It has been a puzzle for me for many years why there are times when everything is going well, you know the feeling “God’s in His Heaven, all’s well with the world” sort of stuff, and then without warning things seem to go astray and on the face of it there seems to be no rhyme or reason. A few years ago I was at a garden show with some of my family, they were very keen to see some of the vegetarian cooking demonstrations but, being a foodie philistine and a committed carnivore, this was not the highest item on my agenda and so I went and had a coffee, again, and on the back of a program for an organic vegetable steamer I started writing about these high and lows.It was Socrates who said that the unexamined life is not worth living and I sometimes think that he went a little bit over the top for most people but he did have a point. It’s a shame that he did not put it into the positive vein by saying that the examined life if lived well can bring about a great deal of enjoyment; at the time and in the remembering and so it was for me on this Saturday afternoon at the National Arboretum in Coventry UK.
It was a great time to actually just sit, think and remember some of the parts of my life that in the everyday run of life seem to get lost and as I wrote about these perceived ‘Golden Moments’ a pattern begun to emerge that really made me sit up and start to take this quest a little more seriously than I have ever done before. Here before my eyes I saw what seemed to be the building blocks of creating a future of golden moments lasting long into the future. Could there really be a clue here for the future? Or maybe just an answer for some of those up and down experiences that I seemed to dog my life.
As I sat and scribbled I came up with some ‘Golden Moments’ in my life that I look back to and really enjoy the memories. This was not an extensive list and there were times that did not get a jersey although I remembered with a great deal of satisfaction and emotion. Sometimes they were brief moments but there were some that lasted over a number of years like bringing up my family with my wife, the years of Officership, different places that I served, and a number of events in my ‘new life’.
So why did these times stand out for me? What made me remember them over all the other things that have happened? What was it that always makes me look back and feel that warm comfortable feeling, sometimes of loss, sometimes of pain but always cherished and good memories that I sometimes feel that I just cannot lose. Without them I would be the poorer and just a spectator in life rather than a participant.
As I searched for words the building blocks became quite evident for me and off the page leapt some common denominators that marked these Golden Moments. There is nothing really new about all this but sometimes we forget to look at the big picture of our lives and simply focus on the negative and so the negative takes over and that is what it becomes. Many successful people have always promoted the fact that ‘you get what you focus on’ and how true it is for so many of us. Three common denominators came to the fore for me in this little reverie in Coventry. I do not propose that this is an extensive list for everyone but we will all, if we go through this simple exercise come up with different denominators but there will be common denominators for your Golden Moments.For me as I expanded on these good memories there were three criteria that seemed to stand out among all the others. There were other things that happened but it seemed for me that these three helped me to create my own future. I am fortunate that there is good alliteration to help me remember them but they were
Competence
Community
Commitment
Are they easy to remember or what? So when I look to the future; ease of remembering these is very important to me when I get a serious attack of ‘CRAFT’.
FletchPeter Fletcher
Former
Australia



















Admittedly an American holiday and not one we should be particularly proud of it is still a good day to consider thankfulness. Sitting at my desk this morning I decided to start a list to see how it progressed as the day went on. We’ll see how much I do or do not have to be thankful for.


