Anna S. E. Lundberg

Coach, Speaker, Writer

Falling leaves: A sign of death or an opportunity for a new beginning?

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I read a lovely post this week about leaves collecting in the garden. But as the author enjoyed watching his son playing in the leaves piled up under the trees, he saw death, decay, and loss.

A barren tree with autumn leaves below
What do you see?

I don’t see death. I see life. I see possibilities. The old leaves were beautiful in their time – from the pale greens when the buds first appeared through to the grand finale of fiery reds, oranges and yellows – but there comes a point when the branches need to let go, to move on from this magnificent past in order to embrace the future. The trees (at least the deciduous ones) must shed their old leaves to allow new ones to grow in spring. It’s a risk, of course: they can’t be 100% sure that new leaves will come, or that they will be as beautiful as last year’s. The trees must trust in an uncertain process, putting their faith in nature’s, and their own, power. And you know what, maybe it won’t work – maybe they will be damaged by a particularly aggressive frost, maybe there won’t be enough rain – but then when autumn comes again the trees can once more shed their old leaves and get another chance the following year.

“You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
-Christopher Columbus (apparently)

I’ve been doing some more spring cleaning. (Are you really only supposed to do it once a year? Though, actually, it seems that I haven’t gone through my old stuff at my childhood home since 2004, if not 1994.) I’m sure that some of you heartless, I mean organised, people have no problems with clearing out as you go along, keeping only the bare necessities in your beautifully minimalist homes. Those of you who are more sentimental will appreciate how difficult it can be to get rid of things from your past. It may be that these things have no use or value at all, that they’ve been lying around for years without your having given them a single glance, and that they’re simply collecting dust and taking up valuable space. But still it can be hard to let go.

One of the reasons, I think, is that these on the surface useless things can represent a particular happy memory or feeling from your past. Some examples: games from your childhood, games that you haven’t played in 20 years and, in fact, are impossible to play since they’re missing crucial bits; but looking at the (huge) box kept lovingly in the cupboard for all those years brings back fond memories of playing with friends and family. Maybe on a deeper level the box also represents a youthful time of reckless abandon, a carefree era without all those adult concerns that weigh us down today.

Bizzy Buzzy Bumbles Game
One top tip is to take photos of things before you throw them out. Then if, against all odds, you need a physical representation to look back and remember those wonderful games together you can look at the photos instead of the actual box. (If you want the song from the ad to be stuck in your head forever, you can watch the ad on YouTube.)

Another, more complex, emotion comes from things that on the surface would seem to lack the capacity to cause any feeling at all except relief that this period of your life is over: piles and piles of essays, exams, and university applications. Did I put all that effort into researching and writing that thesis only to throw it in the bin? And what about the convoluted mathematics calculations – calculus, matrices, statistics – when today I struggle to do basic mental arithmetic? (I was always annoyed at my parents when they couldn’t help me with my schoolwork, because surely adults know everything that a child knows? Now I have more sympathy for their inability to help me with my chemistry homework…) Then there are the applications and acceptances to universities that I never went to, subjects I never studied. SAT scores. Awards. Praise from teachers. All evidence of great achievements at the time, and future possibilities that were never realised. I even have a bag full of gymnastics and skiing competition badges. Imagine! I could have been an Olympic athlete!

Awards from childhood
Look how clever I was back in 1999! Stand back and marvel at the athletic prowess of my primary school years! I’d like to thank my parents, my lawyer, and all those wonderful people who’ve supported me over the years. I couldn’t have done it without you…

So I’m shedding some of my leaves. The maths exercises are going, teachers’ praise along with them. University acceptance letters too. Don’t worry, I’m keeping some essays as I’m sure my grandchildren will be eager to read about my early 21st century views on the effects of globalisation (ha!). And I’m keeping my awards, if only so that I can practice my Oscar/Tony Award acceptance speech (double ha!).

But I’m letting go of my happy childhood playing and my academic achievements from days gone by, trusting that new leaves will grow back in the spring. And though there’s a risk that the new leaves may not be as beautiful when they grow this coming year, I have faith that the lushest, most bountiful year is still to come.

A barren tree with autumn leaves below
Look again. Still see death and decay?

Imagine…

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Yesterday John Lennon’s Imagine came onto the radio. I remember when I requested this song on Capital FM in 2001 when the attacks on the World Trade Center first happened.

You may have noticed that I’ve been quiet for two weeks. I’ve been busy never sleeping in the city that is similarly caffeine-fuelled. So many impressions, so much to talk about.

I visited the 9/11 Memorial on one of my first days in New York. Although full of tourists (some bizarrely finding it appropriate to pose smiling in front of the memorial as if it were any tourist attraction), I found it a beautifully serene place. The two missing towers are represented by two large waterfalls cascading down into the space where the buildings used to stand. The names of the 3,000 victims are engraved all around the reflective pools of water. Although the museum is still being built, the visitor centre shows videos of the victims’ friends and relatives talking about their loved ones. I heard a father tell how one of his sons had chosen to become a firefighter, the other a policeman. On the day of the attack, the last words he had spoken to both of his sons were “I love you”.

A white rose at the 911 Memorial in New York
A single white rose is placed on each name on the day of that person’s birthday

As I was walking back uptown, a friendly guy on the street asked me if I had a moment for gay and lesbian rights. I did. He explained the discriminatory laws that remain in many states allowing companies to fire their employees for being homosexual, and that they were looking for donations to support their cause in the Senate… Yesterday on Facebook, there were posts about the Salvation Army’s alleged assertion that “gays need to be put to death” based on the teachings of the Bible. (Incidentally, I’ve started reading the Bible, and so far I find the Old Testament to be a pretty shocking story of a vindictive god, the killing off other people to take their land, recipes for slaughtering different animals as sacrifices for various sins, calls for stoning, and the labelling of women who have their periods as well as those suffering from leprosy as being unclean.) … And this year’s Tony Award-winning musical, Kinky Boots, tells the unlikely true story of a Northampton shoe factory turning to producing sexy women’s shoes in men’s sizes for the niche market of London’s drag queens, at times hilarious but with moments that tell the more serious tale of discrimination and abuse that these men have faced.

The Kinky Boots sign at the Al Hirschfield Theater in New York
Kinky Boots is showing at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre
The Price and Son set of Kinky Boots on stage at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre in New York
The shoe factory depicted in the musical (and in the film) is based on WJ Brooks Ltd in Northampton, England – which led to some pretty dodgy English accents!!

A few nights ago, I went to see Lee Daniels’ The Butler (at the largest cinema I’ve ever been to! Endless escalators to get to the screen). The film follows one man’s journey from the cotton fields of Georgia to serving in the White House and the final moment of Barack Obama’s momentous election. We witness the changes that take place, the progress and the setbacks with regard to ‘the race issue’, as different presidents come and go. Through the focus on one individual and his family (fictional, though loosely inspired by the real Eugene Allen), the historical events of the past century become all the more poignant and shocking. (Stalin is often quoted to have said, “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.”)

Recently I’ve been hearing about more teenagers who have committed suicide following bullying on Facebook and other social networks.

Oh and then there was the mall attack in Kenya.

All this to say that it makes me sad. Hate and discrimination. Why.

That’s all.

Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…

More posts to come on the fun side of New York, I promise.

Revisiting The Bucket List: Why are we all so concerned about death?

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Something strange has happened to my blog. Or, rather, to the traffic on my blog. For the past few weeks, I’ve been getting hundreds of visitors to one of my posts. Which one, you ask? The one with the gun? In fact, it’s the one with The Bucket List, a post whose essence is a list of 100 things that I want to do before I kick said bucket. Every day, people are arriving at my blog having searched things like “things to do before you die” and “things that should be on a bucket list”. I find that quite fascinating.

Personally, I love to-do lists, I love travelling, and I love learning and experiencing new things; and I suppose that on a planet of over seven billion people it’s unlikely that I’m the only one with such interests and goals. Today, more than ever, the pressure is on to achieve things, to outdo each other in the far-off places we visit or the extreme sports we undertake, to have great stories to tell of our unusual experiences. And it feels amazing! I get a thrill most of all from the experience itself, then from the feeling that I’ve done or seen something meaningful, from sharing that experience with other people, and finally from feeding off of the memories of the experience for days and years to come.

Coincidentally, I read a post from Lonely Planet today “In defence of the ‘tourist trail’” and visiting well-known sites around the world. So many cool traveller dudes would scoff at any kind of box ticking, working your way through common tourist places like the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids of Giza, the Grand Canyon… But there is a reason why these places have become such tourist attractions: THEY ARE AMAZING! I found this when I was at Machu Picchu: yes, it’s become increasingly commercialised as thousands of additional tourists flock there each year, and, yes, I’ve seen pictures of the ruins from the exact same angle many times both from the media and from my friends. But that didn’t make it any less spectacular when I arrived there after my four-day Inca Trail and took that same famous picture.

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Since writing my list of 100 things to do before I die just over one month ago, I’ve achieved four of them:

5. Visit the Iguazú Falls

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41. Sing Evita songs in Buenos Aires

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53. Go paragliding (today!)

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55. Gallop across a field (on a horse).

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And I’ve also had countless moments and experiences that weren’t on my list – such as meeting my niece for the very first time, going for an inspiring coffee with a colleague, playing with my friend’s adorable one year old, eating ice cream by the lake, watching L’auberge espagnole at an outdoor cinema – and the list in no way detracts from those experiences. Life is much more than a list of tourist attractions, sports, and languages.

But in the end, it seems that many of us are searching for meaning, we’re looking for ways in which to experience life to the fullest before that life comes to an end – and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. We just need to remember to keep living in the present, and enjoy the little moments as well as the big WOW adventures. And if we don’t manage to tick off all those 100 things on the list then that’s okay! We will have had a pretty good run…

Starry, starry night

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I’ve always been fascinated by the universe and everything in it. I’ve already said how I wanted to be an astronaut when I was little. We recently found a copy of a letter my mum had written to some astronomers’ organisation cancelling my subscription to their magazine, saying that, “although my daughter is very interested in astronomy, your publication is a bit too advanced for an eight year old”. I read A Brief History of Time and watched all the documentaries I could find with Stephen Hawking. I successfully convinced my IB Physics teacher to cover astrophysics as one of the optional subjects (this turned out to be a mistake as I knew more on the subject than she did). I even came close to studying astrophysics at university, but then took a gap year and ended up applying for something totally different. These days, I eagerly consume any programme featuring Brian Cox. And now, travelling in South America, I’ve discovered an amazing field that I never even knew existed: archaeoastronomy. It combines my love of the universe with other interests like history, anthropology, mythology, and physics.

At the planetarium in Cusco, Peru (a city which itself is designed to mirror, and point to, specific points in the night sky), they told us about the Incan cosmology and how the river in the sky, our Milky Way, had its earthly counterpart in the Río Urubamba. The Sun, the Moon, and the planet Venus featured prominently in the Incas’ beliefs, and they identified a number of constellations, including the lamas, the shepherd, the fox and the frog, that can be seen in the dark matter of the Milky Way. They constructed temples and observatories to align with the rays of the sun during the winter solstice or to maintain a calendar, mostly for agricultural purposes. They used the brightness of the Southern Pleiades to predict the weather and so to plan the harvest (since then corroborated by modern science). And on the steps of Choquequirao, a line of white stone lamas lead the way to the lama in the sky.

Since 1922, we have 88 official, globally recognised, constellations. (Is it just me, or does this number seem very small considering the vastness of the sky? And, I’m sorry to tell you this, but the Big Dipper, the one constellation we can all identify, is not actually a constellation. What?! In fact it’s an asterism, a pattern of stars within a bigger constellation, in this case, Ursa Major.) Of course, they are only constellations from where we are seeing them, in 2D – they don’t actually exist in 3D reality. I’ve had plenty of opportunities to gaze up at the night sky here in South America, in places far from the light pollution that otherwise prevents us from seeing what’s out there – on the boat in the Galapagos, up at Machu Picchu, out on the Bolivian salt flats. Some constellations can be seen, at certain times of the year, in both the northern and the southern hemisphere, while others are unique to one or the other. The most famous constellation in the south, and the smallest of all of them, is the Southern Cross. From this easily recognisable point, I’ve started to learn to identify the patterns that are nearby: the Centaur and the Southern Triangle, as well as some of the Zodiac signs on the ellipsis, the fabulous Scorpio and the not-so-fabulous Libra (it’s my sign, but it’s just four stars in a kind of square shape. Boring!) – still a long way to go to learning all 88! The planets move along this ellipsis, and I’ve been able to see both Venus and Saturn these past months.

At the Cusco Planetarium and at the Observatorio Mamalluca in Vicuña, Chile, I got to look through the different telescopes to see things invisible to the naked eye: clusters of stars, including the Jewel Box cluster of coloured gems, located in the Southern Cross constellation and officially named NGC 4755; the binary stars of Alpha Centauri (that look like one star without the aid of a telescope); and the rings of Saturn. Chile is a particularly favourable location for astronomers due to the climate and the clear skies (in some parts of the desert, rainfall has NEVER been recorded. Ah, just you wait for Anna to come and visit), and as such is home to many international telescopes. The European Extremely Large Telescope is currently being built outside of Antofogasta, dwarfing the existing Very Large Telescope. Chilean astronomers (and foreigners who have worked for a year in Chile) are fortunate enough to be allowed free access to these telescopes for a month each year, avoiding the otherwise huge cost of using one of these massiv telescopes to stare at a tiny piece of the sky and most likely find nothing of interest.

But perhaps astronomy and astrophysics would not have suited me after all. Really what I want to do is lie in a field and gaze up at the stars, not sit at a desk making measurements and calculations. Looking up at the blackness above – at the billions of stars, each as important as our own sun, whose light has travelled billions of light years to reach us; at the countless worlds that must, with mathematical certainty, exist out there; at the white mass of the Milky Way, which is just one of countless galaxies in the Universe – all of our petty little human concerns pale into insignificance. (Doctor Who, I’m sure, would disagree.) And yet, the next morning, when the sun rises and a blue sky encapsulates our little world – rather like the television studio bubble of The Truman Show – we forget all about that whole Universe that is out there and get on with our daily lives. I guess we have little choice – I’m not sure society would look kindly on me if I suddenly stopped living a normal life and instead wandered the streets pondering the meaning of life. This ain’t Ancient Greece, ya know. But a bit of perspective, a bit of humility, maybe wouldn’t go amiss.

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The main telescope at the Mamalluca Observatory in Vicuña, Chile

 

The Bucket List: 100 things to do before you die

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before I dieSo I’ve realised that I’ve watched 18 films so far on this trip, most of them forced upon me during long-haul bus rides, a couple in a hostel, and three that I actually chose to watch at the cinema. One of the good ones was The Bucket List, in which a selfish capitalist Jack Nicholson finds himself sharing a hospital room with loveable family man Morgan Freeman. Both suffering from terminal cancer, they are each given a matter of months to live; so they decide to go off together and experience the world. Their bucket list (a list of things to do before you ‘kick the bucket’, as I’ve just discovered – duh) includes a mix of each of their ideas, from the more material skydiving, getting a tattoo, kissing the most beautiful woman in the world on the one hand, to the more poetic, like witnessing something majestic, on the other.

The film is poignant and sweet though all the time heading towards the inevitably sad ending. But if there’s one thing we can learn from this film, isn’t it that it’s better to write such a list, and most importantly to start ticking things off that list, long before you actually expect to kick that proverbial bucket? I’ve started this list in the past, in the form of ‘100 things to do before you die’, never getting further than about 40 – it’s harder than you think! You need to be quite creative. But it’s also an ongoing endeavour, as you tick things off, mature and change your priorities, and get new ideas. Some of my great achievements from previous versions of the list include running a half-marathon, growing mermaid hair, wearing red lipstick out, trying a Bloody Mary, visiting a porn shop, and of course, visiting Machu Picchu.

Travelling alone, and now even without my iPhone (SNIFF), has given me a lot of time to think. So here it is, my 100 things, varying in how easy they are to achieve. I’m baring part of my soul here, revealing things that are important to me, so try not to be too critical! We all have different things we want to do. And you should know that I have actually done some things in my life already – skydiving, bungee jumping, whitewater rafting, swimming with dolphins… But any constructive builds or new ideas are very welcome, and if you want to do any of these things with me, just let me know 😉

Here goes, not in any kind of order of priority, though it starts with lots of travelling ones, which is inevitable given the context in which I’m writing the list:
1. Visit the Great Wall of China
2. Visit the Taj Mahal
3. Visit the Victoria Falls
4. Visit the Niagara Falls
5. Visit Iguazú Falls *DONE July 2013*
6. Fly over the Grand Canyon *DONE June 2015*
7. Visit Mount Rushmore (“Oh, and by the way: There is no Count Rushmore!”) *DONE July 2016*
8. Go on a romantic trip to Venice. WITH A MAN. *DONE in July 2015 – not with a man, though, SNIFF*
9. Visit Moscow
10. Visit St Petersburg
11. Witness the Northern Lights *DONE March 2015*
12. Take the Orient Express
13. Visit Slovenia
14. Eat sushi and sing karaoke in Japan *DONE April 2016*
15. Visit Pompeii *DONE September 2015*
16. Go to Hobbiton and visit Weta in New Zealand *DONE November 2014*
17. Do a Thelma-and-Louise style US road trip. Without the suicidal ending. *DONE November 2014 – sort of! In New Zealand… and DONE again June 2015 in California/Nevada/Arizona*
18. Visit Nepal
19. Visit Tibet
20. Go on a yoga retreat in India
21. See the Pyramid of Giza
22. Visit Wat Phra Si Sanphet in Thailand
23. Visit Petra in Jordan
24. Visit Mexico
25. Go to Rio de Janeiro
26. Dance salsa in Cuba
27. Visit Mongolia
28. Travel to Timbuktu
29. Eat pizza in Naples *DONE September 2015*
30. Cycle across Gotland, Sweden
31. Take the boat down Göta Kanal, Sweden
32. Go to Alton Towers
33. Go back to Jorvik (the rotten fish smell on the museum ride!) *DONE October 2018*
34. Climb Kilimanjaro
35. Go hiking in Switzerland (still haven’t been after nine years in Geneva!)
36. Visit the reconstructed Amber Room
37. Visit Jerusalem
38. Visit the glowworm caves in Waitomo *DONE November 2014*
39. See the Panama Canal
40. Sleep in a Scottish castle
41. Sing Evita songs in Buenos Aires *DONE July 2013*
42. Go driving in Tuscany
43. Leave the gun and take the cannoli in Sicily
44. Spend Christmas in New York, Home Alone 2 style (minus the criminals)
45. Visit Iceland *DONE January 2016*
46. Travel on the Trans-Siberian railway
47. Travel to 100 countries
48. Visit NASA
49. Learn to identify and name all 88 constellations
50. Drive an Aston Martin
51. Go on a Harley Davidson
52. Ride a jet ski
53. Go paragliding *DONE August 2013*
54. Fly in a hot air balloon *DONE June 2015*
55. Gallop across a field (on a horse. Not with coconuts à la Monty Python) *DONE July 2013*
56. Climb to the top of a climbing wall
57. Run a marathon
58. Walk on hot coals
59. Learn archery
60. Get my sailing licence *DONE September 2018*
61. Do a watercolour course
62. Learn to knit
63. Have a garden *DONE December 2018*
64. Have an ocean view
65. Kiss a Swedish man *DONE August 2015*
66. Learn to ice skate
67. Go kayaking in the Stockholm archipelago
68. Meet Andrew Lloyd Webber
69. Meet Cameron Mackintosh
70. Meet Leonardo DiCaprio (yes, I know, but the teenage me would be really happy)
71. Read the Bible
72. Read the Quran
73. Watch all three Lord of the Rings films back to back *DONE January 2016* (over three days! I decided that 12 hours is too much to watch in one day…)
74. Watch all eight Harry Potter films back to back *DONE September 2018* (over a week! Again, I’m too old and wise now to make myself watch TV continuously without a break…)
75. Attend a film premiere (on the red carpet, not from behind the fence)
76. Have a walk-in wardrobe
77. Learn to juggle with three balls
78. Learn to salsa (important for #26)
79. Learn to swim properly!
80. Learn to dive (as in, off the edge of a pool. Nope, can’t do it)
81. Receive a bunch of roses *DONE February 2017*
82. Get a tattoo
83. Reach 1,000 Twitter followers *DONE May 2015*
84. Get 1,000 subscribers to my blog
85. Learn the names of all the countries in the world, and their capitals
86. Own a hammock
87. Fall in love *DONE June 2017*
88. Learn to play guitar
89. Learn to play Somewhere over the Rainbow on the ukulele *DONE December 2015*
90. Speak fluent Spanish (I’m getting there!) (update: oops I’m forgetting it all…)
91. Learn Japanese *This was work in progress ahead of my trip but not such a priority now*
92. Learn Latin
93. Have an article published in a known publication *DONE January 2016*
94. Have a book published *DONE June 2016 (co-author) and October 2018 (sole author)*
95. Have a lead role in a musical *DONE directed and starred in Starlight Express in Geneva October 2013*
96. Do a French cooking course
97. Find a snow globe of St Paul’s Cathedral like the one Mary Poppins has *DONE October 2014*
98. Voice a cartoon character
99. Have a dog
100. Watch a tennis match at Wimbledon *DONE (centre court!) July 2017*

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#55 achieved today. No, sorry, I don’t have one mid-gallop…