Our old friends and heroes have left the castle by the sea, now living their normal lives after a good and well-deserved rest and recovery.

Being retired comes with the convenience of being allowed to think back and to consider the overall perspectives of society — and the freedom to do this only as much as you want, since it all stays between you and the few people you choose to share it with.

Most younger people live much more for the now and for the future, thinking very much about the consequences of everything. They are often dramatizing the current situation, being unable to see the forest for the trees.

That’s a great advantage of being old.

Today, Maria and Peter were talking over a cup of coffee. Talking is the right way of putting it, as none of them hear very well, so they are actually speaking more than they listen.

One thing did catch Maria’s ears, though — when Peter mentioned a sad situation his niece was in, being clearly desperate while still trying to fix it all herself, refusing to accept the help Peter had offered her.

The situation was this: The niece had locked herself up with many obligations. Apart from going to work, full-time, she was engaged in various organisations, was trying to visit old study mates and friends as often as possible, and herself inviting these over for a dinner almost every weekend. She also had a husband and two small children, and people around her had long been wondering just how she managed to live such a busy life, doing all those things, and with success, as it seemed. She seemed to have an endless amount of energy — until she didn’t.

One day, some small additional problems appeared, that she had to take care of. Nothing impossible, but that led to cancelling some other arrangements, and at work, where her colleagues and managers were used to seeing her being on time with everything, they suddenly experienced that she was lacking behind.

The niece herself was far from happy about the situation and apologised right and left, and somehow all those people around her who used to get a lot from her felt entitled to start complaining and showing their unhappiness with her now seemingly lesser engagement in virtually everything.

One day, she found herself breaking down, crying all morning and having to report herself ill at work. Her husband brought the children to the kindergarten and went himself to work — a long day due to an important meeting. The two had quarrelled a bit in the morning, as he — like everybody else — was unhappy about her situation, and he took it personally, like if she did it to him, on purpose.

At first, she had considered the day off, with no children and no husband for the whole day, to be a blessing. Now she could rest and get back to her normal, energetic way. There should be time for some cleaning as well, and for preparing various things. In the midst of her desperation, she did see a glimpse of optimism: this day would rescue her world, bring back everything to what it always was.

Only, all that didn’t happen. The day moved forward much too quickly, and she got nervous, cried even more, and ended up getting absolutely no rest, getting nothing done, and feeling completely miserable.

When she went to pick up the children, she longed very much to see them, but they immediately sensed that there was something wrong with mummy, making them misbehave in various ways. One of them didn’t want to leave the kindergarten, the other started shouting and beating things.

She couldn’t handle it well, started shouting at them, which made them cry, but somehow they managed to get home. The next few hours until her husband came home were terrible, and as he was tired and obviously had been drinking at the meeting, they again quarrelled.

A sleepless night later, she realised that she had a serious breakdown and needed to talk to someone to get help.

Now, this about getting help is easier said than done in most parts of the world. Even if there are psychologists, they have long waiting lists — or cost so much that normal people can’t afford them. And most people don’t even know what possibilities exist and how to get in touch with them, as psychology help is considered a taboo. It is done in secret and nobody ever mentions it to their friends or colleagues.

So she did what most others would do: she told her husband in the morning that she was ill, and he would need to take care of everything that day, to his outspoken dismay, and then she went, in desperation, to their usual doctor’s open consultation in the morning — was in a line with people having all kinds of illnesses, which made her feel both sad and confused. Was she really ill? Did she deserve to take the time that these other people would need?

She actually decided to go home and was picking up her coat, when suddenly she was called in; it was her turn now.

By a great luck this doctor, despite being busy and stressed himself, immediately understood what the problem was. He couldn’t solve it, though, but he managed to book a time for her with a stress consultant. It was not the first time he had seen this, he told her. In fact, it was very common, and from the other patients he knew that this consultant was very good.

The story went on, as Peter was telling about all the details his niece had told him on the phone. She was now in therapy, seeing the consultant for an hour each week, had made an agreement with her work that she wouldn’t be there for the next three months, and her husband had arranged a holiday from his work for a couple of weeks, taken the children with him to his parents, and she was now alone at home.

As she said, this was not ideal. She missed her family, but how else to arrange for her to get some time to rest? And they were planning for her husband to come back to her, without the children, at least some of the time during his holiday, so that they could go for walks, maybe have dinner out, and do whatever could help her out of her situation.

Maria may be old and have had her working life in different times, but she knew what that niece was going through. While Maria doesn’t herself have any children, she has friends who have, and she had seen how some of them were pushing themselves much too hard. It had been a while ago, though, when they were all younger, and people didn’t break down in those days.

Some, who did, would end up in a mental hospital, but that was considered the worst of all destinies. So everybody were always just biting their teeth together and lived through it.

One thing she had seen work well for these, her old friends, was to get offloaded a bit from some of the tasks — and get rid of some others altogether.

Maria told Peter that she could help. She keeps surprising, but Peter has become used to it and could only tell her that it would be much appreciated, since the niece was very much worried about what would happen when her husband’s holiday was over, and she would have to deal with life again.

Immediately, Maria grabbed the phone and called her old friend Anna. Anna is always full of energy — well, we know that, of course, as we have met her at the castle by the lake — and a secret weapon of Anna’s was her big family. Maybe someone there could help?

A few minutes later, and they had agreed that Anna’s granddaughter would talk to Peter’s niece about offering a few hours of help per week during some time, to offload her from some of the housekeeping and children’s care, leaving more time for the niece to recover.

“And then”, Maria insisted, looking seriously at Peter, “You must talk to your niece often, making sure that she stops doing so many things. She must pick those few things she needs to do, and only them. The globe will still spin, even if she is not making it do it.”

Let’s see how it goes, but it all looks promising!

What a spectacle! The calming and relaxing atmosphere on the beach was interrupted by a dragon eating a building.

On such a Tuesday morning during the fall, the beach wasn’t very populated. Just a few patients from the sanatorium were out walking, some of them with sticks, others free of them, now being stronger people after a couple of weeks in the refreshing surroundings.

The Castle by the Sea, as they like to call the sanatorium, had magic surroundings - the park by the castle was just one of several parks in the area, and the sea, of course, had a beach. Long and wide, equipped with a bench here and there and kindly arranged with all the ice cream kiosks and hot dog stands placed in the adjacent park, maybe to help keeping the beach clean.

Clean it was, definitely, and it was a pleasure to sit on one of the benches, watching the sea or the people - or the dragon.

Over the years, various buildings had found a place to rest right there on the beach. Hotels, mostly, and an occasional private summer house. Probably nothing of all this was built according to the rules, as they basically forbid building on the beach, but maybe the rules were sufficiently flexible to allow for a building being put on the beach in exchange for a favor.

In this case, obviously that favor had not been delivered, or there had been no allowance in the first place. Whatever was the case, this building had never been finished. A brand-new hotel, only missing the last bits, such as windows and paint. It had been like this, a modern ruin, for a few years - until the dragon came.

Children of all ages stopped to have a look when they noticed what was going on. They all enjoyed seeing the dragon take big bites of the hotel, then carefully considering, turning its head with the huge jaws and then, again, another bite.

There is a strange satisfaction in demolition. Maybe it of the same nature as that satisfaction you feel when the last bit of something is being used - the last small piece of butter from the package, so that you can open a new package, or the last of the jam.

More reasonably, we should all hope for everything to last forever, but we don’t. We understand, intuitively, how a tree falling will make room for a new one. And we do enjoy seeing those new trees - and new jars of jam, new hotels, or whatever new appears around us. We thrive on new. And the fall of the old makes the new possible.

The failed building project had been a pain to look at. It shouted out all that was bad and wrong, and also for that reason, it was good to see it go.

Such a dragon doesn’t work alone - several demolition workers were moving around on the ground, pointing, speaking in their walkie-talkies, now and then lifting a hand to stop the dragon for a moment. Like in a circus, when the lion tamer magically makes the wild beast follow his commands - it roars at times, obviously wanting to be free, but still, it behaves like his marionette. And so does this dragon.

Eating a hotel is not done in a moment, so we can probably expect this to happen over some days. Now, when people have noticed what is going on, there are more of them going this way - even though the beach hardly makes up the straight way for anyone, no matter where they are walking from and to. They want to see this.

It is another symbolic sign of the fall. Perhaps this hotel was somebody’s dream that is now fading, and in any case, the cleared ground, when we get that far, will be an open opportunity for something new to appear. Like when the trees drop their nuts, only for small new trees to start their life after a short rest during the winter.

What was once a project for many people to accomplish, the building of something big, has now become a much-appreciated show for the locals and for the patients at the sanatorium. An inspiration for many talks about what possibly can happen next, and for dreams about the future.

This is not an evil dragon - it is the dragon that carries good luck with it. It eats the bad to make room for the good.

Listen! - said Anna.

They both listened for a while with fascination. It was raining, but not with water. They were in the park of the castle. A quiet place with many big old oaks, and it was obviously this time of the year - the acorns were falling from the trees like rain over the park.

This time of the year had yesterday been summer - today it was fall. It had become colder, and those clouds from yesterday were still moving hastily across the sky, now supplemented with even stronger wind and lower temperatures.

The fall is in some languages called something else, such as “harvest” or “ late year” or whatever may have been logical or relevant for people in the areas speaking those languages, long ago, when the words for this were shaped. But right here, at the castle, no other word would be more appropriate than exactly “fall”.

The sky was falling, and soon both Anna and John were hit by the little things - they laughed over it. No harm done, as an acorn isn’t exactly heavy, but it is definitely posible to feel it if it hits your forehead, so they decided to go back in.

Soon there will be all kinds of animals and insects taking these nuts in posession. Not the least squirrels, but also mice and birds of various kinds - the birds mostly for the possibility to catch an insect that thought it had found a safe place for the vinter, bot some of them also eating the actual acorns. And any pigs or deer that may find their way into the park will be happy to see what is now lying everywhere on the grass.

it is a miraculous thing, really, that nature is starting out so slowly in the early spring, only to accelerate the growth and production of flowers, leaves, fruits and nuts over the summer, taking in all nutrition from the ground and the old leaves on it, until everything is handed back to the surroundings in what feels like just a moment in the fall.

Also the farmers get everything they have worked for all year presented over a short period of harvesting the grain during the early fall - hopefully it will be a good harvest. If we can judge from the amount of acorns, it definitely looks like a great year!

Life is so beautiful when it starts. We all love the sight of the sprouts of the spring flowers, and the appearance of the ducklings, and everything else that is new life. As it grows and develops and blossums, it seemingly holds so much power, so much potential, such a likely brilliant future, and it looks like it will live and grow forever.

Nothing does, of course, but the beauty and the memory of it remains, and for a tree, the end is just temporary - it drops its nuts or fruits or whatever it produces, and its leaves, and then it rests for the vinter, after which it all begins once again.

Oak trees can live for hundreds of years, producing this spectacle again and again over the years. They are very significant for the landscapes they live in, very important for all the creatures living there.

It is so beautiful! - they both said as with one mouth and looked surprised at each other. John stopped for a moment to pick up a couple of the little beauties, but then they hurried towards the building, as the first raindrops now also appeared.

The fall definitely can be a beautiful experience.

This is absolutely wonderful! - Anna inhaled another long view over the park with her mind. So many great things happening inside of her that she didn’t know how to express it all.

John studied her face with fascination - You look so happy. I haven’t seen such a content expression for a long while!

I am content, no doubt about that. Just a few days here at the castle and I feel at rest in a way that I never before have felt it. All this nature, the fresh air, the calm and kind people…

They both arrived at the sanatorium three days ago, but it felt like they were in a time bubble that extented endlessly to all sides. It was difficult to remember just what a typical day was like before going here.

They were sitting on a bench in the park near the sanatorium. Some clouds travelled over the sky and it was a bit windy, so they didn’t want to go too far away.

Anna had been on the phone just before, talking to her old friend Maria and trying to explain what exactly made her so happy - which Maria immediately had sensed that she was. And now Anna was again applauding the place, this time to John. He, on the other hand, was part of it, also being a patient, and he understood very well what was going on in her mind.

A year ago, John had been at the castle for the first time. He had suffered from a number of problems during the years, and his life quality was at the bottom. Having several illnesses means visiting doctors regularly, but it had only become too obvious during the last many visits that his main doctor was getting tired of him.

That doctor was in general looking tired. Maybe it is taking a too large toll on people to be exposed to other people’s problems every day, all day long? The doctor probably needed some rest himself. A long vacation. John was also looking tired, in his case being exposed to his own problems all the time. And John could also need a vacation. But how to get on a vacation from your own life?

In a moment of despair, you could think if you had been there and heard the conversation, but in retrospect something completely different - John had told this straight out - I need a vacation. You look like you could need one too!

The doctor had looked surprised, almost in disbelief, not being used to anyone caring about him and his health. But it was an immediate eye-opener for him. After having though a bit, he answered John, that there maybe was a possibility for John to have a vacation. He mentioned the sanatorium and how difficult it was to get a stay there, but he would be happy to write a recommendation and help John with the application.

And it had then taken a while with various paperwork and other bureaucracy, but suddenly one day, John’s phone was ringing - Yes? - This is from the sanatorium. We have scheduled a stay for you - You have? That’s great, thanks!

It was a year ago, and he had been there for a period of one month. And he had felt exactly like Anna was now feeling. He told her.

So now is your second stay here? - Anna was curious and wanted to hear more about the outcome - How was it to get back home after the stay, full of well-being?

It was amazing! My neighbors told me that I was like a new person, many years younger, now smiling at them instead of complaining about one or the other problem I saw. And I felt like they told me: younger.

For a while, I went for a long walk each day and I tried to eat like we do here at the castle - healthy and the right amount of everything.

Anna smiled at him and said, jokingly, that with yet another stay here, he would now become even younger and stronger, so he would become a child again.

He he, you are right. It looks like it would work this way. But the thing is…

Yes?

After a couple of months at home, all the regular things in my life began working the same way they had done previously. I lost that feeling of happiness and started seeing problems, and my back started hurting again, my knee caused me trouble, and I stopped walking, began eating like I had done before the sanatorium stay. Before long, I was back to the same old, and I mean old, me.

Oh! - The smile fainted a bit on Anna’s face as she began to realize the nature of what a sanatorium really does.

So you had an injection of happiness and well-being here at the fairy tale castle, a mindful moment, but it needed to fight the real world and its challenges when you got back - and in the end it lost?

You got it! - John regret that he had told her, because she looked so happy before, and now she had that worried expression that appears when people understand how life cannot be a fairy tale all the time. That there is no cure for life, really, only those mindful moments that make us forget about the problems for a while.

But he had not understood what an enchanting way of thinking Anna had.

You know, then you and I will simply fill up our ressources during our stay here, get the maximum out of it and then stay in touch afterwards, helping each other keeping the moment going forever. How about that? - She sent him a warm smile that covered all of her beautiful face.

Yes, I would like that very much! - John took her hand in his - I’m double happy now for getting here one more time.

Our famous neighbors from previous posts are busy these days with shopping, partying, and helping people around them.

Some other elderly people, along with some younger ones, have been so fortunate to be advised by their doctors to go for a stay in a sanatorium by the sea.

This happens to people who cannot be cured in any normal way, but who expectedly still could get better from a period with carefully planned diets and physical exercises. Fortunate, because there exist only very few sanatoriums, each with a limited amount of beds, so most people will not get the chance.

I don’t know everybody’s name there, but they are mostly old ladies, a few men, and a few younger people. They are there for all kinds of reasons, but the place has a variety of physio therapists, dietists and other specialists who can help each of the patients improve a bit from whatever problem they have with their muscles, bones, or digestion system.

The place looks somewhat more mundane than the picture indicates, but it is placed exactly next to the sea, just outside of the city area, and the air is so fresh, the place so calm and relaxing, that even without any specialists available, most patients would probably get much better from the stay - by stressing down and learning to relax, allowing themselves to do so. And from feeling helpful to the other patients.

Most ill and elderly people in the world are very much alone, and people around them first of all seem to avoid spending time with them and then also refuse to take a helping hand from them. There is a taboo around getting help from someone who is ill. Most people want to do it the other way around instead, to treat the ill as fragile, refusing them the joy of being of use.

But here, at the castle by the sea, they are all able to help a little. For instance yesterday, when a bunch of new patients arrived - after breakfast time but before lunchtime.

It didn’t take long before some confusion arose among the newly arrived, because they had been travelling to get there, many of them since early in the morning, and the procedures for getting registered were somewhat heavy and bureaucratic, and when they finally were through all that, which was a heavy thing for many of them - a lot of work for people with their level of energy - they just needed to sit down for a moment, enjoying some food and a cup of healthy juice or water or whatever possible. But there was nothing for them - the staff at the sanatorium had forgotten to book a seat in the lunchroom for them, and the kitchen wasn’t aware that more food should have been cooked.

And then we saw it, again, like we have seen it before. A recurring pattern of several old ladies who could hardly walk by themselves, who looked like they needed to rest more than being active helping their new, fellow patients - taking action and using their seniority, having been there for several days or even weeks already, to raise their voices and require from the nurses and the kitchen staff that some food and drinks would be arranged for the new ones.

And it worked! Before long, everyone new who wanted it was nicely seated with a plate of soup and a glass of juice, and they felt welcome. And their helpers felt useful. The personnel felt a bit stressed and overwhelmed, I suppose, but they are all strong and should be able to handle it.

The sanatorium offers many activities, and some of them have trainers available but allow for the patients to do some individual exercises as well. One of these is “trekking” or whatever we should call it, where the patients go for a walk in the green surroundings with a couple of walking sticks in their hands, this apparently contributing to a better health.

These old ladies and an occasional man who would usually sit at home, watching TV, feeling out of energy, suddenly become a bit more fresh and active - and start arranging groups for these walks. The more experienced of them know from previous stays where the sticks are kept, so they go and find them, making sure that the new patients will get a set too. And then they go, short and slowly, but they are already much more active than usual, on their way to gain a better health.

It is a sanatorium. There are strict rules for such things as what can be eaten there and when people should go to sleep and get up. But these old ladies… of course they have all brought cookies and some powder coffee and tea leaves, hidden in their bags. And they sneak out of their rooms to “steal” hot water for the coffee and tea and arrange secret gatherings where they play cards and have a great social time in the late evenings.

Individualists can get ill too, and some of these also find their way to the castle. Whenever there is a chance, they will go for a walk (with or without sticks) alone, through the parks and along the beach, admiring the beautiful houses in the area and sending long looks out over the sea, dreaming about the time when they were travelling and seeing the world. Maybe they notice a ship there, or a seagull - or something else that can catch their attention for a while, and they feel happier than they have done for a long time, just out of these simple stimuli. Small elements of experiences that they just don’t see very often in the busy and condensed city life they are normally living.

Yesterday passed, and the new patients woke up today in their new temporary homes with that great feeling of being in the beginning of a great adventure.

Habitual headaches are gone, nobody feels as tired as usual, none of them regret for a second that they went there.

They feel alive now.

How Friday became Wednesday

Do you remember Maria from my previous newsletter? Our old lady who became a real hero when helping another old lady out of the troubled situation she was in.

Maria is a colorful lady, having ideas and doing things that keep surprising. First of all, she is active. She is not just watching TV all day. Either she goes out shopping, or she is shopping from home through the TV shop - or she is arranging a party for her neighbors!

Today it is Wednesday and Maria called her neighbor Peter and told him that she was going to have a party this very evening. Why exactly now, he asked? Well, she felt a bit ill and since you never know what will happen it was better to have the party now than on Friday.

“But why a party?” - Peter was puzzled. 

“Because, my mother would have had a birthday on Friday, had she still been alive. I want to celebrate this.”

So, this is now happening. Peter and another neighbor helped by going out shopping a few things, making a great birthday party out of it. If I know them right, they will have a cognac or two after the dinner, because nothing prevents them from doing it. Probably, they can imagine the late mother being with them there, saluting her.

I can’t help thinking at times that older people are wiser than the younger ones - they live their lives now. They do not live in a future for which they must always prepare, requiring them to hold back now. No, they live right now and enjoy life as much as they can, while they can. They are only too aware that “you never know what will happen!” - and instead of getting scared about that fact, they just take it into account when planning the day.

Are You Making (up) Friends?

Imagination is both a survival tool and a training platform

When you were a child, you may have had an imaginary friend — or just a fantasy of someone existing and being there when needed?

You played with dolls or teddy bears, or you put some kind of soul into other toys — “Now this one drives to the garage and then comes another one and they crash…” — you may have heard something like that from boys playing with their toy cars (or you remember it from yourself?)

The game of life

Toy souls are not always as elaborate as imagined friends, as they are often for one-time use, so to speak — just part of the game right now — where the friend is a lasting game.

Playing is practicing. Children learn how to do and how to talk in a variety of areas while playing, and they develop appropriate thoughts and reactions, emotions and expressions — ready to use when life becomes real for them along the way.

Some people continue this line when they grow up, spending much of their time technically alone, but with so much inspiration from the books they read, assisted by their own imagination superpower, that they develop a kind of friendship with the book characters.

Not as weird as it may sound to some, as we humans are fundamentally social, and we have the skill to play and imagine a world of social interactions that isn’t completely real but close enough — it could have been real — so we continue along a stream of thoughts that will let us live through the world of this imagined reality, this way training for when it really one day appears.

Real imagination for life

Writers do that a lot. Even if they are aware of their characters being only present in the writing, they still develop a familiarity with these characters that spawns all sorts of emotions along with the “life” developing for them in the book.

Diary/journal writers sometimes see their diary as a trusted friend and speak to it as such. Having such a friend has saved the lives of many, writing their way out of a depressed situation — to their trusted, imaginary friend, their diary.

It lets them tell all those things that cannot be told to a real friend, either because it is too intimate or secret, too strange or chocking, or because there is no real friend to tell it to.

When you are writing like this, or when imagining that a book character, whether you are writing or reading about it, is a real person, you are simply still playing — the child in you never vanishes, it is forever part of you, forever helping you to imagine situations, people, reactions, etc., forever training you for any imagined future, forever being a valve for letting out the pressure of unfamiliar or unwanted emotions.

Imagined friends have some advantages, one being simply that they are there when needed, you do not need to find them first, you just make them up. Another is that they are listening, obviously, to what you say to them, and you can trust them 100% to keep the secrets you share with them.

Real friends

Perhaps the real difference between friends from real life and the imagined ones is that the real ones have a life that is bigger than what you share with them — they are not 100% dedicated to you, and they expect you to be for them what you expect them to be for you.

A real-life friend is more like a tree in the park that you can visit and enjoy but has a different life than yours, only with moments shared now and then.

Real you

Your imagination is also real. it is part of that real, existing person that fills up an important part of the time-space continuum, that the universe wouldn’t be the same without — part of important you. It is just as valuable as the rest of you, as the rest of your life, the rest of the existence of everything.

Taking in value from your surroundings, including books, and appreciating it is a great skill to have.

You have it — your life-long ability to make friends, literally make them, whenever needed, shows how capable you are of finding and acknowledging positive input in any place, any situation.

You are real. Your imagination is real. Your imagined friends are real. Each one different from the other, and different from physical friends, who themselves are different — and available only as interferences in time and space, as moments of value.

These moments are as precious as you are able to sense them. They are in you, part of you. The friendship is your sensation of it. As great as you see it, as lasting as you remember it, as true as you want it.

This is the very first edition, so please bear with me if it looks a bit rough or there are errors of various kinds. I guess I will learn how to use Substack along the way and make these letters look better over time.

The theme is what is good in life. Not money or success in the traditional sense, but how there is a built-in value and an abundance of opportunites in every situation you’ll experience in life. And how the small things in life is what life consists of. These are what you feel and experience - and remember. The true values.

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This Edition

This time, I have two stories for you right here in the letter, plus a link to a great story published elsewhere that I think you’ll like.

A Rich Life

An introduction

When the world behaves as if it doesn’t like you, bringing nothing but worries and trouble, you could be tempted to write off the whole thing and just name that terrible place we call Earth an evil place.

But it isn’t that simple. Whatever you look at, there’s more to it. Something inside that will make you wonder, that will bring you the joy of insight and show you a new path for the future and a sense of gratitude. If you open your eyes and your soul and look for it.

When that beautiful old tree falls, it leaves an empty space. But anything that lived in the shadow of the tree before will now see the light and start its own, stronger growth. It will lack the protection it used to have, but will also be free of limitations.

When an egg cracks, it may be time to make an omelet. Spice it up with your favorite herbs and enjoy it for what it is, knowing that the egg is gone, which is sad, but the stomach is full, which is good. And life moves on — the egg wouldn’t last forever anyway, and now it was time to enjoy it.

When it rains and the wind blows, you may be trapped at home, unable to go out, unable to enjoy the sun. But that gives you a reason to enjoy the shelter of home, looking out of the windows and smiling for yourself, deeply moved by the fact that you have that possibility.

When you are trapped outside in the rain and cannot find shelter, you’ll need your survival skills and abilities — to plan and do. It can feel tough at the time, but later, when through it, you now have the knowledge and confidence that you could do it once — and again, if needed. And you can choose to be grateful for everything that didn’t break during the troubled time. Being happy for having a world to live in, despite any losses.

When nothing happens, boredom rules, and you start worrying about nobody needing you, making you superfluous: What you really see is an open field, a blank page, a world free for you to build as you want it. Sure, painting by numbers would have been easier, but without the numbers your options are limitless.

When you think about it all, hardship does exist, but the shell will crack and something good will come out of it. Nature works this way. An endless number of eternal cycles of events, sometimes according to your hopes and expectations, at other times on the contrary — but always leading to a new page, a new situation, a new world for you to build.

Even the tough moments contribute — they pave the way to the good moments.

That makes life rich.

The Neighbors

This is a true story - it happened this very afternoon

We are in one of the World’s largest cities, in a neighborhood with many different people, and on the 4^th floor on a staircase in a long block of flats, two elderly people are living next door to each other. Let’s call them Maria and Peter.

Maria is a lady in her late 80s. She has trouble walking and she often needs help with shopping - then she asks her neighbor, Peter, a “young” man with a couple of years less life experience and in a seemingly eternal cancer treatment that makes him tired and weak, to help her out. The two then go to a supermarket or whatever type of shop is needed, do the shopping together and help each other carrying home the goods.

Well, this Tuesday afternoon, Peter noticed a couple of shopping bags standing in front of Maria’s door on the staircase. He went there, knocked on the door - and then again, more powerfully this time, as her hearing isn’t the best. But she wasn’t there. And the door was locked.

The bags were her regular, solid shopping bags - with her shoppings in them and her purse and keys simply dropped on the top. But Maria herself was nowhere to see.

What could have happened? How could she disappear? Maybe she was out there somewhere, needing help?

Worries piled up in his mind and he quickly decided to go out and search for her, trying to prepare himself mentally for anything that could have happened. He looked around in front of the house, went to the nearest supermarket while following their regular path, then the next one, and then he took a long walk around to all the places he could imagine that she would go - all the places they would normally visit on their shopping trips.

When he finally gave up and went home - she was there! She had just arrived and they met at the main entrance. But where had she been - he had looked all over for her?

Well, can you imagine: Maria, who can hardly walk and only sometimes are able to carry her shopping bags home without help - she had noticed another old lady out there in the streets, needing help.

That other lady was missing an arm and had tried to carry home a shopping bag but it had dropped out of her hand and now she was struggling to getting hold of the goods and picking up the bag, without much success.

So, our hero, Maria, made a quick decision to rush, as much as that was possible for her, to help the other lady. She didn’t know her, just saw the need for help and reacted upon it.

It had turned out to be too difficult for both of them. The bag was heavy, and none of them were able to lift it up and carry it anywhere. The other lady had been close to giving up completely, had started crying and needed some comforting words - and Maria promised her to find help. She just needed to stay there a bit and relax, and then someone would come and help, Maria promised.

Peter, our old, cancer-sick man immediately went out to help the one-armed lady when he heard the story, after having helped his now very tired neighbor into her apartment with her own bags.

And so, both ladies got home with their shoppings, and all three of these old people could feel the importance of being there for each other - having people around them, even if totally strangers, to help when needed. Feel their lives.

Forgive Me, Pope, for Saying the Wrong Words

A wonderful account of learning languages

This story is by Lily Boyer who has an absolutely wonderful way of seeing life and what happens in it.

It is on Medium, so you may be asked for a login and may not be able to read the story if you don’t have (and don’t want to have) an account there. If you can read the story, I’m sure you will enjoy it!

Forgive Me, Pope, for Saying the Wrong Words

On Medium, I run a few publications, including the one where Lily’s story has been published, about all things language, called Language Talk. You may find other stories there that could interest you.

That’s it for today - I hope you enjoyed it!

I’m Jörgen Winther and writing is what I do for a living currently. It has several shapes, for instance technical writing such as manuals and other instructions, translations of a range of different kinds of technical topics, blog posts and articles.

If you search the Internet, you may find my name in connection with articles about lights and lamps, porcelain, leadership, languages and learning, the nature of the universe, and many other topics. But what I really enjoy the most in life is - life! Therefore this newsletter.

In my newsletters, you may find links to various pages and sites on the Internet. Such links may lead to someone earning money. It can be me or someone else, and it can be due to the site paying the writer of the story when people read it, or it could be because some kind of sale takes place, for instance for a subscription or an e-book, either with a direct earning for me or someone else, or with a commission paid for an affiliate link. If anything is offered for sale, you decide yourself if you want to buy it or not. Please do not feel obliged to buy anything, but feel free to do so if you want to.