My dad died recently, of old age – 97 – and I was lucky enough to be with him for his final days. Through this experience, I have had a grand dose of the incredible kindness of other people.

I had loving support and kindness from friends and family, but also from the doctor, the district nurses – thanks to our NHS! – the funeral director, the minister who took the service for his funeral, his neighbours, the lovely lady who cleaned for him, and then those people who deal with all the paperwork and processes post-death.

Everyone I’ve encountered has been helpful, considerate and supportive, and between them they have made the whole business easier to deal with.

I am sometimes questioned on my belief in the essential goodness of human beings, but yet again I have been reminded of just how lovely people can be, and not just those closest to you, but also complete strangers who have no emotional attachment.

It gives me hope for our world in the midst of the noisy surface chaos and mess and lack of care, because lying just beneath that surface is compassion and warmth. When we relate to each other from our hearts, we remind each other that we may have created the mess, but we can also create the solutions between us, because we are essentially caring beings.

Yet again I am reminded to stay with my optimism that we can create a better world.

My daddy loved to learn. He thrived at school and at college. As a small boy, he taught himself to make model aeroplanes. When in the RAF, he took up fencing, horse riding, sailing and ballroom dancing, as well as doing the day job.

When he got married and had a family, he learned how to do DIY, service his own car, grow fruit and veg, and do dressmaking. When computers first became available, he had one of the earliest models and even taught himself how to programme it as well as use it.

And in his later years, he decided to train as a reiki master, and researched not just that, but also nutrition, meditation and Wiccan.

The result, besides being multi-talented and able to turn his hand to anything, was that in his 90’s, he was still as bright as a button, with all his mental faculties. Even 2 days before he died, he was still giving me instructions on what to do with his things, and explaining how to make the perfect gin and tonic!

He was a great role model for the benefits of keeping the mind active and exercising its plasticity.

And it meant that he would constantly surprise me. He was set in his ways as far as habits were concerned and liked his routines, but mentally he expanded his horizons. For example, when Brexit came along, my dad – a conservative all his life – extolled the benefits of being in the EU, with more cogent reasons than any politician. I also got a full lecture on herbal supplements and their uses when I kept getting colds!

Staying active mentally, being curious about other possible points of view or approaches, exploring anything that interests you – these all give us not just knowledge, but also a level of wisdom, and enable us to be truly alive.

So let’s keep learning..

Dedicated to my beloved daddy, who died on 10^th November 2019 of just old age,

I was talking with a friend the other day about the state of the world, as you do. And it is only too easy to get depressed and feel powerless as you go through the things that are in a mess: politics, our injustices, our environmental issues, our broken institutions and support systems, the high levels of stress that most people seem to have.

But feeling depressed and powerless doesn’t make any difference to anything, except us, in a negative sense. So we launched into what we can do that makes a positive difference.

Firstly, we need to notice any positives there are: the gradual slow improvements that underlie the mess. For example, most people in the UK do now recycle a lot more than we used to, and we now have more awareness of bad behaviour and poorly run institutions, because they are scrutinised more and that information is available. This helps us to have a more positive frame of mind.

Secondly, we can educate ourselves. That increase in information means that we can find out more, and have all sides of the argument before we form our opinions.

Thirdly, we can take action. This can be as simple as reducing our own use of plastic, or treating others as we would like to be treated. Being the change we want to see in the world is more powerful than we realise: if everyone did a little bit more in their own lives to make the world a better place, it would change the world.

And we can go further. We can talk about the issues with others, share the expanded information we discover, and influence them to also take more action in their lives. In this, we need to be careful not to become judgemental or evangelical in our attitude. I don’t change someone else’s view by trying to bully them into it, or by criticising them. And I need to respect their position. But I can expand their view, or explain more clearly my own reasons, or suggest possible benefits to them of making a change.

Finally, we can make our voices heard. We can join in protests, vote, write to our newspapers/MP’s – we can come out of the silent majority.

I’m not prepared to sit passively by and see our world go to hell in a handcart – are you? I may not be a Greta Thunberg – I’m not that courageous – but I can do my bit…

I’ve never been particularly keen on the expression ‘positive thinking.’ It has somehow a built-in tendency towards pretending that everything’s great, and ignoring anything that isn’t by burying your head in the sand – that’s the ostrich reference! I prefer to call it constructive or useful thinking.

The intention of the phrase is good to remember though. It is about the perspective you choose to take on whatever is happening, not about avoiding the reality of what’s going on. No-one has the perfect life, with everything working well – even if it looks that way from the outside, we all find some things irritating or frustrating or upsetting. So the trick to making it work as well as possible without pretending is two-fold.

Firstly, we need to make sure we notice what is working for us. This isn’t just about appreciating the good things in life; it also sets us up a constructive or positive frame of mind.

From that, we can look at what isn’t so good in our lives, and decide what to do about it. There are some things we can actively change. For example if we have a dripping tap that is irritating us, we can call a plumber and get it fixed – (confession: it took me over a week to finally do this!)

There are other things we can’t change directly, but we can change our reaction to them. I can’t magically stop the pouring rain, but I can either dress appropriately to be out in it, or treat it as an opportunity to do an inside job I’ve been meaning to do for a while, or just an opportunity to sit and read a book or watch a movie. I can make the best of the situation.

We don’t feel any better about things that aren’t so good in our lives if we just moan or complain about them, or if we berate ourselves for letting it affect us negatively. The situation doesn’t change that way either.

We do feel better if we remember that those situations aren’t all that’s going on in our lives – some parts are good – and if we choose to act or react differently, so as to alleviate the negative effect.

And it’s really all about feeling better about our lives, isn’t it?

OK, so I haven’t really found 101 yet, although I’m not far off! And I’ve only been looking at those things we take for granted.

My dad has lost his hearing temporarily, and I was thinking about the impact that would have on my life. TV and films would lose a chunk of their appeal, no music, wouldn’t hear the phone ring or be able to call anyone, wouldn’t know if someone came to the door – it’s a massive impact.

And that led me to thinking about how we take our senses for granted. We can feel, taste, smell, hear and see, and we don’t even think about it normally. Plus, our limbs move in a co-ordinated way, so it’s easy to move about, our hands can grasp and hold, our bodies just get on with complex procedures like digestion, repair, immune systems. Oh, and all those trillions of cells that we’re made of can co-operate and support each other in their various roles. And none of that requires conscious effort on my part.

Wow!! ‘What a piece of work is man’, as Shakespeare said.

Then there’s our minds, which manage all the amazing things our bodies can do as a matter of course, but also absorb and store incredible amounts of information, which enables us to remember, assess, discriminate, and learn and grow. I know they can also cause us problems, but they do a pretty good job on the whole.

So, without even looking outside ourselves, we have a lot of wonderful reasons to be thankful we’re human.

Add to that the simplest of our needs being met on a regular basis and we must be close to my 101 reasons. I’m referring to a bed to sleep in, a roof over our head, food on the table, water we can drink no predators hunting us so a level of safety, easy access to clothes to keep us warm, lights if it’s dark. We just take all of these for grated don’t we? I know I do most of the time.

It’s easy to get pissed off, feel life isn’t great, wish things were different. And on those days it can be hard to find anything to be thankful for – we just notice all the things that confirm our state of mind.

I think it is useful to remind ourselves of all these reasons to be thankful – it helps us to change our state of mind, and to realise that life isn’t that bad after all..