Success & Happiness

And, as if by magic, it was all over.She sat in her car in the car park with both hands on the wheel and didn’t start the engine. Forty-five minutes. The most intense interview she had ever faced, for the one job her heart wanted above all else.Finance Manager at a small charity working with families caught up in drug and alcohol addiction.For as long as she could remember, she had wanted to work in finance for a charity. Other people wanted to be on the front line. She wanted to be the one who made sure the front line was still there next year, that the rent got paid and every grant was spent where it was meant to go. It was, she felt, her purpose in life.Before she went in, the old voices had started up.You’re not good enough for this.You’re not worthy.You’re incapable.She knew them well. They had come a million times before. A guy she liked: you’re not good enough for him. Other jobs she went for: you’re incapable. Other things she had wanted in her life: you’re not worthy.Life had been hard and tough. Then, with the help of a wise person, she had realised that every one of those stories was made up.They meant nothing. They had kept her safe as a child, and now they no longer served her. They certainly didn’t help her, but they did keep her safe and small.She didn’t want to be safe and small anymore. She wanted to be out there, her authentic self, the person she had always wanted to be.She knew she had the skills. Years of month-ends, budgets and audits had seen to that. More importantly, she knew this was the work her heart wanted. When she did it, there were no conditions about success or failure, no judgement from herself or anyone else. When she was living her truth, no one could question her.She was real, and she would attract the people she needed into her life. Those who did not resonate with her would simply melt away, as if they had never been there. There were three of them across the table: the chief executive, a trustee who had kept the charity’s books for years as a volunteer, and a woman from HR with a printed list of questions.Halfway through, the chief executive took off her glasses and asked what she would do in a year when the biggest grant didn’t come through.As she began to answer, her brain started up. You’re incapable. You’re incapable.Her heart was saying something else entirely.Out loud, she talked about reserves and forecasts and honest conversations with funders. But underneath the words and the promises, she was sending a different message, straight to their hearts.I am the person you have been looking for.It was in direct contradiction to every self-limiting thought her brain was having. She let her heart win.That was her secret weapon. She felt it expanding and sent love to everyone in the room, unconditional love with no expectation and no need for anything in return. She was simply using her power. They felt her love and empathy and understanding, and alongside the skills, they knew she was the best person for the job.She kept all her focus on her end result, which was to get the job. There were others more qualified, others who would probably accept less money. She went after what her heart wanted regardless, and she knew she would get it.The call came two days later.It was a dream come true. She would be helping people, making a difference in the world. Changing people’s lives for the better. Changing their children’s lives. Changing generations of poverty, drug use and alcoholism.She had the opportunity to change it all. This was her genius and her gift to the world.If any of those three voices sound familiar, I’d love to know which one turns up for you. Leave a comment, give this a like if it spoke to you, and share it with someone who has a big day coming up and needs to hear it.You can also support our charity work in Zambia here - Buy me a coffeeReady to step out your comfort zone and into something magical? June 2027, we’re taking a small group to the Luangwa Valley in Zambia for ten days of wildlife and work with the community. Places are limited. Have a look at the trip here. Get full access to Colin's Chronicles at colindurrant.substack.com/subscribe

When the herds left the Liuwa Plain, the hunger came.For weeks the tribe lived on smaller meals, surviving on whatever they could find, and it was never quite enough. The children went to sleep hungry. The old people grew thin. Every year the men stood and watched the dust of the wildebeest drift away across the plain, and every year they knew they couldn’t follow.The men had tried. They would set off after the herds, but out there the river sank into the sand and disappeared. There was no shade and nowhere to hide, and a man was exposed to the sun and to everything else that lived there. The animals could cover vast distances with no water at all. The men couldn’t. Sooner or later they were forced to turn back, because they couldn’t survive long without it. The suffering was too great.Men in those days were fascinated by the world around them, but they generally kept to the same area. It was too dangerous to travel far into the unknown, and the unknown has always been man’s biggest fear.Then one dry season, Acrollis decided he would follow the animals to the bitter end and see where they went.He made a sack for carrying water from an animal’s intestines. Two friends, Akasiwa and Sepo, decided to join him. They were as fascinated as he was. They were heading into the unknown, where anything could happen, and they might never see their families again.His mother was distraught. She didn’t want to lose her son. But his father had watched the children go to sleep hungry too many times. He saw that his son had to go, for the sake of the whole tribe. It was a sacrifice, but an important one. Reluctantly, his mother agreed, and the three men set off.They each carried a few bags of water. It wouldn’t last many days, and there would certainly not be enough to get back if they turned around.The land ahead was barren grassland. The river had gone underground, out of reach of men and animals alike. The herd of wildebeest kicked up a dust cloud that was easy to follow.In the worst heat of the day the herd stopped in the shade of a few large trees, and no travel was possible. The three men did the same, setting up camp and waiting for the cool of the evening. They kept their distance, but every now and again the herd would grow very unsettled. Lions would attack, and one would be killed. At night it was the hyenas. The men lay awake listening to them whooping out on the plain, and in the morning there would be one less calf. It was a war of attrition.Many predators followed the herd, so one of the men always had to keep watch. They could never be too careful. A lion wouldn’t hesitate to kill a man if it felt threatened, especially with cubs nearby. Lions didn’t particularly like eating people, but they saw them as a threat. Acrollis raised his hand, and the others stopped. They crouched and waited.To their right, a go-away bird gave its alarm call. The herd sensed the danger and began to stampede. The three men jumped to their feet and trotted after them. They could run like this for a whole day, but their water was dwindling.A young wildebeest wasn’t so lucky. Two large male lions took it down, and its journey in this world was over. Perhaps it would be reborn as a lion in its next life and the tables would be turned. But for now, it was food. The men trotted past, and the feeding lions didn’t even look up.The animals often walked through the night, and the men had to keep up. If they fell too far behind, they would become a target.By morning, their water was gone.Now the real suffering began. There would be no turning back and no respite. They would simply have to keep going until their bodies gave out. They knew the animals needed water too. The herd had to be heading towards it, and they hoped to get there before their resilience ran out.Through the heat of the day, the men suffered. Their lips split. Their tongues swelled. They dug for roots the way the old people had taught them, roots that were succulent and held a mouthful of water, but it took patience and hard work and the roots were few.That afternoon, Akasiwa stopped walking.“We should go back,” he said.Acrollis turned and looked at the way they had come. Two days of empty grass, shimmering in the heat. “There is nothing back there,” he said. “There is no water behind us. The only water is ahead.”They kept going. An hour later, Akasiwa dropped to the sunbaked earth and lay still.Acrollis and Sepo poked him and tried to get him up. They tried to lift him, but they were weak themselves. If he wasn’t already dead, he was very close to it.His mother had named him Akasiwa, the one who cannot be left.They left him.That night, the hyenas started whooping somewhere behind them, in the direction they had come from. Neither man said a word. Acrollis and Sepo stumbled on. Any predator would have found them easy pickings. They were far too weak to defend themselves.On the second night without water, Acrollis lay down in the grass and didn’t get up. His body had nothing left. The herd was moving away from him in the dark, and he let it go. He thought it would be easy just to stay there.Then he thought of the children going to sleep hungry, and of his father’s face when he had let him go.He got up.On the third day without water, as the heat began to rise, they heard the wildebeest making a noise, as if they were excited. The men thought another pride of lions had come to attack.But as they stumbled forward, they smelt it.Water.The river had come up out of the ground again, wide and fast and deep. Acrollis and Sepo pushed in among the animals, who were just as desperate to drink. It was still hard going, because most of their strength had gone, but they never gave up.They reached the water’s edge and would have jumped in if the current hadn’t been so strong. They were also rightly afraid of the crocodiles lurking in the depths, waiting for unsuspecting prey.The water revived them. Without it they would have been dead within hours. They rested while their bodies slowly soaked it back up, and it brought them back from the brink.Then Acrollis counted the days back in his head, and he understood. Akasiwa had fallen less than a day’s walk from this river.When their strength returned, they filled every bag they had and walked home, following their own tracks across the dry country. They found the place where Akasiwa had fallen. The hyenas had been there first.The next dry season, when the herds moved away, the tribe didn’t stand and watch the dust. They filled their water bags and followed. It took three days to reach the river, and that year, nobody went hungry.Whenever the herds leave the plain, the elders still tell the children about Acrollis, who got up out of the grass when there was nothing left in him. They tell them what he told them: keep going, because the reward is usually just around the next corner.Then they tell them about Akasiwa, who lay down less than a day from the river.If this story stayed with you, I’d love to hear what it stirred up. Leave a comment, give it a like, and share it with someone who’s walking through their own dry stretch right now.P.S. Sometimes the bravest thing is saying yes before you feel ready. Next June, I’m taking ten people to the Luangwa Valley in Zambia for ten days of wildlife and work with the community. Places are limited. Have a look at the trip here.You can also support our work in Zambia here - Buy me a coffee Get full access to Colin's Chronicles at colindurrant.substack.com/subscribe

In ancient times, in the city of Thebes, there lived a warrior called Thecius. He was one of the bravest warriors in the whole city, and he trained other warriors to be brave like him.His method was simple and hard. He took them on hikes lasting many days, deep into the mountains, where they took on bears and lions. This proved them as men. Once they could fight a bear or a lion, fighting mere men was never going to be as hard. That was Thecius’s strategy. The only problem was that it was very dangerous, and many men were killed or injured while trying to prove their bravery.On this particular journey, Thecius had his son with him. Thoris had been trained well and hard, but his father was afraid for him all the same. The boy’s mother had cried when he left. She knew the dangers and the threat to his life. She knew it had to be done, but she feared for her son as any mother would.There were twelve of them in all. Some were seasoned warriors who had been through the ritual before. Three were boys making their first journey, and Thoris was one of them.The going was treacherous. They climbed into the high mountains, crossed rivers and picked their way over rough ground, watching for danger around every corner. Thecius wanted his son in the middle of the group, because the front was the most dangerous position. Thoris would have none of it. He had to prove to everyone that he was worthy of being his father’s son. He had to lead, and face danger head on.They made camp near the river and built a large fire, then went fishing. The river was full of fish and it was easy to catch enough for dinner. But there were large bears about, and they loved a fish dinner too. The fire would keep most of them away. A starving bear was another matter. That shouldn’t happen with a river full of fish, but you just never knew. A bear that was injured and couldn’t catch its own food would simply steal from others, including men.So they built a ring of thorn bushes around the camp, with the fire in the middle. They ate their fill and went to bed early. It was going to be a long day tomorrow.One of them always stayed awake while the others slept. Thoris would take the first watch, then the other boys would take their turns. They told the time by the stars and how far they had travelled across the night sky.It was very cold that night. With the warmth of the fire and a belly full of food, Thoris thought he would be fine. Sleep just crept up on him, and he was snoring softly before he knew it.Eyes were watching from the edge of the camp. Yellow eyes of hungry predators. They watched and waited patiently. The fire burned down with no one to feed it. Every man was asleep.Thorns were no problem for the big cats. They could leap over them or crawl through. Two male lions, brothers, were the first to break the boundary. They were not interested in killing men for the sake of it. What they really wanted was food. They crept quietly through the camp, sniffing out scraps. There was not a lot left, but they ate what they could find.Thoris woke with a start. Something was wrong. They were not alone.He threw a log on the fire and it roared back into life. His eyes swept the camp, and he saw the glowing yellow eyes looking back at him.He froze. He knew this was his moment to prove his strength and bravery, but the fear gripped him. His chest tightened. His heart raced and his breathing was shallow and rapid. He felt himself sweating. He gripped his spear tightly, and then he remembered his training. Calm and loose. If he carried fear, he would show himself to be prey, and the beasts would kill him.He gathered himself, took a deep breath and steadied his nerves. Slowly, the fear in his belly drained away. He crouched, the spear in front of him, ready to drive it into the heart of the beast if it attacked.Then he let out a blood-curdling yell and ran straight at the lion.Startled, the lion turned and leapt back over the thorns the way it had come. Its brother, on the far side of the fire, watched on. It considered its options. It thought about fighting this child and stealing more food.By now the others were awake, Thecius among them, on their feet with their spears ready. The second lion decided its best bet was to leave, and it leapt after its brother. The two of them slunk off into the night.They piled more wood on the fire until it threw its light out to the thorns. The men could still sense wild animals moving beyond the camp, but for now they were safe. They looked at Thoris and thanked him for saving them. They were impressed that he had taken on a lion by himself. But Thoris knew in his heart that he had fallen asleep, and that this was unforgivable. He had let them all down. If he had not woken, the lions could have killed every one of them as they slept.Did he tell his father, or keep quiet? He wanted to please his father and make him proud. But he had also been taught the strength of telling the truth. And he knew that if he didn’t, one day it would come out, and then it would be far worse for him.The camp quietened down. Another boy took the watch and the rest went back to sleep.In the morning everyone patted Thoris on the back and told him how brave he was. It only made it harder.They packed up the camp and headed back up the mountain. Thoris fell into step beside his father. Thecius beamed at him with pride, and it pulled at Thoris’s heart. How could he tell him now?Finally he could hold it in no longer.“Father,” he blurted out. “I fell asleep last night. I’m sorry. I thought I would be fine, but I just fell asleep without realising it.”No one else could hear him. Thecius stared at his boy, his face expressionless. Thoris’s eyes fell to the ground. He didn’t know whether to cry or simply run away.At last Thecius spoke, quietly. “I know, my son. I was wondering if you would admit it to me. I could tell from the fire. It had almost died, because no one had fed it. And I could tell from your bed that you had been lying in it. You realise this is unforgivable.”Thoris nodded.Then Thecius stopped and shouted for everyone to gather round.“Tell them what you told me.”Thoris repeated it. The seasoned warriors already knew. They didn’t miss anything. They had also known the boys would probably fall asleep, after a long day of walking, climbing over rocks and wading through streams.Thoris waited for his punishment, his head down.Thecius stepped forward and put his hand on his son’s shoulder.“My son has spoken the truth. He knew there could be serious consequences, and still he chose to tell the truth. That is the sign of a great man, a man with courage. He has shown he can be trusted, and that he will not lie when he becomes a leader of men. Today is a great day.”The men beat their spears against their shields and chanted Thoris’s name.It was the last thing he had expected. His father slapped him on the back. “There will still be a punishment for falling asleep,” he said. “But you have told the truth, and that is the most important thing. We all knew you had fallen asleep. In fact, we knew you probably would. The real test was whether you would admit it to all of us. You knew there would be a punishment and you still told us. That makes me proud, because it shows your integrity and your character, and that is what matters above all else.”At last, Thoris let himself smile.That night, when the stars said it was time, he took the first watch again. He kept the fire fed until dawn.Have you ever had to own up to something when keeping quiet would have been so much easier? I’d love to hear your story in the comments. And if this one stayed with you, give it a like and share it with someone who might need it.P.S. Sometimes the bravest thing is saying yes before you feel ready. Next June, I’m taking ten people to the Luangwa Valley in Zambia for ten days of wildlife and work with the community. Places are limited. Have a look at the trip here.You can also support our work in Zambia here - Buy me … Get full access to Colin's Chronicles at colindurrant.substack.com/subscribe

Many thousands of years ago, there lived a young boy called Ranzi. He lived with his grandmother, as both his parents had died of illness a few years before. It had hit him hard, but death was ever present in ancient times, and it was not something to be feared.The elders taught the children about the journey everyone takes once they die. The afterlife, and the possibility of coming back to earth and being born again. Many of the villagers carried memories of past lives. Not fearing death helped them face a tough environment. Though tough is our word for it. They didn’t know any different. It was just life.Colin's Chronicles is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.They had a deep respect for animals, trees and plants, and they knew that everything was connected. When they managed to kill an animal for food, they thanked the gods for it. They were taught to live in gratitude for everything they had.A victim mindset was dangerous, because it made you no use to the rest of the village. When bad things happened, there was no time to dwell on them. You had to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and crack on. If you sat feeling sorry for yourself, things would very soon get worse. There was still empathy, but there was no time to do nothing. There were mouths to feed, shelters to build, animals to defend against. Life wasn’t always fair. Sickness could take the hard-working as easily as the idle. But the ones who got up each morning and worked were far more likely to have food when the dry season came and a shelter that held when the rains did. The ones who sat waiting for life to treat them better usually went without.Everyone had to stay fit and healthy, or be left behind to fend for themselves. You had to be fit enough to hunt, and fast enough to run if a sabre-toothed cat came into the village. They noticed, too, that the fit recovered quicker from illness and injury. These were the things they could control, and they prepared them for the things they could not: floods, rock falls and a hundred other dangers. If a family member fell sick, you looked after them, and worked twice as hard.One early morning, Ranzi was walking through a field when he came across a baby zebra lying in the grass. It had been left for dead. The rest of the herd had moved off, faster still when they heard him coming. Something was wrong with its leg. It looked as though a predator had got to it.Normally Ranzi would have left it too. Something would come along soon enough and eat it. That was the law of nature, after all.But he stopped. The foal lay there, small and alone, and Ranzi knew what it was to be left alone in the world.He tried to pick it up, but it kicked and struggled, letting out thin, high squeaks that cut through the morning air. Its eyes rolled white. So he knelt in the grass and calmed his mind and his energy. He sent the young animal love and peace, and spoke to it through his mind, telling it he was here to help, and that without him it would die.The squeaks grew quieter, then stopped. Under his hands, its trembling slowed. Its breathing came longer and softer, and its eye stopped rolling and settled on him. When he lifted it this time, it let him. He carried it back to the village with its heart still beating fast against his chest. His grandmother was overjoyed when she saw him coming, thinking it would make a fine meal. But Ranzi said no. He was going to look after it and get it well again. She was shocked, angry even. But she saw the determination in him, and the kindness in his heart, and for a moment she saw his mother standing there instead. She knew she could not stay angry. She helped him dress the wound and packed it with herbs. Ranzi gave it water in a bowl and went to fetch grass for it to eat later.The other villagers came to look. They laughed and said he was playing with his food. Ranzi wasn’t deterred. He was not a wild animal that killed anything that crossed his path. He felt how much the kindness mattered, and he kept going.He nursed the foal for many weeks. At night it squeaked softly in the dark until he lay down beside it, and then it would settle. All that time, a herd of zebra hung around the edge of the village. Its mother must have been among them. They called from the outskirts, as if to the youngster, and it would lift its head and squeak back, but it was still too weak to go to them.Then one day it began to walk properly. The wound had healed well under his grandmother’s herbs. Ranzi took it out on short walks, and its strength grew day by day. It wasn’t long before it was prancing about. It grew curious about the sounds beyond the village, pricking its ears at things Ranzi could never hear. And it stayed close to him for protection, the way it would have stayed close to its mother.One day Ranzi decided to see whether the herd would take it back. He walked it out into the grasslands.Without warning, the foal startled, spun round and bolted back towards the village. Ranzi ran after it, calling for it to stop, but something had clearly spooked it. It was waiting for him at the hut when he caught up.Then he heard the commotion just beyond the village. Shouting. The snarl of a leopard.The foal had returned the favour. If Ranzi had carried on walking, he would have gone straight to where the leopard lay waiting in the grass, and he would not have stood a chance. The kindness he had given, asking nothing back, had been repaid in an instant.He thanked the foal the only way he knew, sending his gratitude to it through his thoughts. It seemed to understand, though it stayed skittish for the rest of the day, having come close to being eaten a second time.The next day they tried again, more slowly this time. Ranzi kept a sharp eye on the foal, knowing it would sense a silent hunter long before he did.After about half an hour they came upon a herd grazing peacefully. Every head came up and stared as Ranzi approached, the small zebra following at his heels. One of them gave a call, a bit like a donkey braying. The foal squeaked back. It hesitated beside him for a moment, then rushed to its mother.She nuzzled her youngster, then gave him a kick. He stopped and looked back at Ranzi one last time.Everything in Ranzi wanted to call him back. He had carried him, fed him, slept beside him for weeks. He opened his mouth, and closed it again, and stayed where he was.The foal turned and drank greedily from his mother.Ranzi thought of his own mother, and did not look away. He felt the love and gratitude coming from the two of them. It was hard to explain, but he felt the energy of it. He watched until the herd began to move off through the grass, then turned and walked home alone.He carried that day with him all his life. Kindness given freely had come back to him in a way he could never have expected. He went on to look after many sick and injured animals, and the love and gratitude he felt from doing it was overwhelming. He came to feel it was his purpose.They still had to go hunting and kill their food. That never changed. But it didn’t mean there was no time to care for those who needed it.If Ranzi’s story stayed with you, I’d love to hear what you made of it in the comments. And if you know someone who needs a reminder that kindness comes back around, please give it a like and share it on. It genuinely helps the Chronicles reach more people.Are you up for a life changing adventure in Zambia? Read more here. You can support our work here by buying a book for a student in Zambia. You may like there stories too: Get full access to Colin's Chronicles at colindurrant.substack.com/subscribe

There’s a stretch of riverine forest in South Luangwa where the ebony trees are older than anyone can tell you. Their trunks are black and split with age, and if you stand under one long enough you start to hear how much is living inside it. Vervet monkeys crash through the upper branches. A fish eagle calls over the river, and somewhere downstream another answers it. Lower down, where the roots break the surface, there are hollows that house owls, bats, snakes, whatever has learned the tree will keep it safe.It took hundreds of years to build that.It takes one man and an axe an afternoon to take it down.Usually it isn’t cruelty. A family needs a field, and the forest is what’s standing where the field isn’t yet. Or evening comes and the pot needs to boil, and in a village with no power line for a hundred miles, a tree is the only fuel there is. So the axe goes in, and by nightfall there’s cleared ground, or a stack of firewood, where a hundred species had a home that morning. Maize or cassava will grow on the field next season. The fire will cook the evening meal and warm whoever sits beside it. Nobody doing it means harm. They’re feeding and warming their children the only way the ground and the forest in front of them allow.But the tree they took down was never just a tree. It was its own ecosystem, a whole country of lives stacked inside bark and branch and hollow. The monkeys lose the branch they slept in. The owls lose the hollow. Whatever fed on what the tree fed, in a chain nobody can fully trace, loses its place in the chain. One cut, and an entire small world goes quiet at once.And it doesn’t stop at the tree line. What’s happening under one ebony in South Luangwa is happening right now in the Amazon, in the Congo basin, in a hundred places none of us will ever walk through.A count published in the journal Nature put a number on it a decade ago: more than fifteen billion trees cut down worldwide every year, barely a third of them ever replanted. The latest satellite monitoring puts a single recent year’s loss at over twenty five million hectares, an area bigger than the whole of the United Kingdom, stripped from the earth’s surface in twelve months. Nobody sees it as one event, because it never happens all at once, in one place, where it could be filmed and grieved. It happens one tree, one family, one season at a time, and the sum of it reshapes the air the whole planet breathes. The local wound and the global one are the same wound. We’ve just never stood far back enough to see that.It isn’t only fields and firewood, either. Industry takes trees by the million, for reasons that feel just as ordinary from the inside, timber for houses, pulp for paper, cleared ground for factories and the roads built to reach them. None of it feels like destruction while it’s happening. It feels like building.It has always been this efficient, once we had the tools for it. A little over a hundred and fifty years ago, loggers in California found trees with trunks wider across than two cars parked end to end, trees that had already been growing for centuries before the Normans ever crossed the Channel into England. In the century and a half since, something like nineteen out of every twenty of those ancient redwoods have been cut down, turned into the planks under people’s feet and the beams over their heads. What has grown back in their place is still growing. Nothing alive today, not you, not your grandchildren, will live long enough to see those groves become what they were.Then the same people who built with that wood sit in their finished houses, in rooms warmed and cooled by the same industry, and talk about how hot the world has become. As if the heat arrived on its own. As if the floods that tear through a valley after the first hard rain, now that the roots that used to hold the hillside are gone, are simply bad luck. Nobody draws the line from the house to the forest it stood on, or from the flood to the slope that used to break its fall. Not out loud. Not where it would cost anyone anything to say it. We are not the victims of this weather. We asked for it, every time we reached for the axe instead of the alternative, and then called the bill that came due an act of God.We are not far from where this started. A long time ago, when the worst had already happened once and the few who were left had to decide how they would live, they looked at what came before them and understood that none of it had come from nowhere. The hatred, the wars, the slavery. People had chosen it, one small choice at a time, long before any of it added up to catastrophe.We are making the same choices now, in smaller rooms. What to cut down. What to drive off. What to take without asking whether there will be enough left for whoever comes after us.And yet, now as then, some people choose differently.I think of the women I sit with in villages along this same valley, most with far less than I have ever had to go without, who still plant trees they won’t live to see grown. Guides who will walk the long way around a stand of forest rather than cut a path through it, because they know what’s living inside. Children who are taught the name of a bird before they’re taught to be afraid of the bush it calls home in.None of them are waiting for permission to care. They just do, in the middle of every reason not to.That is the only answer I have found to the axe. Not a bigger one. A different relationship to the tree.The ebony groves are still standing in South Luangwa, for now, because enough people decided they were worth more left alone than taken down. That isn’t a law of nature. It’s a choice, made again every season by people most of us will never hear about.It is being made again today, somewhere in that valley, and somewhere in the Amazon, by someone deciding not to pick up the axe.But is it too late?I don’t know the answer. I know that every tree still standing is one more “not yet” than a cleared field would give us.If this made you look twice at a tree today, tell me in the comments, I’d like to know which one. And if you think someone else needs to ask themselves the same question, share this with them. A like helps it reach more people who might ask it too.Get ready for your own African adventure - Click hereSupport our work.You may enjoy these posts too: Get full access to Colin's Chronicles at colindurrant.substack.com/subscribe

A few days ago, Titus Elias sent me a story. Titus is a young man who lives in South Luangwa, and the story is about a leopard he saw with his own eyes. As a child, Titus was quiet but watched everything. He watched how a guide could read a footprint in the dust like a sentence and how his community gathered when someone needed help. He watched the way the river changed with the rains and how the animals moved with it. Her name was Olimba. If you watched Leopard Legacy on National Geographic, or the BBC’s Kingdom with David Attenborough, you may already have met her. For years she held a huge stretch of ground along the Luangwa River, in the Nsefu sector. The guides at Tafika first knew her as Pink-nose. She once fought off a nomadic male near her den and came back to find one of her cubs gone. She raised her son, Makumbi, until he could hunt for himself, then drove him away to find his own ground.In 2025, at fourteen, an old age for a wild leopard, she died during a hunt. A new camp in the Nsefu sector now carries her name.She was never supposed to become a legend. She was only a leopard.She came into the world with nothing but her golden coat, her dark rosettes and the instincts passed down through generations of wild leopards. Yet somewhere between the grasslands, the old woodlands and the winding Luangwa River, Olimba found a place in the hearts of people who had never touched her, never fed her and never called her to them. Most of them saw her for a few minutes from the back of a safari vehicle. That was enough.South Luangwa looks peaceful at sunrise, but it does not forgive. Lions patrol the plains, hyenas wait for their chance, crocodiles lie still along the river and rival leopards defend their ground. In the dry months, water and prey grow scarce. Olimba had to understand all of this without a map and without anyone to protect her. A lioness has her pride. Olimba faced the bush mostly alone.Her shoulders and forelegs were heavy with muscle, strong enough to drag a kill up into a tree. Her broad, padded paws let her move almost without sound, and her long tail kept her balanced on a branch. Under the midday sun her coat shone like polished gold, but in the broken shade of the woodland she could all but disappear. No two leopards carry the same pattern of rosettes. Hers was her own, like a fingerprint.People remembered her eyes most. When she rested, they were calm. The moment something moved in the grass, they changed completely.She did not roar across the plains like a lion. She could lie beneath a tree for hours, perfectly still, while the world went past. A sound in the distance might lift her ears or turn her head. Then, without warning, she became movement itself, a silent rush of muscle and fur.But behind the predator was a mother. To her cubs, Olimba was their entire universe. Every time she left them to hunt, she left them to chance. Would a lion find them? Would another leopard? Would she come back at all? A leopard mother cannot ask these questions aloud, but her life is shaped by them.Some nights she came back with food. Some nights she came back with nothing. Either way, somewhere in the dark her cubs were waiting, and their small calls meant she could not give up. In the bush there are no hospitals and no safe houses. There is only instinct, and the bond between a mother and her young.There must have been countless nights when Olimba walked alone under the stars, long after the camps had gone quiet. Hippos grunting near the river. Hyenas calling somewhere in the dark. Moonlight falling across her back. No camera followed her on those nights, and no guide knew where she was. Those hours belonged to her. A safari lasts a few hours. A leopard’s life carries on long after the vehicle has gone back to camp.Then there were the moments when people did see her. A vehicle moving slowly along a dusty track, and the guide stops. At first there is nothing, only grass and branches and shadow. Then a golden shoulder between the trees. A spotted head. And there she is. The vehicle goes silent. People who were talking a moment ago stop mid-sentence.Sometimes she would stop and look straight at the vehicle, wild eyes meeting human ones across a few metres of grass. Then she would turn and walk on. She never posed for the cameras. She simply lived her life.Wild animals are not perfect photographs. A leopard carries torn ears, healed wounds, patches where the fur never grew back. Every mark means something happened to her, and she carried on.She belonged to no one. Nobody could tell her where to go. She could vanish into thick bush, climb a tree or slip into the dark whenever she chose. She belonged to the wilderness, and the wilderness belongs to no one.Loving a wild animal means accepting that you cannot protect it. You can photograph it and tell its story, but you cannot promise it another sunrise. For Olimba, simply reaching the next morning was a victory.So picture her one last time. The sun is sinking behind the woodland and the Luangwa Valley turns gold. The air is starting to cool. Somewhere beyond the road, the river carries on its old journey. Olimba steps out of the tall grass. Her ears move. Her eyes sweep the ground ahead. For a few seconds she stands completely still.Then she walks.One paw touches the earth.Then another.The grass closes around her. The rosettes disappear. And then there is nothing left to see, only the place where she stood.Her footprints will vanish under dust and rain. New cubs will be born, and new leopards will take her ground. But those of us who saw her will remember her eyes, her silence and the way she walked, and the strange feeling of loving a wild creature that never belonged to us.She was Olimba.If Olimba’s story stayed with you, please leave a comment for Titus. I’ll make sure he reads every one, and it would mean a great deal to a young writer in the valley. And if you know someone who loves wild Africa, give this a like and share it with them.You can consider joining us on our next adventure to Zambia in 2027. Find out more here Support our work in South Luangwa here.You may enjoy these stories too: Get full access to Colin's Chronicles at colindurrant.substack.com/subscribe

When the world came back to life, only a few people were left to see it.The catastrophe had destroyed almost everything. The survivors had hidden in caves underground, and life there had been hard and brutal. Most of them died in the dark. Now the few who remained walked out into a new world, and they did not take the chance lightly. They could choose how things would run, how they would rule, and how they would treat each other.Above all, they realised the catastrophe had probably been caused by the people who came before them. The old world had been full of hatred and fear, of anger and killing and slavery, and of wars that never seemed to end. It was not a good place to live.And yet, even in that world, some people had still found beauty. Whatever was going on around them, they chose where to look.Joseph was a young man who had learned this for himself. By changing his mindset, he watched a different world appear in front of his eyes.He knew he could not save everyone. There was suffering all around him. But he could help the ones who truly wanted to change, the ones who had suffered enough and finally reached the point where they knew there must be a better way to live.They came to him because they saw others thriving. Families with full granaries and fat cattle. Homes where laughter carried out into the night. They wanted some of that.What Joseph told them first was not what they wanted to hear.“Every one of your problems,” he said, “was caused by the person looking back at you from the water.”No one else was to blame. Whatever had happened to them, however hard their lives had been, how they reacted to the world was a choice. In reality, Joseph said, the world is reacting to you, to your actions, your thoughts and your feelings. So if you want to complain about how the world treats you, look inwards instead.Some found this hard to hear. Some were angry with him for saying it.One man stood up. Someone in the village had insulted him, and he had fought him and hurt him badly. Now he was waiting for the elders to decide his punishment, and he knew he would lose years of his life to it. If he had let that insult pass, he said, his whole life would be different right now.“No one can actually insult you,” Joseph told him. “The people who try are only showing you themselves, their own fears and insecurities. To be insulted, you have to choose to be insulted.”Then Joseph told them something he rarely said out loud.For years he had felt the world was against him. He felt like a victim of his own life. He used to joke about it with people, but it wasn’t funny, and he knew it even while he was laughing. Because his focus was on being a victim, that is exactly what the world gave him. Enough to make him feel precisely what he was projecting.Much of the pain in his life, he had created himself. Owning that was the thing that finally set him free.“It’s the same with fear,” he said. “When you are anxious, you are sending that out into the world, and that is what comes back to you.”He told them to be kind to themselves in their thoughts. Not to beat themselves up, and not to live in regret. “The old world built machines for almost everything,” he said, “but it never built a time machine. We can’t go back and change what we’ve done. We can only learn the lesson and do better next time.”The hardest part was the stories.Every day, Joseph said, we make up stories in our heads, and it is those stories, far more than anything that actually happened, that make us angry.There was a man in the village who climbed the ridge every evening and shouted across the valley, loud, for as long as the light lasted. It drove people mad. Joseph had judged him too. He thought the man was arrogant and didn’t care who he disturbed.Then he found out why. The man’s father lived on the far side of the valley. He was old and hard of hearing, and he was dying. The river between them was too wide and too fierce to cross, so every evening his son climbed as high as he could and called across to him. He wanted his father not to be afraid, and he wanted every moment he could get with him before the end. He wasn’t doing it to be rude or to annoy anyone. He was in his own world, fighting his own battle.The people who trigger us, Joseph said, come into our awareness to teach us something. It may be empathy, or compassion, or understanding for others. It may simply be a reminder not to be distracted by things that aren’t ours to worry about.The people listened. They knew he was right. But knowing it and accepting it are different things, and a voice inside kept saying, I don’t want to believe this. The ego wants to be right all the time. It is too proud to face the fact that it was wrong.When we become humble enough to face the real truth, we start to grow into a better version of ourselves. Some of the people who came to Joseph never did get the fat cattle. Most of them stopped needing them.The survivors who walked out of the caves thought they had one chance to decide what kind of world they would build. They thought it was a choice made once, at the beginning.It wasn’t. It is made every time someone insults us and we decide what to do next. It is made every time a stranger’s noise drives us mad and we decide what story to tell about him.Somewhere tonight, a man is shouting across a valley. What story will you tell yourself about him?If this landed for you, or you’ve ever found out the story you told yourself about someone was completely wrong, I’d love to hear about it in the comments. And if you know someone who needs to read this, please share it.I’m all about changing people lives for the better. Through my own story and experiences and how I have changed my own life. Take a look at our adventure to Zambia in 2027 where we shift perspectives. Or, help us support the community by buying some books. You may enjoy these stories too: Get full access to Colin's Chronicles at colindurrant.substack.com/subscribe

Long ago, in a small village in Africa, there was a boy who ate with his back to the wall.He ate fast, one arm curled around his bowl of thick porridge, because the bowl never stayed his for long. His brothers came anyway. A hand plunged into his food. A fist into his ribs, the kind that empties the breath out of you and leaves you making small wet noises on the ground.Not because he had done anything. Because they could.His parents watched from the fire. His mother sighed. His father looked at the boy a moment too long, as if waiting for something to happen.The boy never gave it to him.Those were hard times and the rule was plain. Fight for your food or go without, and the ones who went without withered. He was hungry most days. Some nights he lay in the dark with his knees drawn up and cried, for no reason except that he was alive. Some nights he begged whatever was listening to let him go.One morning he went into the forest to find his own food, because nobody was going to bring it. Masau fruit, if the monkeys had left any. Honey, if he could bear the stings. A handful of termites, if it came to that.He came round a bend in the path and there was an old woman he had never seen before.She was so small and so thin that the wind looked like it could carry her off. She took hold of his arm anyway, and her hand closed on it like a snare.He squealed. He pulled. He twisted until his shoulder burned, and the hand did not move. Something in him went slack, and the crying began, thin and hopeless, the crying of a boy who had done a great deal of it.She struck him across the back of the head.The crying stopped. Shock, mostly.“Sit,” she said.They sat on a fallen log. She had a voice like a dry hinge.“I will say this once, so listen. You have been given life. Do you know how rare that is? There are so many up among the stars who want what you are holding. They want a body. They want porridge, and sun, and the ache of a long walk. They would give anything for one day of it. And they are watching you right now.”She jabbed a finger at his face.“A boy crying because he is alive. A boy begging to be let out. They watch you throw away the thing they would give anything for.”The boy stared. Nobody had ever spoken to him as if he were worth shouting at.“You think your brothers hate you. Look at your arms.”He looked. Bruises in every stage, fresh purple and old yellow.“Every blow has been teaching you to stand. Your parents sit and watch because they are waiting for you to fight back. Everyone around you has been trying to make you strong, and you have taken it as an insult. You wish you had been born somewhere else, to other people. You chose these ones. You chose them because you knew you would have to be broken before you could rise. And when you are big and strong, you will stand between the weak and whatever is coming for them. That is what the breaking is for.”She spat to one side.“This land is hard. Nobody is coming to save you. So you find your own food, and you stop waiting to be fed like you are broken. You are not broken. Broken things do not struggle as hard as you did.”She swept an arm at the trees.“The world answers the way you look at it. Look for enemies and it will give you enemies. Look up. There is fruit in the branches and honey in the hollow logs. And you have time. Do you know what that is? The most valuable thing anyone can hold. A child has it. A grandmother has it. Look at me. I have been walking this earth longer than your village has had a name, and I am not finished. Nobody is too young to begin or too old to wake up. What will you spend it on? Getting stronger and wiser? Or sitting in the dirt and feeling sorry for yourself?”She cuffed him again, harder, to be sure he was listening.“Wake up. Your life is there for the taking. When you want something, you fight for it. I don’t mean go and hurt anyone. I mean don’t stop chasing what you want. Don’t stop looking for joy. Life is a beautiful gift, but only if you make it one, and if you don’t, there is no one to blame but you.”She leaned in until he could smell woodsmoke and crushed leaves on her.“Are you awake now?” she shouted.Something moved in the boy. His shoulders drew back on their own. His chest lifted. His eyes, which had been dull as river stones, cleared and began to shine. There was a warmth under his ribs, and his heart beat harder to fill it.Love. For himself. For the life he had been begging to leave. Even, and this was the strangest part, for the boys who had put him on the ground.Then he looked up, as she had told him to.He had walked this path a hundred times with his eyes on the dirt, watching for the next fist, the next empty bowl. Now the msasa leaves above him were flushed copper and red, and he stopped where he stood. Clouds stood in the sky like mountains, slow and unbothered. Every trunk was a different grey. A sunbird flashed across the path and was gone, and something rose in his throat that he had no word for, and then he did.Thanks.He was thankful for the leaves. For the sky. For the porridge, even the porridge he had to fight for. For the air moving in and out of him without being asked.The forest was the same forest it had always been. He was looking at it with thanks, and it had never been so bright.A smile pulled at his face. It felt strange, like a muscle nobody had ever used. The fizzing behind his breastbone was excitement, he realised. For tomorrow. For what he might do with it.He looked at the old woman again. She was laughing at him, a high, squeaky, delighted laugh, and her eyes were bright as a girl’s. She was the oldest person he had ever met, and the most awake.Age had nothing to do with it.He jumped up to thank her, and the log beside him was empty. A dent in the leaves where she had sat. That was all.He did not wonder about it. He ran.He ran barefoot through the trees and came into the clearing just as the evening meal was being dished out. He took his bowl and sat down by the fire. He did not put his back to the wall.His eldest brother’s hand came for the porridge, as it always did.The boy’s fingers closed around his wrist.He did not strike. He did not speak. It was a grip he had learnt that afternoon, and it did not move. His brother pulled. The hand stayed where it was. Their eyes met over the fire.Then the boy lifted the bowl with his other hand, and ate.Across the fire, his father had stopped chewing. His mother did not sigh.I wrote this story for the women of the wellbeing groups in Zambia, but it belongs to anyone who needs it.If this story reached something in you, I would love to hear it. Leave a comment and tell me which part stayed with you, or where in your own life you have been guarding the bowl.If it moved you, tap the heart so it finds more readers, and share it with someone who needs to hear that nobody is too young to begin or too old to wake up.And if you are not subscribed yet, subscribe, and the next story will come straight to you.Help support our work in ZambiaExplore joining us for an adventure in Africa in 2027You may like these posts to: Get full access to Colin's Chronicles at colindurrant.substack.com/subscribe

I wrote a version of this two years ago. This is what I’d say now.Before my coach said a word, it was already coming. We’d have barely logged onto the call, her face just resolving on the screen, and something in my chest would loosen and rise like water finding a crack, my throat tightening before either of us had spoken. She didn’t need to ask what was wrong. She was just the trigger, the door swinging open on something that had been standing behind it the whole time.I used to think that was strange. Now I think it’s the whole point.Trauma isn’t the blow itself. Not the fist. Not the fall. Not the sound of a door slamming somewhere you couldn’t see.Your body can take an extraordinary amount of physical damage and come back from it, cells rebuilding, bone knitting closed. The wound that doesn’t close the same way is the emotional one, and it lives somewhere else entirely, in a part of you that has nothing to do with the part that heals a cut.When something is too much for the mind to hold, the mind doesn’t hold it. It sets it down somewhere out of reach and hands you a story instead, a version of events you can survive telling yourself.That’s not a malfunction. It’s the oldest trick the human brain knows, the same one that’s kept a child sane through things no child should have to survive sane. If you were being eaten alive by a lion, your mind wouldn’t let you feel the whole of that. It would give you somewhere else to be.The trouble is what happens after. The story stays. So does the thing underneath it, the actual charge of the event, undealt with, unspent. It sinks into the body and waits. Fear tends to settle in the stomach. That’s why the phrase exists, the pit of your stomach, because that’s exactly where it sits.And it doesn’t stay quiet. Years later, a raised voice, a slammed door, a certain tone from someone you love, and your stomach drops before your mind has caught up to why. You are not reacting to the person in front of you. You are reacting to someone else, in another room, a long time ago. The brain pulls the old file and holds it up like a warning. This happened before. Watch out.That’s a trigger. Measured against what’s actually happening in the room, it usually looks like an overreaction, because it is one. But it was never really about the room. It’s the trapped charge finding daylight, and every time it does, you get a choice you didn’t know you had. Shove it back down, the way you always have. Or let it move.I didn’t know how to let it move until a few years ago, working with a coach who helped me start releasing what was trapped in mine. Afterward I found language for what had happened, in Dr. Bradley Nelson’s The Emotion Code, and in David R. Hawkins’ Letting Go. Different books, same thing underneath. The trapped emotion doesn’t need you to understand it. It doesn’t need a story, or a diagnosis, or an explanation for why it’s still there. It needs to be felt, fully, once, and let go.That’s the part I want to walk you through, because it’s simple and it works, and I found it easier with someone on the other side of a screen than I ever did alone. If you don’t have that, you can still do this.Find somewhere quiet. Not the car. Not a room with other people in it. Somewhere you can afford to be undefended for a few minutes. Bring to mind something that still has a charge on it, an old anger, an old fear, something that moves in you even now when you think about it. Notice where you feel it. Not what you think about it. Where it sits in your body.Then do the opposite of what you’ve always done. Instead of flinching from it, turn toward it. Let it get bigger. Sit inside it fully, rather than at its edge. Everything in you will want to look away, the way it always has. Don’t. Stay until it crests, and if you stay long enough, you’ll feel it start to thin. Not vanish. Thin, the way pressure eases out of a room when a window opens.When it’s done, it’s done. No ceremony after. Try it again with something else, another memory, another old ache, and feel that one through too.One caution, because it deserves saying plainly. If what surfaces is more than you can hold on your own, don't let this stand in for real support. It's a good place to start. It is not the whole of the work. Find someone trained to sit with you in the harder parts of it, the way my coach sat with me in mine.It may take a few tries before it works the way I’ve described here. It may get louder before it goes quiet. That’s not a sign you’re doing it wrong. It’s a sign that something which has been waiting a long time has finally been asked to leave.I don’t get on those calls anymore. The skill is inside me now. When the old tension rises in my stomach, the one I’ve come to recognize by feel alone, I can turn and face it without anyone else on the screen. I feel it fully, the way I learned to, and then I feel it ease, the pressure going out of it until there’s nothing left where it used to sit.P.S. If this landed somewhere in you, hit like, it helps it find someone else who needs it. Share it with anyone you know who's still carrying something old. And if you try the exercise, tell me in the comments what came loose.If you want to help support the work we do in Zambia, please consider clicking below.Support us here Get full access to Colin's Chronicles at colindurrant.substack.com/subscribe

The cursor blinked on an unfinished sentence, and I was already gone. Not gone as in distracted by nothing in particular. Gone into a version of my life where the book had sold, where a number, three million dollars, sat somewhere just under my ribs like a held breath, where strangers asked me about the writing process and I answered them well. I could see the interview. I could see the house. But I could not see the next word.This happened most days, for as long as I was writing that book. I would catch myself an hour or two into the fantasy, manuscript untouched, and come back to the actual page feeling faintly ashamed, the way you feel walking back into a room you left mid-argument.It took me a long time to understand what that was.If you’ve got a manuscript open on your laptop right now, further in than you’re telling anyone, and the momentum’s gone for reasons you can’t quite name, you already know this from the inside.It wasn’t laziness. Laziness doesn’t build entire imagined press tours. What it was, I think now, was something closer to sabotage, generated by the part of me that had a great deal invested in staying exactly who I already was. Finishing the book meant becoming someone else, a person who had actually done the thing rather than talked about doing it. My mind, given the choice, will manufacture almost anything before it lets that happen, an urgent need to reorganise a bookshelf, a sudden doubt about a sentence three chapters back. Anything but the next word.It didn’t stop when the book was finished, and it was never really about the book at all. The same fear turns up wearing a different disguise every time I try to become more than I currently am. It was there again the first time I invited people to come with me into Zambia’s South Luangwa Valley, the same one I keep going back to. Their week, and in a real sense their safety, would be in my hands. It always arrives with a good argument for why now isn’t the time. In my experience, that argument has never once been true.It still shows up anyway.A caterpillar does not know it will fly. Inside the chrysalis it dissolves almost completely first, and there is no memory available to it of a caterpillar that skipped that part. It simply has to stop being what it was before it can be anything else. I don’t know if it experiences that as fear. I know I did, and still do, most times I try to become something I haven’t been yet.The book got finished the way most things get finished, not by winning the argument with the part of me that wanted to stay small, but by sitting down anyway while it was still talking. Some days I wrote past it. Some days I wrote a paragraph and stopped, went back to the fantasy, caught myself, came back again. There was no morning I woke up and the fear was gone. It just got quieter than my need to finish the thing.I still catch myself there sometimes, mid-sentence, imagining a life that’s already worked out. It isn’t only the book anymore. It’s whatever I’m building next. I’ve stopped being surprised by it. I just know now to look down and see what’s actually still unfinished in front of me.If this found you at the right time, tap like, it helps more people find it. Subscribe for the next one, because fear will be back with a new argument before long. And if you've got a minute, tell me in the comments: what's fear been arguing you out of lately?If you want to support our work in Zambia in anyway - Buy me a coffee Get full access to Colin's Chronicles at colindurrant.substack.com/subscribe