The first tiny alarm bells rang when, in my very early 50s, someone who later became a friend and who, together with her husband, became inspirational for me, said the words, “Aren’t we lucky to have…” It slowly woke me up. I had what I had but did I appreciate what I had? This stayed dormant within me for some time. Sometime thereafter, we travelled to Vietnam, where, for me, for the first time, I witnessed true contentment among those who had so little. I tried to equate what they had and what we in the West had, and who was the happier, who was the ‘richer’, and I realised that they were. They were happy with their lot but we wanted more – more of everything. Again, this remained dormant within me to a certain extent for some time – or so it seemed. Maybe a few of my feathers were starting to be ruffled, and I slowly began to become conscious of things that previously had just been accepted as part of life and that I wasn’t seeing the true picture. Like most of us, I think we spend much of our lives acting unconsciously, as we were programmed to do, and finally I questioned: ‘why’? Ultimately, I had a meltdown, which, in retrospect, was probably the best thing that’s ever happened to me. There is no camouflaging the depths to which I went and the arduous efforts to get over it but through this adversity, I discovered not only a connection with others that I could never have imagined, but more importantly, my own strengths, which I never realised I had. I’m no different from anyone else, I thought I was. The key, I think, is inspiration. It took me over 60 years before someone said that I was an inspiration. I will never forget the moment and I hope that what I have written will inspire others. As I learned, there are no limits to what we can achieve in life and any limits are the ones that we create, so if I can do it, then so can you!
