Tag: guilt free

I wonder, what’s this red button do?

Simply Messy1 Comment

Recently, a friend mentioned the big red guilt button he carries on his back. I imagine this button as implanted somewhere between his shoulder blades, ready to growl an alert if, when he sits down, he relaxes, rather than answering emails or ticking off items on his To Do list; monitoring closely for movement away from responsibilities towards the committees we both serve on, and towards family time. This mention came about in a surreptitious conversation filled with me whinging us commiserating about how hard, sometimes, Quaker committee work can be (similar, I imagine, to volunteering to help with any faith group, or possibly even with any group at all). It can certainly bring with it an impressive array of opportunities for guilt. Guilt if you say no to service (we all have to do our part, you know); guilt if you say yes (particularly if you can’t, as it happens, respond to all emails within 24 hours, and all those that need careful consideration, research, and consultation more widely within 48); guilt if you say yes and you do everything “expected” of you and as a result you have no family time, no relaxing time, no personal time.*

My big red guilt button is not on my back. It’s buried deep in my more wobbly than I’d like it to be tummy. It rumbles when I eat food that will make that belly wobblier still; and it rumbles when I don’t, because what kind of example am I setting for my children if I buy into the Diet Culture? If I am not body positive, what chance do they have of overcoming societal limitations and recognising that every body is beautiful? (And yes, I do believe that – that every individual is amazing, and every body is unique and special and to be celebrated; every body except mine, that is. Oops…) I feel guilty and lazy when I choose reading over running; but how can I model living a happy life when I look upon movement merely as an unpleasant means to an impossible end, and never something to do purely for fun? Read the literature and it says, “all the studies agree that a girl’s attitude to how awesome her body is comes straight from her mother”, and oompf, there it goes again, my big red button shrieking in glee as that alarm sounds yet again.

If I manage to talk down my social conditioning, born and embedded in an era when only young, thin, non-disabled women had any worth at all; if I talk that down, it’s time for the next level of guilt to kick in. A deeper rumble now, connecting to the back of my mind. You say your body is beautiful after all? Huh! You are so wrong. And even if you’re right, none of your clothes fit. What?! You want to buy different clothes? More clothes?! But you have a wardrobe of clothes you’re too fat to fit into. A wardrobe of clothes you would have to replace. Think of the cost! Think of the environmental impact! As though eating food you don’t need – what a waste! – wasn’t bad enough, you’re now going to buy new clothes just because you’re too lazy to exercise into your old ones? Are you trying to single-handedly destroy the entire world?!?

And so it goes on. Guilt for putting work before family; and its equal and opposite guilt for not making the time during my holiday to mark the work my students need feedback from before their exams. Guilt for spending so much time prepping lessons, and not giving my colleagues enough time to adapt my lessons for their own use; guilt for not making every lesson more individual to each one of the unique individuals my students are. Guilt for choosing to spend time just with my husband and not always spending down time as a family; guilt for not supporting him more when his physical health needs it a lot more than it used to. Guilt for never putting my own needs first and then exploding when the weight of martyrdom gets too much; guilt for sitting here and writing this while my kids watch screens, the floor remains un-hoovered, dentist appointments wait yet another day to be made.

The title of this post, for any of you unfamiliar with it, comes from Dumb Ways To Die, an ad campaign that became a TikTok sensation that The Cowgirl and The Vicar both introduced me to (yep, there it goes again: guilt she knows TikTok trends already; guilt I’m not one of the cool mums who knows the trends without being told). Of all the dumb ways to die, surely suffocating under the immense weight of the guilt of everyday living has to be one of the dumbest. So many of us have one of those red buttons, buried somewhere about our persons, hidden under our shrugs and smiles and stimming fingers and falsely loud laughter. Some people reading this might even scour these words for signs that they should increase pressure on their own big red button, adding in the weight of what I may have written about them (spoiler alert: it’s not about you). So why do we still trap each other and ourselves into these needless holes we all so hate? And how can we stop being so silent about it?

https://unsplash.com/photos/selective-color-photography-of-person-holding-orange-gas-smoke-standing-on-snow-LOHVrTsdvzY

*It is a truly odd thing that a community who are, on the whole, generally quite nice people, can ask so much, of so many, for so few. I’m not sure why this is. I think it may have been this way for quite some time. I really hope it doesn’t stay this way for very much longer.

The countdown to a simpler Christmas. Week 3 (and a bit): More beauty, less of a beast

Simply Messy2 Comments

My Fabulous Mother was fond of recounting, when I was growing up, her Greatest Success as a counsellor (though, now I think more about both counselling and confidentiality, I suspect this might actually have been her Greatest Success that was Also Appropriate to Share with her Children). This success occurred as follows. At around this time of year, or maybe a little earlier, one very overworked and underappreciated client spent some of her session ranting about sprouts. “I don’t know why I bother! They’re so much hassle, and nobody even likes them!” Mother, looking her directly in the eye with her head tilted just a little to one side (yes, I’ve been the recipient of a few of Those Looks myself) suggested calmly “Well, don’t do them then.” And with those five words, Christmas tradition and a source of major angst were both knocked down like the flimsy Ikea-bought gingerbread house they were.*

A gingerbread box with smarties covering it.
It is a good thing Ikea’s furniture is significantly better than their gingerbread houses. This deserted shack was all that could be salvaged from this year’s purchase. Still tasted good, though…

The Internet has been teeming with similar stories recently, as household after household have their bubbles popped and now face Christmas alone. Suddenly it is OK to look at what you would like to eat, rather than what you’ve always eaten in the past, or what you feel is expected. Pigs in blankets? Eat the whole pack! Nothing but eggnog? Well, at least it’s full of protein! All the trimmings but none of the turkey? Can’t say anyone would blame you! But these traditions, and stresses, and plans are all there for the sake of the people we love most in the world – or at least, are most closely related to. And the people we will be spending it with this year, if we’re not spending it alone, are one fraction of that same group – the people we love most in the world. So if we’re not doing all the franticness and faffiness for ourselves or the people we love most, who are we doing it for?

One clichéd beast is that it is all for the children. We must do everything, be everywhere, take part in every activity and contribute to every appeal because if we don’t, their Christmas will be less than it could have been. For those of you without primary school aged children, let me give a flavour of what I mean here. Even in these Covid-riddled times, with no End of Term disco or Christmas play/activity afternoon/assembly to squeeze in, we still had: a Zoomed introduction to Year 2 SATS; Viking Day (Muuum, I was the only one with a homemade costume! It was the Worst Day Ever!); Wedding Day (to celebrate Christian traditions. Because no other Christian traditions spring to mind at this time of year…); Christmas Party Day; Christmas Jumper & Santa Run Day (don’t forget the donation, just a quick dash into a supermarket as we have no doodle-free colouring books or un-nibbled mince pies in the house, naturally…); Christmas lunch (which had to be reordered separately to all their other school dinners, which was probably handy as it was about the only school dinner I actually managed to order in advance); breakfast with Santa (via Zoom, and only for The Cowgirl. The Paleontologist was furious when she found out, not because she missed a Zoom call with Santa, but because she missed waffles for breakfast); and finally, to top it all off, the flu inoculations, with a likely side effect of fever. Good thing a temperature isn’t something to be worried about, really. Oh, wait…

Christmas for The Children goes beyond school nightmares activities, of course. It seeps into everything, becoming indistinguishable from actions to appease my own Ghost of Christmas Past. These things that made Christmas magical for me, I try to recreate so that my children can also feel that magic. The beauty, the candlelight and singing and tranquility my parents somehow pulled off? Those are the things I would love my kids to look back on and smile at in years to come, as they still have that effect on me. But fighting to recreate a half-remembered and thoroughly idealised holiday that fits neither the temperaments not the needs of this household, in this time, in this place, destroys the beauty of my memories by trying to cram them into a stress-shaped handmade golden star gently spinning in the frantic storm of my passing.

One way to make Christmas a thing of beauty is to make it all for God. The carol services and soaring soprano descants and the infant Jesus being borne to the crib at Midnight Mass are things of beauty, of mystery, of joy and worship and wonder. There is peace on the face of every one of those faithful worshippers, who have struggled more than ever this year, and now laugh in relief as they wish everyone love and joy and go home to sleep for a week. There is beauty in the people who come to church every year, in those who come every week, in those who come every day. There is beauty in the reaffirmation of faith and the deepening of commitments, making church-going just a little bit more normal, just for one day. There is soaring beauty and joy there. And there is such a beast to: the beast of expectations, of seeing the finished result of a service and imagining it was as easy to put together as it was to participate in; of settling in to the familiar and forgetting that even the familiar must be practiced and reworked and takes more effort than dragging a wheelie bin through a hedge backwards, just as those secular reworkings of cooking the dinner and decorating the house and searching, again, for the list of addresses you swore last year you would put back in a safe place takes time, and energy, and emotion. And through it all you have cancelled dreams and last minute positive Covid tests and phone calls from people expecting decisions it is not yet possible to make. For me, some of the greatest beauty in the season is held in the familiar worship, recreated anew every year; and some of the greatest beastliness can be found in what it takes to make that worship possible.

Maybe Christmas is for Good? Anyone with as bad a taste in cheesy heartwarming films as I have will have seen many, many different incarnations of the story (probably) initiated by A Christmas Carol, where someone who thinks only about money discovers the error of his (and it does seem to usually be his) ways, discovers the Magic of Christmas, and opens his heart to joy. In Nativity that joy means accepting the past and embracing self-belief. In A Muppet Christmas Carol it means supporting local businesses and realising that money can be used for good as well as ill. In Love Actually it means acknowledging and embracing those around us who get us through, even though this hurts sometimes. In A Christmas Story it means doing your best to fulfil your children’s dreams, even if they break their hearts (or their glasses) in the process. In Christmas Vacation it means destroying everything around you in order to discover that the things that really matter are not the lights, or the eggnog, or even the Christmas Bonus, but are rather the people you share those horrific, hilarious moments with. And the list could, of course, go on, and on, and on. People with their priorities misplaced get them corrected by the magic in the air and the movements of Father Christmas, and renew all our faith in ourselves, humanity, and the world. These are tales that place goodness at the heart of Christmas, and yet in themselves create impossible expectations and unliveable ideals that contribute, in part, to the reason that this season causes more divorces than any other in the year.

Christmas is about individual traditions and collective memories. It means working to help those who are lost or abandoned by others or the system; it means finding beauty and hope in lights in your neighborhood or the local parks; it means worshipping and glorying in individual acts or communal praise; it means finding the perfect gift that will be used and treasured and remembered for years to come; but it doesn’t mean all of these things, all together, all of the time, for every person. It is not about outdoing others, or overdoing excess, or doing every single thing that makes your memories sing every single year. I hope that this year, for all the darkness many will face in the days ahead; for all the food that will be thrown away in one house while next door starve with no access to fresh supplies; for all the people who tore their families apart working out their original Christmas bubbles and cannot see anyone at all now to fix the deep-running pain; I hope for all the hurt we have faced this year, it may just give us the chance to re-find the beauty and magic of Christmas in a way we haven’t had for decades before this. And, in the very, very long run, I hope that will be one of the real blessings of 2020.

A garland on a staircase which has actually been hoovered! Wrapped around the banisters are Christmas lights; in the corner is a washing basket and a bookcase.
A handmade garland; reusable advent calendar, Christmas lights on the stairs. This is what my home looks like all year round in my dreams.

*I also very happily followed this advice in my own cooking until my Mother-in-law, who is equally marvellous but has a couple of significant blind spots in the area of Green Vegetables, introduced The Paleontologist to sprouts a few years ago. In doing so she accidentally discovered the one, lightly-steamed-with-no-added-flavour or-they-don’t-count, green vegetable she is not only willing, but eager, to eat…

Simple creativity: Making something is one way to say I Love You

Simply Messy

You know that feeling of standing in the kitchen after a long day of achieving not very much, trying to avoid looking at the washing up piled forlornly by the sink, vaguely ignoring the nextdoor grunting of sofa gymnastics to the soundtrack of a slightly familiar theme tune, when suddenly, out of nowhere, you hear the line from a made-for-Netflix programme that puts a whole new slant on your thinking? For me, tonight, the programme was Daniel Tiger’s Neighbourhood. I had been mulling over creativity, why I love it, and why I give it so little time, when suddenly and repetitively came an inanely animated voice singing “making something is one way to say I Love You.”

Of course it is! My father was a past master at this one. Once he put together a whole new wall for my bedroom to avoid saying he missed me when I was away for a week. He passed the skill on to me: most noticeably around birthdays, because if you don’t make someone the perfect birthday cake (thank you Pinterest), how will they know you love them? My crafting projects around the house suddenly blur into focus as acts of love towards the family I want to enjoy them; so much easier than thinking about needing to keep up appearances or avoid judgement from passersby. Though let’s face it, saying I love you isn’t the only reason to be creative…

What could possibly say I Love You more than a cake topped with dinosaur bones and biscuity mud?

Then there’s making things for Christmas – food, beds, decorations, to do lists, an unholy mess, and everything else needed for good old-fashioned relaxing fun. Let me make one thing clear: this is absolutely not me saying it’s time to think about Christmas. Not until Advent; don’t even get me started. Why would the council put up Christmas decorations on Remembrance Day? How can people be sorted except for “a few last minute things” by the end of October? And the people who manage to have jobs, small children, and send out Christmas cards all at the same time… No, this is about me thinking about why it is so important to me to make things myself when my eyelids are trying to close themselves over burning balls of fire at four o’clock in the afternoon, and why I keep cards, and ribbons, and paper from one year to the next, to the next, to the next, in the hope that maybe this year will be the year they get transformed into gift tags, origami stars, or anything from my recently borrowed copy of Paper Christmas. (Borrowed from the Library at the same time as Stuff That Sucks. Is my subconscious overdoing it, do we think?)

Why do I put us all through this every year? Because how else can I say I love you to my man, who works into the night so often through December (Midnight Mass is an early finish in comparison), holding and supporting and grounding everyone else’s festive spirits and crashing out on the sofa by 6pm on Christmas Day (and if we ate lunch at lunchtime that day he’d never make it that late). How else could I say it to my children, who struggle through a season of snuffles and broken routine and hype and impossible dreams, and all they have between them and devastation is whatever we manage to spin from our imagination and overnight Amazon deliveries? How could I say it to my extended family, who have fussed and fretted their way through Advent, watching the weather forecast and praying it won’t snow yet, that the roads will be clear, that there will be room in the car and the house and their brains for everything that needs to be remembered?

It turns out I quite like carving pumpkins. It also turns out I’m not very good at letting the children take a turn, in case they Get It Wrong…

Saying I love you is important. It is important to children who need security; to spouses who need appreciation; to friends who never get as much time as they deserve; to people we have known forever and people we’ve only just met. It’s also important to ourselves. Writing; baking; crafting; planting flowers: they are all ways for me to say to myself that I am worth the time I am spending on me, OK being proud of the results of my labours, that enjoyment for its own sake is allowed to be an act of love. Creativity in a world of numbers and statistics and targets has been weighed, and measured, and found wanting. It will not solve the climate catastrophe. It will not save humanity from itself. Being silly and spontaneous and simple does not often make it onto the news, or even our highly edited Newsfeeds. But for me, at least, it brings peace. Balance. Acceptance. And making things is one way to say I Love Me.

When grief and guilt collide

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This is a bit of a secret, but here goes: I can never hear “Let It Go” without smiling. There are reasons, I promise. (Admittedly, I like a lot of other songs without the reasons, but some things are meant to stay secret…)

When Frozen was the new big thing, The Paleontologist was still at nursery, and only knew the names of about 3 dinosaurs. Picking her up each lunchtime, we often found ourselves walking home with another little girl and, as often happens, the two became fast friends. It would take us twice as long to walk home, of course, but it was worth it for the company, for the grown ups as much as the small people. As we walked, we discussed everything from religion to the trials and tribulations of having little girls with ridiculously curly hair. It was mundane, often slightly stormy, and utterly lovely. A few journeys home stand out particularly clearly in my mind. One was the walk where we spoke of my friend’s family for the first time. She was from Yemen, and these were the days before the war there was particularly spoken about. It was from her that I heard about the conflict, and her who told me the story of a nephew of hers, lost in the fighting. She never said what side he fought on, and I saw no reason to ask. She did tell me his last action was to call his mother, pray for her, and tell her he couldn’t get out. She stayed on the phone until the line went dead.

Image by Sarah MacIntyre, published on Twitter in response to the attack on the Charlie Hebdo building in January 2015. A beautiful picture of two young girls, one in a hijab, one with uncovered hair, weeping as they draw a heart between them.

My other memory is made more beautiful by the tragedy that walked with us at times. The Friend could barely speak English, growing up as she had in a bilingual household that spoke Arabic at home. The Paleontologist had never seen Frozen, or listened to any of the songs. But there they were, skipping down a backstreet, dodging dog poo and abandoned tyres, and belting this song out at the top of their voices, The Friend singing, The Paleontologist echoing. It remained their song until they left nursery to go their separate ways, to different schools and, soon enough, to different cities. In my mind, it will always be their song.

At this point in the academic year, Let It Go becomes a bit of an anthem. That and The Final Countdown. There are a lot of reasons for this, to say the least. Mistakes are always made, by teachers, by students, by other departments who frankly should know better. The time to sort them out has passed and we are left with no choice but to accept whatever outcome we are left with. Students who have failed who deserve to pass; students who have passed who did no work at all; students who have faced circumstances that mean they have dropped out, at the last minute quite often, because of exam terror, or sudden eviction, or losing their Home Office appeal and facing deportation. And we, their teachers, are left saying goodbye, looking at a year of slogging our guts out, summarised in a row of 50 or so little words: Pass. Fail. Pass. Pass. Fail. For me, at least, those words are filled with emotion. Grief for the things I planned to do, but didn’t quite manage in the heat of yet another Ofsted year. Guilt for the times I wasn’t focused enough, didn’t get that marking back with enough feedback; would that have made the difference? Grief because, for all it is an overwhelming relief when the end of the year finally comes around, it is also a goodbye, to the groups you have really enjoyed as much as the ones you have struggled with, and I have never been any good at goodbyes.

Loss. Goodbyes. They always seem to be bad things, to be avoided at all costs with Hollywood-style endings and Olaf having “his own personal flurry”. None of the heartbreak of The Snowman for younger generations, please. And don’t get me wrong, I’m all in favour of happy endings. There is a reason I’ve never made it to the end of Watership Down. But we know that growth, beauty, fulfilment can only happen if some things are lost. The more you prune roses, the more will grow in future. (I think, anyway; though if I’m wrong that explains why my roses keep dying…) Students must finish with us to leave and move on in their lives and achieve whatever they are able to. Children must grow up, grow independent, make choices and mess things up for themselves. Loss surrounds us, from monumental landslides that make life after them unimaginable, through to little disappointments, more hurt pride than moments to mourn. Beautiful moments you don’t want to let go of. Moments that went wrong, and leaving you grieving for what you hoped they would be. Every breath draws in new life and releases what is no longer helpful. Accepting those losses is the only way to release the weight of carrying the world on your shoulders, eternally. But isn’t that so much easier said than done?

How can you accept your children no longer seeing you as the most magical person to ever exist? How can you accept students who once saw you as their salvation seeing you now as the teacher who let them down? How can you accept the passage of time robbing you of health, energy, self identity? How can you accept a political situation that fills you with fear of what may be lost, and anger at the price that will have to be paid by those who have nothing to pay it with? How can you accept the loss of your parents, your partner, your siblings, your children? Grief never disappears. It sneaks into your gut when your shields are down, when you sleep and dream they are still alive, still around, that you are still able to change and correct the situation. And resting underneath the grief, gurgling maliciously, is guilt. Have you let them down? Could you have done more? Do they know you could, should, tried to do more to change things? And then that guilt surges to the surface, forming a suffocating barrier between yourself and acceptance.

Making a choice means closing down opportunities and saying no. If you commit to one course of action you are saying no to all the others. Sometimes it is just a delay, a maybe next time, or an I’ll try that when this other thing changes. But sometimes the choice is absolute. The choice to move countries; the choice to have children; the choice to get married, or to get divorced. Some decisions will forever change the direction your life will take, and you will never be the same person as you were before you made them.

But when we make these big life choices, we rarely pause to grieve for the things we are leaving behind, even as we celebrate the things we are moving towards. Nor do we acknowledge the guilt that can be associated with those choices. Getting married will always be a point where everything changes, and I added to that by moving halfway up the country at the same time. Oops… And then my father died, 3 months after my wedding. Publicly celebrating our intention to support, aggravate, annoy and enhance each other for the rest of our lives was utterly beautiful, and I will never again have a party that is so much fun. But it meant I was giving up my father’s name, changing documents so that he was no longer an explicit part of my identity, as he lay dying (even though we didn’t know that was what was happening). But I had just got married! How could I feel guilt, feel grief, for that? But seriously, looking back, how could I not feel All The Emotions at such a time?

You can have anything. You can’t have everything. And admitting that, whilst being one of the hardest things ever to do, is almost certainly key to surviving everything else, acknowledging the grief, the guilt, and moving beyond both into genuine acceptance.

Poppies at sunset. Image by danigeza, via Pixabay.

Beaches, guilt, and yodelling: what really counts as wasted time?

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A few days ago, sitting in the sun in the local playground, I put down my phone, lifted my face to the sun, and started to feel guilty about doing nothing.

It’s a beautiful February afternoon, warm enough to not need coats. The Cowgirl is swinging down the slide belly first, yodelling “Nants ingonyama” like she’s opening the Lion King in the West End. The atmosphere has that heavy stillness pulsing through it, as though the air itself is holding its breath, waiting for the coming of summer. Of course, the fact that it’s February and feeling like midsummer is a worry, but winter is still a recent enough memory that it is one I’m willing to ignore right now.

In my mind, I rewind a few days, to a wind-battered beach in North Wales. Perfect kite-flying weather sees me chasing tails and laughing until my blood tingles. We even get the kite off the ground every once in a while. The Paleontologist digs as deep as she can, delighted when she reaches water, finding treasure and convinced it’s a real dinosaur tooth. She stands triumphantly in the newly created moat, in snow boots and a bobble hat, waving the tooth above her head. And in the moments I’m not running after precious comfort blankets or untangling kite strings, my mind is actively seeking how I can use this time more constructively, what I should get ticked off The List while everyone else is happily engaged in activity.

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A windswept beach in February. Where could possibly be a better place to build a sandcastle?

That gnawing question ignites in my belly every time I stop to play, or think, or pray. I can manage board games for about 20 minutes before cracking and putting on a load of washing. Lunch anywhere but my desk, over marking or incomplete registers, prompts mild panic and causes me to spend the time I should be enjoying food and conversation crafting unnecessary excuses instead. Playing football in the garden? Maybe, but only after I’ve done this weeding. And hung out the washing. Oh, and just picked up these bits of rubbish… By which time the moment has passed, the TV has responded faster than I have, and another opportunity has been lost.

The compulsion not to waste time snakes under my skin and corkscrews into my bones. Each morning, the ticking clock dominates, driving any form of enjoyment further away with every click, ever conscious of every moment wasted not doing Something Useful. How quickly can the children get up, dressed, and into school? Will it be before the traffic locks down every route into work? Once I’m in college, time distorts like a carnival mirror, making everything both bigger and smaller at the same time, consuming everything that lies before it, not letting me finish anything for good. Then, with a rush, the end of the day comes, and – deep breath – it’s time to do it all again in reverse, like some twisted Bear Hunt. Back through the traffic, swear swear, crawl crawl; back through the school gates, hurry coats, hurry bags; back to the kitchen, eat your food, eat your food; back to the girls’ room, pajamas, teeth, story, bed; then they’re tucked in and I’m cowering under my own covers, muttering “I’m never going on the school run again”. Except, of course, I do, tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

And, throughout all this, pushing me on if I ever catch a glimpse of a pause, is that simmering volcano in my belly. Keep running, don’t stop, keep moving. As though if the merry-go-round slows down the centre of gravity will be lost and we will all go spinning off into the uncertainty and vacuum of space. Busyness keeps the wheels spinning; fun makes them wobble. Cooking for dinner whizzes the wheels along smoothly; baking for fun gets a whole lot of flour in the cogs and clogs them right up. Getting up early to go for a run (well, that may be pushing it, but a wheezing jog, anyway) gives a good push start to that day’s rotation; meandering along the same paths in the balmy afternoon sun pulls back on the axle… will it stop? Making Memories and photographing and Facebooking everything keeps the fun boxed in and safely contained, weighed and measured; the same activities done spontaneously and without record feel as though they never really existed. Facebook, Netflix, blogging – things that keep and hold my attention spin the gears and ease the pressure building up below the volcano. But nothing removes it altogether.

Going back to that beautiful coatless afternoon in the park, I sit, trying to ignore my internal volcano, and think about the blossom on the trees, and the daffodil buds, and the lilies in the field. I have always seen that Biblical analogy as a message not to worry – one which I’ve followed only very infrequently. But this day, I accept that it is also saying that these amazing things are so very temporary. They are beautiful, but only if you give them time to speak to you. Otherwise, you miss their majesty because you are too busy with your head in the washing machine and your mind on what happens next. Like life, and Easter chocolates, and childhood, once it’s gone it does not return. So take the time, stop, and enjoy the sunshine, the yodelling, the chocolate. Let the volcano bubble; just keep checking in to make sure the scary Mount Doom eruption is still a little way off. When that moment comes, by all means, let the craziness out or everything will be destroyed by your own screaming. But until then, life is these still, unscheduled moments, and missing them is missing the point behind all the busyness.