IMPORTANCE OF RECONNECTION
HOW FRUSTRATIONS OF WRESTLING WITH TECHNOLOGY ILLUMINATE THE BENEFITS OF SLOWING DOWN
Mickey Mouse, Mr Potato Head, the Pink Panther and Darth Vader are some of the celebrities to have rung the bell to commence business at which major world stock exchange?
2. Lasagne is the favourite food of which cartoon cat?
3. Which Australian former test spin bowler was allegedly kidnapped and threatened with having his toes cut off with bolt cutters recently?
4. Halima Cisse, a 25-year-old from the African country of Mali, recently gave birth to how many surviving babies (a) seven (b) nine (c) eleven?
5. A late 19th century Australian art movement was the Heidelberg…(a) Academy (b) Project (c) School?
6. Name the primary alcohol by volume in a Harvey Wallbanger cocktail.
7. Bi-sexual youth worker Brooke Blurton was cast as the “leading lady” of which 2021 TV dating show?
8. Dying recently at the age of 78 was which Latvian-born Australian who set 26 individual freestyle world records between 200m and 1500m?
9. Cate Blanchett won her first Oscar for her role in which 2004 movie?
10. Which city has been declared the European capital of sinkholes with an average of 100 appearing each year?
11. Teams in which sport compete annually for the Ron Massey Cup?
12. Which is the correct spelling (a) discrepancy (b) discrepency (c) discreppancy?
13. King Henry VIII reigned during which century (a) 15th (b) 16th (c) 17th?
14. How many points were scored in a recent Super Rugby match between the Hurricanes and Waratahs (a) 72 (b) 92 (c) 112?
15. Which anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States occurs today (a) 10th (b) 20th (c) 30th?
16. Keith is in which Australian state/territory?
17. “I met her in a Kingstown bar. We fell in love. I knew it had to end,” are lyrics from which song?
18. Which team recently won its fifth English Premier League title?
19. Fourteen-year-old Brisbane schoolboy Finn Little co-starred with Angelina Jolie in which recent movie?
20. Horatio Nelson was killed during which 1805 naval battle?
21. Which dragon flew away with Daenerys’s body after she was stabbed to death in the final episode of Game of Thrones?
22. Antonio and his sons Adriano, Bruno and Marcello were the given names of the founders of which motor-cycle manufacturing giant?
23. Which five countries with names ending in “u” have Pacific Ocean coastlines?
24. Which controversial, three-code footballer won the John Eales Medal in 2014, 2015 and 2017?
25. Which auto-maker recently unveiled the Boat Tail, the most expensive car in the company’s history, with a reputed price tag of $36 million?
Ifind it’s often a challenge to come up with a topic to write about each week for these articles, not that there isn’t a lot that we could write about, more a case of choosing something that might be of interest, helpful and applicable to those reading.
Engaging with a broad demographic means we may not always be writing about something of immediate benefit or interest to everyone and some of what we write about may challenge some people’s thinking; but we can’t predict the impact in advance.
So, I had a chuckle to myself as I was deciding what to write about this week because I’d already chosen the topic of connection.
My original intention for content was quite different to what I am now sharing, but more of that later because circumstances changed.
As I was pondering on connection in general, while also needing to work through my to-do list, my speed of access to the internet slowed down dramatically, which can be annoying to say the least particularly when we rely so heavily on it and so many of our files are in the cloud.
However, that happens quite a lot and generally coincides with students returning from school; it was particularly bad when everyone had to home school.
This time was different though. I chose the usual restart approach, which seems to fix most things, and it did this time. But sure enough, within half an hour the same thing happened. And again, and again, and again.
I’m generally very calm about everything but could feel myself going into reaction mode as there were many things I needed to get to. So, again a typical strategy, I walked away, wandered around the garden, breathed and returned.
It helped but this cycle of slowing down, restarting, walking and breathing, carried on for a couple of days, was slowing everything down, particularly my ability to be productive.
I then remembered that there had been some of other “connection” problems over the last couple of weeks.
We had received several emails from various providers letting us know of changes that had been made to some of our accounts which hadn’t been requested by us. None of them was major, fortunately, however each one took time and patience to unravel and set right and some I’m still working on; I recognised that I was becoming impatient at times as I just wanted to fix them and move on with more “important” things.
What am to make of all of this? I came back to Einstein’s theory that “everything is energy” and, therefore, so are we. And the energy we bring to what we are doing at any given moment, for example pushing rather than allowing, rushing rather than being in flow, affects everything and everyone around us; here’s what I mean.
Back to the internet connection example, all examples really.
On one level it seems to be technology, something to blame and frustrate us, yet, when I take it deeper, I can acknowledge that I was rushing and wanted to get things done in a certain time frame.
The message I now take from the slow connection and other problems taking time, was that I needed to slow down, settle, move away, take a breath and reconnect to me and in doing that the problem resolved itself. I can be a bit slow on the uptake sometimes!
I suggest that all of the examples are reminders for me, and perhaps for you too, about the importance of staying connected, internally and externally – self, others and the world around us.
What messages have you been receiving recently that could indicate it’s time for you to do the same?