Being Aware in the Moment

My blog is all about living in times of change ...and of course it could be said - and it is said by many people - that that change is simply part of the cycle of life and living ....and this, in one sense, is very true. A month ago we were in the deep freeze of winter and now the snowdrops and daffodils are appearing with all the renewed vigour and energy of spring.

But that sort of change and cycle is expected, it's predictable, re-assuring and it tells us all is well, there is an underlying stability....

And that, of course, is so unlike much else that is happening today, like the changes currently unfolding in the Middle East, where events are unfolding with a kind of quicksilver re-activity..with protests and unrest contaging from one country to another with a rapidity which is extra-ordinary.

I had an email from a friend teaching in Bahrain with some of the local 'street' news he had heard there that doesn't necessarily appear on the screen here. Yes, we hear that protests are beginning in Bahrain too, but do we hear that The King in Bahrain has tried to bribe everyone by offering every household a thousand dinars (something like one and a half thousand pounds!!) Or that the Kuwaiti Emir has also offered every Kuwaiti individual a thousand Kuwaiti dinars (more than two thousand pounds?) Both offers in an attempt to keep the status quo!

What an extra-ordinary state of affairs! A world that communicates so quickly, that is reading the trends as best they can as they are happening ....and attempting to be pro-active. And as the above example show, pro-active both in attempting to prevent those changes or pro-active in bringing them about.

It is often said that history repeats itself, but surely the wonderful opportunity of today, is to learn from the past, understand today and to forge a better tomorrow.