Happiness Matters

August 31, 2020

“Eat Pray Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert

Books I Have Reviewed, Happiness Matters, Making Miracles, Memoir 2 Comments


“Eat Pray Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert

I can totally understand why “Eat Pray Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert has garnered so much attention and a devoted following worldwide. I’m not put off by the cynical reviews, though reading the book, I’m less convinced by the film – which I saw first. I understand film and book as loosely paired, each bright exponents of their own art: the film as very colourful, the book as a very readable exploration of how spirituality can marry well with the best of western values.

“Eat Pray Love” is full of the kind of pithy wisdom that we might collect for ourselves and deploy over a life-time, taking our favourite nuggets with us on our holidays, or into our encounters with difficult people… And it is also an immensely readable story of how one brave woman learned to slough off the trials of her life to find something more rewarding.

If she can manage to do that, so can we. Speaking as one who has spent years in a spiritual quest to understand Why? and who now acknowledges increasingly that Why is not the point: it’s more useful to work out How… it is heartening to notice many of my own suspicions echoed in this volume. I nod, agree “Yes, of course!” and “Oh, so now I understand…” Which is what, for me, makes this book such a gem.

“Eat Pray Love” is well written, and grapples with seeming ease, with abstruse spiritual concepts that would leave many of us floundering. With a seeming effortlessness, Gilbert lays out to view her evidence for a kind, generous all-seeing deity who loves us totally, and would like us to be happy. To argue with that seems churlish.

Rather than write a glowing review and indicate that this book saved my life, I would rather you read it and collect from it what suits you, given where you are now, and where you are going. It’s the kind of tale that will resonate with each of its readers differently, so that will have to be my main recommendation: read it, because it might just be the book you’ve been looking for. If not, then working out the reasons why not, is useful to know.

If I have one quibble, it’s that Ms Gilbert – who has such an amazing array of language she could use – in her heated moments references disability as an insult. I wasn’t really expecting to see it written, so when I saw “spaz” it was a jolt, and to see “spastic” used as a form of abuse was like tasting metal in my mouth. Once, as Lady Bracknell might say, is unfortunate. Twice begins to look like carelessness.

Nevertheless, a book I will keep.

Thanks for reading.

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August 25, 2020

Knowing all this…

'Trapped: My Life with Cerebral Palsy', Fran's School of Hard Knocks, Happiness Matters 3 Comments

Knowing all this…

Knowing all this…. Covid resurgence, climate problems, disappearing wildlife, wildfires, water shortages, riots, political shenanigans and catastrophic explosions, not to mention other issues closer to home that constantly pull me up short and make me question… Knowing all this, what am I going to do?

Am I going to watch videos fervidly late at night and worry? Am I going to scroll endlessly through mini clips exposing this disaster or that impending crisis? Look out of the window at relentless rain and wonder where the Summer went…? Or…? Can I do something positive?

My life, my choices, my peace of mind, my freedom.

I hold tight onto my choice to be purposefully kind, and to work hard despite these and other pressures that bear down on my heart. I can still help a bit, by keeping my health strong, and my mental processes tidy and clean. Just because life’s situations are sometimes messy, is no reason to head straight for the swamp and drown in it.

All change, or betterment to any degree, starts with me, right now.

So that signals the end of obsessive anything, of endless checking, clicking, scanning the horizon and fretting. Instead, I’ll go for a walk in the fresh morning or as evening light fades. Instead, I’ll eat well, take a rest when I need to, and chat with my friends on the phone or over a cup of socially distanced tea. There is always plenty to do, and when that is finished for the day, I can read a cheerful book, watch a funny movie, have a laugh with my family.

When I look back at this unsettling time of change, I want to know that I worked hard and did my best. And in that, there is precious little space for wasted time or regret.

Thanks for reading.

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August 17, 2020

Taking refuge

'Trapped: My Life with Cerebral Palsy', cerebral palsy, Fran's School of Hard Knocks, Happiness Matters 0 Comments

Taking refuge

In the process of growing up and getting older, have I been taking refuge behind unhealthy behaviours? In a household which was unusual, it comes as no surprise that I must have learned some very odd coping habits. And of course, I would unthinkingly accept what I saw around me, adapt to it and adopt it as mine too. Odd, that we adopt dysfunctional behaviour in order to fit in, when dysfunction makes true co-operation non-existent or at best, reluctant.

And so in the cause of adapting to what I have seen and felt, I have become too often, and painfully, bad tempered, perfectionist, judgemental, and I have spent a great deal of thought and mental energy in “fixing things”: keeping people happy, not rocking the boat, both appeasing and enabling bad behaviour, even while I was totally unaware of doing any of that.

In the process of realising all this, I’m having to recalibrate a lot of things I thought I understood. I’m having to take fresh responsibility for being too quick to be offended, for being sharp with judgements, and being impatient. None of what we get through in daily life matters so much that it should make us unhappy, and since bad behaviour alienates people, it’s no wonder I’ve felt too often alone and beleaguered.

But it’s never too late to start again. It’s taken me a long time to get to this point, and I’m glad I have, finally reaching a place from which I can work constructively. Painful as it may be, understanding my part in keeping difficult things going, and choosing now to work and behave differently, brings rewards I could previously only dream of, and a kind of peace and resolution that I feel as if I’ve been searching for all my life.

Thanks for listening.

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July 23, 2020

Birth family dynamics

'Trapped: My Life with Cerebral Palsy', cerebral palsy, Fran's School of Hard Knocks, Happiness Matters, Memoir 2 Comments

Birth family dynamics

Taking time in lockdown to browse through on-line videos on self-help, I listen, learn and recalibrate a lot of what I thought I understood. My understanding of many of my birth family dynamics changes, firming up, and offering new perspectives that bring me up short, as I ask myself a host of questions which will probably remain unanswered.  

Some answers I do have, however. And this process of reflection is very welcome, as finally I can feel myself standing up straighter and coming out from under a lot of pointless habits, such as needless introspection – Wow! It was never about me after all, there never was anything I could have done to change that – worrying, and overthinking around painful subjects – What might I have done differently? Turns out, not much.

This process of setting to rights and starting again is often painful: I’m having to review most of what I previously thought I had understood about “what happened” and reconsider events in a very different light, as having much less to do with my conduct or perceived failings than I had assumed. Coming to terms with a lot of wasted time and wasted regrets – there was no shape I could have twisted myself into that would have made any difference, after all – has been stark. A process of uplifting liberation from the old narratives also leaves me feeling quietly appalled.  

Children accept what is reflected back at them and assume it is inevitable. So, my childish realisation that my parents both had difficulty accepting my particular suite of impairments was part of the juvenile understandings I collected about life in general and me in particular: “I’m obviously impaired, therefore I’m unhappy, obviously…” As youngsters, we take on board a great many mixed messages, then spend years trying to contort ourselves to make sense of them. So I took for granted an assumption about my world, that I now recon is the Great Falsehood.

To be continued.

Thanks for listening.

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July 20, 2020

Time management and lists

Happiness Matters, The Rights & Wrongs of Writing 4 Comments

Time management and lists

Using even very rudimentary time management and lists of things I need to do, then going one step further and setting up a weekday timetable, helps me to focus. What I’ve been putting off becomes harder to ignore, besides which I find I have much more headspace to make life more interesting and enjoyable.

Compiling lists puts all outstanding matters up front, spelled out in black and white, so I don’t have to carry reminders around in my head. If I go one step further and compile the rudiments of a timetable for each weekday, I can change and refine what I decide to do, testing out what works. In itself, the thought that goes into setting up a timetable gives me the added incentive to follow through and commit to what I’ve already decided.

It doesn’t matter so much what I put in my schedule: respecting the thought and commitment implicit in setting one up, I find it much easier to tailor my other tasks around it without having to find awkward excuses. To say, “I’m sorry, I’m busy” is enough, and far easier than, “I’ve timetabled work that day,” which always invites a counter argument, “Oh, but surely, just this once?” or “But you don’t have to work today, surely?” Beware of people planting the idea that what they have planned for you is more important than what you have timetabled.

Another major bonus of timetabling deployed for even a couple of weeks, is that allocated timeslots quickly become habit forming. We get used to doing a thing regularly at a set time, and so it gets easier. Writing between, say, 2pm and 5pm on weekdays; hoovering on Monday mornings early; supper prep never before five of an evening. Little steps like this soon build into a self-respecting habit, which also means it is very much easier to relax and enjoy our free time when we have scheduled a “Weekend off!”

Thanks for listening. 

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July 9, 2020

Tools of time management

Fran's School of Hard Knocks, Happiness Matters, The Rights & Wrongs of Writing 0 Comments

Tools of time management.

Since I work for myself, I have to be both my own organiser and the one who gets things done. I have to be the one who says what goes, and who does what she’s told. And lately – in fact, for far too long – I’ve been prevaricating and feeling a bit lost, because I have not understood that both roles have different purposes, and both roles are essential.

So, instead of actively using tools of time management and organising my time – accepting the role of organiser – I’ve been hiding in books and in details. It’s very easy, in a lockdown situation to hide from the realisation that I’ve been stalling. I’ve needed someone to tell me what to do. But – Ha! – that is my job. So….?

So I have to be the one who sets up my own timetable. This very quickly gives my weeks a structure that enables me to allocate different times to certain allotted tasks. Having committed the time in advance, I do not then find myself thinking endlessly about all those other tasks which still have to be done and which are less than thrilling: shopping, laundry, meal prep…

With the help of a timetable, routine jobs are given their allocated time, before which I am allowed to accumulate a small pile of things that will be dealt with then. So I can stop thinking about them. That way, I free up loads of space and crucial mental energy for many of the things I prefer to do, deploying timetabling so that I can say, “Sorry, I’m busy at the moment…” and mean it.

Having even the rudiments of a timetable is as important to tell us what we can leave doing until later, as for reminding us what we can do now.

Thanks for reading.

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June 25, 2020

What to expect from Covid

Happiness Matters 2 Comments

What to expect from Covid.

I read worrying news that Covid is on the rise again in China, the country whose experiences in the latest infection control seem to be the lodestar for the rest of the world. New outbreaks, more infectious, with a super-spreader at the centre, requiring the tracing and testing of literally hundreds, then thousands, of people. Elsewhere, there are sporadic outbreaks in countries that have previously managed to keep their outbreaks under control. More infectious may not mean more deadly, but it’s all to be seen.

And what can we do? I’m not sure what to expect from Covid. It seems that, if we pursue the Scottish objective to its logical conclusion, the hope is that Covid will be eradicated here. There are some smaller countries that have managed eradication, presumably at the cost of not allowing travel beyond a radius of say, ten miles, controlling cross-border movement and so on: difficult to maintain, though presumably cross-border controls will continue to be necessary for a fixed or limited period – a year, six months? – and then gradually, we may hope to see them lifted, as part of a package of measures including widespread testing, quarantine arrangements for those who have to travel and eventually, an effective vaccine.

Meantime, here we all sit each of us alone and together as our family circumstances dictate, waiting to hear, and increasingly dependent on our on-line tools for social and business interaction. I worry most about our children, who cannot be expected to learn everything from their carers, no matter how well balanced or optimistic the adults around them might be, and who rely on people from outside their family circle to evolve and develop socially.

I am puzzled by the ramifications of losing physical sharing, laughter and picnics in the park, and I have to hope that life can resume, eventually, allowing us to emerge into daylight, in groups, and sharing hugs, whispered secrets and good times.

Thanks for listening.

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June 16, 2020

Holidays in lockdown

Happiness Matters, Making Miracles 4 Comments

Holidays in lockdown

How do we take holidays in lockdown? It might seem peculiar, in a time of enforced mass inactivity, to talk of Summer holidays. We don’t want time off work! We need to get back to work…! And yet, old habits die hard: despite the changes, we are advised to keep things as “normal” as possible, our usual yearly activities almost always include a long summer vacation and in less that two weeks, both my husband and my daughter will be “on holiday”.

If we are forced to shelter in place or isolate, how can we enjoy a holiday feeling? I have a few suggestions which you can maybe relate to, and which I hope will soften the blow of a staycation, even if you are yearning to get away.

~ Since holidays are all about being looked after by others, take steps to share the burdens of daily living: routine tasks such as cooking, cleaning and laundry are much more fun when shared. Make a party of it and put on music, dance.

~ Buy a new set of linen and put it on the bed. Freshly laundered sheets always make me feel happier.

~ With our weekly shop, we can experiment with new foods, dishes and meals that take the sweat out of cooking. Eat a main meal at lunchtime instead of in the evening and try out new salads, drinks and prepared foods. Short-cuts can be such a boost.

~ I’ve cleared out my wardrobe again and I’m wearing a lot of the clothes I keep “for special occasions”. If you’re anything like me, the time is fast approaching when that special occasion is right now, this minute. If you need matching gear, order it on-line, and if that is beyond your budget, browse for ideas and accessorise with what you have at home.

~ Clear out cupboards and put together a present box: wrapping papers, celebration bags, ribbons and bows. Recycle the old, well used seasonal stuff that you don’t really like, so that you know, next time you want to wrap a present, it’s all organised tidy for you. Then exchange presents for the season. Small is beautiful.

~ spend more time outdoors in all weathers. There’s no restriction on walking and travelling near home, so let’s spend more time out in the fresh air. It’s such a wonderful time of year.

I’ve been up since the crack of dawn and have already recorded and sent a contribution to The Word Bin, a new audio podcast, “The Word Bin” from Fair Acre Press. Check out the link and have a go, it’s great fun!

Thanks for listening.

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May 26, 2020

What I do in lockdown

cerebral palsy, Fran's School of Hard Knocks, Happiness Matters 4 Comments

What I do in lockdown

What I do in lockdown has altered my views so that all my workaday and long-held assumptions are being challenged.

I’m sure that, six months ago, if I’d said I would prioritise hoovering on Mondays, and washing sheets, taking out the recycling, remembering to place gardening bins on the kerb just to give me something to do of a weekday morning, I would have guffawed loudly. That, I would have opined, would have been as likely as my daughter settling down to do jigsaws, which hitherto she has scorned.

Yet, in the last few weeks, both Seline and I have completed about seven or eight jigsaws each, with no complaint and a great deal of enthusiasm.

Instead of complaining about domesticity, I now thank my lucky stars when I can visit the supermarket, am grateful there is food on the shelves, and shop conservatively, mindful of the twin injunctions to shop as infrequently as possible, but without hoarding. I’m grateful too, for daily acts of heroism from those who keep turning up for work in hospitals, schools and shops, fearful, perhaps, of becoming unwell, but also grateful to have gainful – and such useful! – employment.

One of the good things to have come out of this current situation is the recognition, finally, that the “small” occupations many people have, are vital for all of us. The recognition that ordinary people, going about their usual jobs, are really important to the continuing function of their communities; that to be relied upon, as a teacher, a medical technician or a parent must be, is a useful, indeed one of the best, ways to contribute meaningfully.

Whatever else I may learn, the restraints currently imposed on us have taught me, finally, what it truly means to perform routine tasks willingly and with a peaceful heart. So many of us have to take risks that I am not, nor ever have been, called upon to take. And I am grateful to them.

Thanks for reading.

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April 30, 2020

A different world

cerebral palsy, Fran's School of Hard Knocks, Happiness Matters 4 Comments

A Different World

Lockdown has brought with it the realisation that, for all our privileged existence, there are aspects of the way we live that we must change, if we are to continue having any quality of life. Though they present major challenges, the current restrictions also offer un-looked for opportunities to consider that a different world is possible.

I don’t find that the lockdown restrictions so far imposed have yet changed my daily routines or expectations radically; except perhaps to bring with them the beneficial awareness that yes, I can go for walks, and so I should make the most of that. Because I am only allowed to venture out once a day – though again, that is not such a change from my usual limitations – I find myself rejoicing when I do: official restrictions have made me very grateful and appreciative of the freedoms I enjoy.

Perhaps we will all have to re-frame or curb our notions of what we have grown used to, but the end result is that we are usually more appreciative of what we have.

The season, and the weather, are especially lovely at the moment, the routes are calm and quiet, and I can hear loud birdsong in the bushes that, un-tended, have been left to flourish. They are that shade of almost painfully bright, light green that makes me breathless.

Robins chirping loudly, blackbirds flitting and warbling, song thrushes trilling, do remind me what an invasion our usual motor vehicle noise is. The fresh green grass and the bright and blue skies unmarked by vapour trails remind me, too, that we must find ways to share the world so as not to destroy it.

We can do this, and we must. So I’m grateful for what I have and look forward to a quieter, more equitable way of living when lockdown restrictions are eased.

Thanks for reading.

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