_The signals along the track turn to red and the trains stop. When the road vehicles slow to a stop, their brake lights glow. Milimetrically small advertising hoardings having changing electronic pictures on them, fans in the Hamburg football stadium have flags that tey wave periodically. On top of al that there are the mini-scenes within the different worlds; the frogmen diving a river to find the corpse; Pippi Longstocking lifting a horse in a village; gnomes working in a mountain cave; a couple making love in the middle of a field of sunflowers.
Watching some of the workers bent over their desks painting the tiny figures, you wonder what drives them. They are investing time to provide details that most of the visitors might never spot. Presumably they enjoy what they do - given some of their unergonomic desk positions, I hope they aren't being forced to work their. I'm guessing they even love what they do and get a kick out of including the little details into their worlds. Maybe people spotting the scuba-diving cows makes the workers smile as well. Yes, you could argue that they must simply be detail-focussed people and I would agree in part - they could never cope with the job otherwise. However, the level of intricacy goes beyond mere attention, moving into a passionate love of detail.
Which bits of your job do you love doing? What is there in your normal day or week or month that gets you interested more than the rest of the drudgery? Yes, the MW people need to make sure that the trains all run to the schedule and don't crash, that lights come on when 'night time' happens so that the basics of the wonderland work. They could stop there, but actually its all the exciting little extras that make the place so fascinating for everyone from 3 to 83, judging by the rapt attention of the visitors I saw.
Lots has been written about finding meaning in our work and maybe at the start of the year we need to re-examine what we do. Can we find an analogy to painting today's person faster than yesterday's, making it a neater job, with more colourful clothes? Maybe there are little scenarios we can include that make people smile or big thigs we can create that make people gasp. How can we relate differently to our boss, our colleagues or our visitors in order to make them feel better or for us to enjoy our days more? Its true what people say that the more you put in the more you get out; it might mean we have to give a little extra but isn't that worth it? Iif we enjoy our work more, how much more will that contribute to our happiness and mental well-being?

I slipped on the ice on Sunday - vicious nasty black stuff formed from the layer of sleet the previous night. A comic book fall - my legs went out from under me and I landed on my back. On the steps. Really rather painful and I probably should have gone to A&E rather than getting on a plane to Germany, but work beckoned. Thankfully this week I am only running outdoor team building sessions which doesn't need a huge physical input from me otherwise I would be in a spot of bother owing to my enforced movement impairment.

It has made me think though, particularly following a conversation I had with some older ladies about their inability to do crafts now that the arthritis has taken hold. What will we do if and when we lose the ability to do the things we love?

Have you stopped to consider it or are you, like me, guilty of thinking that you will simply be as able as you are now until suddenly you get hit by a bus? I don't want to think of my faculties failing - who does - but in the back of my mind there has always been the thought that one day I will not be able to do outdoor activities at my current level. As for planning round that, I seem to have done nothing.

When is the right time to start planning for that moment, given that the timescale is completely unknown? When I'm 40 or 50 or 60? Or now, whilst it has impinged on my conscious and has become much more of a possible reality? I know that if I wait until I am better again, I will lose the impetus and that probable picture will fade from memory.

Change is never easy and the first step in managing it is to accept it as a reality and let go of the former things. Only after that can we reprogramme and move into the new beginnings. What stage have you got to in your future thinking?

"Hard and happy are not contradictory"- Judith Buelz

This was a quote from earlier in the day when we were talking about challenging tasks in the Life College and I Iiked it so much I felt I had to share it.

For me it sums up a positive attitude to tackling challenges that we probably would all benefit from acquiring a little more of, but maybe we can only do that with hindsight. If we more easily accepted that some things are worth doing despite being hard or hurting a little, we might not back away so often. Particularly with the younger generation, but with adults as well, I notice people trying something once and if they are not instantly successful then they give up and walk away. Admittedly some of the blame for that lies with the culture of instant gratification that enveloped us but a lot of it is a lack of resilience and an inability to suffer for our longer term good. Just look at footballers writhing around after a bit of a kicking if you need an example.

So how do we cultivate this attitude some more?

Stop and reflect on all the successful things you have done in your life, the things you are most proud of, maybe things that other people recognised or rewarded you for. How many of those were easy and painless? My guess is, very few of them. Most of the memories that evoke pride in us are related to moments when we had to strive to achieve, when times were hard and we were made to work for our success. If you have  photos of some of these moments, it would be worth retrieving them now. They are the evidence that hard work does pay off, that a little suffering is not always wasted. Granted, suffering for your art, or whatever, does not guarantee success. But giving up does guarantee failure.

Lance Armstrong, the multiple Tour de France winner writes that pain is temporary but quitting is forever. I have taken this on as something of mantra when things have been physically tough. But I think I might replace it now with

"Hard and happy are not contradictory!"