Comfort

“Comfort” seems to be the word of the moment for me. I have, as usual, been dancing outside of my comfort zones, but I’m beginning to wonder what would staying in one look like? I often push myself – perhaps partly cos of encouragement by my Dad when I was younger not to “rest on my laurels” (Hi Daddy).

This is good in that I get to experience stuff I otherwise wouldn’t, I challenge myself, I don’t let fear hold me back from life in all its fullness. However, sometimes maybe it would be good to revel in a bit of comfort. Yesterday I was asked what comforts me, and just thinking of the answer was a comfort in itself, a chance to dwell on what makes me happy. I realised that I’m easily pleased as it’s to do with being held, or a shared raised eyebrow across a room, or a chance to laugh or sing. My head works very hard for me, and so even the feeling of the pillow cradling my heavy head brings a comfort it’s easy to appreciate and be grateful for.

I recently had a discussion with a lovely friend about how I feel comfort can get caught up in class issues – that us middle class folk can be trained to expect, and feel we “deserve” comfort and this can mess us up in all kinds of ways – leave us disillusioned when we don’t get an easy life, as well as engender superiority. But I suspect it can also fuel the doubt we can then have that maybe we don’t deserve the wealth and opportunities denied to our working class brothers and sisters, so we can’t then ‘enjoy’ them fully anyway.

Hmm, much to continue to unpack, but I do like the thinking, and shall continue to focus on the joy of resting my brain after ;)

reach out

I’ve blogged before on connections. I’m increasingly aware that it’s what I feel I’m about – trying to reduce people’s isolation by encouraging connection, and in the process reducing my own. What I notice tho is that the time I need connection most is the time it’s hardest to push through the fear, and try to reach out. So presumably that’s the case for at least some other people too. I’ve been reading about depression recently and was interested by this summary of a book by Steve Ilardi who “argues that the brain mistakenly interprets the pain of depression as an infection. Thinking that isolation is needed, it sends messages to the sufferer to "crawl into a hole and wait for it all to go away". This can be disastrous because what depressed people really need is the opposite: more human contact.”

I’ve had a couple of people recently send me brief but incredibly powerful messages, and knowing the impact they’ve had on me, spurs me on to continue – I do believe a word of encouragement goes a long way, a smile from someone as they pass brightens my morning.

My current ‘trick’ to not taking rejection personally is to have a stab at imagining (either wildly or sometimes more sensibly) what might be going on for the person who doesn’t connect. I find it far too easy to take it to heart and think someone doesn’t like me if they don’t respond to my email or friendly hello in the street. But now I tell myself maybe they’ve dropped their mobile down the toilet so can’t reply, or the neighbour who I repeatedly greet but am ignored, it’s completely possible he is deaf and can’t hear me, or maybe he’s just scared of friendly people.

This enables me to keep on pushing out of my self doubt and into the much sunnier place of interconnection. If anyone has other top tips, do share…

weeding

I’m not a gardener. But I have a garden, that frequently threatens to overwhelm me with the need it has for attention. I occasionally get out there for short frenetic bursts and today was a good day for doing so – feeling full of frustration, loneliness and disappointment. The weeds are not delicate shoots coming up between carefully sown plants. It’s not that kind of garden. The weeds are predominantly vast swathes of long-dead long grass, and last year’s ferns, covering bulbs that miraculously attempt to regrow in spite of everything. So I don’t have to tenderly thin things out, I get to grab fistfuls of yellowing stuff, and pull. The results (as long as I only look at small sections at once) are satisfying in that I can fill the wheelie bin quite quickly. I have to take a bit of care tho. There may be undiscovered shit. Or painful thorns.

And so of course I see the metaphors. I need to pay more attention to clearing away the old stuff, cos otherwise the new stuff doesn’t stand much chance of blossoming cos it just can’t breathe, even tho it’s having a good job at germinating without any help from me. But maybe I can slow down at trying to get it all up at once, cos there are hidden nasties that need specialist attention – thicker gloves or a dog poo bag. I’ll stop with the metaphors now…

Is contentment counter cultural?

I’ve been struggling for some while now to be happy with what I’ve got and not be hankering after something else. I frequently blame myself. But I had a penny drop this morning. I was thinking again about my favourite film, Robots, and the slogan that the company develops to increase sales “why be you when you can be new”. I rally against consumerism a lot and have spoken here before about how fear gets used to peddle stuff we then think we need to improve our lot. I try to avoid adverts, but they are pretty much everywhere, and so even tho I imagine I’m immune, I’m not, and their insidiousness will impact upon my sense of wellbeing. So even tho life is good, if I’m bombarded with messages that encourage me to doubt if all is well, might I “need” a product that would help me feel better/brighter, maybe it’s no surprise if sometimes I am worn down and do feel a discontent of capitalism’s making? One of my favourite songs is here:

http://www.seizetheday.org/music.cfm?trackID=1&albumID=1&alphabet

what do you think?

You’re Irreplaceable

I have to buy a pack of replacement bulbs for my car before I can legally drive in France. I’m hoping this will be an easy to achieve task – I live in a place where I can just pop into a shop and buy a pack of spares for “just in case”. I live in a culture where it’s easy to chuck something out that doesn’t seem to work any more, where little seems cherished.

I’m in a relationship with someone who makes me happy. Does this mean I’ve “moved on” from my marriage? I certainly don’t feel like it’s possible to “replace” what I once had. And I’ve noticed that some of the times I’ve felt most self doubt is when I feel that I have been “replaced” – when I see someone else sat where I used to.

And it’s not just in that relationship. There are people in my life who I now am in much less contact with than I used to be – they have moved elsewhere, or I moved elsewhere. I’m aware they still occupy a very special place in my heart even if we no longer hang out and share in the way we used to – I may now spend less time with them, but they can never be replaced.

For me the current issue is how I celebrate every encounter in the present – it will be the only one like it – and not spend my time so sad that the previous encounters have already gone – nothing stays the same and the now is the only place I can be, trusting that all that’s gone before is still held safe and no-one is getting “replaced” but we’re all getting to live in the present as we move forwards.