Happy Birthday...the wandering dog salutes you!

I believe we are surrounded by angels and angels come in many forms. One of my angels come in the form of my sister, she is my best champion and I am very blessed indeed to have her always there, when i need her the most.

I think of the time, i first got my driving licence and my allotted car park was on the 5th floor of this huge office building. She would sit next to me and say" you are doing great, you are good driver"...even when I was stuck on a slope for three traffic light changes one time!!

When we were in school, she used to wait outside my class for my break to start so that she can have recess with me, we used to talk all the way to school and all the way home. When we got older, it was all the way to work each day because her work place was near mine. I cant remember what we spoke about but we always talked ..lots.
One time, when we were teenagers and I had a "curfew" to come home by midnight, of course I wasn't home in time and she turned back all the clocks in the house so that my parents wont know.
When I needed to move countries and make that difficult choice of packing up to come home, she was there to help me pack and lighten my load.

That does not mean we don't irritate each other, I am quite sure I wind her up quite often esp. with my sense of timing and my lack of tact. This whole idea of tolerating someone intrigues me because its different for different people. Some people save their best behaviour for others and are impossible to live with at home, whilst others put up with anything from those who are in their "inner circle" ( friends or family members) but wont tolerate much from others outside this circle. How do we make these distinctions? who's in and who's out?

My own personal way is to let people in and give them the trust from day one. This is because I believe that what i put out into the world in terms of expectations is what i will get in return. If I start out by trusting someone and giving them the benefit of doubt and practice generosity of spirit, then this is what I create in my world.
Others may disagree with this and I know a number of people around me who feel the need to be my " watch dog" because they are concerned that I might get hurt because of the way I open up to people.
I have worked with someone for many years and he believes that trust needs to be earned not given. I sit on the opposite side of that spectrum where i believe that trust needs to be given till someone abuses that trust. An outside observer to this relationship with my work colleague , pointed out to me that because we were both working so closely that we were actually "bouncing off" each other and that if i became more discerning, then this guy I work with, would become more trusting. The more trusting I was, the more distrusting he became because he was "protecting me" This turned the responsibility back to me because I was a co -creator of this experience and if I wanted the dynamic with him to change, I needed to change something about me. There is a quote that says " If I change, my world changes" Instead of "pushing, pulling and struggling with the people around us, we can look and see what trigger within us, they are responding to and what will happen if we changed it slightly. I can never sit at the opposite side of the spectrum of trust but I can and have moved slightly, to practice more care in the way I allow people to enter my world. And then there are others who have been a part of my world from a very early age, like my sister. And in some ways , she is my world. I am really proud and happy that my sister chose me as her cause to champion. That she chose to "watch"me at times from afar just to make sure that I am OK, giving me space to be the "wandering dog".
Here's to my sister, who has taught me the value of real friendship because she is my best friend first before she is my sister. Happy Birthday "AG", I love you lots.