The Ugly Duckling Company

We go into session number three knowing it’s going to be difficult: we pretty much agreed at the start of the course forgiveness could be the hardest of the habits to practice. As we were divided into groups to discuss what forgiveness ‘is’ and ‘isn’t’ at the start of this session, people were still generally unanimous in thinking this way. We also found that forgiveness is not quick: there’s generally a lot of work involved. We looked at the case of a priest, Fr. Michael Lapsley, who had been the recipient of a letter bomb; which took both of his hands and one of his eyes. The blast also shattered his ear drums. As the letter bomb was carefully disguised in-between some religious magazines, it was clear that this attack was calculated, and deliberately aimed at Lapsley. Lapsley described original feelings of “hatred and desire for revenge”, but went onto say that nowadays if his attacker was to confront him and ask for forgiveness, his first question would be “have you stopped...

The word ‘kindness’ had already been floated around before we all came into tonight’s meeting: being mentioned quite a lot in relation to the idea of gratitude. We jumped straight into it this week: dividing into groups to put together an image of what a happy person might look like. One of the symbols used in all three images was the heart; often associated with the idea of love. There was a general mutual agreement that kind people were generally loving and welcoming. One of the ideas that struck me most, however, was the image of a human face made up of fragments of different kinds of people: to show that anyone can be kind. Kindness is not represented by someone’s appearance, rather it is determined by how they behave. Perhaps that should go without saying, but the image represented that anybody can be kind. Conversely, someone suggested later on that actually kind people have an attractive quality about them: they’re instantly noticeable and tend to “fill up the room.” I w...

Once again, we’re comfortably sat together in the hall: anticipating what the concepts of savouring and gratitude might mean for this course. It almost sounds simple really; everybody feels like they savour moments regularly, it’s just a fancy word for enjoying something, right?  Well, no. Early on in the session, we were read a section of Touching the Rock by John Hull (his diary about going blind). The section, entitled RAIN (pp. 22-24), was really well written: lines such as “the steadily falling rain creates continuity of acoustic experience” and “there is a light cascade as it drips from step to step” really jumped out at me. These lines themselves were an experience to savour. As I sat with my eyes closed listening to the piece, I didn’t just allow a picture to form in my head, I found myself enjoying the words themselves. In his piece, Hull goes on to talk about how the rain for him is an experience to savour because it helps him distinguish his surroundings. Hull i...

We are all sat in a half-horseshoe like shape, waiting for the night to take action. Having just eaten, the atmosphere is almost comfortable, but for the blaring lights: firing on all cylinders to discomfort the eyes in the room. This is it; not the first official week, but an important one nonetheless. In these few seconds alone, we await the introduction to the six week journey we are about to embark on together. The pursuit of true happiness is about to come to life this evening as we prepare ourselves for ‘The Happiness Lab’ course (funded by the ‘Ugly Duckling Company’). Starting from the 9/9/2015, this course will run every Wednesday until 14/10/2015, where all of us in this room will learn the secrets to true happiness. Largely inspired by The 8 Secrets Of Happiness (Paul Griffiths, director of the ‘Ugly Duckling Company’, & Martin Robinson), the course will be filmed, with a subsequent DVD planned for release. The main aim of this course is to unpack six kinds of be...