I decided for one week I would be an Opposite George.

Huh? you say. What’s that?

Opposite George.

Let’s begin with George and his story of being the Opposite.

Meet George Costanza. He’s a hapless character from the television comedy show, Seinfeld. In a classic episode, George laments to Jerry that essentially his life is the pits.  Every decision he’s made has turned out wrong and his life is the exact opposite of what he wants.

Jerry’s reply is “If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.”  George, at that very moment, decides to do the opposite of what he would normally do.  By the end of the episode we find he has gone from being unemployed, living with his parents and unlucky in love, to the reverse.  He ends up dating a beautiful woman, gets a cushy job with the New York Yankees and moves out of his parents home.

I love a good quest story.  You know the one where the main character sets out on a journey (of a thousand miles) searching and seeking for someone or something.  Along the way trials and tribulations are encountered and our hero emerges bruised and battered yet victorious and ultimately changed, transformed.

What I particularly love about these stories is when the person meets a wise old man or woman along the journey. This is the sage (guru, master, teacher) who possesses secret knowledge and comes to the aid of the young heroine at particularly difficult passages in her life.

So there I was, about 3 months into my own quest and I began to wonder where was my sage, my teacher?  And where the heck was I going to find my own wise old man or woman?  I wasn’t on a path in the forest fighting off dragons, nor was I sitting across from a yogi in an ashram somewhere in India.

We take many interesting paths along our life’s journey.

Some paths are straight and clearly signposted; others wander all over the place and then there are some paths that just seem to peter out and stop. Where to now?

Then there are the stumbling blocks along the way. Maybe it’s the root of the tree that trips us up momentarily or it’s a boulder stopping us short. It’s the breakup of a relationship or it’s an illness. It’s moving to a new home or losing a job.

When this happens…when we stumble along our paths…what’s our initial take? ‘This is bad..this is terrible…it’s catastrophic…what am I going to do?’

But, we don’t know what’s around the corner though, do we? What’s beyond the hill? Around the boulder?

Hello. These are my first words on this first blog.

I’d like to start off with a few words from the Chinese philosopher, Lao-tzu. You may be familiar with:

‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’

Love it. So appropriate for the journey ahead. It seems so far, but you have to get started with that first step.

There is also another version of Lao-tzu’s words. (Apparently, it’s a more accurate translation from Lao-tzu’s original Chinese). I think I prefer this one: