My journal

Colour in my world

Mere colour, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.

~ Oscar Wilde

You may have guessed from these pages that I love colour. As a young woman, my wardrobe was a profusion of primary colours — reds, yellows, royal blues, as well as lots of white. But during my declutter, I noticed that in recent years the colours of my clothes have undergone a transformation. There are lots more pastel shades, especially different shades of blue and beige. There are even brown items — a colour I avoided when I was younger because I felt it made me fade into the background because of my dark skin. There are a few yellows and reds — although I hadn’t worn them in ages, I was reluctant to discard them for sentimental reasons. (Marie Kondo would disapprove!)

Mature women are encouraged to tone down the colours in our lives — wardrobe, jewellery, makeup, we are told should be muted. Have you noticed that many mature women wear shades of brown, beige, cream and black? Perhaps it’s because magazines and countless blogs for the over 40s and 50s exhort us to subdue, soften, and diminish! Red is out, jewellery should be silver, platinum or white gold and no chunky gold necklaces or bangles.

Does muted = age?

Distractions

You are going to be great. Keep going!

~ Unknown

How easily are we diverted from our purpose! There are so many distractions in our lives that sometimes we forget the path we have chosen. Amore and I are planning our next trip to Italy and we are researching places to stay and things to do — and it’s been consuming and distracting. So much that I’ve neglected my five point list which is supposed to keep me on the path to living my passionate life:

The face — a different kind of reading

Colleen — A picture of me taken on holiday in the Queensland tropics. What does this face reveal about me?

The face shows who you are, how you have lived, what you have felt, and who you can become.

~ Lilian Bridges

After reading the wild, I discovered a different kind of reading: reading the face. When Sylvia from A touch of balance offered me a face reading, I asked, “what’s that?”

“Face reading,” she says, “allows you to see areas of weakness in the body, it also gives some indication of your personality, it allows you to understand yourself better.”

It is the window into the workings of the body, mind and emotions.

~ Lilian Bridges

The art of face reading dates back thousands of years. It originated with Taoist monk healers who studied the face to gain an understanding of the health of their patients.

Wildlight — a review

You spend your whole time on an island looking out to sea. It’s a kind of meditation. Perhaps what you’re really facing is yourself.

~ Robyn Mundy

I’m a bibliophile, always with a number of books on the go at the same time. Recently I realised that by reading four books concurrently I wasn’t taking in much information. I was reading only at night before sleeping and each night a different book — and lately, only non-fiction. I usually take notes while I read — new words, quotes, interesting facts — but when I read my notes later, I couldn’t recall their context.

Wildlight, the new novel by Australian author, Robyn Mundy was on my shelf to be read but because of my search (read insatiable thirst) for information on writing, reading, meditation, living simply and passionately — I had only read a couple of pages.

I decided to take a moment… well… a morning to read and be still.

Take a moment (or a morning) to be still

take a moment to be still — Take a moment to smell the roses

Time spent doing nothing allows us to awaken what is most meaningful and valuable to us.

~ David Kundtz

“Life is busy,” is a common refrain when we ask someone how they are, or how life is for them. Society encourages us to work harder, faster, aim bigger, achieve more. Our lives are full of distractions, and in our connected world we are always thinking about the next new thing, checking our twitter feeds, sending messages and filling our time with unfocused busyness.

“The fast-paced rhythm of modern life conditions us to skim the surface of experience, then quickly move on to something new,” says Stephan Rechtschaffen. We are so harried, hurried, moving headlong to the new, that we forget to be intentional. We forget to focus our attention on the present.

Achieving clarity

Your life is created first in your mind, then in your world

~ Janet and Chris Attwood

To live a passionate life is an inspiring ideal, but what does it mean? Some say that it’s living an authentic, purposeful life. But what does that look like? I’ve been looking for guidance and clarity. And boy, is there a plethora of superficial ‘Ways to find your passion’ and ‘Easy steps to live a passionate life’ out in the ether.