About this Website
Introduction:
This is my personal experiences website. The purpose of this website is to relate to you in a personal way and build a bridge over which can we travel and make a better future for us being together. We can also make a better future for those we are in close community with who are around us. I have had a real interesting life and I would like to build you up and inspire you as well through what I have written and the photographs used in this website. I find as I give away life to others, it comes back in far greater abundance then you ever gave away. Life is meant to be a shared experience and not an isolated, individual experience.
The essence of inspiring you is to treat you as a very valuable person. You in turn can then treat others around as being very valuable as well. That approach in life changes the world.
I would also like to hear back from you in the ‘Comments RSS’ on the right-hand side of this website. We all have different gifts in life …. each gift is unique to the next gift. I can learn from you and you from me. If we see life as a communal exercise as being here for the common good of others, we will end up with a much richer life and we gain far more in life. This is compared to seeing ourselves here only in a highly individualistic sense.
There is a story of two men in prison. In the morning one of the men looked out and saw the mud in the yard and that is what he talked about all the time. The other man looked up and saw the stars at night and talked about those stars …… about their brightness and beauty. This story is symbolic of the whole life. There is plenty of mud of life to talk about or there are stars in the sky to talk about.
I personally and Harriet my wife have deep sense and vision of life. We wish to see this vision applied in real practical outcomes …… to have a wholistic approach to life in all things. This website endeavours to demonstrate this view on life.
Life is all about moments – reflective, impulsive, joyful …… times we love to relive. This website is about Ken Aitken, my wife Harriet and my family of two children, Claire and Anthony. It is about our moments as a family and our extended family which includes you. The times with you may appear in some of the photographs given in this website.
Everyone of us has a private space in our lives that we carefully guard, a place like an internal garden they live out of. I call it ‘The Garden of Life’ A garden is a personal space you can go into and to enjoy the peace, the cool air, the shadows of trees, the sun shining with translucent light through tree leaves and palm fronds, the perfume of beautiful blossoms.
No one else comes there except yourself and your family. Even friends do not just drop in. They are invited out there with you after you have let them into your house. Strangers who come are intruders and will be dwelt with by the police.
___________________________________________
Ken Aitken: I grew up in the 1950’s and 1960’s at Wilsons Creek, up in the mountains out from Mullumbimby in Northern New South Wales, Australia. I was raised on a banana plantation amidst the steep slopes of rainforest and wet sclerophyll (gum) forest and occasional cliff outcrops. The creek we swam in was a very clear, clean freshwater rainforest creek with big deep pools. People now in the City, would give their `eye’ teeth for it as my late father used to say.
Wilson’s Creek is about twenty minutes (about ten kilometres) up in one of the many valleys west of Mullumbimby, in the Northern Rivers area. With this time, came for me a strong spiritual love of Creation, Nature, Country Living and the Environment.
It was a hard and simple life with a Dad and Mom and three younger brothers (Gerald, Rick and Colin). My father had come through the Great Depression of the 1930’s. His father had died when he was only thirteen and he had to leave home and fend for himself. He had learnt many lessons of self-sufficiency …. personally and economically.
My life has gone through these stages …. Click on the blog site here:
Section 1: Wilsons Creek Years 1950 to 1967 …..
Exploring the Hiddeness Of Life
1: Wilson’s Creek Packing Shed as House
3: Blackbean Rd. as given on this section of this website
4. Wilsons Creek Primary School
Section 2: AVONDALE COLLEGE DAYS 1968 -1969
See the following web posts on this website:
Section 3: UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND DAYS 1970 -1974
Section 4: GENERAL BRISBANE LIFE 1974 – 2010
___________________________________________
KEN AND HARRIET’S PLACE
1606 Chambers Flat Rd. CHAMBERS FLAT
QLD 4133 AUSTRALIA
http://kenandharrietshouse.blogspot.com
E-mail: aitkken@gmail.com
______________________________
Ken & Harriet on their 2009 trip (September / October) to England from Australia.
We spent a week in London before we hired a mobile home
and drove through East Anglia for two weeks then spent a week in Kent.
See my Personal Experiences website above on the Travel Page on this website.
__________________________________________________________________________
OUR HOUSE: In 1981, we built a unique natural house out of recycled timber for a fraction of the price of a new house. People often come out to see this house. I had run an environmental landscape design and construction business for twenty years so I had the skills to put things together like this. This is on our five acres of light open eucalypt bush at Chambers Flat, Brisbane.
The house is largely of glass set into a post and lintel construction of 100 ++ year old broadaxed timbers and sandstone walls. The total concept of indoor-outdoor flow, has a nice ambience to it and the design is unique. See the house and garden on my website:
The house is called ‘Ken & Harriet House’ … it is a great place to live as I largely look after the large garden and acreage. We have a real sense of close community, starting with the family and spreading to many others. Looking out my family and friends is what I do now.
_________________________________________________
….. The freedom of life we now have (having no mortgage on our five acres of land
plus a house we built from recycled materials in 1981) has enabled us to go on
four week holidays to England in 2003, Italy in 2005, and France in 2007,
Canada in 2008 & England again in 2009. See the Travel page for the
different photographic posts and words …….
_______________________________________________________
In 1968 I left home to begin a new section my life at Avondale College at Cooranbong right down near Morisset, near Newcastle in New South Wales, Australia. I went to do a Science Degree. I had a Commonwealth Scholarship to go to the College. As given above, see the following web posts on this website:
I then went up to Brisbane in Queensland to do a Science Degree between1970 and 1974 at the University of Queensland. I married Harriet Kent from Melbourne in December 1975. Work wise , I started my own business which ran for twenty years. I ran a small business in upmarket landscape design and construction for wealthy clients around Brisbane for twenty years. It was called ‘New Earth Systems P/L’. I was an Outer Gardener concerned about Outer Sustainability. This Outer Sustainability was fragile and easily eroded, dependent on my performance and people’s acceptance of my work.
Fourteen years ago while surfing at Peregian Beach in Queensland, I fell off a boogie-board in metre of water and hit my head on the sand. The end result was that I ended up in the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane in December 1996. I was in a coma for four weeks and it took six months in hospital before I was able to walk, talk and function in a reasonably normal manner. I had suffered a severe brain injury.
A New Season of Life:
I am now a former brain injury survivor who has chosen to be not a victim but to be a victor though the worst situations in life. I am now on a permanent holiday for life through a life time Income Protection Policy. (How that came about is the infinite – personal God!!). Now the same policies are not commercially sold …… they have gone up to 500 pages before you even apply for one!! I now have a generous monthly income for the rest of my life though I do not ever have to work again. The monthly income is quite adequate for our needs. Harriet can work as well. She works with Qld. Health in Logan City. She is the GP liaison officer who links up doctors (300 ++) in Logan City with Logan Hospital.
This side of the accident since I was in hospital unintentionally from 8th December 1995 to now, I have really discovered people in a big way. I have really come to value people, no matter who they are, what they do or say. I have developed a passion to build inner community with many people around the world especially by e-mail. As I am on a permanent paid holiday through my life-long Income Protection, I have time to spend with people in a way I never could do in my busy business. I have very focussed on the inner sustainable life.
Inner Sustainability: In an ongoing personal sense …. Can your life be maintained? ….. is what you doing now preparing the way ahead for new life? I have discovered the significance of the Inner and Outer Life. Sustainability I have come to see, has to be a wholistic view on life of Inner, Middle and Outer Persons. Problems come because things do not change from the Outside to Inside but from the Inside to the Outside.
The sustainable life: Such a life has the ability to be continually maintained everyday. I have found from personal experience that in recovering from a brain injury and experiencing life in an ongoing way that there are three important components. These are: Structure, Social Network and Spirituality. Each of these components act like legs on a tripod which sits on large rock near the ocean. When the storms and waves of life come (as in brain injury), if the legs are strong, the waves will go over you but you will sit firmly on the rock of life. If one of the legs is weak, the tripod topples over into an Unsustainable Life experience. The components of a Sustainable life are:
1. Structure …. Like the Body without a backbone, so is life without structure. It gives order, direction, aims and achievable objectives i.e. overall purpose.
2. Spirituality ….. gives ultimate significance …. The window of light and life ….. like a large glass window at eye level …. Is the inner room of your life which will provide plenty of light and understanding. It answers such questions as: Who are we as people?, What is the meaning of life?, Are we significant?, What values should I live by?, what gives identity and destiny
3. Social Network …. The people around us: the synergistic effect … multiplication and complementary effect of effort: Family & friends, Clubs and Organisations, Associations, Churches, General Community and work colleagues.
Inner and Outer Life:
Everyone of us has a private space in our lives that we carefully guard. I call it ‘The Garden of Life’ A garden is a personal space you can go out into and to enjoy the peace, the cool air, the shadows of trees, the sun shining with translucent light through tree leaves and palm fronds, the perfume of beautiful blossoms.
No one else comes there except yourself and your family. Even friends do not just drop in. They are invited out there with you after you have let them into your house. Strangers who come are intruders and will be dwelt with by the police.
It is the same with relationships. You have to enter someone’s inner life with their consent. You do this by placing great value on the person and listening intently to what they say, as though it is absolutely important. By listening intently (consciously in a rational way and unconsciously with your intuition), you are as it were gently knocking on the door of their inner house.
If that person trusts you, they will then invite you into the garden of their life. Then you can talk gently back and forth and then you have established a relationship with them. They will open their door of their inner life at a later time if you knock. To keep that process going is a Sustainable Relationship. If I act suspiciously or try and crash the door with a sledge hammer, I will not be let in. That is what I call an Unsustainable Relationship.
These Sustainable Life Solutions will continue to work for you in the years to come.
Inherent in this framework is an understanding of our uniqueness as a created being, sustained by a loving Creator. Having a clear identity enables you to become people focussed rather than self focussed. See details on the Sustainable Life here at this Website: ‘The Sustainable Life …… for a life of wholeness …. Do You live a Whole Life or do you have a Hole in your Life?’
I am now an Inner Life Gardener concerned about Inner Sustainability. When you are secure in yourself, then you are able to reach out to other people and assist them in their journey. I have a desire to bring the sustainable life, not just to brain injury survivors but people everywhere. I facilitate by communicating this by the Internet to over a thousand people around the world. Some group identities have many Cyberspace members as well.
__________________________________
READING NOTE: ‘…….’ means a reflection of memories as pictures. It isn’t precise analytical thought. Where does one memory picture start and stop? Life is a story that flows from one memory picture to the next.
__________________________________
August 6, 2009 1 Comment