Keeping Our Balance

 This week's quote reads, "To keep your balance, you must keep moving."

Nope. Sorry, whoever wrote this, I don't agree. In order to find our balance, and then maintain it, the first necessity is stillness. Or at least, that is what I have found.

Because if we are constantly moving, how are we to find any kind of still centre? For most of us, the first half of life (and probably later than that) is all about keeping moving - about discovering who we are, what we love, what we're good at, finding our "tribe" of people, whether those be family, friends, our faith or some other community, or a mixture of all of them. The first half of life is all about striving, achieving, moving on, moving up, moving, moving.

Successful people can run away from themselves for years. They (and I count my younger self among them) skate across the surface of their lives, achieving, dazzling. It often takes some traumatic event (the loss of a loved one, or a devastating failure) to bring us up short. When this happens (and it generally does, at some point in our lives) our balance is lost and we find that there is no still centre around which we can regain it.

If we are lucky (and I was) there will be some wise friend or mentor around to give us advice. Which, for many of us, will be to stop moving, to sit in silence, to simply be. I have found that this (together with walking alone in nature) are the only ways of keeping my balance, and of discovering a new balance, a quiet centre. I was afraid of loneliness for much of my life and found the company of people infinitely preferable. But I believe that my decisions to quit smoking and drinking, combined with my interior spiritual journey in the early 2010s (still continuing) helped me to welcome solitude as a time to think, to reflect, to spend time in my own company, to come nearer to the Divine. These days, when I spend too much time in the company of too many people, I need a lot of time alone to come back to myself, to regain my balance.

True extroverts will find this hard to understand, but introverts and ambiverts will be reading with little cries of recognition. I'm not saying "I want to be alone" like Greta Garbo, but that I need a balance between being with people and being on my own. These days, I have found a balance I am comfortable with: I like to spend most of my daytime hours alone, working, or writing, or crocheting, but enjoy coming back into congenial company during the evening, with Maz and Luna. I love spending time with my best friend, and with my close family, but drop back into my customary routine with - no, relief is the wrong word. It is like slipping one's feet into a pair of comfortable slippers and sitting in one's favourite armchair, deeply relaxed, after a busy day.

How do you keep your balance?

           

Coping Badly

This week's blogpost nearly didn't happen: I am staying up in the Lake District with my best friend, and have forgotten to bring my computer mouse with me. I have my laptop, but no mouse. And I am finding it incredibly difficult, and teeth-grindingly frustrating, to use the laptop's tracking pad. I even had to ask my friend what it is called!

Which has made me realise what a creature of habit I am. With my mouse, I scroll down effortlessly, place the cursor at any spot I choose without effort, and generally just get on with whatever I'm writing. But I am having to laboriously learn how to move around a document, how to copy and paste, how to scroll down, all accompanied with much cursing. Nothing is labelled and I have to guess where to click on the tracking pad to get it to do what I need it to. Grrr!

Most of you will probably be laughing at my incompetence, yet the frustration is real. I have no desire to learn this new skill - I'm used to my mouse, and will return to it on Sunday with little coos of joy.

It has been a salutary reminder that the only constant in life is change and that I need to keep up, and somehow embrace it, rather than reacting so negatively, as I have this morning. I am embarrassed that the lack of a mouse has thrown me for such a loop - I had thought I was more adaptable. I can remember learning how to use a mouse in the early 1990s - my son was three and we had just bought our first home PC. There was a little game, consisting of putting a jigsaw of four pieces together, using the mouse, which my son mastered effortlessly, but I found so difficult.... 

So I have persevered, and this blogpost is the result. 

Interruptions Welcome

This week's quote reads, "Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans." 

And I had to laugh, if a bit ruefully. I used to be a fairly uptight, perfectionist, person, making plans for every aspect of my day, easily upset if something happened to de-rail them. Which has happened just this minute: I have taken a photo of the postcard on my phone and e-mailed it to myself, so that I can include it in this post. But it hasn't come through, and unless it does so in the next half-hour or so, this post will be without an illustration.

A few years ago, this would have caused me to gnash my teeth, get annoyed. But now I thought, oh well, never mind. Worse things happen at sea (to coin a cliché). The skies will not fall if this post does not have an illustration, far from it. How many people read my blogposts anyway?

During the past decade or so, mainly thanks to the wonderful Brené Brown, and her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, I have learned to become a recovering perfectionist, much more able to let my precious plans go, and enjoy what comes up instead. It is a much richer, more rewarding way to live. I know I have posted about this fairly recently, here, and laughed out loud when I discovered the post under the tag 'perfectionsim'. And feel no inclination to edit the post and correct the typo. Which is surely progress?

Because, as I said in that post, "life is messy, chaotic, unpredictable, and we cannot dictate how it will turn out. The one thing we can predict with some certainty is that it will not be perfect. No-one's life is perfect. And so the important thing to realise is that settling for "good enough" will ensure that in the long run, we are far happier than we would be if we were constantly yearning for the 'perfect' life."

I also believe that if we are too fixated on our precious plans, we can miss many spontaneous joys. For example, if my DH and I go on holiday, we have a general idea of some places we would like to visit, but are happy to play it by ear and go with the weather, go with the flow. Which has resulted in some gorgeous, unexpected events. Like bumping into Will Kirk of The Repair Shop at the Weald and Downland Museum a few weeks ago - he was charming.

Life is much more enjoyable when we allow a little spontaneity into it, plans or no plans... Interruptions welcome.

A Chain Begins with Two Links

 This week's quote reads, "I would now be ready for a chain of happy circumstances."

 

And I thought, o-kay... what does that mean? It is a statement of hope for a happy future, but surely there is more to it than that? Then it struck me: a chain begins with two links. If there is only one link, it is not a chain, it is a loop. Going nowhere. So perhaps in order to be happy, in order to experience "happy circumstances" we need to open our single loop and make connections with other people, get involved in the world around us. 

Which takes vulnerability, trust and courage. When we look around our world and see so much senseless hatred (witness the dreadful attack on the Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester yesterday - my heart goes out to all the people involved, suffering for the idiocy of the Israeli government) our instinct can be to hunker down, draw up the drawbridge and hide. It takes courage to stand up and protest, to reach out with compassion. As my own faith community, the Unitarians, have done. Yesterday, when news of the attack began to spread, the following statement appeared on Facebook:

"We are shocked and saddened by today's attack at Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester. We know that this will be felt deeply by Manchester's Jewish community, their families and their wider communities, particularly on the holy day of Yom Kippur.

We stand for peace and oppose violence in all its forms.

An attack on any place of worship is an attack on all who value freedom of faith and conscience. Places of worship should be sanctuaries; safe spaces for reflection, community and spiritual life. As Unitarians, we are committed to interfaith solidarity and to building communities where people of all faiths and none can live without fear. That commitment matters most in moments like this.

Rev Cody Coyne, minister of Cross Street Unitarian Chapel, Manchester City Centre, and President of the Manchester District Association, said: 'It can feel so much like hate is winning; but I think how each act is met with people running in to care for the victims, give solace to the bereaved, and in some cases placing their lives on the line for the sake of others. For each person committed to violence there is an overwhelming chorus calling us to act for peace and support.'"

This is how chains of connection are built - by standing up for what we know is right and refusing to allow hate to win. Every time we stand up for love and oppose mindless hate, a new link is forged.

Keep Your Head Up!

 This week's quote reads, "Keep your head up! Otherwise, you won't be able to see the stars."

It is a good reminder. There are many reasons why people walk around with their heads down, unaware of what is going on around them. Perhaps we are "in our head", preoccupied with our thoughts; perhaps we keep our eyes down to avoid meeting the eyes of anyone else we encounter; or (worst of all, in my view) we are so engrossed in our mobile phone screen that we are oblivious to the real world. 

Maybe I'm getting old, but it never ceases to astonish me when I see people walking around buried in their phones. They are missing out on so much - real life, going on around them.

Holding our heads up can also be a sign of self-worth. We are not afraid to meet the eyes of other people, are comfortable in our own skin. Which is a vulnerable act, and takes courage. Because I also appreciate that for many people, who do not, for one reason or another (like skin colour, sexuality, neurodiversity) "fit in" with the majority, flying under the radar is important for their safety; meeting the eyes of the dominant majority can be potentially dangerous. I hope there are places where they feel secure enough to raise their heads and be with their community and watch the stars.

But the most important reason to keep our heads up, in my opinion, is exactly what the quote states: "otherwise you won't be able to see the stars". Or the rest of the wonders of the world, all around us. My DH and I have recently spent a week in West Sussex (based near Chichester) and spent our time sight-seeing. We saw much to wonder at - the glories of Chichester Cathedral (see below), the different period buildings at the Weald and Downland Museum, Arundel Castle, and the beauty of the South Downs. None of which we would have been able to appreciate, had we not been looking around us, keenly aware of our surroundings. 

The Shape of Grief

I found the image below on Facebook the other day, and it fits my mood perfectly, as it is coming up to one year since my darling Mum died. "Grief is the last act of love we have to give to those we loved. Where there is deep grief, there was deep love."

I miss her so much. Miss being able to share silly, little, everyday things - the latest doings of our grandsons, progress with a crochet or stitching project, shopping for my daughter's wedding dress, how I'm feeling, any particular day. The number of times in the last twelve months I have thought, "I must tell Mum that," and then remembered, again, that I can't. That she is gone.

I cannot wish her back. She was nearly 93, and had commented numerous times in the last couple of years of her life, "I'm ready to go." I hope she is at peace, wherever she is (she was a sound atheist and believed that death was the end of all things). 

It's a weird process, grieving for someone you have loved deeply. At first, it is all consuming, and you think you'll never get over it. You cannot believe that they are really gone, that you will never be able to talk to them, hold them, love them, ever again. Then, time passes, and time heals, and you regain something of an even keel, even though one sweet core of your life is gone forever. But then, something reminds you, and the loss is raw and wild once again. Or that is what I have found. 

And yet, the love remains. I am who I am - mother, grandmother, friend, minister - because she loved me well. And that is what I miss most of all - her unconditional love. She had boundless love and compassion for others, especially her family. And was friendly with everyone she met. She had a knack of striking up conversations with strangers, which I have inherited, a bit. And every time I do, I think of her.

Bless you, Mum. I love you. 

World of Wonders

This week's quote reads, "The world is full of wonders. One of them is me."

Which is a nice thought. But I wonder, how many of us believe it? I certainly do not see myself as a "wonder of the world".  I am a flawed, imperfect human being, just like everyone else. My first reaction to this quote was to think that the only people who do see themselves as "wonders of the world" are misguided and egocentric, even narcissistic. A certain orange President comes to mind...

But on reflection, I'm not sure I'm right. Perhaps there is another way to look at it, to think of ourselves. Perhaps it is about accepting ourselves as we are, flaws and all, and being grateful and in awe about the body, mind, and spirit that is ours alone. Each of us is unique, each of us has a very particular contribution to make to the world, that nobody else can make. 

I have blogged before about the importance of this, here. And am unapologetic about repeating part of that post, Brené Brown's definition of authenticity:

"Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we are supposed to be and embracing who we are. Choosing authenticity means:

 - cultivating the courage to be imperfect, to set boundaries, and to allow ourselves to be vulnerable.

 - exercising the compassion that comes from knowing that we are all made of strength and struggle.

 - nurturing the connection and sense of belonging that can only happen when we believe that we are enough."

Perhaps it's not so much about being a "wonder of the world", it's more about showing up as our faulty and fallible selves, recognising those flaws and failings and, nevertheless, doing what we can, where we are, with the gifts we have been given, to make a positive difference in the world. Which means living in consonance with our values and daring to take a stand on the things which matter to us, regardless of whether it will make us unpopular, get us into trouble.

So yes, each and every one of us can be a "wonder of the world"; "unique, precious, a child of God" (to quote the Quakers; and can do our best to make a difference, using the talents which are ours alone.

May it be so - all our talents are needed, in this flawed and imperfect (yet also wonderful) world of ours.