Happiness Matters

February 12, 2021

Ten things I’ve learned in lockdown

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Ten things I’ve learned in lockdown

It’s important to make the most of what life gives us. With that in mind, here are ten things I’ve learned in lockdown that might also help you:-

  1.  There are more important things than a “normal” routine. How many times do we do something, or go through a usual – pre-lockdown – day without really thinking about whether we need to, or could, do things differently? Being forced to live for well-nigh a year cheek by jowl with my nearest and dearest, a great many things have had to be adjusted, including my “usual” workaday expectations. And guess what? The world is still working fine.
  • There are lots of things I don’t “need”. Again, how much stuff in a “normal” day have I got used to taking for granted? Trips out whenever I like, visits to shops, buying a new set of clothes… An awful lot of stuff I expected to need and want, I no longer even think about. A new trend of minimalism which gives me room to do more interesting things.
  • As I get used to getting along with “less”, I appreciate what I have, more: time to rest, to go to bed early, time to resign the worries – since there isn’t much I can do if the weather keeps me indoors most of the day and I’m not allowed to venture outside anyway, except for exercise… So I am happy to have time to eat a leisurely breakfast and appreciate how it tastes; I’m happy to share a joke or watch re-runs of favourite TV series with my husband and daughter; I’m happy if I have a clean top to wear…
  • I buy less, so what I have at home, I adapt to less wasteful, more friendly usage. Instead of buying disposable face-masks and synthetic wash cloths which end up in the bin, I buy washable alternatives, or cut up a ragged cotton towel into wash-up squares that can be laundered and re-used often; I started out saving ends of soap and reforming them – and I still intend to do this, when I’ve got enough of them – but I now also buy round soaps instead of square, because I discover that a round shape means much less to throw away.
  • I think less about things that I don’t enjoy. The things that used to bug me – constant laundry, washing and tidying – I now see as opportunities for improvement; and if that doesn’t work, I deal with chores quickly, and with minimal mental investment, with a view to getting past them and into something more fun: I’ve started learning Portuguese on duolingo, and I really enjoy the new “Durrells” series…

To be continued… Thanks for reading.

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January 14, 2021

Dear Blog

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Dear Blog

I know a post is overdue. It’s been too long since I wrote to you.

Though I get a lot of help from my sisters, I still find myself subsisting on about five hours sleep a night: I want to go to bed early, but life gets in the way, and besides, I find the late evenings and early mornings peaceful, and just about the only time I can be sure the phone won’t ring, the family won’t need anything and there won’t be stuff around the flat that needs seeing to. I putter about sorting things, ready for the next day, and am surprised when I see 12:34 grinning at me from the kitchen clock. That time already?

Some people have a high tolerance for living with lots of stuff around them – they don’t mind leaving things in pursuit of a bigger objective – but, perhaps since I’m slower anyway, I find that harder than doubtless it should be.

Mum is still in hospital, on a general medical ward, free of covid – everyone is tested twice a week, and yesterday one case was found – and finally a diagnosis has been confirmed that fits well enough with her symptoms. Is this good news or bad? How does Mum feel about it? I can’t know. I can only go by the brave face that she puts on things when she phones me. Not too bad, I gather, and knowing her, she will be glad to have something to focus on.

Though I feel she needs to get home in order to locate something she can genuinely recognise and find soothing, I am kindly reminded by my friends that the hospital would not keep Mum in a moment longer than need be, the current pressures and risks being what they are.

With that I am content. Almost. Most of the time. I listen to loud music through my fab headphones, work, and hope. Which will have to be enough in these strange times.

Thanks for reading.

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November 17, 2020

A World of Opposites

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A world of opposites?

Right now, the world appears as one of opposites: Republican, Democrat; mask wearer, not a mask wearer, Brexiteer, Europhile… And more than ever, we seem to be insisting on our rights to oppose. All of which appears to be sowing division, discord, and unhappiness.

Division, discord and unhappiness are not attitudes I wish to learn or absorb into my thinking, nor would I ever think that endorsing these aspects was a good thing. It is my experience that we all have something to learn, and that if we want to begin to find solutions to the world’s very real problems, we have to begin to find a way to live amicably, despite our different viewpoints. So how can we do this?

I can see many different points of view. Depending on my mood and a host of other things, I can agree that a certain viewpoint is justified sometimes, even if I hold a different viewpoint; it all depends. So, if I lived in a country with minimal state provision for its citizens and a very thin or vulnerable safety-net for the sick or disabled, of course I understand those who insist on the right to keep working as long as they can, and who decry any attempts to restrain their freedoms in that direction, pandemic or no pandemic.

Self-reliance is laudable, but it can sit uncomfortably in the midst of a global health crisis. So, since members of my family involved in healthcare are in the midst of a viral outbreak which is having deadly outcomes and which most observers agree is now barely being controlled, and since I have friends directly involved in looking after the sick, I support restrictions on our social lives and even on our freedom to earn a living if that helps to bring the crisis under control. If I expose myself to un-necessary risk in exercising what I think of as my rights, how might an eventual illness in me or in my household add to the burdens of an already toiling health care system?

It is very apparent to me that, even in a world of opposites, although the Covid 19 virus and its ilk has not – not yet – affected me directly, it is better for me to curtail my daily expectations, since the combined effect of us all doing so reduces the risks to healthcare workers: even in times of crisis, we do not routinely choose to work in a field of endeavour in which the risk of serious illness or death is constant, and many times that of other work.  

However that may be, I can and do listen to differing points of view, and try to see the merit in all different perspectives. Despite our differing philosophies, we have to find ways to listen and co-operate with one another every day, so that together we can contribute to constructive, long-term solutions to our problems. That is what politics is all about. Since climate change, environmental losses and the weakening of democratic systems affect us all, the most enduring solutions will come from as wide a field of contribution as possible.

Thanks for reading.

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October 5, 2020

Taking a longer view

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Taking a longer view

My mother’s health is failing. Finally, after several years of painful struggle and wishing that things could be different – I’ve not quite lost sight of the woman who was content in her domain and saw the purpose in carrying on – my mother’s light is fading.

In watching this long-drawn out process, taking a longer view, many emotions surface. And though I don’t know on any given day which will be uppermost, and which will lie dormant and sabotage me as I sleep, I know that this period of waiting will simply have to be endured, as all painful things are.

Certainly, there is regret, and a patina of peculiar relief, as we both accept the inevitable: I can’t make things better in the way she would like them to be: herself able and competent, living in France, her son alive, well, and, (in the dream she would have liked) living a happy life… I can’t put back the clock, and I’m not sure, even if I could, that it would be a wise course. Would all the things that have happened in the intervening five or so years have to happen again? I’m not sure we could cope with that.

There is comfort, as there always is, in knowing we have succeeded in coming this far together, in peace, and finally in a clearer understanding.

As a kid and a young adult, I often felt my parents to be remote, living by adult rules and logic to which I was not, nor expected to be, privy any time soon. Now, since I see Mum most days and have a hand in keeping her affairs in order, I have, I think, proved my claim to be as content, happy and competent in my own life as most of us are: my mother can relax now, knowing that, although I’ll never reach her heights of scholarship or astonishing grasp of detail, there is enough of her in me to ensure that I’ll be okay. Different, but okay.

Thanks for reading.

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August 31, 2020

“Eat Pray Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert

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“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…

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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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