Love And Let Live...
It is 1.45pm, and I am alone on the terrace, enjoying the hottest day since we arrived; the temperature is in the high 20’s now and said to be soaring to 35 degrees this afternoon…
Giorgos has just popped by on his motorbike, and offered me Ouzo – which I have turned down…!
In St Lucia it was ‘weed’ each day… ‘Do you want some Bob Marley man’… Here it is Ouzo…
Maybe I am missing some vital message?
I woke up at 6am this morning and thought about driving up to Pantokrator to see the sun rise and run ‘off road…’ But it turned out to be only a thought (for now) as I went back to sleep and instead at 8am ran down the hill to Barbati, along the beach and down the rocky sandy path, where the tail of a snake disappeared as I approached, and then a big fat green lizard darted out of my way…
I then made my way back up the hill, past Stefanos Place again, and down the hill the other side to Ipsos… I have discovered back roads and a chalky football pitch there… The well used local football ground gave me a sense of joy as I ran; easy on the legs, the hills rising around me, overlooked by the local houses… I felt I was in a different time and era even, in the new land that I am inhabiting for now.
I felt the energy of the local people who play on this ground, the many feet that have raced across it and run around it, floated around me and it felt that I could make believe anything in this land; make up anything in the next step… no one knew where I was either, not even Anadi… Free in the step and the next; just running along on a sunny day in Greece…
Stefanos has just arrived and offered me Ouzo too… I showed him my glass of lemon that Giorgos brought me and said ‘Giorgos has already brought me Ouzo’.
We laughed… I think he knows I was joking.
The lack of a common spoken language means that Stefanos and I exist in the intuitive language of the soul and the heart; as unlike his sons, he speaks the same amount of English as I speak Greek! But we are always pleased to see one another and after our interactions, I am always left with the sense of having had a lovely ‘conversation’.
I stopped circling the chalky football ground, ran to the seafront and found Anadi… We went for another swim.
Another very short swim!
Yesterday 300 metres, today 350 metres; we are building it up after the first ‘hypothermic experience’ with my enthusiastic 1000 metre stretch!
I still get the ‘dizzy’ thing, that I experienced that day, but it doesn’t have the same effect of giving me fear of imminent ‘disappearing’, when we are not very far from the shore and I decide to stop there and then…
The joy of drying in the sun after a swim in the clear, turquoise Ionian magical balm is indescribable. As we lay on the hot pebbles I was reflecting on my run where not a soul knew where I was…
‘It is funny how none of us exists unless we interact isn’t it’? I said… We might ‘make people up’ in our head but actually its important to let them go, unless they are there…
Holding on to people in any way doesn’t serve them, and limits the relationship rather than expands it… So many things are done and said in the name of love which isn’t love at all…
Letting people go, 'love and let live' frees us all and real relating begins…
I sent Janai some money last week... He is the young runner with no shoes, who I met in St Lucia and agreed to sponsor. He needed some training shoes, sweat pants and a top and a bag to put them in… It took all of 4 minutes to organize it on line so his Mum could pick up the cash… I love this world of technology we live in, which connects us all so immediately…
Janai sent me a message of appreciation on ‘google hang out’, but I do not want to ‘hold’ him in any way… I would like to free him to run, but only if he discovers this is what he wants…
And when he said ‘I will not waste the money…’ (It was not very much money and did not compromise me in any way to give the money, or to send it… ) I responded to him and said ‘enjoy whatever the money brings you Janai…’
Money is energy, and one of the most challenging forms of energy for so many people; our relationship with money can give us such insight into areas we are stuck… I can remember seeing a therapist when I was about thirty ‘worried’ that as I was a ‘healer’ earning money for it somehow wasn’t okay!
He gave me a very valuable and helpful mantra, which I have shared with others over the years…
‘Money and success is good for me…’!
We now have a dilemma… I have found a frightened, abandoned puppy cowering under a car here. I heard whimpering and discovered this terrified, shaking little thing, who is now sleeping on my lap!
Later…
It is now the evening, Anadi and I are on the terrace again and the puppy is asleep on my lap….
We had a meeting with our friends in Kassiopi about the Kassios Dias race on Sunday… And so we felt we had no other option but to take the puppy along!
I was introduced to a very nice woman who owns a shop there and who loves dogs… She called two women to help, both English, but both of whom were too full of stray dogs.
It is a big problem here on the island…
When we got home I called a place called 'The Ark' and spoke to another concerned woman, but she says that they get calls reporting ten to twenty abandoned puppies a day….
‘I haven’t looked into its eyes’ she said, ‘it is a spiritual matter, it is much harder, in the way that you have…’
She suggested I send a photo and express my distress that on this beautiful island, there is this lack of care of the animals…
Nikos and Giorgos have arrived to open the restaurant…
They are on the case helping us with our puppy dilemma…