Early signs of spring and the What Went Well Exercise

It's mid-February on the left coast of Canada. The air is warm and once-in-a-while the sun comes out. As does the first sign of spring, the crocus flower. It's a wonderfully positive experience.

Dr Martin Seligman is one of the founders of positive psychology ~ a movement premised on countering the disease model of psychology, which focuses on relieving suffering rather than amplifying well-being.

Dr Seligman has books and TED talks about all things positive. Being naturally cynical, as many of us are, it's easy for me to dismiss the exercises and routines he recommends. Yet here is one he promises will bring less depression to our lives, more happiness and an addiction to the exercise itself six months in. All that is required is pen, paper and perhaps a silencer for cynicism. It's called the What Went Well Exercise. 

Every night for the next week, set aside ten minutes before you go to sleep. Write down three things that went well today and why they went well. It's important to have a physical record of what you wrote. The three things need not be earthshaking in importance ("My husband picked up my favourite ice cream for dessert on the way home from work today"), but they can be important ("My sister just gave birth to a healthy baby boy").

Next to each positive event, answer the question "Why did this happen?" For example, if you wrote your husband picked up ice cream, you might write "because my husband is really thoughtful sometimes" or "because I remembered to call him from work and remind him to stop by the grocery store." Or if you wrote, "My sister just gave birth to a healthy baby boy," you might pick as the cause... "She did everything right during her pregnancy." 

Writing about why the positive events in your life happened may seem awkward at first, but please stick with it for one week. It will get easier. 

Enjoying a wonderful walk in the sun with the love of my life, and discovering the first signs of spring, are two positives indeed.

I just need one more.

Photos by Jim Murray. Copyright 2015.

I Want to Believe

It's been a dull, damp day here in Vancouver. After a few spring-like days it was just another typical winter's day on the west coast.

We went for a walk, like many walks before, to the coffee shop at VanDusen Gardens. Afterwards, a walk around the gardens; it's always changing through the seasons. Sometimes we see coyotes roaming the paths on days like this.

Rounding a bend, near the Rose Garden, a cluster of people were looking and pointing at something apparently above the tree line. An eagle perhaps? We came closer and saw it too.








There were lights in the sky and they were spinning ever so slowly.




Obviously connected in some fashion, a circle of sorts. Spinning. Turning. Hovering. Seemingly without substance, yet clearly a substance of some kind. A floating sphere of lights in the sky. Hovering. Most definitely: hovering.

I struggled to get my camera out out of its bag, and after fumbling with my cold hands and frustrated with getting the video on the camera to work, I managed to get a couple of still photos.

The people around us, a few more had arrived, still pointing, mesmerised it seemed, murmuring things like "What the hell is that thing?" and "We should leave right now." No one left.


Within seconds of taking the first few photos, a startled voice, that of a child's, exclaimed, "There's another one!" I was taking many photos at this point, not worrying about settings or focus. Trying to get as many photos as possible.

A scant moment later, the light shapes, shot up into the sky and disappeared. We waited, or at least most of us waited; some people hurried away with troubled looks on their faces. The rest of us waited, hoping.


I checked my camera. Only a few photos turned out; some of what I thought would be the best shots were completely blank. It's as if they had been erased. Not deleted because the camera still registered them as being photos. I looked over at my partner, "Did I have the lens cap on?" No, of course not.

We walked home in silence. What did we see? Did we see anything at all? Was it some sort of natural occurrence, like sun dogs in a prairie sky? I don't know. There was nothing on the news about it.

I should have interviewed the people around me. At least taken names and contact information. It all happened so quickly. We all saw the same thing. Or did we?




And just like the poster my daughters gave me years ago, which still hangs in my office, I want to believe.

But what did I see this day?

Photos by Jeem. Copyright 2015 by Jim Murray

Caffe Sospeso

Friend John Harris, former Vancouver morning radio personality and now producer with AMI Accessible Media recently reminded me of the random acts of kindness showing up in the caffe sospeso movement.












Coffee, as my faithful reader knows, is important to me. Finding a great cup of coffee has been, to date, a journey across four continents, numerous time zones and a bunch of baristas.  About the only time I've been away from a cafe serving an adequate cup of java was during the three months Sherry and I spent in the Yukon. Even in the Red Centre of Oz I could find a decent espresso, but that's the coffee culture of Australia for you: slightly more advanced than this northern nation of Tim Horton's and Starbucks, though again, as my dear reader understands, there are some good, independent coffee shops to be found here on the left coast. And in NYC , or BA, or Tucson or even Squamish.

A caffe sospeso is a suspended coffee, paid for in advance as an anonymous act of charity. It's usually a simple, black coffee. The tradition began, perhaps, one hundred years ago in the working class cafes of Naples, where someone who experienced good luck would order a sospeso, paying the price of two coffees but receiving and consuming only one. A poor person enquiring later whether there as a sospeso available would then be served a coffee for free.


The sospeso movement died out, depending on your reading of history, and the history as recorded by the Internet, only to be revived, again in Italy, during the financial crisis of the 2008.

In 2013, a smiling John Sweeney of Cork, Ireland, launched a facebook page to promote the idea of suspended coffees, along with the larger notion of random kindnesses. He has since been celebrated on a variety of sites, and the movement has spread.

Ultimately the contemporary caffe sospeso is a symbol of social solidarity born out of the 2008 recession in Europe. The reason for solidarity has not changed from 2008. Indeed, the more ways we can build solidarity, the better. From Gaza to Nigeria, from France to Senegal, or from Ontario to Saskatchestan, it doesn't much matter.

Does the idea of caffe sospeso work here? In Vancouver or Burnaby, Palermo or Canberra? Well... we should find out. We're all in this together after all. Let me know what happens... themurraychronicles@gmail.com

Copyright 2015 by Jim Murray