Happiness Matters

Watching de-clutter programmes

I’m currently obsessed with watching de-clutter programmes. But then, I love to de-clutter, and am always looking for new ideas and inspiration. Why, you might ask, when I have never had a problem with accumulations?

I’ve watched Maria Kondo, and another Canadian offering, ‘Consumed’, both of which offer insights that are salutary. For example, that our things can weigh us down; that we should either love, or use, what we own, and if we don’t, then why are we keeping it? Why not have a house-full of things we love? Or an empty house that we can fill with things we love… Why not, indeed? Sometimes I think that we go away on holidays to simply get away from the weight of our possessions.

And coming to the end of series two of ‘Consumed’ I felt a flush of regret, of shame, almost, that I’ve never had much opportunity to accumulate things. I have perhaps turned a necessity into a virtue, because to do anything else was too painful. First in a diplomatic lifestyle in which the family was constantly moving, packing and moving again, then at boarding school with its term times, holidays and limited trunk space, and even, dare I say it, in hospital during the long summer holidays, with its long wards and neat bedside lockers so clearly demarking small expectations.

It’s all very well for me to decide I’m a minimalist, but it is truly unfair of me to expect others to agree. It is sometimes very necessary to feel the security of generosity, of knowing that we can keep many things we choose, because we love them. If that means we have four pillows instead of two, then that’s fine.

I know that less is more. And I agree. But there is a place for knowing we can collect things, and expect our collections to be respected. So I’m not going to be badgering my husband and daughter any more, and I’m happy to leave my sister to accumulate what she wishes. Having gone through the same minimalist tests, she has swung rather to the other end of the scale, which is just fine and dandy with me.

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Grief comes in unexpectedly

As my mother’s health improves, my grief seems to be receding. Sure, Mum may never get back to being the sparky, independent woman she has been all her life, but perhaps that matters less than we thought it did.

And watching over the last year the process of her gradual change, acknowledging how many personal mountains she has had to climb – not only losing her husband and her son, but having to move her home twice in less that eighteen months and make all the necessary personal adjustments – I appreciate her courage anew.

In her quieter moments, she remains an inspiration, and not for the reasons she might suppose: not for her physical strength, her purposefulness, her self-reliance, but for her resignation. Her stoicism, never her most obvious trait, is resurfacing in such a way that grief comes in unexpectedly. It pricks behind the eyes, occasionally overflows, but then it leaves again. And this has happened so much in the last few years, that I too am becoming more resigned.

I can’t pretend to understand the Whys of our situation. I can hope to make a small difference, and give my mother the hope that she will be heard, and that she will get better. I keep my fingers crossed, pray almost constantly, and hope for the best. Because when examined objectively, there has been nothing else we could have done that would procure a better outcome. The NHS – God bless it! – has proved itself a worthy champion of those in crisis; they have rescued my mother from death and from her habitual defeatism, they have given her the hope of a new lease of life as well as a long-overdue medical review, and today, they conceded that she could come home, after more than three weeks in their care.

So with the help of two members of staff, we packed my car this afternoon and drove home peacefully, and with gathering relief. There may be more grief to face, but at least we now have hope that we can face it on our own terms. Which is something else to be grateful for.

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The example of others

In visiting my mother, increasingly I notice the help offered and contributions made to my life and peace of mind by the example of others: doctors who help, nurses who answer bedside summons, auxiliaries who dish out tea, or supper, or chat, taxi drivers who take me where I want to go, my husband who cooks when he is asked to, and my daughter who can be trusted to do chores she is asked to.

And I realise, teamwork really does help the world to function. Yet another lesson for me: I can work in a team. I do not have to be solitary, alone and independent all the time. Capable of doing all things reasonably well, I can also ask others to help. I can delegate. Coming down from the citadel of solitariness, I can lighten the load, have more fun and gain insights from others, by sharing with them all my travails – gently, of course – and being thankful for their efforts on my behalf. It’s lovely to let go the reins and allow life to flow.

I learn a lot from my mother: that independence and self-reliance are great strengths, that it is good to have our own opinions and to be able to justify them, that hard work will reap great rewards. In the example of her dependency, I also learn that teamwork is valuable, necessary and can save lives, as well as making living much more fun.

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To the hospital

Timetables are useful, and so are routines. Which now include visiting the hospital most days to visit my Mum. I have driven myself there, but the difficulties of obtaining parking are almost insurmountable. (What do I do if, having reached the hospital, I can find no-where to park?) So now I get taxis and am grateful that I can relax in the back of the cab for fifteen minutes each way. If I time it right, I can avoid the worst traffic clutter and shorten the journey.

            I really cannot fault my mother’s medical treatment at the Western General. Having such an apparently intriguing case on their hands, the treatment appears to be tiptoe kid gloves careful, and the staff are uniformly kind, helpful and easy to get on with. And I say that as someone who has good reason to loathe hospitals and to never want to go into one again.

Yes, I can identify with the tedium. It amuses me to hear my mother complaining of boredom and frustration, but I refrain from saying, “I do know, I do understand…” as that would only make her feel worse: without prompting from me, she remembers my hospital admissions, which she herself sanctioned, and concedes that yes, I do understand, and yes, I have been patient. That was nice to hear, today. (Increasingly, I find I can make a point by being silent and letting it speak for itself.)

            So yes, I have reason to hate hospitals, but I no longer do. Which for me is not so much a turnaround as a revolution of cosmic proportions. A whole arena of paranoia that I have, apparently, let go. For which, yet again, I am immensely grateful to my Mum. Thanks be to mothers for the lessons they teach their children.

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My ageing mother

I spend a great deal of time at home. Which is to say, I spend even more time at home than I used to, and it is a trend to be discouraged. I find it harder than ever to leave the house, and not because I have nothing to do or have any kind of social phobia. But since my mother came to live nearby, I am around to answer the phone in case of need: a habit, which started about three years ago when my father got frail, has hardened.

That’s a pity, since I’ve always found it so hard to motivate myself anyway, that any added disincentive is unhelpful. I just have to remember to go out, make myself less available, less amenable to answering the phone when I have to work.

But that is harder to do than it sounds. I accede the general principle when offered it, but find that it must warp to take in a new reality: My mum is unwell. She tells me often that she feels tired, and complains of various recurring problems, all of which have been investigated and remedied as far as possible. None of it really helps, unfortunately, to answer a situation which could be described quite simply, as, “Getting old, and hate it.” And I wonder at our tendency to prize life almost for the sake of it, instead of looking more closely at its quality…

I am so grateful for my mother’s continuing presence. She has had no choice but to rely on me, which she finds hard. And I have had no choice but to grow up a bit more, be patient, and accommodating – but not too much – and willing, but not too willing. Which I also find hard, but liberating too: it is rare that something upsets me, these days. From learning to accept the inevitability of ageing and its effects, I have learned many intangible lessons that it might otherwise take lifetimes to acquire.

Yesterday, Mum was taken into hospital, a decision made urgently necessary because of a combination of her limitations and mine: she now needs support to walk, which I cannot give her, and because an accident at home would spell disaster, we cannot easily experiment with other options like zimmers and walking sticks. So together we are still learning about compromise, and about accepting oneself despite obvious frustrations. It might be that hospital is the best place for Mum at the moment. I’ll keep you posted.

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Unreasonable expectations?

I watched the crowds of travellers at Gatwick airport with disbelief: lines and lines of people waiting patiently to board flights that would take them on holidays to the sun, or to see Santa and his reindeer. If that was me, and I was cornered on the floor of an airport lounge waiting for a miracle that never came, I would probably go home. For thousands of holiday makers, that was not the reality, as delays caused by drones overhead, stretched into hours and days.

We put up with all manner of indignities and disappointments in the hope of something better, which on the one hand, is reassuring: it is good to be stoic, and to stay optimistic. But I can’t help wondering why we are so willing to believe in the fantasy of better, if only we will fly away somewhere else; and I’m surprised that more people didn’t conclude from the delays that they would be happier at home, with their perhaps rather muted family celebrations. Surely home cannot have become so objectionable that we would rather spend days sleeping on a floor, than go back to our usual comforts. Is the fascination of elsewhere so gripping?

Or have our expectations grown too great? I recognise that Christmas and New Year are family time, and that we want to be together and do something special. There is, equally, intense pressure on us to do that and be that, and to buy our way to that special place we call happiness.

Even so, flying away in the depths of winter somehow goes against my grain, when all I really want to do is hibernate. And surely, instead of being encouraged to jet to the sun on 21^st December, we should remember that winter weather is unpredictable and that snow, ice and dark nights make travelling more hazardous. In other words, it might be better for us all, if we could surrender to the seasonal wisdom that says, now is a time for resting and doing less.

As for demonising members of the public for supposedly disrupting air traffic, are we really ready to vilify unknown others because they inconvenienced our holiday plans? We are encouraged to believe that the consumer is king, and that, if we only want a thing enough, we should have it. But I do not believe that anyone’s life deserves to be ruined because our seasonal expectations took a dip.

We all say we wish we didn’t have to work so hard, and that the demands of the commute are intense. Yet when we have the chance to do nothing – and a seasonal break over winter is the perfect excuse – we itch to be elsewhere. Just sayin’…

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Reasons to be cheerful.

Perhaps our future prospects fill us with gloom and we have a lot to feel gloomy about: the likelihood of losing our place within the European Community, despite, apparently, more and more people expressing doubts about that. (The European view appears to be that we as ‘a nation’ appear determined to rush to the cliff edge and tumble over it, though there are ways to avoid that. The consensus appears to be that we have lost our senses.) Will that cause hyper-inflation? A rush on medicines or petrol rationing? Who knows.

There are also worries about the state of the USA, the dominance of China, the situation in Syria and Palestine, the environment, the economy, and many others…

But in the midst of all the problems, I can see that there are reasons to be cheerful. So if you need reasons to be cheerful, here are a handful to ponder.

~ All of life progresses in small steps. Therefore every step forward is progress. One piece of litter bagged, one journey walked, one shopping bag re-used, one environmental product purchased, one purchase not made, a letter written, a visit made and enjoyed, and idea captured on the page, a good photograph. All such things as these make a difference.

~ These days, when we want to eat, we can, if we choose, reduce that process to about ten minutes. Meals come in all shapes, sizes and packages, for which I am grateful. We can’t recall how hard it was in the middle ages to procure enough to eat before actually wasting away. The lengthy processes of finding food, cleaning it, preparing, cooking and serving it was so protracted that those who ate regularly – a privileged minority – employed whole retinues to perform all the different tasks of food preparation, while the rest of us lived on a mess of small porridge leavened with the occasional apple or piece of turbot caught illegally from the Friar’s ponds and very likely eaten raw. We are very fortunate indeed that food is easy to come by.

~ In the UK we can still express our opinions freely without an oppressive degree of state control. Reading John Simpson’s three volumes of autobiography is a sobering reminder that innocent, kind, intelligent, brave people – often young people and students – die for the causes of freedom of association and freedom of speech. They do not deserve to die, and we would do well to remember what a precious gift it is, to live in a part of the world where expressing a view will not lead to arrest, detention without trial or summary execution.

~ Happiness is worth fighting for.

~ We can have fun, therefore I think that is what I will do, this year. Have fun, and thank my lucky stars that I still have the health to enjoy it.

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