Reading, Writing and Gratitude for Mentorship
Reading.
Reading, to me, is like absorbing a chain of emotional DNA coding.
When I read, I absorb the sense of things, the emotional journey – I don’t recollect the facts … without a monumental conscious effort.
Numbers, mean nothing to me - my bank records would support this statement! When I am reading and a date, or an amount of something is mentioned, I skip over it, with only a sense of “Wow! That was a lot!” … or maybe, “Gee, that was a long time ago!”. I come back to it later, if the number itself matters.
This made History one of my most challenging courses for me, which also means it was my least favourite, as it was my lowest grade. What a shame! I was interested - I loved the stories and had a complete sense of the journeys and the eras - but remember dates? Agh! They just wouldn’t stick! Before a test, I would labour over my textbook, memorizing dates with every tool I had at my disposal – re-writing them, saying them out loud, associating them with other things … but the next day, they were usually gone!
When I read – as my eyes run over the variously connected shapes on the page, over the letters, strung together to make words, which when thoughtfully put together, evoke feelings, inform thoughts and help us to absorb new concepts – I FEEL my way through what is in front of me. The shapes swim together and the silvery thread of a chain of thoughts seeps into my consciousness, an internal version of the memories in Dumbledore's Pensieve.
"I use the Pensieve. One simply siphons the excess thoughts from one's mind, pours them into the basin, and examines them at one's leisure. It becomes easier to spot patterns and links, you understand, when they are in this form."
—Albus Dumbledore, explaining what a Pensieve is.
Writing.
Writing to me is a process by which I turn my thoughts into feelings and convey a sense of my reality, for others to better understand something, someone or some experience.
My latest project requires me to put together words to convey the impact a mentor has had on my life and on the lives of so many others. I will do my best, for I loved him so!
What a fitting place to start my Blog – from a place of gratitude for my first real hero and mentor, DAVID GODSON - a writer, educator and horseman with a huge heart and a hearty laugh.
Good mentorship at the beginning of life saves the painful experience of unlearning and re-learning later. Good mentorship is necessary to become our best, to lead others, to take the chances necessary to excel.
Without a sense of the strong feathers on our backs, who would leap from a cliff and spread their wings? People with a death wish maybe …
Good mentorship not only gives us wings, it gives us the courage to test them!
David Godson provided me with a well-fleshed-out pair of wings. I followed him around worshipfully from the age of two, while he taught the older kids in Pony Club camps on my
parents' farm. It was watching David compete in pre-Olympic trials on his horses Jasper and Thisbe at the Caledon Hunt Club, that inspired me to shoot for the Games myself. He not only gave me the notion - over a period of 20 years, he built the solid foundation I needed to build the dream upon. Without that, I would never have made it to the great heights I did, as an awkward too-tall girl, from too-far North, in the Sport of Kings.
This Blog will examine some of my favourite risk-takers and the community of feathers it took to build their wings. It will look at gratitude as a pillar of joy, resilience, forgiveness, compassion, facing our fears, at good mentorship and community.
Altogether, I hope that sharing my trials, tribulations, and train wrecks … as well as some of my rare small victories … will resonate with some of you. I hope it shows others that if I can do it - ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE! And, I hope serves as a road map to find joy in the middle of life’s shitstorms.
This one is dedicated to you, David Godson - you will be missed!
http://www.shellhousefuneralhome.com/obituary/david-godson
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1274271932732799/about
Take a chance,
Paige Lockton-Wilde