The Good Boy in the Gas Mask.

What does it mean to be a good person?

At ten years old, I wanted the neighbours to think I was a good person.

My strategy involved a lawnmower and a gas mask.

I suffered from hay fever, which made mowing the lawn a particular kind of misery. Imagine trying to push a lawnmower while sneezing with almost every step. The grass needed cutting. My nose had objections.

Even then, I was creative and solution oriented.

So I put on a gas mask.

Somewhere between a suburban household chore and a steampunk expedition, a small boy got on with the work.

It is a funny memory. But what stayed with me was a thought I remember with remarkable clarity.

As I mowed the grass along the pavement, I looked towards the neighbouring houses.

Are they watching?

I hoped they were.

I wanted someone to see me working hard. To notice that I was doing my part. Perhaps to think, There is a good boy.

Inside that comical figure was a sincere little heart.

I wanted to be industrious like my father. I wanted to contribute to our family home, to help keep it neat and cared for. And I wanted that contribution to mean something about who I was.

Being seen mattered.

Someone noticing my effort would confirm something I hoped was true about me.

I wanted to be good, and I was still learning how to recognise goodness in myself.

Looking back, I feel tenderness towards that boy. His desire for approval did not make his effort insincere. He was doing the work. He was contributing, despite the sneezing.

He simply wanted a witness.

Perhaps many of us carry that child into adulthood.

The lawnmower changes. We become helpful colleagues, dependable parents, generous friends or committed volunteers. We do things that matter. Yet somewhere in the middle of our contribution, we glance towards the windows.

Did anyone notice? Do they know how hard I am trying?

There is something deeply human in wanting our efforts to be recognised. The difficulty comes when recognition becomes the measure of our goodness.

Other people can see our actions without knowing our motives. They can approve of something that causes harm. They can disapprove of a necessary decision.

Their applause cannot do the work of our conscience.

As I grew older and fell in love with Stoic philosophy, goodness became associated with virtue. I began asking what kind of person I was becoming through my choices. Wisdom, courage, justice and self-discipline gave me something more substantial to practise than the art of looking respectable.

Today, I understand goodness through an inner sense of responsibility: how I live as a rational, social and creative being.

But even that requires honesty.

My conscience must remain open to examination. Otherwise, “I am living according to my own truth” can become a comfortable excuse for ignoring everyone affected by it.

I can feel right and still be mistaken.

I can mean well and still cause harm.

I can regard myself as helpful while making another person’s life more difficult.

Good intentions begin a responsibility. They do not complete it.

That responsibility asks me to pay attention to what follows my thoughts, words and deeds.

When my words hurt someone, can I listen before defending myself?

When a decision benefits me, can I consider who carries its cost?

When I discover that I was wrong, can I change course without turning the correction into a battle for my dignity?

And when an apology is needed, can I follow it with repair?

These questions make goodness less comfortable, but more useful.

They bring it into our relationships, our workplaces and the ordinary moments when we must decide what to do next. They ask us to remain accountable after our intentions have met the world.

I still have affection for the boy in the gas mask. I would never tell him that wanting to be seen made him less good.

I would tell him that his contribution already mattered. The grass was being cut. The family home was being cared for. He was learning that he could overcome a difficulty and do his part.

Then I would offer him one thought to grow into:

You will not always be praised when you do something worthwhile. You will sometimes be praised when you have something to put right.

Keep paying attention.

At ten, I looked towards the neighbours’ windows and wondered, Can they see that I am good?

Today, I try to look towards the lives my actions touch and ask:

What has my participation made possible—and what must I take responsibility for now?

Denmark: Where the Stones Remember

What’s a country that’s at the top of your bucket list?

The picture I hope may become real and not just AI

I have booked my ticket to Denmark.

For years, it has been a country somewhere ahead of me, a place I hoped one day to visit. Now the journey has a date. Yet the longing that takes me there reaches backwards through generations.

I want to walk on the land where my forefathers walked.

Bertel Pedersen, my sixth great-grandfather, was the last of my direct ancestors to walk on Danish ground, before 1752. I wonder what he carried with him when he left. What memories of home remained with him? What did he miss? Did he ever imagine that, centuries later, one of his descendants would feel drawn to return?

I cannot know his thoughts. But I can follow the thread he left behind.

And that thread takes me further back still, to the tenth century, to Jutland, and to two stones standing at Jelling.

I want to stand before the small Jelling stone, raised by King Gorm the Old in memory of his wife, Thyra. There, among the carved runes, is the earliest surviving mention of Denmark within the country itself.

But what draws me first is the remembrance of a wife.

Before this became a monument studied by historians, a man wanted a woman to be remembered. The words have outlived the hand that carved them, the people who first read them, and the world in which they were raised.

I imagine standing there quietly, allowing that distance to settle around me.

Nearby stands the larger stone, raised by Harald Bluetooth in memory of his parents, Gorm and Thyra. Its inscription declares his achievements: winning Denmark and Norway and making the Danes Christian. Christ appears on one face; an animal entwined with a serpent appears on another.

It is often called Denmark’s birth certificate.

Here, love and remembrance stand alongside power, victory and a nation’s changing faith. A son honours his parents while announcing the world he intends to shape.

I feel an urge to reach out and touch these stones, as though my fingertips could close the centuries between us. Perhaps simply standing before them will be enough. To see the grooves, the weathered surfaces, the marks made by someone who once stood where I will stand.

In my imagination, the present grows quiet.

For a moment, I hear voices speaking a language both distant and strangely familiar. I picture someone approaching the newly raised stone, pausing to read its runes. What did those words mean to them? Pride? Grief? Hope? Did they understand that their world was changing?

My longing reaches beyond Jelling’s declaration of Christianity, towards the older world of gods and goddesses, of stories told beside a fire, of lives lived beneath the turning sun and moon.

There is something in that world I want to understand more deeply.

I sometimes imagine it as a call within my DNA. Perhaps it is ancestry. Perhaps it is the imagination answering a story that has accompanied me for years. Whatever its source, the feeling is real: a longing for a place I have never known.

Yes, I may romanticise the past.

The people who raised these stones knew hardship, conflict and uncertainty. Their lives were as human as ours. Yet their stories and sagas still stir courage, curiosity and the desire to accomplish something worthy of remembrance.

I want to meet that humanity beneath the history.

Denmark is at the top of my bucket list because I hope to stand before a runestone and feel time become briefly transparent.

To look at an ancient inscription and sense the living person behind it.

To walk on unfamiliar ground and wonder why it feels familiar.

My ticket will take me to Denmark.

The stones, I hope, will take me further.

My SEO Strategy? Keep It Human.

What are your strategies for SEO?

Search engine optimisation has never featured much in my writing strategy. I leave that to the professional blogs and websites. My approach has become simpler over the years: write something worth writing, and enjoy the process.

When I started blogging, I hoped to attract readers. I believed I had insights to share and something of value to contribute. There was pleasure in discovering that my words could interest someone else.

With time, my purpose shifted. I began writing for my children, hoping to leave them a record of my experiences, reflections and lessons learned. They grew in their own directions, as children should, finding their own sources of knowledge and inspiration.

Google became a ready source of answers, and now AI has entered the conversation. That landscape will keep changing. Through it all, I still find something precious in reading how another human being has experienced life.

Perhaps I am old stock. I like visiting the blogs of fellow writers on WordPress. I enjoy real writing by real people: a small observation, a personal struggle, a moment of humour, an unexpected insight. There is something quietly satisfying about encountering a person through their words.

Eventually, my SEO strategy became simply to write—and to write as well as I can.

If somebody discovers something useful or entertaining in what I have written, that is wonderful. If a piece passes quietly through the world, I am comfortable with that too. Writing already gives me something valuable.

These days, I write for myself as well. I love going back through entries from years ago and meeting my younger self. Sometimes he surprises me. Sometimes he reminds me of something I had forgotten. Always, he offers me another glimpse of the life I have lived.

I enjoy writing in my own voice, finding words for what matters to me, and leaving a record I can return to.

I still appreciate a reader. A like makes me smile, and a comment can turn a solitary act of writing into a conversation. Those connections remain a lovely part of blogging, even though the numbers no longer occupy much of my attention.

So, what are my strategies for SEO?

Keep writing. Give each piece my best attention. Let it carry something of the human being who wrote it.

And enjoy whoever happens to stop by.

My Younger Self Never Gave Up on Me

What’s one thing you know now that would have saved your younger self a lot of pain?

“What’s one thing you know now that would have saved your younger self a lot of pain?”

My first reaction is gratitude.
My younger self did a good job. Looking back, I feel little need to rescue him. In many ways, he was the one who saved me from pain.

He made good decisions that led to good outcomes. He sought wisdom, explored his creativity and kept looking for ways to make life meaningful. Much of what I enjoy today grew from choices he made before he could know how they would turn out.
Of course, there were moments when, with hindsight, I could have chosen better. There were mistakes, disappointments and efforts that did not produce the results I hoped for. But I cannot honestly describe my life as one of suffering from which my younger self needed saving. His choices spared me a great deal of avoidable pain, and I want to give him credit for that.

One of the most valuable lessons I learned from a teacher was to live a life of adding value.

That principle gave my life direction. I began to consider what I could contribute, what I could improve and what might become possible through my participation. In my own way, I started engineering a life towards meaningful success.

I was not always successful. Yet my younger self kept learning, adjusting and trying again. He continued investing in a future he had not yet reached.

My younger self never gave up on the older self I would become.
I find something deeply moving in that thought. The person I am today lives with the consequences of his decisions, but also with the benefits of his courage, discipline, curiosity and perseverance. He did much of the groundwork for a life I now get to inhabit.
It is easy to look backwards with the advantage of experience and notice everything we would change. We know how certain decisions turned out. We can see possibilities that were less visible then. Our younger selves had to choose while the future was still uncertain.

Perhaps they deserve some appreciation for what they managed to get right.

I would like to turn the question around:
What did your younger self do that has made your life better today?

Perhaps they learned a skill you still rely on. Perhaps they left a difficult situation, nurtured a relationship, asked for help or persisted through uncertainty. Perhaps they planted something whose value only became clear years later.

This does not require us to deny our regrets or pretend every decision was wise. It simply invites us to remember more fully—to recognise the good alongside the mistakes.

When I look back, I see someone who was seeking wisdom, creating possibilities and learning how to contribute. Someone whose efforts helped spare me pain and gave me a foundation on which to build.

To my younger self, I want to say:
Thank you for the good decisions. Thank you for seeking wisdom and making room for creativity. Thank you for learning to add value.

And thank you for never giving up on me!