The 7th biennial European Conference on Positive Psychology (ECPP) began here in Amsterdam yesterday.  Four years ago, I went to the 5^th European Conference in Copenhagen.  It was pretty special and I wrote extensively about it in this blog - see, for example "European positive psychology conference in Copenhagen: arriving, opening speeches & reception".  

I'm just back from four days away with friends down in Cumbria.  I have been going to these long residential Spring weekends on the edge of the Lake District for well over twenty years and have written a lot about them too ... see for example the sequence of posts from a couple of years' ago beginning "Peer groups, Cumbria spring group: first morning - arriving".

It’s about six in the morning.  A cuckoo is calling repeatedly and I’ve just woken.  I’m warm in my sleeping bag, but it’s quite cold in the tent.  How am I feeling?  Frightened!  Externally I’m fine, but when I look inside there’s a constriction.  When I explore it more awarely I get an image of a cold, heavy snake lying down the length of my body and most obviously there’s a constriction around my heart.

"Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”    Rainer Maria Rilke "Letters to a young poet".