I got back home quite late last night and as I was pottering about getting ready for bed I noticed something rather odd on the kitchen floor right up against the base of one of the cupboards. I bent down to have a look at it and… oh my god! It was the very tail end of a little snake, the rest of it having squashed itself right underneath the cupboard, (and how it managed that I will never know; I’d have thought the gap was too small to fit in a pencil, let alone a snake!)

“Well, you can’t be there little snake,” I thought, so I touched  its tail to get it out. It didn’t like that, and in an alarming flash that made me step back, the rest of it disappeared under the cupboard.

Now, anyone that knows me will tell you I’m a real animal lover, but a snake in my kitchen was a step too far even for me! I guess one of my cats had brought it in, but how to get it out? The only way I could see to do it was to demolish the cupboard and I wasn’t up for that at half eleven at night. What to do? Nothing for it but to go to bed and think about  it in the morning. Let it go for now.

So this morning I wake up and I’m puzzling over the snake. There is, ominously, no sign of it in the kitchen. I have breakfast and go to my office to check my emails before starting work and part of my mind is puzzling over the snake. I guess I am going to have to get a carpenter in to remove the base panel of my kitchen cupboard and I am pondering who to phone that would be able to come today.

Suddenly, one of my dogs stars barking at something inside the house so I go and check. There on the stairs leading up to the kitchen is the little snake, cold and curled up, and more than a bit scared of the barking dog. It clearly wanted to go out as much as I wanted it to be out!

Suddenly, a huge, puzzling problem had a very easy solution; a up-ended tupperware box and a sheet of paper for a lid and I scooped up the little snake and re-located it to the end of the garden where it slid off on its way very happily.

And now I find myself wondering what lesson is there for me in this story? Sometimes in life are we faced with what seem like an unsolvable problem. And sometimes, if we just have a little patience, if we just have the faith to let go of the worry and the need to get everything fixed right now, the problem sorts itself.

I know this because I heard it on the radio yesterday. The show I was listening to was a science program. A physicist explained that the matter in each atom actually made up a very small part of the atom. In order to illustrate what he was saying, he asked us to imagine that the nucleus of the atom was about the size of a football. Most of the matter in the atom is there in the nucleus. If the nucleus of an atom were the size of a football, the electrons and neutrons, et al that make up the rest of the atom would be spinning around about 10 km away!

All the atoms that I am made from are mostly space. We are all mostly space.

This is a most extraordinary piece of information. I have been thinking about it all day. I do love the thought of spaciousness; many of us have the tendency to be very busy, rushing around too much, filling our lives with obligations and things. Creating a feeling of spaciousness in my own life is something that is quite important to me.  I have found, through working with my clients, that this is true for many people.  A sense of spaciousness allows all sorts of interesting things to emerge.

But I notice that I have been thinking that spaciousness is something which I have to create in my life. It is another thing for me to do. And now I learn that most of me is actually made up of space! I don’t have to create anything. I just have to connect with what is.

Truth be told, I feel a right numbskull.  I keep getting stuck in the simplest of places and find myself bursting with frustration at times. (You know how it is; “I’m going to throw this ****** computer out of the window in a minute!” ) I am looking online at those “How to” guides and I get into the FAQs and find I don’t even understand the questions let alone the answers!

I keep telling myself; “This time next year all this will be easy!” And it probably will; I’ll have learnt by then through trial and error, asking for help, pracitising, making mistakes and finally getting it right.

The getting it right bit is just great. When I finally get something looking the way I want it to look and saying what I want it to say and linking up to other stuff  the way I want it to link…, oh my! what a sense of achievement! This is why, despite the struggle, I have a passion for life long learning. And the more I play around with this, the more I have that feeling of getting it right.

Of course, the essential word in all that is: play. When I play with this instead of getting stressed and self judgemental, it all goes a lot better.

In the meantime, this website is very much a work in process. My intention is to launch it properly in the autum of 2011. In it’s pre-launch state there will be all sorts of things that I hope it will do one day that it isn’t doing yet! If you hit a frustrating dead-end, (for example, a link I haven’t figured out how to make live yet!) do feel free to email me with any questions you might have.

maggie@maggiewhiteley.com

So I invite you to be patient and understanding whilst the site is in its development stage. I am sure you will be. After all, if Agents of Change can’t enjoy watching something develop, who can?

In the meantime, I’m going back to playing… goodness knows how that fuzzy image appeared at the top of the page!