We are staying with friends in Wigan and attending the funereal of Clive Rimmer.I don't know who will be there from my distant past.
This morning we went to Joan's childhood home - the home of Joan's Mother until she died last October. It will be the last time we will cal - I guess.
It is also the same Lancashire street that I was born in and where I lived for the first 25 years of life.
A journey of memories as always. So many places, buildings, shops, street corners, churches, rugby pitches, pubs, unsurfaced roads, rear entries to terraced houses. All the places played in - frequented as a child through to adulthood.
Emotional intelligence tells me that these emotions are real but that I need to manage them - not try to flee from them. Not to ignore them but become energised by these emotions by turning them into positives.
I always think about Viktor Frankl in this regard. Behind bars in a concentration camp of living death - he always looked forward to the positives and therefore survived.
More than that. He used all experiences to positive ends.
If you struggle with experiences in the past, or the present, why not read his book.
Essential reading for anyone on the road Less Travelled::
Viktor Frankl
'Man's Search For Meaning',
"A thought transfixed me:
For the first time in my life,
I saw the truth as it is set into song by many poets,
proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers.
The truth that love is the ultimate
and highest goal to which man can aspire.
Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret
that human poetry and human thought
and belief can import:
The salvation of man is through love and in love."
