A simple step

There is one thing that doesn’t change - the passage of time. The earth continues to rotate around the sun, bringing the planet to life. Everything living exists over a period of time. My favourite moments in life are two-fold.  The first are times when I am immersed in something that I love doing - so much so that time becomes flow.  The second are times when I ‘stop the clock’ and stay in the moment, relaxed and at peace - just being.  I think the latter wins out, and over the years I have taught myself how to push the pause button - empty my thoughts, turn off the internal chatter and stop. Of course, the earth keeps on turning - but in my own way, it feels like it has slowly come to a gentle pause, just for a short while anyway. Magic. 

A funny day. I have my three boys here for the holidays at the moment who are all under 11, and today we decided to get the ferry from Devonport to Auckland City to have lunch with my Partner, Ali. We drove to Devonport and I duly parked the car in the car park, tried to buy a ticket (the machine wasn't working), ran to get on the boat and off we went on the 11.15am ferry towards the Sky Tower and Downtown Auckland. A couple of hours later, well fed and watered, we arrived back at the ferry terminal in Auckland and waited for 20 minutes for the ferry back over the water (it's only a 15 minute trip). The ferry arrived, but this time it was a different type of boat and much busier. We hopped on, checking with the ferry man that the ferry was the right one and going to Devonport (as I had reservations), and off we went.. As we neared the Devonport ferry terminal, Sam, my eldest pipes up .. 'hey Dad, this doesn't look familiar at all. This isn't where we left the car...

As we begin the Christmas season around this beautiful world, a period of reflection often occurs. Christmas (for most of the western world) is a time when we think about the year gone by, and about how far we have come along the road, and then we turn to the new year and begin to think about how far we are going to go and what we are going to do with our time next year. We all live life at different paces, sometimes we move quickly, at other times more slowly. We each choose how fast we want to move, making decisions that alter our progress and that sometimes take us in different directions. Sometimes those decisions help us gather momentum, at other times we lose it. That got me to thinking about physics...I was never really any good at school physics, I think the highest exam mark I ever got was around 40% despite the attempts of some very good teachers!, and the lowest was somewhere in the teens ....now a few years on from school, the querky reality is how much physics i...