Notes from Olivia's Diary
Before I go to the hospital as a busy, busy doctor, my morning ritual consists of opening Sarah Ban Breathnach's "Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy", a daily journal feauturing 365 essays for women on everyday spirituality.
For the March 23 entry, Breathnack's title for her essay is 'Always Be a First-Rate Version of Yourself' where she writes that "we are constantly programmed by the world to be other women, not ourselves. With this pervasive social schizophrenia, it's no wonder that most women are terribly confused about the issue of their authenticity. To be authentic is to be genuine, veritable, bona fide, being actually and precisely what is claimed. THe only thing that we can genuinely claim to be is ourselves. . And our best is good enough."
While reading this book,I was also listening to the Twister on his morning radio talk show and he was talking about these four Spanish students who captured breathtaking NASA like photographs from 20 miles above earth using an equipment worth $140. I was so curious about the images the four students were able to capture that I run to my laptop and type in Mo's suggestions on googling 'spanish students capture pictures from a balloon'.
I zero in on one entry,London's Daily Telegraph which reports that:
"Under the guidance of their teacher, Jordi Fanals Oriol, the Meteotek team of IES La Bisbal school in La Bisbal d'Emporda, in Catalonia near the French border, took atmospheric readings and photographs last month with a digital camera lofted high above the planet by a simple helium-filled balloon.
Gerard Marull Paretas, Sergi Saballs Vila, Marta Gasull Morcillo and Jaume Puigmiquel Casamort built the electronic sensor components from scratch and successfully sent the latex balloon to the edge of space and took readings along the way.
Marull, 18, told the Telegraph the experiment was launched to see if the balloon would make it past 30,000 feet, which is the altitude commercial airliners fly. Instead, it made it to over 100,000 feet.
The 18- and 19-year-olds told the British newspaper they tracked their progress using an onboard radio receiver and Google Earth."
Isn't that amazing? The four students exhibited derring-do to the extreme, and the results were way beyond fantastic capturing the world's daily major newspapers.
I look at the 'Simple Abundance' book lying in front of me. It is true. We can find the sacred in the ordinary. We can start with ourselves. We think we are ordinary, but we can start by daring to dream, and acting upon that dream. We can be first rate versions of ourselves, as exhibited by those Spanish students. The results might surprise you, and confound you, just like the images beamed a 100,000 feet away from earth.
Goodtimes!!!
(Photo: METEOTEK IES LA BISBAL SCHOOL/BARCROFT MEDIA)
