Christmas this year. I’m going to be a little Grinchy here and be honest with you, I was really starting to hate Christmas in Canada. First, I hate buying gifts; I find no pleasure in it, only stress because I never feel I’m giving the right gift to the right person. Second, I’ve always been poor and parting with money that really needs to go to bills and food made me angry and feeling pressured to do so. Thirdly, the feeling among the adults in the few weeks leading up to Christmas was acidic tasting. People felt stressed, pressured, anxious, nervous and nasty. I couldn’t wait for it to be over.

But this year, it being our second Christmas here and feeling like I’ve finally shaken that feeling I have been loving the magic and simplicity of it with my students. The Christmas carols, fun crafts, stories, talking about different ways we can express love without presents. With the use of a book called Christmas Makes me Think, we talked about the less fortunate, the animals that are killed and the trees that die.

The children have suggested we decorate trees outside so we don’t have to cut them down. To give our toys to children who don’t have any. One student even wrote a letter to Santa and told him not to bring her any toys because she didn’t need any more. Another student drew a picture of Santa on his sleigh and reindeers and marked on his bag in bold letters was AFRICA (one student had mentioned that African children don’t have any toys) and all the gifts were going to them. We discussed shelters and soup kitchens and they all embrace the idea that it was A OK with them if Santa didn’t bring them a toy on Christmas Eve because that toy would go to child that had none.

We even explored the story of Jesus (there were flashcards of baby Jesus and Mary in my Christmas teaching material). Now, here in Taiwanese culture, fables, stories and legends are told to explain the many holidays here, but the children don’t view them as fact, just stories of fantasy, just as they did with the Christmas story. So I enjoyed telling it and didn’t feel churchy doing it, or forcing them to believe in it, it was just another legend to them and they thought Jesus was a very kind man and that’s why we do kind things for people on Christmas, just as he did and they also think Jesus is a kind magician.

So I love that I’m living in a culture where Christmas time is not about spending, giving and receiving gifts, or people going further into debt, or people feeling sad or depressed because they have no one to celebrate with. It has been a wonderful opportunity for me to instill different ideas, to give their curious, developing, spongy minds something to chew on, to show them different directions we can go, a different way to look and react to things and embrace assorted concepts without having to accept or conform to whatever everyone else is doing or expects you to do. Everything that is, that is tradition or expectation was once a new idea, starting your own and knowing it’s right for you is something I feel this Christmas is teaching me.

I hope what you are doing for Christmas is right for you and yours and I wish you a loving holiday season.

The End

I looked high and low, but that’s the county of Akrotiri. I got excited because I kept coming across information about the city of Akrotiri on the island of Santorini in Greece that had a cool history of being perfectly preserved under volcanic lava. It was really interesting, but alas, it was not the country of Akrotiri, the air base owned by the England.

So I decided to take a more festive angle and I came across special days in December. I do apologize a bit for the length, but it really did put me in the Christmas spirit. Enjoy!

December 4 – International Hug Day

A hug can say an incredible amount without uttering a word. It says I care for you, I love you, I support you, I encourage you, I miss you, let me comfort you. It says I don’t want to fight; I want to be close to you. It says don’t be afraid I will protect you. I want to take care of you, I’m proud of you, you make me happy. It says don’t go away, I need you, be safe, it says welcome. It says hello and good bye.

What did you last hug say? Happy International Hug Day.

December 7 – Letter Writing Day

I used to be a big hand written letter person. I had a friend in high school when she went away to college we wrote letters to each other. Our letters could be as long a 3-10 pages of hand written thoughts and feelings. Since I’ve had a computer of my own it became a more practical source as it was more effective with keeping up with my thoughts.

Though I know the art of the hand written letter has gone the way of the instant age I still love writing letters to people. I dedicate the time, effort, careful thought, precise wording and emote as much emotion as I can through the written word. I love the power of what a combination of written words, black on white, can evoke.

I’ve had to come to the acceptance that most people don’t dedicate the time to writing letters/emails, and this has been a hard one to learn being so far away from family and friends without a chance to see them, my only form of connection is through letters.

So if you’re feeling inspired during the season, I’d love, love, love to receive a letter from you; happy Letter Writing Day.

December 8 – Winter Flowers Day

There are a large variety of winter flowers ranging in color and beauty, but my favorite has to do with the feel of it; the Crocus. I go on later how beautiful winter can be, but I’m still a warm blooded Canadian and when I see a Crocus peeking out of the snow in a melted patch, with my down coat unzipped, my toque in my hand and scarf untied, I know Spring is warming up to make its debut real soon and that is a very happy feeling.

It’s nearing the end of the season, there’s more slushy gray snow than the sparkling white, your heating bill is getting on your nerves, you’ve had more dark cloudy skies than the blue sunny ones and you just want to see a little color again.

And then that sweet little Crocus of white, purple or yellow peeks out at you and you feel this warm flutter in your body. It always surprises me because they do arrive when there’s still plenty of snow on the ground; they seem out of place, got their time wrong, it still winter little flower, how did you get here?

They are a winter flower, but they cosy up to their pal Spring and they’re giving you a little heads up and telling you not to give up hope, winter is almost done and soon Spring will bring you color, warmth, buds, and the sweet scent of regrowth. They’re a prelude to what is to come, and so I welcome the adorable little Crocus and revel in his charming appeal; happy Winter Flower Day.

December 14 – The 12 Days of Christmas Begins

Fun little song right? Well you may be interested what the lyrics actually mean.

The twelve days of Christmas are the twelve days between December 25th, the birth of Jesus, and the Epiphany, January 6th, the day Christians celebrate the arrival of the Wise Men and the revelation of Christ as the light of the world. And the 12 gifts to Christians are…

1. The partridge in a pear tree is Jesus.
2. The two turtledoves are the Old and New Testaments.
3. Three French hens stand for faith, hope and love.
4. The four calling birds are the four Gospels.
5. The five gold rings recall the Hebrew Torah (Law), or the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament.
6. The six geese a-laying stand for the six days of creation.
7. The seven swans a-swimming represent the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.
8. The eight maids a-milking are the eight Beatitudes.
9. Nine ladies dancing are the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit.
10. The ten lords a-leaping are the Ten Commandments.
11. Eleven pipers piping represent the eleven faithful Apostles.
12. Twelve drummers drumming symbolize the twelve points of doctrine in the Apostles Creed.

If all that means something to you great and if you’re a religious person than it will give the song more strength, but Craig and I are looking at the 12 days of Christmas a little differently. We’ve decided to celebrate the 12 days leading up to Christmas with acts of romance, love and fun. Just another opportunity to show we love each other.

Regardless of the meaning, it still a fun little ditty.

December 17 – Bake Cookies Day

Since setting out to lose weight and lead a healthier lifestyle about seven years ago and then going vegan I’ve learned a few tips about baking and how to make recipes lighter and more importantly, healthier. This being the season for Christmas cookies and wonderful baked gifts I think we could use a few ideas to not add to the waist line this season. Of course if you eat the whole batch I have no sympathy for your weight gain:

• Always substitute white flour for whole wheat in your baking. More fibre and protein and helping those bowels move with more ease to evacuate all that unhealthy food you’ve been consuming.
• Use Splenda instead of sugar. I know we want to avoid artificial sweeteners, but when baking with high levels of fat and sugar, it’s good to go a little lighter. So when that recipe calls for 1 cup of sugar you are adding 829 calories versus 1 cup of Splenda adding only 96 calories.
• If you feel uncomfortable with sweeteners, then definitely go with organic sugar. Organic and regular sugar both contains the same amount of calories and fat, the difference between them is how they farm it. Organic sugar farmers do not use any chemical pesticides and herbicides on their sugarcane or sugar beets nor do they remove any of the natural molasses.
• If you’re worried about cholesterol and want to lighten further, you can substitute eggs for flax seed. Eggs in most recipes are for the purpose of binding and flax seeds do the same trick. You can find flax seed at any health food store throw them in the blender, blend until a powder and mix 1 Tablespoon of flax seed powder and 3 Tablespoons of water, let sit 3-5 minutes, and you got yourself one egg. Works perfectly.
• This one I love. Substitute oil for unsweetened applesauce (take it a step further and make your own applesauce). Good bye fat and calories and hello a moister texture and it won’t make your cookies or cake taste like apples if you’re concerned.

I’ve make cookies with no sugar, no oil and no eggs and they taste fantastic; happy baking.

December 20 – Go Caroling Day

My students and I started singing Christmas carols this week and the childish delight I get singing these fun songs makes my chest swell with giddiness. The images they invoke, the memories they spring forth, the sights and sounds swirl around in my head like fat sparkly snowflakes.

I know how it is back home, Christmas carols seem to start up the day after Halloween and they play the same ones over and over and over again until you gag on the words, but there’s something different about singing them with group of people. About wrapping your own voice around the words and hearing a friend or family member doing the same next to you and both of you, the whole group of you are being charged with energy of what that song means to you. Sure you can’t sing as well as Bing Crosby or croon or harmonize like the men in dashing, jaunty hats, but no one can feel them the same as you when it is your voice that brings them to life.

Happy Caroling Day.

December 21 – Winter Begins

It’s your right as a Canadian to complain about the weather, but it’s also our right as a Canadian to brag about the majestic beauty of our seasons. There are only a limited amount of countries that get the full beauty of winter, the sparkle, the ice kingdoms, the painfully blue ice cold skies and the shimmering diamond white of new fallen snow.

I know, I’m in Taiwan and I no longer have to drive in it, slip in it, bundle up against it and pay to be warm because of it, but, well this man says it well:

There is nothing in the world more beautiful than the forest clothed to its very
hollows in snow. It is the still ecstasy of nature, wherein every spray, every
blade of grass, every spire of reed, every intricacy of twig, is clad with radiance.

William Sharp

I have complained right along with you, but there are few visions of beauty that move me more like a sparkling sunny morning after a night of silent falling snow. Happy First Day of Winter.

 December 24 – National Chocolate Day

Ah chocolate, my friend. I can trace my life through the years with my relationship with chocolate (I keep capitalizing chocolate as if it’s an important title or name). Chocolate makes people moan, scrape their plates, makes children jittery with excitement and your body say ‘thank you for that decadent gift.’

Growing up I was always a fan of the cheap chocolate Noname brand cookies that Mom used to buy, but my favorites were, if she had a coupon for it or it was on sale, were those Dare chocolate cookies and the Decadent Chocolate Chip cookies by Presidents Choice. FYI, those are made that much more fabulous when they’re frozen. Thank god Mom had a two limit cookie rule growing up. As torturous as that was it saved me from binges. Perhaps the loss of that rule had something to do with my 20 pound weight gain when I moved away from home. I didn’t wait for sales or cut coupons, I just attacked those cookies in my college room dorm.

It was the foil wrapped Santa’s and eggs at Christmas and Easter; the milk chocolate bunny on Easter morning. The mini chocolate bars at Halloween and the Mississippi Mud dessert my aunt Laurie made at Thanksgiving. Oh! And the few years I got a box of Turtle chocolates for Christmas, I practically whimpered in pleasure as I ate those nibble by gooey nibble in my bedroom in the basement so I wouldn’t have to share. Yes, chocolate and I were lovers.

Then there was the chocolate truffle. My life changed after that. One holiday in my mid-teens my brother brought home his girlfriend (now wife and I can understand why after these chocolates!) and she brought chocolate truffles as a gift to his many siblings. When that dusty, earthy, bitter sweet lump on chocolate (we laughed with adolescent squeals that they looked like poo) hit my tongue and instantly began to melt and fill my mouth my knees nearly gave out. I had never experienced anything like that before, and since Mom wasn’t watching and there was no rule for guest chocolate you can better believe I binged on those bad boys. After that day my palette compared every chocolate that entered my mouth to those truffles, and every day my palette searched for that sensation again. After I learned what they were in my adulthood I discovered them again in my late 20’s. And they still made me close my eyes, shudder and lean up against a piece of furniture. I raise my glass to you Truffle.

Okay, I know I could continue on about this, like the time Craig and I had the turtle cheesecake at a local bakery/café in Stratford, Ontario. You know how they say good chocolate can release endorphins? Well Craig and I ran to the privacy of our home after that experience. Or the dessert that was popular in the early 2000 in chain restaurants, the Chocolate Eruption, the Pop of Gold’s on side tables at Christmas, the Ferrero Rocher chocolate in their shiny gold wrapping, oh dear chocolate, how do I love thee.

So on December 24^th, ya, ya, it’s Christmas Eve, but it’s also NATIONAL CHOCOLATE DAY! And I’m going to say thank you to the Olmec Indians who were the first to grow cocoa beans and the Mayans and Aztecs were the first to develop the first ever chocolate sensation, the hot chocolate. And one more big shout out before I close this, to Christopher Columbus for introducing the cocoa bean to Europe where our creative European friends then created what we know and love today.

Happy, happy, happy chocolate day.

December 24 – Christmas Eve

My hope is you get to experience this with some child, be it your own, students, nieces or nephews, because Christmas Eve is one of child’s most magical moments. And though I don’t have children of my own, I spin, and create and twirl the children who I care for, imaginations till they are dizzy and heady with anticipation and enchantment.

I remember Christmas Eve as a child and I would almost be sick with excitement at the thought of Santa and his reindeers landing on our roof, entering own home while we slept (though this image does scare some of my students, frankly I think they have reason to, a strange white man entering you home as you sleep and walking around and eating your food, a little creepy) and placing gifts under our twinkly, fragrant tree.

We live in a world that has lost a lot of fanciful mystery and though I was devastated when I found out there was no Santa Claus, I would not give up the years when I knew there was. Embrace magic when you can and I hope you will on this night.

December 25 – Christmas Day

A very Merry Christmas to all my loved ones.

December 31 – New Year’s Eve

It’s the promise of a new year that is so enticing and alluring; to leave behind troubles and difficulty of the past year or to celebrate the success and happiness of it. To feel you have a chance to better yourself and fill your heart with promises and good intentions. To feel excited about what is to come, what discoveries can be made and marvel at the ones you made in the past year.

Your slate is clean, you canvas ready to painted, your stomach quivers in anticipation as that clock counts down, as those seconds of the past year are becoming memories as you chant. When those two hands align your new life begins again and anything, anything is possible. And this magic happens every year of our life; happy New Year’s Eve.

Happy Holidays to all of you.

Love,

Becky

What I enjoyed about this exercise, researching and exploring the good side of Afghanistan is that it truly did add to my quality of life. It replaced things within me that may not have been in the fore front of my mind, but none the less had a place of prominence in my view of that area of the world. It calmed the bubbling muddy waters of what I’ve heard and knew about this country and its conflicts. It gave me an opportunity to allow the murky water to settle and for the water to clear somewhat so I could see beyond the polluted dirt and receive a purer picture.

This pursuit of mine is not about me plugging my ears, squeezing my eyes shut and shouting ‘la, la, la, la’ at the top of my lungs, I’m not ignoring the difficulties this world suffers, but rather I’m choosing to see it from a different angle; an angle that is much more loving and joyful, to bring more of that into my life and to balance out and overshadow the flow of negativity.

We rely so heavily on what is fed to us, accepting it, absorbing it and allowing it to settle within us that it becomes reality and fact in our psyche, cementing in negativity without an understanding how so much of it compounds upon itself until you are heavy with the damage of it.

I choose to break out of that mold and actively seek out what is hidden from us, but is as real and alive and bold as the bleakness that envelope us from too many angles. This is me running out, dedicating my energies to seek and with the knowledge that with loving effort that I will find.

Afghanistan

Superstitions:

So on to my first installment of the Joy and Beauty Network I want to start this blog with a few warnings. Dear treasured and loved and ones, please stay away from rainbows, and most definitely do NOT walk under one! According to Afghan superstition you will change sexes if you do! To clarify, if you walk under a rainbow boys will turn into girls and girls into boys. My goodness! Unless of course it is your life’s mission to do so and can’t quite afford to do it yet, then get out there hunting for those colorful magicians, I’ll even help you.

I hope you’ll be more attentive when doing your daily chores after reading this. Watch your feet when you’re sweeping up your children’s fallen crumbs and bountiful pet hair. For if your feet touches that said broom you will then be falsely accused of something! I say that’s quite the defense, one to pull out of the back pocket if someone points a finger at you charges you with a crime. “But your Honor, I understand why he is falsely accusing me, I was careless and I brushed my foot with the broom”. Case dismissed!

I know we all do things senselessly at times. Twirl your hair, bite your nails, bounce your leg, but if you want to keep life sweet don’t ever open and close scissors mindlessly, for if you do bad luck will befall your life. The universe cannot understand why one would open and close scissor without purpose, surely such a foolish act must be punished with bad luck. So only have those scissors on hand when you need them!

For new parents out there, a few helpful tips, you’ll need a few coins (clean ones!) for these. If your baby is, God forbid, born with an outie bellybutton, get out that clean coin and secure it firmly on top your child’s bellybutton for three days. When the coin is removed, your darling baby will no longer suffer from such a hideous deformity, for they will then have an innie. Another one that requires a coin; though you may want to be prepared in advance because you need a gold one this time, but make sure it’s clean (this is explicit!), is if your baby is born jaundice you let them lick a clean gold coin. Viola! worried parents and doctors, problem solved. You can thank me later.

These of course are but a few superstitions from this culture, but it was amusing to come across them and include them here as it’s a good example as something that connects us to a culture we feel we have no common ground with. We have all grown up with our parents or grandparents sprouting seemly ridiculous reasons why they are doing something or avoiding another. Shaking our heads at how people could possibly believe such absurd notions, but every culture has them, everybody has an older family member that gives you nonsensical advice with great seriousness with their long wrinkled finger waggling in your face. Whether it’s rooted in Canada or Afghanistan, we all have our irrational suspicions.

Poetry:

According to the United Nations statistics, Afghanistan has a 72% illiteracy rate. Without most of their people being able to read or write I discovered in my research this week that poetry is their main source of education, passing of tradition, history, stories and entertainment. This is a nation that has the hearts and souls of poets.

The Afghan people often use a term when debating or arguing a point: ‘Sha’er mega,’ meaning “The poet says.” They quote great poets to validate their opinion or idea. They lean on poetry for support and turn to them for answers that they believe in as strongly as their own thoughts and ideas.

They communicate in poetry, they teach their children the great Persian poets, their memory and history is entangled among words that have rhythm, rhyme and are spoken with a lyrical air that creates spoken music.

I came across many Afghan poets. Some philosophical:

The knowing , the perceptive man
is he who knows about himself,
for in self knowledge and insight
lies knowledge of the holiest.

If in his heart there is no fear,
his deeds are not those of the good,
pay no heed to one who’s skilled
in quoting the Qur’an by heart.

Some moving:

By blood, we are immersed in love of you.
The youth lose their heads for your sake.
I come to you and my heart finds rest.
Away from you, grief clings to my heart like a snake.
I forget the throne of Delhi
when I remember the mountain tops of my Afghan land.
If I must choose between the world and you,
I shall not hesitate to claim your barren deserts as my own.

Others thought provoking:

Who makes these changes?
I shoot an arrow right.
It lands left.
I ride after a deer and find myself
chased by a hog.
I plot to get what I want
and end up in prison.
I dig pits to trap others
and fall in.

I should be suspicious
of what I want.

And all beautiful:

Oh’ Great Mountain, reaching far into the sky!
How long will you find satisfaction in self love?
Though just a tiny butterfly, I am yet free,
To dance on a flower head while you remain shackled.

There was as time in our culture when poetry played a big role, my own mother used to exasperate us with very long poems she memorized from her education that would burst forth by some random word or phrase someone said. Poetry entertained the pharaohs of Egypt and regal royalty of England, recited in the rich households with expensive champagne coursing through their veins. But that is no longer the case; poetry is seen as an old art form. People don’t feel they understand poetry and certainly don’t seek it out or take the time to memorize them or recite them at the dinner table. But in the poor homes of Afghan, in a country torn apart by war, hate and fear they create or recite poetry to relieve, express, share, calm, entertain and strengthen themselves and each other. And I think that’s a mighty beautiful thing.

The Beauty:

Seeing a vision of beauty soothes cradles and lulls. It’s like silky soft sucky blankie being gently laid over your thoughts and feeling and saying ‘hussssssssssshhhhhhhh, go to sleep now.’ It quiets you and fills you up in one deep breath. It makes you feel the power of something bigger, and if you don’t believe in things like that, regardless, you suddenly feel a part of the bigger. It steals time, breath and negativity right out of you leaving you with physically feeling beauty.  As flowery as my writing can be, even I can’t put into words how beauty physically feels, but we all know how it feels, and we need more of it. So here are few pictures of Afghan’s beauty.

A Prayer to Afghanistan

When I think about how much hate, fear and ignorance is funneled towards you 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it makes me sad. So this is my humble contribution to send a little love your way; to the children who live in innocence, to the many poets who string words together to express beauty and deep emotions of your people. To the people of Afghan who love their country fiercely and to the people who live away from their cherished home and are bombarded with words of aversion and generalizations.

Forgive us; forgive me, for only allowing the negativity of your beautiful country to settle on my mind and heart. For choosing to accept what I heard and saw and never once sought beyond it. Now I am looking beyond the darkness and I have seen light; I have seen beauty and profound love and I am grateful that now blots out the many years of night that has cast dark shadows on my perception.

With love from me to you,

Becky

Epilogue

I hope you enjoyed this piece I’ve written about Afghanistan (I know how to spell that properly now), I thoroughly enjoyed my week researching and writing it. For the first time in a long time I had something to look forward to after work, something that made me excited, eager about, made new and interesting thoughts bounce around in my head. I hope that you too have the same thing that gives you the feelings as I’ve discovered. If you haven’t yet, if you want, it will come to
you.

Have a joyful and beautiful week.

Next installment: Akrotiri

But I did find the source, I found that answer that rested my subconscious somewhat, but I still needed to find a way to lay its concerns to rest, quite literally. It occurred to me after spending another evening after work on the couch in front of the TV flipping through the channels. Through my rapid channel changing I was bombarded with sounds of firing guns, exploding building, shrieks of pain, maniacal laughter; over to CNN about war, terrorism and fear. Frustrated, I snapped off the TV and turned to my book of the week, Stephen King’s The Stand; where I read about murder, insanity and suicide; tossing that away I stumble to the computer and online news stories reported about governments failing their people, diseases seeming to bloom within a large unsuspecting and innocent population. It all made me want to sit on the cold tile floor and weep uncontrollably like a child who is just so overwhelmed and doesn’t know what to do with it all.

I felt weighted with this constant onslaught of violence, fear and pain. From the real life tragedies and suffering, to making it into entertainment to amuse us made me heavy with sadness and anger. I’ve been finding it increasingly difficult to balance it with joy in the face of constant woe.

Woe to me is best description for the way we feel every time we close the newspaper in the morning. When we turn off the late night news before we climb into bed, are you not afflicted with a bit of sadness and despair for what the news have told you the state of world is in? Don’t you feel troubled that generations of children are being entertained with images, games, books, movies, and TV shows filled to the bursting point with violence, fear and misery?

Now this coincided with a bitter sweet discovery about myself. The sweet part being I’ve achieved happiness. I’ve got what I’ve been working for all my life; a great relationship, a great job, a beautiful home, financial security, confidence, health and inner strength. Awesome…now what do I do?

Then comes the bitter part; I have truly left myself feeling embarrassed about this. I don’t know what I want to do with my life now. I don’t know what interests me, what direction I want to head, what goals I feel passionate about or things I want to pursue. I’ve spent my adult life fighting for security and all my fantasy and daydreaming was merely a technique to keep my head from dipping below the surface and drowning in the cold waters of my struggling life. I indulged in them because they sent me to a happy place that made me smile and distracted me from the strains in my life, but I never thought they could be reality; it was a mind trick, a soothing game to propel me through difficulties. Now I have the freedom, the security, the strength and confidence to achieve…but what do I want?

So I asked that question over and over again for days, feeling increasingly more frustrated, but one word kept bobbing in front my face. JOY. Joy, joy, joy, joy. I want to feel joy. “…as though you’d suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle.” —Katherine Mansfield. That’s how I’d like to feel please.

So how do I achieve joy? Well that brings me back to the first part of my ramblings, about feeling overwhelmed and bombarded with the dark side of life and noticing how it seems to dominate everything around us; images, radio, ads, entertainment, newspapers, magazines, books, TV, etc. Everything outside us has a deep and profound effect of how we feel and perceive from the inside out. When we see acts of terrorism and war we feel scared, when we see pain and suffering we feel sadness, when we read about tragedy we feel helpless; every negative image or word read elicit a negative feeling within ourselves. And the thing that has always nibbled away at me is there is so little goodness reflected back to us in the same way. Not that there is little goodness amongst all this negativity, but that the beautiful part of life is only showing in one theatre among the twelve, and it’s showing in the old theatre with crappy chairs, small screen and gummy floors. Get my drift?

There is so much joy and beauty out there and I feel it’s not getting the same attention its pal pain and suffering. Years ago I mused that there should be a network solely dedicated to all the good, beautiful and happy things that go on in the world. From the small acts of kindness, to the snuggling deer and dog (saw that one on YouTube) to things that make us laugh and images of breath stealing beauty. A network you could turn to and guarantee to make you smile and produces a much kinder feeling that warms instead of making your stomach ache.

So I’m starting my own version of that. I’ve decided to start with selecting a country of the week and researching it for unique facts, fun stories, recipes of their food, discover their landscapes, traditions and interesting stories and images of beauty. It will be for the purpose of allowing the light to shine on things that is mostly kept hidden to reveal joy and beauty.

I’m simply going in alphabetical order and interestingly enough the first country on that list of 257 is Afghanistan. I think a perfect place to start because when that four syllable word is uttered or read people have an instant thought or feeling about it and I’m betting it’s not a positive one. Well that’s going to change, if for anyone, I want it to change for me and I hope it will for you too.

So I hope you’ll come along with me as I begin this new hobby of mine. I feel excited about it, I feel like I’m on the brink of something…well something good. And since the idea came to me early this week my nights of anxiety are beginning to dissolve away.

Stay tuned for the debut of the Joy and Beauty Network.

P.S. I’m adding to this the following evening because I wanted to share how my night went last night after spending the evening researching Afghanistan for the first time.

It was filled with smiles and a few giggles very late into the night. I still had trouble sleeping but this time it was dominated by fun facts, interesting things I never knew about this country, traditions that sounded beautiful and images of their snow-capped mountain ranges played behind my eyelids.

Feelings that play out in my sleep are very often acted out by the children whom I am working with at the time. If I’m feeling anxious I often have dreams that they are sick or lost but last night my students danced and laughed around my classroom spouting facts and asking me to tell them more about this mysterious country.

So even though I still lost hours of sleep I didn’t begrudge it, in fact I joyfully gave it over. For I was having sweet dreams about Afghanistan! So tell me, who here reading this has ever had sweet dreams of Afghanistan? Yah, that’s what I thought.

How do you feel when you hear these things excitably exclaimed in your face as they glow from the inside out with happiness? Perhaps you feel a bit green-eyed?

Here a few of my guilty experiences of envy. A friend designing and renovating her future home with future husband; a very talented writer has self-published his own work twice over, working on the third and quitting his job to write full time; family able to go to family
celebrations without a chance of me attending and one as silly as a someone
growing their own fresh, organic food.

That very talented writer is my brother by the way and I’m ashamed that I haven’t posted his blog address on here before. I humbly do so now: joshmartinink.wordpress.com.
Check him out and buy his books, he’s gifted.

What I’m getting at is this. When we hear of other people’s good fortune, admit it or
not, but one of your very first reactions is…I want that. You feel a little twinge of questioning why they got so lucky, why are they so successful, why do they get rewarded…why not me? And somewhere amid your applauding smile you feel a little bit of resentment towards that person.

This feeling came face to face with me this past weekend when I finally got around to
writing and congratulating my brother on his very exciting and bold endeavour.
The thing is my mom had told me an embarrassingly long time ago, but until I
wrote him I had not realized how limey my vision had become.

I congratulated him but also told him I was a bit envious as well. Once it was in black in
white that word crept off the page and into my chest and I didn’t like how it
felt. As happy as I was for my brother it wasn’t as pure as it should have been
because it was murky with a fine emerald mist of jealousy.

It made me pause and I found myself writing: Negative feelings breed negative thoughts which in turn create negative actions. Doggonit, you’re right Becky Martin! So I began to revaluate how I have reacted privately and quietly to other people’s happy news and I discovered I was having negative feelings and thoughts resulting in negative actions.

Never were the negative actions towards the person who I was genuinely happy for, but
often it would come out in others ways, like a bad mood, throwing off my
routines, being late, irritability and snapping at my husband.

So I’ve decided to heighten my awareness of my thoughts and feelings towards other
people’s successes, rewards, hard earned achievements, victories or good ol’
fashion good luck. Even though the person is never aware I have these feelings,
sometimes neither am I, I feel it can soil the positive thoughts and feelings I
am actually sending them.

I don’t like the way that little monster makes me feel or react to the joy of others, so it
stops today. Congratulations brother Josh for your many successes that has been
earned through courage and hard work. To my beautiful friend Karen who is
building her future home with her now fiancé (announced today!!), I know I’ll
build a castle with my king when the time is write to secure roots. To my
brother Damien who has acquired the knowledge and skills to become greener and
healthier, I hope to learn more from you in the future. To my family who puts
in the time and effort to see each other during times of celebration, I am
happy you are maintaining connections. And even though I can’t be among you I
have nary regret about moving here when we did because one cannot regret being
embraced by a place that opened me up, shook me, cleaned me out, and offered me
clarity. The peace and knowledge of that is worth a congratulations.