My neighbor Richard is a retired dentist.  I meet him regularly while I’m running and he’s walking his beautiful Alaskan Husky.

He’s one of the happiest people I have ever met.  He told me today that he loves to go backpacking and long hikes.  But he needed to put metal plates on the toes of his shoes because he’s always banging his toes.  The reason is because he’s always looking up at the beautiful scenery around him and never looking where he’s going.

Richard is 74 tomorrow.  I have never seen him not smiling.  We always stop and chat and every conversation leaves me feeling uplifted and a little giddy.

I think this is such a great way to live life.  And such a great person to be around.

May your toes be protected as you become captivated by the beauty around you and your life.

Love,

Ingrid

Colette, the French writer, wrote:  “Sure you’ll do foolish things.  But do them with enthusiasm.”  I’m a big fan of this principle.

One of the people I work with, Janet, couldn’t stop laughing when she saw the photo above in last week’s blog.

It turns out her family owns a 100-acre olive ranch in central California.  And guess what?  Whatever that is in the photo, it’s not an olive!

I was shocked to find out!

It totally has the texture of an olive and in my mind it tastes the way a sweet olive would taste, not as sweet as a berry, but as sweet as an olive would be before you added salt.

Turns out I have a vivid imagination (no surprise).  I’m laughing about the exuberance with which I embraced this utterly unknown black whatever-it-is, and the exhilaration with which I experienced it.  I still love how it tastes.

If you have any idea what it is that I’ve been eating, please let me know as Janet had no idea.

I’ve taken some of their seeds and planted them, so I’m going to have a tree of whatever it is growing in my garden soon.

Wishing you many mystery surprises too!

Love,

Ingrid

 

 

 

NOTE:  If you read this blog, you need to read the next one posted on Sept. 16, 2018.  Here’s the link for it:  https://wordpress.com/post/ingridgudenas.com/954

I made the most stunning discovery on my morning run.  An olive tree loaded with ripe black olives.  I have never before tasted an olive right off the tree, before anything was done to it to alter its flavor.

I am over the moon with wonder, how fresh, how sweet, how OLIVE it tastes. Unhampered and unhindered by any other flavor, just the pure sweet goodness of the natural olive, the RICHNESS of its flavor when it’s not besieged by salt.  Don’t ask me how many I ate.

I also encounter wild berry bushes along my run.  Many of the berries are still an unripe red, as you can see, but now every so often the bushes produce a big fat ripe sweet juicy black one.

I halt my run to seek them out and to momentarily gorge.

The explosion of pleasure the rich, sweet berry juice sets off as I bite into it is indescribable.  The freshness, the sweetness, how WILD it tastes.  A sweet explosion.  Straight from the garden of Eden.

I find myself deriving pleasure from the simplest of things.  A cup of tea with a good friend, meeting eyes with a baby, seeing my neighbor walk his dog, birds singing, my cats climbing on me while I do Pilates, riding my bike around Lake Merritt and through the fragrance of the Oakland Morcom rose garden on my way to work.

The word simple means not combined with anything else, the essence of this word means uniquely itself.  The word came from the Latin simplicitatem when it meant not mixed with anything.

Simplicity to me is when I experience something uniquely as itself.  In its purity.  A friend, a berry, a purring cat, the wind in my face as I ride, the smell of jasmine.

Simplicity is purity.

May your life be filled with many simple pleasures that surprise you with exhilarating explosions of pure joy.

NOTE:  You’ll laugh when you read this one posted the following week.   https://wordpress.com/post/ingridgudenas.com/954

Love,

Ingrid

 

My dear friend and co-worker, Crystal, surprised me one day.  I have a wine barrel planter on my patio that hadn’t had anything planted for a while.  I came home and discovered Crystal had come over on her way to the office and planted all kinds of wonderful things she knew I would like, like kale and purple collard.

When I told her how delighted I was, she told me she also included compost that would yield surprises because she had no idea what would grow from it.   Her chickens help create the compost with seeds they’ve eaten and Crystal never knows what will spring up.

After much anticipation, to my delight I now have a white pumpkin.  I’ve never seen one before and it seems rather magical to me.

Crystal and I have a friendship that is full of magic and magical surprises. This utterly surprising beautiful white pumpkin symbolizes that for me.

It rather seems like something straight out of a fairy tale.  Once upon a time, there was a magical white pumpkin …

May you experience the pleasure of a magical surprise in your life.

Love,

Ingrid

 

 

I made a huge discovery this year, one that absolutely blows me away.

It started when a friend of mine, Diane, told me that birds planted her garden.  Her husband put seeds out for the birds and, as they came to eat, the birds sprinkled seeds all over the yard.  Diane let the beautiful flowers grow exactly where the seeds were planted by the birds.  I thought that was such a marvelous concept, letting the birds create the artistry of the flowers.

Then Diane told me about the incredible harmonies of nature, the magical inter-dependencies that create both survival and beauty.  Specifically, she talked about plants and butterflies.  She was especially happy because a flower her birds had planted attracts a certain kind of butterfly and that exact butterfly had found its way into her garden.  Remarkable that this butterfly found its way to that exact spot!  How did it know?

It was the first I ever heard that plants attract specific butterflies.  I was both surprised and in awe of the plants’ and the butterflies’ abilities to find each other.

I have a garden surrounding my patio and I’ve had butterflies there from time to time, but I never paid attention to why they came, assuming they were just passing through the neighborhood.  So, I did a little bit of research and planted a flower, verbena, that attracts butterflies, just to see what would happen.

This past weekend, as I was enjoying the sunshine on the patio, first there was one butterfly, then two, then three, then five all at once.  Then a steady stream throughout the afternoon.  I couldn’t believe it.

I was astounded by the idea that I had issued an invitation to butterflies, that my invitation had actually been received, understood, and accepted.  I was in awe, astonished I could invite butterflies to my garden and they would come.

So I went online, did more research, and planted 5 more types of flowers that attract butterflies.  And several that attract bees, including lavender.  I read that I should put out a bowl with shallow water for them as they need to hydrate during their quest, so there’s a little bowl for them too.

Their fluttering wings are impossibly magical.  That something so light and beautiful can fly through the air and land in my garden fills me with wonder and gratitude.  They fill my garden with magic.

What didn’t surprise me, though, is that the butterfly invitation itself would need to be beautiful to work.  The flowers I’ve planted are beautiful.  I can see it takes beauty to attract beauty.  Just as it takes a beautiful spirit to attract another beautiful spirit.

May you attract many.

Love,

Ingrid

This past week I had clients in Silicon Valley which is a bit of a commute in morning traffic.  It takes me a while to get ready in the morning because I run and do Pilates before breakfast, then I’m heating up lunch to put in my thermos. Then a million other little things.  Altogether, quite a project to get me out the door.

So I was up and running at 5 am.  Never saw another soul.  Completely dark.  Still.  Spiritual.

Wonderful solitude while the world was sleeping.  Feeling completely at peace.  No lights on in the houses.  Something comforting about knowing the world around me was serenely sleeping.  Something so peaceful about sleep.   Something profound about being the first to greet the day.

I felt tremendous affinity for the sleeping world around me, picturing them each sleeping peacefully and gradually entering the world with their own unique morning routines, making coffee, probably a rushed breakfast, scanning the morning ahead, looking forward to it with eagerness, boredom or dread.

The magical dawn and emerging symphony of bird song started a little before 6.  The sun gradually rose.

Later, as I sat in morning traffic, I looked around the sea of humanity around me, I looked at the faces inside the cars.  I thought about how extraordinary it was that none of us knew each other, yet we all had this one moment in common, sharing this traffic jam. The faces I saw were beautiful.  I realized how much we all have in common.

Each one of us is unique, each one of us with a purpose to achieve, each one of us giving something to the day to move our civilization forward.  Each one of us, doing our best with what we know, loving, struggling, fighting back from our mistakes, achieving victories large and small, relying on our friends, expressing ourselves best we can, daring to dream.

To my surprise many drivers smiled at me, warm, genuine smiles.  By the time I arrived, I felt I had encountered a number of unexpectedly good people.

Then I walked in to meet 9 senior executives in a large high-tech company, 9 I have never met before, but ones I knew already were part of our beautiful humanity.  I loved them before we even said hello.

Wishing you a beautiful day and many magical encounters.

Love,

Ingrid

 

Is there some unspoken rule that it’s okay to love people outside work, but we’re not supposed to love anyone we work with?  I don’t recall anyone saying anything about it and I’ve never read in any policy manual that you’re not supposed love the people you work with, and yet there seems to be a powerful taboo against it.  Of course there’s inviolate policy about not harassing them, but I’m talking about love.

I’m not talking about romantic love, nor about anything in any way physical or anything like that.

I’m talking about the kind of love that can happen between good friends.  But this is different from friends, it’s the kind of love you feel after you’ve been working shoulder-to-shoulder with someone and you get to see their true self and you come to deeply admire the intensity and uniqueness of who they are, the magic they bring.

For me it happens at work even with people I don’t hang out with outside of work. I’m talking about an intense feeling that’s a combination of love and admiration, a feeling of joy to be working with them.

Within my organization we don’t hold back and we sign our emails with “Love”.  Telling my staff is easy, with clients and people outside my organization it’s a different story.

I was sending an email to an outside business associate (doesn’t that sound just so deadly dull?  Business associate!), someone I had grown to really like, and spontaneously I started to sign it, “Love, Ingrid.”  And then suddenly I felt I was violating a taboo, that it was inappropriate. I deleted “Love” and replaced it with “Warm regards”.  What the heck are “Warm regards”?  It just was as close to the truth as I could get without infringing on the taboo.

I reflected on this and started to think about if I could sign my emails with “Love,” how many clients and business associates do I work with that I would do that with?  The list is really long.  And then I asked myself, what percent of the list would slightly freak out, not know how to respond, and would feel a little (or a lot) uncomfortable?

I don’t know for a fact, but I have a feeling it’s a good percent. They just wouldn’t know what to think because it’s so different – signing off with “Love” NEVER happens in business. They wouldn’t know how to respond. It would create a dilemma for them.  They would wonder – what will happen if they don’t sign theirs, “Love” back?

I don’t want to make people this uncomfortable!

And then I realized I never say, “I love you” to them.  Yet for many of them I feel an intense love and, as much as I might try to mold it into something more socially acceptable, the truth is, it’s love.

How could love come to be so misinterpreted?

Is there some false idea that love will interfere with business? It hasn’t in my life. As far back as I can remember, I’ve loved many clients and coworkers deeply. I’ve loved a number who didn’t even love themselves.  It’s never interfered.

I remember one time when I was working with a major corporation and I was on a project with the executives of a division that had about 4,000 people.  I had completed a number of successful projects that made them tens of millions of dollars, programs that were very popular with the employees. My work with the senior executives all the way down to supervisors, especially with the training department, was very shoulder-to-shoulder, if you know what I mean, all of us pitching in to make it work.  Intense, tight, driven, no BS.

As we poured all of ourselves into these projects, over the course of 5 years I grew to fiercely love a large number of them. My heart would explode with joy in many of the meetings, discussions and conversations. I was profoundly moved by many of them.

Something held me back from ever saying anything about it.

One day the top executive was leaving a 1-on-1 meeting with me.  He hesitated in the doorway, turned only partially around and with the most neutral tone asked me, “You know we like you, right?”  This incredibly tough guy had an almost pleading expression on his face for me to understand his meaning.  This question pierced me like a saber.

I gently said, “Yes, I know … I like you too.”  He gazed at me, looked satisfied, didn’t say anything, slowly turned around and walked out.

The moment he left, I burst into tears. I actually have tears in my eyes again writing this. It was his way of saying, “I love you. We love you.”  I knew it was as close as he has ever gotten, or would ever get, to saying it.  It meant the world to me.

I will love him, and all the people there I worked closely with, forever.

Somehow I’m afraid that when I get to the end of my life and look back, I will regret not having said, “I love you” to all the people I have loved at work.

The only reason I don’t say it is because I don’t want to make them uncomfortable. And I REALLY don’t want to make them uncomfortable. That’s important to me.  I’m going to keep looking until I find an answer. In the meantime I’m just going to enjoy feeling it.

Wishing you many good people to love …. in all areas of your life.

Love,

Ingrid

 

NOTE:  On my bike rides on my way to work, I ride by Children’s Fairy Land next to Lake Merritt in Oakland.  Children’s Fairy Land was Walt Disney’s inspiration for Disneyland.  The photo above was taken right outside the entrance.  This piece of art has always been a favorite of mine.  I do believe in happily ever after.

Recently a friend of mine wrote he thought I was one of the happiest people he knew. Well, reading that certainly made me quite happy!   And got me started thinking about the different kinds of happiness.

There’s the happiness when someone you knew in childhood that you haven’t seen since high school find you on Facebook and you reconnect to discover a wonderful rich relationship , a new friendship with beautiful roots to an exquisite and memorable small home town.

There’s the spirited joyousness of seeing the first flowers of spring.  And the bliss of body surfing at the Jersey shore, catching a perfect wave for the unparalleled sensation of a long thrilling ride through warm ocean water.

There’s that burst of elation in finding a perfect parking spot right in front of the De Young museum in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, when usually you have to walk 3/4 of a mile.

There’s the unexpected pleasure of meeting a new person and discovering you want to talk forever.  Or the remarkable happiness of laughing so hard and long with someone,  your stomachs hurt and your eyes tear up.

There’s the joy of having work you love and people you love to work with, so going to work each day becomes a thrill.

There’s the feeling-like-a-kid exhilaration of riding a bicycle through tree-lined streets in an old-fashioned neighborhood.

There’s the tender pleasure in seeing someone else happy.

And there’s all the joy that children bring, the exultation of seeing your beautiful and talented daughter sing in public, not to forget the euphoria of falling in love or the deep fulfillment of being married for a long time and loving even more deeply as each year goes on.

So many different kinds of happiness!

Joy, happiness, euphoria, pleasure, exhilaration, ecstasy, delight, jubilation, pleasure and bliss.

May you experience all of them!

Love,

Ingrid

 

Playing hooky was one of my absolute favorite things to do in school.

It basically means not showing up where you’re supposed to be.  It doesn’t mean being permanently gone, it just means for today.

I loved it!  Still do.

In high school, we would pile into a friend’s car and drive 45 minutes to the shore.  (On the West Coast we call it the coast.  On the East Coast we call it the shore.)  We’d spend the day at the beach and be home in time so our parents didn’t notice we were gone.  Best time ever.

In college, my roommate (most awesome college roommate ever) and I would take the train to Philadelphia, meander exploring all the streets and top it off with the most fabulous split pea soup ever at a really chic French restaurant.  Sometimes we’d just hang out in our room and talk.  Or ramble down to the duck pond on campus to watch the ducks and explore.  We had the best endless conversations, so much better than what we were missing in class.

There’s something wonderfully delicious about brief escapes.

I absolutely love the work I do and the people I work with, and I’ve never had a day where I didn’t want to be there.  Every single one of us at ETS is a hard worker and no stranger to long hours.

But, at ETS we also all love to be outside and we don’t get enough of it.  So, we love arranging afternoon excursions for any reason whatsoever, like earlier this month we took an afternoon for a Spring Fling. That’s all the reason we needed.

Which brings me to the other day.  We have a beautiful client, Carlene, who has become a dear friend we all absolutely adore.  Her father-in-law has one of the most magical gardens in California.  It’s full of flowers, plants and trees native to California, arranged in the most natural, aesthetic manner you can imagine.  Hundreds of people tour his garden every year.

The photo above is the ETS staff who could make the tour Carlene invited us on.  Carlene is the gorgeous woman with her hand on my shoulder and her father-in-law, Al, is standing behind me in the baseball cap.

Al created this garden for 3 purposes, each for the 3 groups that visit.

First, it’s a safe refuge and natural habitat for animals.  Al created a stream with a pond that’s a duplicate of streams in the high Sierra mountains.  It has fish and the sweetest looking turtles.  There are lizards, a terrific variety of birds and many other small animals.  He has one plant, a Verbena, which attracts 11 species of butterflies (he gave me one that’s now in my garden waiting for butterflies).   Large animals, including deer, also come visit.  Yesterday we were beyond thrilled to see a mother quail with 9 babies, all less than a day old, running around like adorable little puff balls with tiny feet.

In the photo, you can see Janet has binoculars around her neck so she wouldn’t miss any of the many varieties of birds.

It’s also a place of discovery for children, a place where they can explore, climb friendly trees low to the ground, prospect under bushes, learn about birds, experience a close encounter with a wide variety of little animals, play endlessly.

The third purpose, the one for adults, is one we thoroughly accomplished. That purpose is peace.  When you’re in this garden, you feel supremely at peace.  The colors of the garden are in perfect harmony.  Al planted it so, wherever you look, you see no less than 7 different colors of flowers at the same time.  There are so many good places to sit, so many little paths to walk, so many beautiful things to look at, all under a sky that’s almost permanently blue, that profound blue that can only be found in a northern California sky.

These 3 beautiful purposes and his beautiful garden told me the story about the beauty of Al’s soul.  I have never met anyone who dedicated their energies to purposes such as these.  What a beautiful man!

I think planned vacations and scheduled days off are a good thing.  But there’s no substitute for playing hooky on a beautiful summer day.

I think the purpose of playing hooky is to refresh.  And we were very much refreshed by this wonderful experience.  I am still smiling.

Wishing you moments of discovery, refuge and peace, and, after some good hard work, glorious moments of innocent hooky to refresh your soul.

Love,

Ingrid

 

Dear Bonnie,

It’s just about 5 pm on Sunday, right around the time I usually sit on my patio and talk to you.  I’m writing you a letter instead.

Today there was a service in your honor.  Ralph told me it was packed.  I’m not surprised.  You are the most loved person I’ve ever known.

You have been one of my closest friends for 35 years.

I’ve called you my Fairy Godmother from the beginning.   I had the idea that all I had to do was tell you my dreams and you would make them come true.

You laughed but said go ahead and tell you anyway.  So over the years, each time we talked, I told you my dreams, and, funny enough, they did come true.  You always laughed and said I was the one making them come true, but I always said no, it didn’t come true until I told you.  Every letter, card and email you ever sent me started with, “Dear Fairy Goddaughter” and was signed, “Your Fairy Godmother.”

You helped me deliver my very first communications course to a large corporation.  We had 18 hard-boiled Labor Relations negotiators from a national railroad who argued like mad that showing any affinity would destroy their negotiations.  We persisted and they had life-changing wins.

We delivered a workshop to 400 teachers in the Philippines. Near the end of the workshop they told us they had something they wanted to say to us.  Then they joined hands, all 400 of them, raised their arms in the air and sang an incredible song of hope and optimism because it was the first time in their teaching careers they felt they could actually help every one of their students.  400 joyous voices.  There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

You were on my Board of Directors for 32 years.  You know every important thing that’s ever happened.  No one has expressed more pride in my achievements than you have.

25 years ago we lived together for 7 years, sharing a house.  First in that charming cottage in the Oakland hills.  I remember the day I came home after work.  You were sitting at the kitchen table, you looked up at me and said, “We should get some goats.”  I considered it for a moment and said, “Sounds like a fine idea.”

So we moved to the adorable farm house in Sunol.  You had the house in the front, I lived in the house in the field in the back.  We had Japanese Silky chickens with long feathers and a rooster named Henry who crowed at 4 in the morning.  We grew out-of-this-world corn, tomatoes, lettuce, and big fat peaches we had to eat over a bowl because they dripped buckets of sweet juice.

I would come talk to you at the end of the day.  I told you about my day and heard all about yours.

For 35 years we’ve had an endless conversation, shared our joys, our sorrows, our struggles, our triumphs.  I’ve laughed with you more than with anyone I’ve known.  We both believe that nothing is so bad you can’t start laughing about it.

Our friendship has always been sunny, like a clear blue sky absent of clouds.  No arguments, not even 1 disagreement.  Only the purest understanding and mutual encouragement.  No one has encouraged me more than you have.

If I close my eyes, I can hear your voice.

And so I take the constant encouragement you gave me for the last 35 years and treasure it like I do the sun, that vital source of life-giving light.  It burns bright in my life, and will until we meet again.  For I am as certain of this as I am of the sun up in the sky, that our friendship is forever.

Love is Stronger

We were able to create a bond

That would endure after our last breath

Into worlds and lifetimes beyond

For love is so much stronger than death.

• Louis Alan Swartz

 

Love is stronger.

Until we meet again,

With much love,

Your Fairy Goddaughter

Ingrid

PS  ** “Goodbye? Oh no, please.  Can’t we just go back to page one and start all over again?” — Winnie the Pooh 

** “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” — Winnie the Pooh