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.