Category: Everything

I’ll just get another one…

One of the (many) things I love about Greek life is that when you take something to be fixed, the assumption is that you are not just getting to buy another one but that you will do everything you can to make this one (car, computer, printer etc) last for as long as possible.  It’s a very normal approach, on the island at least. There is no ‘oh I’ll just get another’ mentality.
So I’m going to hold off buying a new printer and see what magic can be worked.
Recycling has many, many faces.
Thanks for the reminder.

Mind drivel

This is a great example of perceptions.

I arrived in Greece to the following comments – all made within three days.

  1.  You look well, have you put on a couple of kilos?
  2.  You look well – you’ve lost some weight!
  3.  Oh I like your hair, it was blonde last year?
  4.  You look younger this year!
  5.  There’s something different about you but I don’t know what it is
  6.   I keep looking at your hair, something’s changed but I don’t know what

Of all of these comments the truth is that I’ve had my hair cut by about 6 inches.  My weight is about the same.  My hair has been brown for a couple of years.

Taking any of these comments personally would be insane.  My reply has been to say – oh thank you!  apart from the hair colour when I answered that it was brown last year.  The comments are made by other people’s minds comparing their flawed memory of me from last year with what they see in front of them and then finding something doesn’t tally and then needing to organise it and know what it is.

I do it too – I look at people and think oh they’re fatter, thinner, older, younger, more tired, more energised etc, than they were last year – my mind comparing them against a flawed memory and wanting to categorise them and makes things neat.  It’s what we’re taught to do so that we feel in control of stuff (that’s another HUGE subject for another time).  But I don’t spend so much time taking any of those comments that pop up seriously (most of the time… I still have my moments…).  I have realised that it’s just my commentator aspect wanting to fill space and feel as though it’s in control by working stuff out.  It’s up to me whether I engage with any of it.  And frankly, most of it’s drivel (like the above) so I am becoming much more adept at letting it waft by.

Some people may FEEL different to my memory of them, but that’s too much for my mind to handle it needs to have CATEGORIES.  The feeling thing is a very different kettle of fish and also for another day.

Without wanting to repeat myself too much, this is one of the things that meditation and mindfulness practice has taught me.  I don’t have to take any of the crap that enters my head seriously. It’s quite restful not having to get out the table and chairs and best china and most fancy Oolong tea for any old Tom, Dick and Harriet of a thought that comes along, and THEN have to spend hours entertaining them.  Instead I can acknowledge that something feels different without having to get my knickers in a twist about working it out.  After all, everything’s always different all of the time.

Oh REALLY?

I make myself laugh. Sometimes just because I’m bloody funny and sometimes because I have an old pattern that wants other people to think a certain way about me.  And the thing is that the afore-mentioned ‘certain way’ changes all the flaming time.  If only I could be consistent!

This afternoon I stopped and filled the car up with petrol in Germany.  When I went in to pay, Pharrell Williams was on the radio singing ‘Happy’.   So I chirped along quite loudly when it suddenly dawned on me that I wanted the young men (and when I say young, they were young enough to be my grandchildren for God’s sake) to LIKE ME and to think that I was COOL.

I did this by doing my best to be a) obviously English b) know the words to Pharrell and c)  appear to have a jaunty gait.

I ask you – what does ‘obviously English’ even mean?  I don’t even know what it MEANS but I was trying to be it!  And why the chuff do I care about what two teenagers in a random petrol station in Germany think about me?!  But clearly in that moment – I did.  NOW do you see what I mean by funny?  Bloody bonkers, more like.

I catch myself at this quite a lot.  I was in the car park of my favourite hotel in Lucerne this afternoon, I pass through twice a year to and from Greece, when I caught sight of the manager.  We always have a bit of a chat and I could feel myself composing my ‘hey, remember me, I’m a nice person!’ face (what does that even LOOK LIKE?).

Waiting, waiting – ah!  There we go – recognition, phew.

And sometimes I can feel myself morphing into one of these guises and I catch myself in time and I relax and stop trying to force the situation.  Forcing myself, forcing a belief onto others, forcing my insecurity and my need to be liked onto the world.

Hakuin, an old Japanese Zen Master, is credited as saying  something like ‘the Buddha is like water and human beings are like ice.  The sunshine of our awareness melts the ice and turns us into Buddha’.  I share that A LOT because that’s what’s going on here.

An increased awareness of how I am, moment to moment.  This is totally one of the things I love about mindfulness practice.  Stick at it long enough and we may start to catch ourselves out in our own weird shittery.  And there’s nowhere to go with it other than to notice, smile and relax and THEN see what happens.  Sometimes the weird shit still happens, and other times we just flow, no stress, no forcing.

My many-sided personality

I wrote the following post some weeks ago.  Everything changes, all of the time 😉

Today I feel hopeless, low, sad, fed up, cross, irritated, bored.  And yet I just responded to an email enquiry and assumed a bright and breezy persona.  The challenge is acknowledging that both exist and that both exist at the same time.  It is completely within my power to morph into a bright and breezy person but it’s also a fact that there is an underlying heaviness going on.  I have a mad mixture of energy rushing round my body and I think the only kind thing to do is to not add to the heaviness by making it a thing.  ‘Oh look, I’m not being authentic’ – for example.

Of course I’m being authentic, but the reality is that I also have a business to run.  When I’m face to face with guests in Greece I will very happily tell people how I am when they ask me because that’s the point over there.  But equally there is another entirely valid world that requires me to play dress-up and so I do.

I am not being deceitful or devious, I am simply choosing the most appropriate response to a moment as and when it arises.

I can very easily make a stick out of ‘ought to’ and ‘should have’ and I realise that they are unnecessary, unkind and unhelpful.

I embrace my many-sided personality – it is merely decoration, it is nothing to do with who I truly am.  Who I truly am feels every aspect of every turn of personality and neither judges or commentates – it is the ultimate in allowing, forgiving and loving.  And when I relax into that, I can be in flow, regardless of whether my ‘personality’ is describing the current situation I find myself in as good or bad.

Creativity, Action and Doing Nothing

I have a million ideas all the time, as my friends will vouch for. I go through periods where I say, “Ooh! I’ve got a new idea! I’ve got a new idea!” and I get really excited and I start talking about it and it’s absolutely the next thing and it’s really going to happen and I’m going to do this and do that and, “Oh my God!” and it’s such a great idea.

The thing is, of course, that this happens quite a lot, so not all of these ideas actually turn into something. And I caught myself the other time I was mentioning to a friend of mine, “Oh, I’ve got a new idea I need to discuss,” and I thought, “Oh my goodness – how many times have I put her through this, this whole, ‘Oh, I’ve got a new idea to discuss,’ and she sits and she’s very good and she goes, ‘Yes, that’s a great idea,’ and then they don’t turn into anything particularly?” And then I started to get a bit, “Ooh… My ideas don’t turn into anything.” And this little voice started its work of, “Oh well, you see? You don’t actually get anything done, do you? All these ideas… Don’t waste other people’s time,” on and on and on, this little voice. And I realised that I didn’t care what the little voice said.

I do have a million ideas and I am equally passionate about every single one of them. I’ve got a book that I’m writing, there’s a brochure that I want to get written for Serenity Retreat, there are other projects on-board that I want to get started for Serenity Retreat, business workshops I want to get started. Now, not all of these will come off – I realise that. But that’s not the point.

The point is that we just have to keep chucking stuff out there, because it seems to me that one or two of those projects will take root and they’ll become more than just a notion – which is what has happened with Sicily. Sicily is now a thing; it’s going to happen in October. I’m going to do a partly silent retreat in Sicily. The Greek retreats have been running for… this is our seventh year, and that started with one of these ideas.

So even if we are an ideas person and keep coming up with stuff, I’m a real big fan of ideas. I am not a very big fan of listening to ideas that haven’t got a plan behind them or that people are just musing about and thinking, “Oh, one day I might…” I haven’t really got time for that. What I’m really interested in is seeing somebody’s passion and for somebody telling me that, “Oh, and I’m going to do this and I’m going to do that,” and outlining their action. It might come off. It might not. But just by putting that passion and enthusiasm into something and looking at the steps necessary to take action, we’re fine-tuning our way, we’re getting more and more in touch with what’s really resonating for us and what isn’t.

So I’m a big fan of millions of ideas. I’m going to keep having millions of ideas and most of them won’t come to anything – and that’s absolutely okay. And so it’s okay for all of us.

Which is also why I’m a big, big fan of sitting and doing nothing. I love meditation, but I think sitting and doing nothing is massively under-represented. I love lying on the sofa and turning everything off and just having a little wander around in my mind; not trying to get anywhere in particular, just seeing where it goes, really. Sometimes it turns into daydreaming and sometimes it turns into worrying about something or what have you. And I just notice all of that and see where it goes. Then sometimes, something will come to me in a flash, like the Sicilian thing did. I was lying down and just BANG! This idea came to me and I had to get up and get on with it straight away.

So I’m a really big fan of doing nothing as well. Let’s all do more nothing.

A Compassionate Weight?

A friend of mine was recently indirectly criticised about her weight.

It set off an avalanche of feeling, not only in her, but in me, in her telling of the story.

Judging somebody by their weight is easy pickings.  It can be a great way to feel a bit superior but it’s also a sadly missed opportunity to practice some empathy and compassion.

I am overweight. I’m also a recovered alcoholic, drug user and relationships addict.  You may spot a theme – fix me, fix me, fix me  – first drink, drugs, men and now – food!

The irritating thing about weight is that it’s so OBVIOUS, goddamnit.  I mean it’s right there in the rolls of fat and the heaviness in getting up and the clothes that don’t ‘fall’ in the way they are ‘supposed’ to.

BUT.

But get this.  Have you ever:

  • Felt an overwhelming urge to shout at your partner, you feel it rising, rising, rising – AAAGH – there it goes!  You know it won’t help and yet – you do it.
  • Said you’d be home at a certain time and then convinced yourself that it would be okay to stay out with late with your mates (even when it wasn’t actually ok)
  • Spent an extra hour at work even though you promised to be home on time, convincing yourself that it would be okay (and it wasn’t).
  • Turned up late because you couldn’t get up in the morning (just another five minutes in bed….)
  • Promised yourself that you wouldn’t buy any more clothes/video games/gadgets because you really can’t afford it and then….. bought something?
  • Promised yourself that you’ll do the hoovering/clean the car/fishtank/bathroom when you’ve read to the end of the chapter and then convinced yourself that all that stuff can wait (this is a hell of a good book!).
  • Promised yourself no more tv/computer/social media – oh, but just this one more time….

The weight thing is NO different for me, it’s just that the effect is so much more obvious to the naked eye.

If our bodies expanded in direct proportion to how much we shouted at others, spent money we didn’t have, stayed too long at work, neglected our relationships, avoided chores, spent too much time on mindless activities (social media) then we would all be bloody obese.

Weight is such an easy target but maybe rather than pointing the finger at others can we look within and find some common ground?  Can we ask:  Do I ever do/say something that I actually know (in my heart) is not going to produce the most helpful response/effect and yet I do it anyway?

Do you see how it’s no different for those of us who overeat?  And don’t you think we give ourselves enough of a hard time about it (like that ever helps)?

You don’t know someone else’s journey, their battles, their demons but you know yours.  We all have battles and demons, all of us. It’s just that some of us get to wear our demons more obviously than others.

And yes, I totally accept that some people are really happy being whatever weight they are.  This is just my story.