How I would have loved to have neat handwriting! At school, neat handwriting always implied orderliness and discipline and we knew instinctively that this type of student would be first in line to win the prize for efficiency. But I was not that student. My ambition was to write like Mona When I was at school I sat next to a girl called Mona. She was shy and didn’t talk very much but she had the most beautiful handwriting.  She had the tidiest, loveliest handwriting I’d ever seen. Each middle zone letter was perfectly rounded and exactly the same size. All the lines were equidistant and a ..read more

Trying to acquire self knowledge is like looking in a mirror but only seeing a frontal view of yourself. Your friend watching from the sidelines can see so much more – like a crooked hem or a missing button. Or maybe she’ll notice that it’s just the wrong colour or even the wrong size for you. Viewing your reflection in a mirror is one thing, but imagine how much more difficult it is to view your own personality! It’s impossible to see yourself as others see you. Not only because it requires a lot of self knowledge in the first place but simply because it’s impossible to be objective about y ..read more

Frustrated Bees We have a hive of bees under the roof near the bathroom.  They aren’t much trouble in winter and we hardly know they’re there.  But in the spring they go crazy. They seem to get intoxicated by the spring air.  They get so excited that they lose their way and get into the bathroom through the open window. Now, rather stupidly, I get sorry for those bewildered and frustrated bees.  So I spend quite a bit of time carefully fishing them out of the bathtub with a tissue and sending them out on their way. Sometimes I can find up to 40 bees buzzing frantically agai ..read more

My Teacher was a Dragon I had the most awful maths teacher. She was like a fire-breathing dragon and took pleasure in intimidating me. She breathed fire on my ineptitude and her anger burnt through the timid offerings of my workbook. She wielded her pen like a cutlass and my handwriting bore the scars of her ire for many years. If intimidation was her purpose, she succeeded pretty well because I had a fear of maths ever since. She was every pupil’s nightmare and I retell this with some satisfaction because decades later I still feel relieved that I am out of her clutches! That period in my lif ..read more

My aha moment burst upon me like a veritable light bulb. I had been watching Walter Isaacson conducting an interview on TV with Tracy K. Smith, when she  quoted two simple lines from a poem by William Butler Yeats called Tom O’Roughley. Of course anyone can quote a poem – but Tracy K Smith happens to be the 22nd U.S. Poet Laureate. So I sat up and listened: And wisdom is a butterfly And not a gloomy bird of prey. Brief but meaningful. Now I had studied some of Yeat’s poems while still at school though at the time their deeper meaning escaped me. But now on hearing these few words someth ..read more

I had the most awful maths teacher. She was like a fire-breathing dragon and took pleasure in intimidating me. She breathed fire on my ineptitude and her anger burnt through the timid offerings of my workbook. She wielded her pen like a cutlass and my handwriting bore the scars of her ire for many years. If intimidation was her purpose, she succeeded pretty well because I had a fear of maths ever since. She was every pupil’s nightmare and I retell this with some satisfaction because decades later I still feel relieved that I am out of her clutches! That period in my life made me realize how im ..read more

How do you deal with loneliness when the holiday season seems to be the loneliest time of the year? Everyone around you seems to be buying presents, preparing meals and going to dinners and parties. When you feel alone it rubs salt in the wound to see so much activity and so much shopping and scurrying around. Your only wish is that it would all go away as quickly as possible. What are you to feel when the whole world except you seems to be bubbling with fun and holiday spirit? Your loneliness is accentuated by all this contrast with your own situation. So you pretend to be bright and hap ..read more

Because it aroused conflicting emotions in me. As a child I was given a shiny new piggy bank to introduce me to the virtues of saving. The little porcelain pig had a smiling face but I hated it with a passion because of the conflicting emotions it aroused in me. You see, I knew I would have to smash it one day if I wanted to get at the coins. I never smashed the silly little pig.  But the conflicting thoughts bothered me for quite a while. Though I didn’t make the connection at the time. Years later I realized that it was somehow connected to the idea of a chicken having to break its shel ..read more

If you think you are, don’t let perfectionism ruin your life. So many of us are stressed out from trying too hard – but hitting a blank wall. Are you expecting too much from yourself? Sure we expect a lot from ourselves. It’s called ambition. But are we guilty of shifting our ambitions and stresses onto the shoulders of our children? Are we expecting too much from them by asking them to be perfect students when we were not perfect ourselves? Perfectionism may appear to be the ideal but in reality it’s the enemy because it can ruin your life. Perfectionism is a certain route to disappointment a ..read more

Creativity is about connecting with yourself. It’s not about curating or finding other people’s quotes. Real creativity comes from something deep inside you. And the best way to connect with that something is not by any artificial means but with something simple and organic. In actual fact it’s quite easy. You just need a pencil and paper. Then relax and let it flow. You may start very tentatively but eventually your pencil will take over – and mirabile dictu, you’re on a roll. So why a pencil and not a pen? Because a pencil is psychologically less intimidating. And you can always erase what y ..read more