Dear splendid reader,
I don’t know about you but I’ve had a social month so far, with signs of it continuing as August insists on grabbing me by the scruff of my neck and hauling me out of the house with an ‘enjoy it while it lasts’ warning.
Yes, ma’am! I will accept the call to adventure, cook meals with friends, explore new places, and steer my lifeboat along the current of fate. Occasionally surprise squalls descend, but if I accept the weather I might even encounter marvels and arrive at unexpected shores.
Consider, for instance, the situation of retired Australian business man, Tim Shaddock, who was living in Le Paz, Mexico with ambitions to sail the ocean solo in his catamaran. He was adopted by a persistent dog, whom he named Bella, and when he decided to embark on a 6,000km-long sailing trip in April 2023 to French Polynesia, Bella accompanied him.
Several weeks later his boat was damaged in a storm and all the electronics were wiped out, leaving him and Bella drifting at the whim of the North Pacific ocean. Thankfully, he had the gear to catch fish, which he and Bella ate raw, and he collected rainwater to survive. Three months later, his vessel was spotted by a helicopter that was accompanying the Mexican tuna trawler María Delia, and the duo were rescued.
Shaddock’s survival was bolstered by his guardian dog, who provided him with hope and friendship during an ordeal that would test the best of us. It’s much harder to give up when someone we love depends on us.
You can read Shaddocks’ entire story in this Guardian article. It underlines that there are times when you must surrender to circumstances, but a faithful hound will lessen the anxiety. I’m sure the story has already been optioned by a Hollywood executive…
While away last week I hung out with friends and their children, and it reminded me of the importance of play and flexibility. Yes, kids do adore screens and if you let them they would spend much of their attention on them, but they also love to run about, make up games, fling themselves unerringly in the direction of mild or outright danger and rarely exhaust their trove of questions.
I don’t have children but I’m in awe of all my friends who are raising kids since it requires buckets of patience, tolerance and kindness, even while the wee savages wreck your calm.
As the occasional visitor I can depart at bed-time to cheery farewells, head back to my hotel room, open up a drink, watch a BBC documentary about the construction of the Roman Coliseum, and happily discover that they are replaying three episodes of I, Claudius (a series I’ve never watched) and decide to stay up late to view them because I can sleep in.
This is not an option for sensible parents of small children, so I salute you all! Raising the next generation is one of the most important tasks of the current generation. It’s rarely rewarded by anything other than the eventual realisation that you have raised amazing young people. It’s like weary generals observing an empty battlefield as the sun rises and penetrates the haze when the armistice is announced. One day much of your daily stewardship will be finished and you too can watch old dramas on the telly and sleep in until the afternoon, but you might be haunted by the memories of sandy hugs and lolly-pop kisses, while the tension of tantrums and sulks fade away.1
Children are so utterly themselves at this age, and insatiably curious. It’s loud, dramatic, and like Shaddock, your plans can be obliterated by the natural chaos that surrounds them. You have to surrender, remain flexible, and hope your partner can grant you small reprieves every now and again, just as you do the same for them.
Most of all children are creativity engines, with wild imaginations and boundless belief in the extraordinary. It’s hard to watch that change as the complexities of being an adult start to impinge upon their sense of how the world works.
In each of us is the eternal child crying out ‘Why?!’ to rules, schedules and bills. The best we can do for them is hunker down, look them in the eyes and say, ‘Yes, it’s stupid. Let’s go built a fort.’
I’ve mentioned before that I try to keep up to date on positive news of people making a difference in the world. There are signs of hope everywhere if you train yourself to look for them.
I recently read about Irish chemistry postgraduate student Fionn Ferreira, who patented his method of removing microplastic particles from water. Ferreira grew up near the Cork coastline and notice the increase in plastics washing up on the shoreline. He decided to do something about it.
The west Cork man is currently working with the University of Texas to scale his invention for use commercially in areas such as water treatment plants and large-scale water outflow points.
Fionn believes that while his invention is a solution, it is not the only solution to the plastics problem in the world's oceans.
"What I do think is that the major thing we need to try is to stop letting plastics get into the water in the first place.
"We can only achieve that by trying to eliminate single use plastics, change policies around plastics, and make plastic breakdown and degrade a lot quicker," he said.
"But also, we need to value every single creative idea from all those amazing minds out there," he added.
I love that image of a young Ferreira standing on an Irish beach, watching the surf wash up trash, and realising something needed to be done… so he directed his life to be part of the solution.
Of course the best option would be for plastics not to get into our oceans, but there are people attempting to tackle several aspects of that problem… like the Dutch-based non-profit company, The Ocean Cleanup, which employs ‘120 engineers, researchers, scientists, computational modelers, and supporting roles, working daily to rid the world's oceans of plastic.’
Not only are they removing plastics from the oceans and seas, they are stopping it at rivers. Watch the short video below to see the Interceptor Barricade at the Rio Las Vacas in Guatemala. ‘As of June 13, over 850,000 kg has been extracted from the river by The Ocean Cleanup since the end of April.’
This reminds me that people care what happens to our world. Not everyone is going to invent a scientific solution, but many more work in industries that are trying to tackle the many problems our world faces.
Today I was in a charity shop and the woman behind the desk was regaling customers about the bad behaviour and theft she witnesses regularly. This prompted the sharing of a similar tale of an awful act by one of her regulars. There was a lot of wishing bad cess on the malefactors.
‘I’m losing all faith in humanity,’ she said several times, as people dropped off clothes, bedding and toys. ‘Thank you love,’ she said to one donor, and then pointed out the CCTV cameras observing the overstuffed shop. ‘Not that we can do anything if we catch them on it,’ she noted dourly.
At the frontline, it’s hard to notice anything but the war.
I bought a golden lacy shawl and a fringed fancy jacket, and my friend purchased a bag of treasures.
Our pleasure at our recycled finds was doubled by our merry company.
This is not to diminish the true, difficult struggles of parenting.