From Our President - Mike Flavell

Planning Ahead

All our lives we have been planning. When to leave home. When to apply for a different job. When to buy a piece of equipment. When to employ staff. When to sell the family home. When to make changes. One might think, superficially, that we would be pretty good at planning. Except it never seems all that easy.

In U3A we need to do some planning now that we have a website. You can see it easily. To check it out just type north canterbury u3a into Google, M.S.Edge or Safari.

What next?

We’d like to welcome new members for 2026 at a morning tea at Artisans on 8 October 10-12 noon. Let me know if you would have liked to come but cannot make it.

We would also like to use our new website to let you have access to online learning from Australia and the United Kingdom. More on this later however if you have experience with online learning we would welcome your assistance.

Voluntary organisations like ours continually need new volunteers. It is easy to become comfortable with others carrying organisational jobs and so difficult to realise “Wow. Is it my turn now?” To follow that up with an offer of help is even more challenging.

It is, of course, not that we don’t want to help. With maturity comes an understanding of what follows commitment – I might never get out of it. There will be far too many meetings achieving little. I’ve finally got to retirement and making my life work so why would I actively stress myself out by volunteering?

If you can help, please do. Tell me or any of the committee.

There is a great Sufi story about two monks making their way in a heavy snowstorm toward a monastery far ahead. They hear a cry for help. One monk says “We need to press on to safety. To pause here, even to help another, is to die”. The second monk says “I have heard the cry for help. I cannot ignore the need of a fellow human being.” The first monk says “I will leave you to help then. I am moving on” and pressed on in the snowstorm.

With some difficulty and time the second monk rescues the injured person and struggles along the path with the injured person with little remaining energy. Just when he thought all was lost he saw the faint light of the monastery ahead and renewed his efforts only to fall over an object on the path covered in the snow. It was the frozen body of the other monk.

You know the moral of the story.

Spring is well with us even if the ground stays remarkably wet. The daffodils have done their thing, the freesia aroma is delightful and the cherry blossom is arriving in full. I hope you are finding renewed aspects of life in your lives as well.

Mike Flavell

North Canterbury U3A