Simon Nicholson

2019. Lets go.

perspective, real estate

A little look in the rearview mirror as we slide into 2019.

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The beautiful road back from our holiday, through Northern Transkei, and into 2019.

If I wanted to choose a movie title to best describe my last year, it would be Fight Club. Or maybe The Long Walk to Freedom? My bank account’s cash flow would best be visualized like the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan… absolute carnage!

A career in real estate is not for the faint of heart. Earning commission selling houses in a third world country that is battling through a recession, whilst politicians threaten property redistribution without compensation, is quite honestly a mad man’s game.

If you can look past the aforementioned horror show there are diamonds in the rough: new friendships, freedom, and true satisfaction of sailing your own ship. 2018 taught me much, but the most important thing it gave me was a belief in myself, in my plan and the simple truth that if you want something, you can roll up your sleeves and go and get it.

Every fight comes with its own small amount of glory. There are 52 agents in my office and roughly 250 on the north coast, every day it’s me vs everyone else. On all good property deals, it’s always a race to the finish. Closing a deal reminds me so much of my early surfing career, that feeling of winning an event was the exact same rush.

I love it.

The property market on the north coast was buoyant in 2018, largely thanks to the increased influx of young families from Durban and Gauteng. Ballito is a very unique space in the sense that it has found itself in a prime position after the new airport was built, and sugar farmers started offloading large tracts of land, close to the town’s heart, for developers to custom design living spaces that are perfectly in line with the demand of new generation. The result has been a radical expansion, as huge investment money has poured in. Elaleni, Zululami, Barbets Crest, Birdhaven, Loxley, Mont Calm, Tahari, Brooklyn and Ballito Hills are just a few of the new estates currently being built in and around the Ballito area.

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Barbets Crest is a new development going up alongside Simbithi Golf Estate,

Simbithi continues to be a favourite, with its location, facilities and incredible lifestyle offering. I live in a sectional title unit, a 3 bedroom duplex in the estate, and by far the two biggest perks of our lifestyle are they security and the lifestyle my kids live. With many young families in the sectional title complexes, our kids spend most weekday afternoons and all weekends running amok on the nature trails, fishing in the dams with their mates. Joel has a watch alarm set for 5pm so he knows when it’s time to make his way back to the house. Not only is it a great way to grow up for them, it’s a huge pressure off Kimmy and me as parents, because we have space, and the TV remote!

As much as estates are the premium demand, we saw freestanding homes bounce back into favour again this year, as prices continue to climb in gated estates, free-standing houses (which have had minimal demand in previous years), found themselves as great value for money in 2018.

I sold R50 million worth of property this year, 12 of those 14 deals were neck and neck races with other agents. One thing you can be sure of, if it’s a good deal, there’s going to be multiple offers, and navigating that deal to the finish is the hardest part of this profession. It’s something I’m really starting to enjoy the pressure of (I only lost 2 deals to other agents). My most intense negotiation this year was a R10 million cash deal, which was close to a record high price in Simbithi. It went backwards and forwards over 3 days until we settled at R10,650,000. Such a rush, and a great boost for my own confidence in negotiating and closing big deals.

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A view worth every cent.

No matter how much the deal is worth, the highlight of my year in sales always comes back to the people I get to meet. This year I’ve worked with some incredible people, made some new friends, but few more inspirational than Mr Harold Mac Millan.

Mac, as I’ve come to know him, is a character like no other, and getting to meet people like him is exactly the reason why I love my job. My first intro to him was quite an experience, a range rover pulled up, with the number plate Mach2, which left me half expecting a Ferrari loving racing fanatic who shmaaked to go fast,  instead out jumped the closest looking human to the Goonies pirate, One-Eyed Willie.

A few years ago life granted Mac the cruel privilege of a tumour behind his eye socket, and as a result, half of his facial bone structure had been surgically removed. Steele plates and bone grafts had been put back to restore his faces shape. A patch of skin has been sewn over the place where his eye used to be, leaving him with literally half a normal face.

Now I say privilege of a tumour because life can really be a shit, you can guarantee it will throw you curve balls and how you decide to respond is what makes you who you are. What Mac has lost, has only left more space for his incredible human spirit to shine through. A decision he probably made during a very dark time, and one that defines his true character. Perhaps having walked so close to death, free’s a person to truly shine the way we all should. Mac walks this earth free of the limitations that many of us carry, and when he speaks to you, it is direct, straightforward, and from the heart.

We connected instantly.

Anyone who knows me knows I have a dark sense of humour and love a good laugh at life’s cruellest jokes, somebody once described it to me as “cheap laughs in dark times”. I like that. Mac is no different and disarms everyone he meets with comical quips about his appearance (he introduced himself as the pirate of Simbithi), not allowing you a moment to feel sorry for him. But what’s really cool about him is his passion for life, this guy ain’t waiting for tomorrow, he is ALL about today!

He came to me through a good friend, looking for an investment property, and we struck gold pretty quick. We closed a deal on an apartment in Simbithi, and it needed a lot of work to get it into a rentable state, but scooped it for a fantastic price. Now on average, it takes 3 months to transfer property into a new owner’s name, and it’s never advisable to begin renovations until it belongs to you. If anything goes wrong in the transfer process, you risk losing any money you spend on renovations.

Trivial things like this weren’t going to slow Mac down. He asked me to get permission from the seller to get started early, which I did, and when I walked into the property a day later, the entire place had been dismantled, tiles ripped up, cupboards sent for a respray, lights replaced… all this in one day! Ol Mac wasn’t messing around. When people operate on that level, it inspires you to raise your game too. Over the coming days we sorted out locks and keys, fixed the garage, re-tiled, sanded the deck, and found him a tenant (a good mate of mine who I think connected with him instantly as well), now we only have to wait another two months for the lawyers to catch up and register this place.

The point of my story about Mac is really just to give praise to a person who inspired me this year, those connections are rare. It’s so easy to feel sorry for ourselves, to say life’s unfair and make excuses. Mac reminded me that we should only make room in our lives for positive energy, regardless of our circumstances, life is not fair and never will be, we should grab a hold of our passions and go after them like there is no tomorrow. Cheers to this legend for giving me a new perspective, something I value a lot in this world.

Kimmy took a big step this past year too, starting her own photography business, and it has taken off! We both really wanted careers where we decide when and how we work, so we could maximize our holidays and time together. You can see some of her work at littlemcdonald.com (she is the youngest of three McDonald siblings). She has specialized in property images for real estate companies to start, with a few family shoots, a wedding and a even a hotel in the midlands thrown in to make for an exciting first year. Her real passion is wildlife and hopefully she will be shooting a game lodge soon. I’ll be there to carry the bags.

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So here’s a huge THANKS to those of you who I’ve worked with so far, it is always a pleasure working with my friends! I look forward to driving more of you around our town this year, talking nonsense, comparing war stories, venting about parental responsibilities, and connecting over a beer.

I’m really excited about 2019, and I plan to make the most of it. I wish you all good health and wild adventures this year, make the most of this trip around the sun.

See you all soon.

S.

Eternal Life

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When my wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2013, her biggest fear was not being able to see our kids grow up. There are two parts to this fear, firstly the personal fear of missing out on the experience, having Joel and Anna was easily our greatest life achievement, witnessing their journey to adulthood is one of life’s most rewarding experiences. The second part of that fear was the consequences of her death, and how that would affect them, how would they turn out without their Mom. Losing your Mom at the tender age of 2 and 5 would undoubtedly have consequences, pretty much a new mother’s worst nightmare.

After coming to terms with the fact that her death was an actual possibility, my thoughts turned to possible ways to preserve her values, memories and character so in the worst case scenario, she might still be able to have an influence on them in their growing years. She might not get to experience them growing up, but they could still have her influence through their formative years through video messages, and a small library of her thoughts.

The hard part was going to be getting her to agree. She was fighting cancer, and the possibility of losing that battle was not even a consideration for her, she was an extremely strong woman, this would basically be considering the possibility of defeat.

So I bought a video camera, and secretly started documenting quiet moments with the kids. Watching them back now with the kids, it’s pretty funny how to transparent I was, every time I pick the camera up she glares at me, and says, switch that thing off!

Over a few awkward and gingerly attempts I tried to get her to talk to me on camera. She wasn’t having any of it. Eventually, we had the conversation and she explained that she couldn’t do it. She was in a life and death fight for her survival and her entire focus had to be on defeating it. I agreed and dropped the subject.

Unfortunately, by the time we knew the end was close, she had long lost her ability to speak, or communicate. This was one of the few regrets I was left with after her passing. Should I have pushed harder? What else could I have done to preserve her memory?

It stayed with me, I thought about it often, I thought of writing a children’s book for them, with a storyline that described our love and our journey but I wanted something that would stay with them until adulthood. I kept her cell phone with the idea that they could somehow learn about their Mom through the things she followed, the pics she took, the texts we sent each other? It all felt very spaced out and disconnected.

Part of me was frustrated, convinced that had she been consciously aware that the end was  near, she would have left us something. Optimistically I searched her phone, her computer, her emails. I found nothing.

In late 2015 we had to move house, two days after the madness, I was sitting on the floor in the new garage, going through boxes and deciding what was going to come in the house and what was being stored. I noticed a book that I didn’t recognise. A diary. I opened the first page and the first words took my breath right out of my chest…

“My book of just in case…..To my darling husband…”

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What followed over the next 15 pages is hard to describe without tears. The bravest, most intimate messages to the kids and I, written in case that she didn’t make it. It was nothing short of talking to her from the afterlife, two years after her death. It was exactly what I had been looking for. It was something, even if it was just a few pages,  of HER, talking to the kids, in her words, in the future, from the past.

Since her death I had been thinking of ways to make a hard copy of myself, should the unimaginable happen and they lost me too. This very blog has always been a part of that plan, a record of my thinking, our journey. I sketched up a loose concept and emailed it to my friend Tank who takes ideas and turns them into real websites. The idea was a sort of an online family tree, where generations from now you could travel way back on your family lineage and meet your great great great great grandfather, learn what he stood for, and understand your heritage with an accurate first-hand account. He wasn’t convinced, saying it sounded a lot like Facebook and I kind of agreed. It lacked the hook, who cares what happens in 100 years.

Then I stumbled across this…

An app for talking to the dead? Woman brings best friend back to life as AI chatbot

What…!  No, they didn’t!

Oh yes, they did. When this woman lost her best friend, she was devastated and in an attempt to find closure (she happens to work with Artificial Intelligence Apps) , she fed thousands of his text messages, images and personal data into a chatbot with the ability to learn his style of writing, and personality, to create appropriate responses to real-time questions. The result…. hauntingly real life conversations with her long since dead friend. Creepy ? Little bit! Comforting? According to her , absolutely. It’s helped her cope with his death. And friends say that the chatbot has nailed his sense of humor, often making funny light quips about his tragic death.

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This was created after his death using what little they had left of his digital history. Which got her (and me) thinking, what if you built the virtual personality before death, what if you could give the A.I everything it needed to be a real as possible. From beliefs, values, actual voice recordings, facial expressions the neural network learns who you are and they way you react… you essentially are backing yourself up to a hard drive. Sure, when you die, you’re dead… but that doesn’t mean the people left behind need to lose you! I did some more digging… and found this…

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It’s exactly what I was thinking about! With a much better grasp on what is, and will be possible, they have got an incredible plan.

Using the latest in artificial intelligence, facial recognition, data analysis, these guys aim to build your immortal digital profile. But word is people have been waiting since 2014 for something to actually happen. I hope it’s not too far off.

So would you back yourself up? We all want to leave a legacy, don’t we? Nobody wants to be forgotten. Is there anybody you would like to have a chat with, that has left this place? Imagine you could simply text or FaceTime with your lost loved ones, hear their voice, listen to their opinions on your daily problems. Imagine my daughter, reaching adolescence and being able to text her Mom about her boy problems, and getting real advice back, in her Mom’s words… kinda like that scene from Man of Steel (Superman), when his dad appears as a digital avatar in the spaceship… God I sound like a nerd.

I know one thing, its a lot easier to build your digital backup before you are given a terminal diagnosis, besides most people don’t get time to ponder their departure like Jess did. I also know how much those few pages she wrote meant to me, and will mean to my kids one day. So I know I’m in. It’s hugely comforting to think my kids could have a conversation with my avatar long after my death, and its answers will be based on my logic and belief systems.

So I’ve signed up.

The full story about Roman Mazurenko’s chatbot and how they built it, read it here

 

 

 

Dear Anna, Dear Joel. Part 1

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Hi you rubbishes!

Well this is an experiment and I hope I can keep it going. I’ll keep adding to this as much as i can, every time you do something worth remembering, or just gathering material for black mail in the future…at the very least there will be some good stories for your 21st birthdays. Here’s a snapshot of the nonsense you two have been up too this year so far :

Sleep: you guys go down every night with minimal drama, slap on a playlist and 2 songs in each of your beds does the trick, i actually feel bad, it is kinda hypnotic, you don’t stand a chance, most times you are both twitching by the end of the first spiderman song…

But during the night…

The war continues! Anna sleeps all night, anywhere, anyhow! Joel not so much, you actually advised me last week that if I were to leave the wooden spoon next to your bed, you would definitely spend the whole night in bed. When I asked why the wooden spoon you answered “because mom used to use it and it’s much harder than a smack” thank you, point taken, I’ll be sure to use that in that future.

Eating: we negotiate dinner every night, the roles have flipped and Joel you kinda eat like a horse, Anna requires motivation and threats, perhaps wooden spoon can work its magic here too

Bathing: Both your favorite lately is family bath, when the three of us try to squeeze in, Anna combs my hair with the foot scrubber (charming) and Joel you hold your breath and squirt water from your mouth despite having just watched Anna “wee like a boy” into our little swamp of heaven.

Holidays have been a blast for you guys, the week we spent in Seal point gave you all kinds of confidence and independence which terrified the daylights out of me, but you are better off for it no doubt, you bonded with your cousin Mila for the first time, PoPo took you running in the sand dunes every day and your granny faraway looked after you for entire week doing arts and crafts so i could catch my breath. Your granny (Bal)Lito has been a star at keeping you entertained since you both got home, play dates, cousins, movies you name it! Truth be told I never had relationships with either of my grandparents like the ones you have with both sets. Very lucky kids. You better repay all the love when they’re old and rotten, visit them lots and spoil them.

Anna, you insist on your tea bottle every morning at 5 am whilst snuggling into my chest and watching Frozen for the millionth time. I love it too. Even if my eyes are burning and I’m in a foul mood from lack of sleep.

Joel you are part human part Dinosaur, perhaps more dinosaur with hints of human, you run around our house making that god awful noise , with your little arms tucked up like a T-Rex or Spineosaurus or Indominosaurus… I don’t know, you change your favourite meat eater every week… If Indy the cat bites you, and he does so regularly, it’s because he is so confused and terrified of what we bought home 6 years ago and what it has transformed into.

Your interest in the opposite sex is alarming… how would Yoda say… The force is strong with this one…. Kimmy has endless patience with your attempts to “by mistake” bust into the bathroom and see her naked. Nevertheless she endures and you continue to sneak. Definitely an appreciation of the female breasts in your future.

Both your favorite things are dancing in the lounge with the music full blast, tickles and rough play on the bed, which you try and lure me into every morning and every night. Joel … Endless hours of youtube videos dinosaurs, dinosaurs, dinosaurs… Anna you are not obsessed with anything specific, you dabble with a bit of Barbie, a bit of dress up, although you loving helping, no matter what it is, packing the dishwasher, cooking, juicing the veg. You guys have such good mates in our complex and not a day goes by where the gang is not up to something. Cian, Nathan, Troy, Noah Shaun, Noah, Riley, Rider, Ripp, Willow.

You guys drive me nuts and I still can’t be away from you for more than a few minutes without having a physical pain in my chest. Honored and excited that it’s my job to raise you for the next 20 years. Here are some pics and videos as evidence.

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Where Does The Time Go?

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So I’ve been really useless at keeping the blog flowing. It’s been six months since my last post.

I’ve been busy! I swear!

I’ve been writing a bit I guess, but nothing here which is supposed to be a legacy of thoughts for my kids one day, so this is me telling myself to shine up, and promising to be more regular.

I may have been quiet but I have not been idle! I penned two stories for our local surf mag Zigzag, one about Casey Grant which i also posted here, and I just wrote another one about that insane swell we had, the one that turned St Francis bay into a Mexican point break. The mag only comes out in a few weeks, so I’ll put it up after.

So much going on besides work and raising two toddlers, here is a quick debrief…I’ll try do it in one breath:

Deep inhale…Ace Ventura style:

In December I had an awesome holiday in Seals, the waves cooked and I surfed a bunch then it stopped so I had to sit still and which was very hard cause the last time I was there was with Jess so I had to deal with some stuff, had some tears, and had one very large night with my little brother Josh which I cannot remember the end of, but when I woke up I was best friends with Derrick Watts from Carte Blanche, which was cool but I was missing a beautiful girl called Kim who I was falling head over heels for so I flew home for New Years and we partied with her family and friends and a rhino and drank till the sun came up, it was the best new years I have had in years and I smiled a lot then I went back to work and surfed when I could which wasn’t much but then found a gap to go to Mozambique for a weekend which was amazing and the waves were amazing which my new girlfriend who had never dated a surfer didn’t think was so amazing but we had a jol and drank beer and watched the sun go down over a beautiful lake with some friends, and laughed, and then I surfed again the next day, which inspired me to enter the RVCA Jbay Open trials, which was a long shot, but all you rad people voted me in so I got chance to go up against the top guys in the country and I lost early and my legs were too tired to walk up the beach but had such a blast and then went back down to Cape St Francis to see meet my niece Mila and my brothers and sister and cousins and parents and it was very cool…..

Dramatic exhale.

All in all good stuff! Fun stuff!! Kids are doing great and we have been busy! My hair grew long and i got a fuzzy beard. My friends hate it and say i look like a Neanderthal, or blonde Jesus, then I tie it up in a bun and they get really mad, but that’s okay cause I’ve always wanted to grow my hair long and look like a hippy. I am amazed at the energy and passion I have for learning and hunting down new projects. I thought much of it was a knee jerk reaction to losing Jess, a sort of a way of distracting myself, but it seems to be a new way of life for me and I’m very grateful for that. I’ve got some big ideas floating around in my head and I’m hoping I can turn them into reality.

So as I keep mentioning (probably because I’m embarrassed to think people actually read this) this blog is a place where my kids can come back and read everything that was going through my head in their early years, and as they grew up, it might help them understand the decisions I made that might seem crazy years later (hey guys, pack your bags we are movin to indo!!) but it struck me recently whilst watching some incredibly old footage I found in my garage, that it’s a great place to tell them about themselves too. Where else am I going to keep all these funny as hell little movie clips, stories they tell, and other awesome little things they get up too. So I’m setting a reminder (part of my new weeks resolutions), every 3 months, I’m going to write them both a post, documenting the nonsense they have been getting up too, sometimes it might be stories, sometimes just pics or videos. It may seem trivial or stupid at the time, but looking back in twenty years its going to fill me with kinds of fuzzy warm stuff… after watching the stuff I found, I realized how fast it all goes. if I’m lucky enough to live that far, I may as well be smart enough to make it count.

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Speaking of making it count, I recently won a battle I have been waging unconsciously for 16 years! The DSTV disease!

The single biggest waste of time in my life since I moved into my first apartment, watching reruns over and over and over and unable to pull myself away. I finally disconnected DSTV for good, partly cause I can’t afford it, but mostly because it’s a load of repeating crap! I almost never saw anything new and constantly got sucked into movies I knew exactly how they were going to end.

Useless.

Anyhow, I upgraded my internet to an uncapped line (half the price of DSTV) and created a YouTube account, now I follow a bunch of my favourite channels YouTube accounts and every day I have fresh content that is relevant to me. I watch through my Apple TV and its crisp HD. Discovery, Nat Geo, Science channels, Vice TV (so good) WSL (surf stuff) all my favorite companies, brands magazines have YouTube channels with cool content, TED talks, come on!!! the smartest people in the world talking about their passion, craft, science whatever, in 20 min digestible chunks, for free! Every day! I cant get enough of it!

I find myself watching much more interesting and relevant subjects, less nonsense that I could actually careless about. If movies and series are you thing, streaming sites like PopcornTime (naughty but free) and Netflix will take care of your needs. Time is valuable, if I’m going to watch something it better be fresh!

All this free time on my hands and suddenly my brain starts working again! I started searching for stuff that really makes me tick, and stumbled onto this little gem.

Wait but Why.

You are bound to have come across this blog already, the guy is practically famous now….  its hard, there is so much content in your face every day, what is actually worth the time it takes to click… regardless, this is another opportunity to get involved… if you want to have some very relevant and complex issues explained in a way that makes you feel that you actually understand… this is for you.

My poor friends and family, I have bent their little ears off with all of this, the only person who has shown equal amount of interest, is my little boet, Josh, which is awesome when we finally get time to talk, then we can bend the shit out of each others ears. W.B.W is my current school for thought, it’s the site that has given my brain the best work out its had in years, hell, maybe ever! I have simply not come across anybody who can break down extremely complex and important subjects in a manner that makes them so easy and fun to digest.

Here are some of my favourite posts…

Elon Musk. This guy…. wow, ever want to feel insignificant in your achievements, just check out this chap… current projects… changing auto industry from petrol to electric, re-invent energy consumption on a global scale and remove humans need for fossil fuel, oh and colonize Mars…. all of which he is progressing fairly nicely with… and he is from South Africa too. You can read it here

A.I ….did you know that there is some crazy stuff happening in this world right now, really really smart people are building really smart things. It’s all very exciting if you ask me, and nobody sums the very complex subject up quite like Tim Urban. If you not interested to read any further , consider for the following for a second … there is a reasonable to fair chance that in that the next 20 years they will develop technology so advance that you will become immortal… it’s quite likely actually. Blow your mind here

His one post is about life weeks, and he offers you a new perspective by visually breaking down your life into weeks on a graph…. this is what it looks like….

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0 years to 90 years, each square is a week

Not THAT many weeks are there… are there….

You can read the post here, but the summary of what he is getting at is the value of every week, if you are lucky enough to live a full life… look at those squares… there not that many of them! So he suggests adopting a new weeks resolution, instead of a new years resolution… I’m sold!

If you are not sold and you think what a load of crap, I’m just going to wing it… maybe you want to have a good laugh instead… read this one, on procrastination. I cried, I really did, so funny, that monkey runs my life.

I’m still really into this whole teaching my kids valuable life lessons around their school hours and stuff, and welcome any links, ideas, info you might be keeping to yourself so your kid becomes clever and mine doesn’t… I always love the few weeks after I post a new blog and the people who reach out with info, suggesting things I might like and stuff to check out, its my favourite part of all of this. Please send any forward thinking progressive online teaching stuff you may have come across!

So that’s all the good happy stuff, not much room allowed for the rest. I’m sure those of you who have followed our story are wondering how I’m seeing somebody already, and how I’m starting a new relationship whilst still dealing with the loss of Jess. I’ll be honest, because really what else is there to be, this is me, there is no point in softening things up for anyone.

The truth is I don’t know, they are completely different paths yet inexplicably intertwined, the one has nothing to do with the other , yet they couldn’t exist without each other. Losing Jess was an experience that has changed me as a person, the world has a harder edge than what I would have believed before,  less romantic than it all looked a few years ago for sure. I’m still an idealist, even though I carry a wound that reminds at times to be a realist, the idealist still wins. It’s a choice.

There is a song that goes, “it’s better to feel pain than nothing at all, the opposite of love is indifference“.

I embrace my pain for Jess because to understand the great heights of true love, you must experience the pain of loss, you’ll never know you’re at the top until you’ve touched the bottom, that old chestnut. That pain only cements the value of what we had. I feel the same today as I did the day she died, it will never change. I will never get over it. That’s not how it works. But I will never live in the middle , indifferent to love because I am afraid of losing someone again.

I have so much love still to give, and lucky me I found an incredible person to give it too. Not even she will ever understand the role she has played in getting the three of us back on our feet. Nothing is forever so grab it while you can and hold on tight until it is ripped away.

So here’s to love! and making the most of life! and cancelling DSTV!

Peace and love from your hippie friend Simon.

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Time To Explore

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This picture is a good snap shot of my happy place, living where the land meets the sea, I find so much peace in the ocean, but mostly it reminds me that the world is a mystical place.  It also reminds me that I need balance. I took this picture on Thursday evening last week, its been a busy couple weeks at work and the end of the year is fast approaching. Kim and i sat quietly on the beach listening to the sea and breathing fresh ocean air, it was a good time to reflect on things, be appreciative for what i have. it got me thinking about the pace of life and how we go through it with comfort blinkers on.

We all cling to things that comfort us, things that we can bury our faces into when the world scares us…. for some of us its religion, for others its material objects to distract and play with, maybe its a person, who makes you feel safe, or the ocean . Some of us fill our lives up with so much drama and gossip that we never need to stand still, quiet our mind and stare out into the night wondering why all of this … is.

I have made a conscious decision to explore myself, my mind, what makes me tick and what the hell are we doing here.

What I have started unravelling is fascinating. I have so much to say, so much running through my head I can’t write fast enough to get it all out. Like water falling from a huge waterfall landing on my head, every drop is a new thought, idea, energy pounding through me, its relentless and intense. It’s the most exciting feeling to have this unlocked this part of myself. I feel like im an explorer who has landed on a new mystical shore in another galaxy and anything is possible.

So I’m searching, looking at myself from so many angles, my life, the world, the universe, whats is really happening right now and I’m fascinated by us, and the bizarre and complex life form we have become.

Death has brought this curiosity to me, and the first anomaly that I have come across is my life… have you ever wondered where you were before this? the observable universe (what we are able to see so far) is 13 billion years old …well that’s as far as we can tell for now…. that is a long time…. if you had to scale that period of time into one year, the human race only showed up in the last few seconds of the last-minute of Dec 31st…. and the longest surviving human life is not even a millisecond on that scale… in the scale of time and space, our life time almost doesn’t exist it is so small. for some strange reason I find this fact comforting? I don’t know why it just seems today we all take ourselves so seriously but we are really small and insignificant as individual beings…

So where has your life force been before this?  You are not afraid of where you came from, why should you be any more afraid of where you are going after you die? You had no say in coming into this world, yet you did, you are here, conscious, thinking, powerful human being that has the incredible power to imagine, think and most exciting of all… choose. You call the shots. If you want to do something you have the ability through the left hand side of your brain to turn that thought or idea from your right brain into a reality… that is just fascinating.

We have crawled out of the sea, and climbed into spaceships and stood on the moon, in the shortest conceivable time we have begun looking back to where we came from, and started figuring out our place in this universe. but fear holds us back, fear of the unknown, fear of the black space we float in, fear of our temporary consciousness… we find ways to make ourselves feel safe, things to cling to, things to distract us…

My facination is as much about what we don’t know as what we do,  there is so much we have yet to understand about our potential. Much of these questions stem from the last few weeks of my late wife’s life, her brain tumour had taken ownership of the left-hand side of her brain, and left her unable to communicate with us. It was a very scary thing to watch the person I love go through, but that fearful experience left me with so many questions, I needed to know what she was going through… one afternoon we were sitting at the little table in her ward, I was helping her eat some lunch, and I asked her ( almost as a rhetorical question, because she very seldom spoke more than a yes or a no at this point)… “what is going on in that head of yours Jess?” I asked…she looked at me, peaceful as anything, and said…”I’m trying to get to you but im stuck up in the ceiling over there…” it was the strangest thing sitting there with her, knowing that she was experiencing a completely different reality to mine.

Then I came across this incredible story… a neuroscientist who had a stroke and lived to tell the tale, she describes in detail the experience of losing the left hand side of her brains functionality, her version of events is as specific as you could ever hope to hear. Then another video on a similar life changing near death experience, then I recalled the near death experience of a friend which I witnessed first hand, I helped him pulled from the ocean with no pulse, and watched as he was slowly brought back to life over 15 minutes of resuscitation. a few weeks later after he described to me a similar experience to this woman, all random, all very similar experiences and all have different beliefs. Now im not searching for answers to the afterlife, in my opinion that is a waste of precious time, we all get to find out one day, I am more interested in the seemingly common thread of clues that suggest a higher realm of consciousness, we can understand our place here, and how we all are connected. It’s pushed me to a place where I need to ask questions, I’m not satisfied with my contribution to the world so far, I think I’m better than this… I think we all are.

So I have become consumed by self discovery, by exploring myself and educating my kids in way that will help them understand themselves and the effect they have on others, I have promised myself I will not let life get in the way of this most important journey. I am aware that we have a fantastic amount of potential and live in a world with such incredible possibilities, but we allow ourselves to be ensnared in the belief that we need to go to wake up, work, make money, watch tv, go to bed and repeat, day after day. I’m not saying we should quit our jobs, there is virtue in an honest day of work, and our modern world is governed by the monetary system we have created, stepping away from that will make life very difficult, what I’m going after is how you balance that work, how do you spend your down time, what are we leaving behind for the next generation. That’s where I want to be different, that’s where I need to change.

So the December holidays are here, and its the best time of year to get a little personal with ourselves? But it’s so easy for that time to come and go in the blink of an eye, happens to me so often, I’ll get a break from the kids and ill have 5 things im so excited to do, by the time the kids come back I have only managed 1 or none! So I have become good at planning my time off, i try to understand what exactly it is that I want achieve and then structuring my precious time in a way that sees me get the job done. Here is such a good TED talk about such an experiment, if you are looking for a good idea on how to balance your inspiration time and work (okay, it’s an extreme example but very cool nonetheless) . The point is, there are some very clever people in this world and they are doing some amazing things if we just take the time to look up from our daily grind, we can participate.

I think that as a human race, we have the responsibility to figure out how to exist on this planet without killing it and each other, we are all connected and responsible for finding a way. I’m not sure the majority of us are doing our part at the moment.

This December, I’m going to start a new project. I’m going to plan my children’s education, I’m not talking about schooling, I’m talking about the lessons I want my kids to learn, the virtues and knowledge I want to expose them to by the time they walk out my door to a home of their own. I figure I have about 13 years until Joel is 18, and about 10 years until my Anna (who just turned 3) starts telling me how things happen around here, so I better get cracking while they still listen. I want to show them this planet, I want to take the time to explain the different races, religions,  cultures and let them make up their own minds what feels right and wrong, not because I say so, but because they have seen it with their own eyes. So I will start with a list of virtues, subjects, and break it down from there, into travel locations, books, movies and experiences that will help them attain the greatest objectivity I can give them. It will be a big list, but once I know what the lessons are, it will be that much easier to get there, because I will know where we are going.

I know this is all very idealistic, and I’m pretty sure I sound like I’m having a sort of mid-life crisis, but the thing is I feel more alive than ever, I feel like I have the clearest understanding of the value of time, and I want to use it in a way that makes my kids into the people who can change the world we live in.

Here are some links to that have been inspiring me lately:

A rad website  with all kinds of inspirational forward thinking stuff about the universe and reality as we know it:

http://www.lucidtree.com  (lots of conspiracy theory stuff in here too.. I stay clear cause all it really does is bring me down)

A movie on quantum physics ( done in a way that makes sense to dummies like me 😉 )

A collection of 20 min talks from the greatest minds our world has, an absolute favourite of mine.. TED Talks.

http://www.ted.com

The neuro scientist woman who had a stroke and lived to tell the tale…

A great visual perspective of the observable universe:

My mate Craig shared this awesome site, where you can learn just about any new and creative skill you can think of, through video tutorial :

http://www.skillshare.com

Since I’m fast approaching some very touchy subjects that throw humans into a complete frenzy at the best of times… i thought the following disclaimer would be a wise addition for any newcomers…

Disclaimer: This blog is therapy for me, and record of my thoughts for my kids. I don’t pretend to have all the answers and I sure as heck wont ever tell anybody that my way is the highway. I am always prepared to admit I might be wrong , so long as you are too:) If you disagree, please don’t hesitate to comment, but remember that I am merely sharing my personal journey, not asking you to alter yours.  Let’s keep it constructive!  Hambe Kahle (go well).