andrewnicol.net

169 | 365 Candle in the Dark

As a teenager lighting and sound were my thing and I can remember attending a course with a renowned lighting designer for the performing arts, whose name alludes me.
 
At one point during the course we had to create mood for a tent scene on the stage using lighting effects and one single candle.
 
Having that one candle on the stage made the design difficult to say the least. In a pitch black theatre, where you literally can’t see your hand if it is an inch from your face, a candle is exceptionally bright. The light it generates can’t easily be softened or turned down. People sitting in close proximity of the candle were illuminated by its presence alone.
 
20 plus years on, I can still remember a lot that I learnt on that course, about how the eye works, about how we see black and white in the moonlight, about creative license, and about how bright a single candle can be.
 
Every now and then you meet people who are like candles in the dark. Every now and then I meet someone whose flame burns so brightly in the dark patches of this world that it lights up everyone around them.
 
If one small flame can make a difference, maybe I can as well.
 
 

159 | 365 - Bright Light

You know that experience you have when you first turn the light off and everything goes pitch black. Then slowly, over a period of time, your eyes adjust. This process is called night adaptation. It takes roughly 8 mins to half adapt to darkness and around 30 mins to get full night adaption.

Once our eyes are adjusted. We can walk around with very little light as though it was daylight. We get used to walking around in the dark, and the night feels very bright.

Suddenly someone flashes a bright white light towards our eyes for less than a second. In that second our night adaptation is destroy completely and it will take a further 30 mins to completely restore it. We start fumbling around in the darkness again, wishing it were really daylight.

I took this photo yesterday morning. The bright light is not the sun, it is a street lamp that illuminates small exposed patches in its vicinity, while still casting deep shadows into the darkness. Dawn is breaking in the background. Daylight is coming.

Here’s the point. How bright a light will I be to the people around me? Will I be a bright white light that has significant radical impact? Or will I be like the streetlight, an artificial light that illuminates small patches while leaving deep shadows?

156 | 365 - Running

“So I run with purpose in every step. I am not just shadow boxing. I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what I should.” – Today I ran 5 km’s. It’s been a while and it was hard work. I had to keep setting small targets. I’ll run to this corner, and then I’ll run to these shops. All the while I had the end goal of completing the run in mind.
 
As I was running I was thinking about how hard work life can be. Paul talked metaphorically about running with purpose in every step. Sometimes the goals we are called to, seem so unattainable and so distant.
 
It is easier to give up.
 
To stop running.
 
It reminds me that I have to set small obtainable targets and run with purpose to each one. Then move to the next target with purpose.
 
This is how improvement comes, how perseverance comes.
 
Then we complete.
 
We finish.
 
We win!

vividly live...

Death is more universal than life;
everyone dies but not everyone lives

- Alan Sachs

Mowing the lawns ... oh JOY!

One of my earliest childhood memories is chasing my father around the lawn with my toy lawn mower. Not surprisingly this wore off in my teens when I was forced to actually mow the lawns with a crappy old lawn mower that you had to start with an electric drill.

Nowadays I actually like mowing my lawns. (You will notice I said my lawns; I probably wouldn’t enjoy mowing your lawns.)

Mowing my lawns brings some form of escapism and satisfaction. I plug in my MP3 player, zone out and get an uninterrupted hour to myself.  The satisfaction comes from completion, the finished product, and it looks good.

Over the weekend I was mowing the lawns and Jayden woke up and decided he would take his plastic lawn mower and “help” me mow the lawns.

He starts by zig zagging all over the place, bouncing around like a rabbit on steroids. At first I think it is cute and it brings a smile to my face. After a while it becomes outright dangerous as he cuts in front of me and instigates lawn mower head on collisions.

My frustration starts to set in. Not because it is genuinely dangerous but because he interrupted my routine, my thoughts, MY time!

I start to get annoyed, and at that precise moment I miss the point of life.

Jayden was having fun, enjoying life while his old man was selfish, grumpy and annoyed. The five minutes extra it took to have fun with my son, was just 5 minutes I would spend on the couch later that day.

I was reminded that I need to be joyful. To delight in everything. In all things. To make my sons day. 

Joy, afterall, is something God wants us all to have.

Strangely, the times I have the least joy seem to be the times that I am self-centered and concerned more for my problems and myself. My needs become more important that the needs of my son or my family or my friends ... or ... people!

In order to live vividly we need to take every opportunity to experience joy.

So ... What if I focused less on myself and more on bringing joy to those around me? What would happen to me if I did this? Would I experience more or less joy?

If I just had...

A friend of mine has a new toy. It is a Lama V4 remote controlled Helicopter. He is seriously addicted and now so I am I.

I wish I had known about these before Christmas. I mean if I had a Lema V4 my life I think would be all but complete. Seriously, what more could I want. Really?

It is interesting to me that so many of our wants revolve around “if”.

If I just had …

If only …

If …

I am drawn to these toys, the same way I can be drawn to many other things. It is almost as though I have fondness to whatever the “if” is. As though by not having this thing, I miss out. I am deprived of some great pleasure.

In reality of course by not having a Lama V4 I miss out on little (Or a lot depending on your world view). But I actually have everything I need.

What I am really trying to say is this: “If” can be a dangerous word.

Footnote: I did $65 dollars damage to his Lama the first time I flew it. I could have flown to Tauranga in a real plane for that price.

Disclaimer: Nothing in this post should be read to indicate that I will never buy a RC Helicopter. As I said I am now addicted and that may be the theme for another post.

Lost for words

We have all seen the Oscar's or MTV awards. Someone gets an award that they just didn't expect and end up babbling into the microphone about nothing. I have, in my own opinionated way, thought it was bizarre that these stars would speak publicly so badly.

Anyway last Thursday a group of us went to the fast 50 awards. We were sitting there and they said the first award is for the Fastest Employee Growth in the Central North Island. As they said it I was struck by the fact that we might actually win this, which was something I hadn't prepared for, "and the winner is Logistics Personnel".

What the? I then tried to get my team to come up with me (their legs became rocks), I lost my way getting up the front (there were only about 100 people there) and then was lost for words. Yes you heard it correctly, I, Andrew Nicol was lost for words. I blahed something about thanking my team about ten times and promptly left the stage. To this day I can't believe it!

Later we got another award for 28th Fastest Growing Company. I had a bit more to say about living people matter and my team, but I will never get over the shock of being lost for words.

You can read my viewpoint post to see some of my thoughts about our growth.

Canoeing on life's river

I took my kids to town yesterday morning for quality time. Most of the conversation with Talia & Kyla was around the death of Beth a friend of ours from church who died of cancer on Saturday Morning. It seems like an odd conversation to have with your 4 & 6 year olds, but the purity and innocence of their questions is always so stimulating. Answering them in real and understandable ways stretches me, as so often there questions are not about how, or where, but why? Providence is not an answer that kids just accept. To be honest like my kids I struggle with the physical side of death. Not being able to spot that person in a crowd, or shake their hand or talk to them, and this is for people that I don't know intimately. I have yet to lose someone really close to me, and I can't imagine how Phil and his kids feel, not being able to hold or love Beth again.

Last night we decided to have takeaways in the car, down by the Waikato River. It is NZ's longest and only north flowing river. It flows at around 3 - 4 kph, which means you have to paddle faster and harder than 4 kph to go upstream. It was kind of a weird evening, dusk was hastened by the dark clouds that promised an imminent flow of millions of waterfalls from the sky. As we watched, a canoeist paddled swiftly down the river, he to would have known the rain was coming but I suspect he didn't care. I got to thinking that I have long thought about canoeing down the river. You will notice I said down, canoeing up would simply take all the fun out of it. I have not yet had that adventure and I determined to do that this summer.

As I contemplate yesterday, Beth, the kids, providence and the river I am reminded that life is created to be lived not just gotten through. Maybe we shouldn't always be paddling against the current; maybe we should relax more and enjoy the ride. It reminds me that life is more than making money and buying clothes and houses and yummy food, that it is about appreciating creation and adventure and most importantly people.

How many people just go through life, and don't live it. I too, often forget to live. My problems and issues become my focus and I just get through another week. I act as though life is some hard journey where I always have to paddle upstream and forget that my days are numbered and that in a generation or two my name will be consigned to a family tree somewhere.

I resolve for the ten thousandth time to live and to be!