For the Journey

There is a huge hooha in America about the inauguration of Barack Obama. I know I am not alone in wondering about all the fuss. there is some train journey for a start. What is it all about? Why all the expense when many Americans can't afford healthcare?

Don't get me wrong, I am overjoyed that there is a black president. I find it inconceivable that it was only a few years before I was born that there was segregation in America. Around the time I was born, my father was in the RAF and my parents were renting an apartment in Oxfordshire. It was the late sixties, people were still relatively poor, there was a shared bathroom, shared with the occupants of another apartment.

My mother had an American friend at the time, her husband was in the USAF. Her name was Bonnie and she was a southern belle. She confided to my mother, "Oh but Ann, you can't live here." My mother thought it was because the flat was down at heel. "But the bathroom Ann. They're black!" My mother's neighbours, who shared the bathroom were black Americans.

Are you as shocked as I was?

The journey we as a society has come on since then is pleasing in many ways. And we are all on journeys. I often help my clients with NLP work. It is like programming for the brain. We often give the mind a vision of the better future they want, with their goals fulfilled. It helps because it gives the mind a destination to aim for. We can sit down and decide we want to go on holiday but until we know where we want to go, how are we to find our way there? If we don't know whether we are going to Bognor or Barbados, how will we know whether to go to the railway station or to the airport?

I explained this to a client today who told me that we could forget the highway to happiness because for her entire life she hadn't even been on the map! It was a funny moment, not a sad one. This lady is learning a lot, she's coming along for the ride, the journey of change.

I am conscious that yesterday's post was a little "me" orientated. That was not the intention of this blog when I started so I hope I have given you a bit more interest today. Happy travels.