People need problems
Published: Thu, 07/12/18
I was very pleased to hear that the twelve young members of the football team and their coach have been successfully rescued from the flooded cave in Thailand. I am still not clear on how they got into that mess in the first place. Maybe the conversation went something along the lines of: ‘I don’t care who kicked the ball down that hole, no one goes home until we find it.’ Or maybe not.
I am also mindful of the fact that those who took part in the rescue were putting themselves in great danger. One diver actually died while assisting in the rescue. His name was Saman Gunan and he was a 38 year old former navy diver. Thankfully there were no other serious casualties and the seemingly impossible rescue was a complete success.
Every now and then we need a reminder that overcoming impossible odds can be done. It just takes brave and skilled people to decide that they are willing to risk everything if lives need saving. I guess that is how the human race has achieved what what it has achieved in terms of successes and victories.
However, situations like the cave rescue in Thailand also make me wonder why we human beings make life so difficult for themselves. I don’t mean getting stuck in caves, I just mean failure to face up to problems and challenges head on, and then solve them with focus and determination. Perhaps focused problem solving is most likely to happen when we have simple and clear cut problems which demand total concentration. A clearly defined success or failure at the end concentrates the mind too.
Life is full of strange paradoxes. Those 13 young men and boys nearly caused a horrible tragedy by getting stuck in that cave. Rescuing them cost the life of a brave man who volunteered to save them. Yet, the outcome was an inspiration to all of us, but it would still have been better to have been careful in the first place.
Anyway, I have decided that it is time to start getting a bulletin out six times a year, one for each Stav festival. I am already late for Baldersvaki (mid-summer) but it is ready. I have decided to make it available to anyone on my list who would like to read it and you can get it here as a PDF, please note that it will not open online, you will have to download the file to your computer to open it using a PDF reader, most computers have one installed, if not get yourself Adobe Reader or something similar. Link here https://www.screencast.com/t/f4nZD6lNu
Regards
Graham
PS Next training event in Beverley on the 21st of July, self-defence in the morning and staff training in the afternoon. Full details at http://iceandfire.org.uk/train.html