Tag: Love yourself

Rocks, ripples, and uncomfortable reflections

Simply MessyLeave a comment

Be yourself, they said. Don’t worry what anyone else thinks of you, they said. Follow your dreams, and be what you want to be, they said.

What a mantra to live by. The only problem is, it rather assumes that the thing you want to be is a good thing. In my case, the thing I want to be is perfect. I want all the people around me to be happy, and healthy, and doing things they love. They can even be rich or materialistic if they really have to be. But I want me to be perfect. Perfect in body size – hardly original; perfect at work – outstanding, I think they call it in the trade; perfect as a mother – (hides behind a computer screen rather than going to a primary school violin concert, so that’s a fail); perfect as a vicar’s wife – the kind who serves gin and always knows how to solve other people’s problems, whilst simultaneously fixing the photocopier and booking a donkey for Palm Sunday. All round perfect. So when someone says to me “Be what you want to be,” I hear “You must be perfect. And if you’re not perfect, really, pack up and go home.”

And, quite often, that is exactly what I do. Looking at all the options, I know that I can’t do everything, and the fear of not being perfect stops me from doing anything at all. How is it possible to do the right thing in a world full of endless choices and conflicting needs? I want my children to grow up in a world that is not hurtling towards self-destruction with only an air bag as an emergency break, so I know I should drive my own car less. But I also want my kids to be able to do normal things, like going to the cinema or trampolining with friends. And I know that I don’t have the energy to get them there on the bus – and, more importantly, get them back again on the bus, rather than throwing them under it when they’re exhausted and I’ve run out of food to bribe them with. So I start tearing myself up about what is the right thing to do, and is it selfish to put my children’s needs first, and am I using them as an excuse to put my own needs first, and is that selfish, and before I know it, I’ve turned into Chidi from The Good Place, and I’m about to be crushed by an air conditioning unit filled with my own indecision and self-doubt.*

Or what about what clothes to wear. It’s amazing how many implications just that simple decision can have. I want to wear clothes that make me feel good about myself – luxurious and in control. (Yes, I know that clothes aren’t everything – but I also know the magic of the right pair of shoes.) So, I want to wear clothes that make me feel zingy. But, at the moment, I can’t. All my clothes are just too tight. So now, I have a decision to make. I could go on a diet. There are a few out there that I haven’t tried, and I’m sure they would work if I followed them closely enough. But let’s face it: I know how to eat healthily. I’ve done it plenty of times before, and I’m not doing it now. For today, my priority is keeping going, and sod the amount of chocolate bars it takes me to do it. I don’t want to go on a diet – and that decision makes me feel like a failure, because how can I be perfect if I’m doing something that makes me feel bad and not want to do anything about it? Alternatively, I could buy a whole new wardrobe. I know that would be tempting for a lot of people, but you know what, it’s not for me. It would be utterly unsustainable, as it would have to be fast fashion for me to have any hope of affording enough clothes to wear regularly. Also, I really like a lot of my clothes, and I’m not ready to give up on wearing them again. This would make me feel like a failure, because I’m not perfect at sustainability. Finally, I could keep going with what I have. Which is, of course, the default, and therefore what I’ll probably end up doing. But it’s uncomfortable. And it makes me sad, because these clothes used to make me feel zingy, and they don’t any more. And you know what – that just makes me feel like a failure, without even knowing what I’m not being perfect at.

These concerns are small, and self-contained, and a little bit hyperbolic. They are also fundamental to how we see ourselves and our own struggles. Do we look to the impact on the world, and put it over ourselves? Do we look at how others see us as the most important thing? Do we think about how something will make us feel – will it make me happy? Is being happy the ultimate goal?

Pebbles dropped into ponds cause beautiful ripples that flitter and fade. I don’t want to be a pebble, though. I want to be a rock, that, when dropped into the pond, will never be forgotten – that doesn’t leave ripples, but changes the whole landscape. I want to be noticed. I think we all do. And if I can’t be that rock, well, what’s the point of doing anything at all? But bubbles and ripples bring more joy than rocks. They mean life-giving rain, causing ripples and dimples and flowers to grow. They mean skipping stones and taking time to stop, and breathe, and enjoy. If you’re very lucky, they even mean otters, streaming up and down, hidden, half-seen, heard in the rustling of the reeds before they race away, leaving you wondering if you saw anything at all.

We don’t all have the energy to find exciting new sustainable ways of doing things. We don’t all have the strength to keep going through the fear of failure. We don’t all have the privilege of the financial security to lead slow lives, or the family support to do that. What can we do? If we just do what’s easy, we’re ducking out of one of the biggest decisions of our lives. But it’s a decision that we must all make for ourselves. 

Be yourself, I say. Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks of you, I say. Have the courage of your convictions, and lead the life you are called to lead, I say. But for goodness sake, don’t think it’s easy working out what that is. Have the courage to accept that for a while, you’re just going to have to wander in the wilderness, dodging perfect whenever you can. After a while, your hard work will pay off. You’ll find your way, and you’ll become wonderfully good enough.

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Otter swimming, sending ripples out ahead of her. Image by strichpunkt from Pixabay

*If you haven’t seen The Good Place, and you have Netflix, I recommend it. Both very funny and full of all the best and the worst of moral philosophy – what more could you ask for?

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.

An air pie and a walk around

Simply Messy1 Comment

Having said I was going to completely avoid making life harder for myself this year, I decided on the spur of the moment, at the beginning of this month, to comprehensively ignore my own sage advice. As well as continuing to gently declutter (which is already showing pockets of improvement, and not just in the number of coffee cups making their way down to the kitchen each day), I have also taken on #sugarfreeFebruary. As well as helping me to remember how to spell February each time I write out the hashtag – my Entry level students are right, it is much harder than it looks – it also means that I am trying my absolute best to cut out all added sugar for the whole of February. It’s a sponsored activity, raising money for Cancer Research, and if you would like to sponsor me, that would be amazing.

Like too many other people, when someone says cancer, my immediate thought is of my Dad, who died a long time before we were ready to say goodbye to him, from pancreatic cancer – a cancer that still has survivial rates that are far too low. He died before I qualified as a teacher (following in his footsteps, something that would both delight him and make him call me an absolute idiot). Even worse, he died before he could get to meet his grandchildren, and that’s just not fair.

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My Dad and me on my wedding day. He died 3 months later, of pancreatic cancer.

However, much though I would like to see a cure for every form of cancer, giving up sugar is not just about raising money. It’s also an incentive to do something that I’ve been thinking about trying for a while. As I’ve said before on this blog, I have a curvy, lumpy figure; some in good places, some really not. I’d like to lose weight. I’d like to fit in better with society’s expectations of both a healthy figure and an attractive one. I know that shouldn’t matter that much, but sadly, to me, it does. I’ve tried diets and healthy eating plans, though not as many as some. Some have worked for a while, and others haven’t, but right now, I’m heavier than I’ve ever been. In my head, that definitely means desperate times and desperate measures.

So here I am, a week into avoiding added sugar. Here is what I have learned so far:

  1. Sugar really is added to everything. When I started looking more closely at ingredients lists, there were some unpleasant surprises. I guessed that breakfast cereals and mayonnaise would be out, but crackers? Crisps? Gherkins? That just seems mean.
  2. It does reduce food waste. It has made me stick to my food plan. It has made me use up leftover vegetables rather than cheating, going for the easy option and having frozen pizza for tea. It also means I won’t be eating food I really don’t need, because I’m bored or stressed. Eating food you don’t need is just another kind of food waste, and one I am happy to be mostly avoiding.
  3. Don’t believe the hype. Lovely though it would have been to have woken up at some point this week, over the hump and discovering the extra enthusiasm, glowing skin, and perfect sleep promised by many sugar-free websites, this is not how real life works, it seems. I do not suddenly have amazing skin and glowing eyes. I have headaches, and a dry mouth. I am tired all the time, and I have had more exhausting dreams this week than I have for months. Admittedly, though, I may not be able to blame absolutely all of this on no longer eating biscuits…
  4. You do lose weight. But not that much. Or at least, I haven’t lost that much. It turns out that cheese and gin don’t actually have added sugar in them, which means that giving up sugar is easier for me that being pregnant was, but it is not an instant cure for eating too much.
  5. The people around me keep me going when I would blatantly give up on my own. When I start something, I want results straight away. If I don’t get them, I get bored. If I get bored, I give up. (This obviously doesn’t bode well for the rest of February.) If I hadn’t committed to sticking to it for a month, and if I hadn’t already got some sponsorship money because I said I would do it for that long, I would already have given up.
A mug which says "money can't buy you happiness, but it can buy you tea and cake, and that's pretty much the same thing".
A gift from my children. This probably tells you all you need to know about how obvious it is that sugary food makes me happy…

Overall, I’m glad I’m doing it. For the money I have raised (and hopefully will continue to raise), and for what it’s taught me about my own willpower. It’s also shown me that I am never going to enjoy an air pie and a walk around while everyone around me is tucking into cake. Should I eat less sugar? Yes, probably. Do I know a lot more about what has sugar in it? Yes, definitely. Am I going to keep this going after the end of February? No. Absolutely not. As Jed Bartlett once said, “Does it make you live longer, or does it just seem longer?” Life is for living, and enjoying, and laughing through. This week has shown me that it is worth seizing the day and enjoying the cake. And if that means my lumps, curves and traditional build stay right where they are, then you know what, I need to learn to be ok with that.

Not perfect; brilliant.

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Winter sun shining through ice. Photo credit: Uki_71, Pixabay

I love the word brilliant. It sums up so many things: brilliant white teeth in a commercial smile; stars, diamonds, and all things precious; and I can’t hear it without being transported to long car journeys through France, with The Cowgirl shouting “Have a banana,” and The Paleontologist responding “What the Hell is going on?!”*

This morning, brilliant meant driving to work, straight into the most glorious, icy cold winter morning sky. I was going to stop and take a picture, but I was running late (of course), and my co-ordination is pretty bad at the best of times, so I decided not to take a picture through the windscreen after all.

This evening, brilliant meant driving home from work into an equally glorious, deep and mysterious winter night. It evolved from deep, deep blue, though a variety of colours too close to name, to pure black. I even arrived home early enough to be there before the children, and have two whole minutes to wolf down a Club and take one shoe off before they started ringing on the door bell like an axe murderer was after them, shrieking with joy because, for once, Mummy was home first…

This afternoon, brilliant meant sitting in a classroom with three Level 1 English students, taking a Speaking and Listening exam. They were all adults. None of them were born in this country. All of them have stories to tell – which they never tell, but keep bottled up inside – that would make me weep if I knew all the details. Yet there they were, talking about the lessons that can be learned from the Holocaust. They had been set the task of discussing whether it could happen again, and what did they say? “We can’t change others’ minds, but we can change our minds. Be happy with what we have.” “It all comes down to talking more in society. If we think they are wrong, we need to say so. We have a right to choose our government.” “We need to understand humanity.”

Today, brilliant meant looking at myself in the mirror, and realising that all these experiences, these moments of beauty and pride and absolute chaos, these moments are what life is made of. These are the good bits of life, the bits that should be enjoyed; but I for one race through them instead, looking always on to the next thing, the next job, the next item on the to do list. I looked at my children, The Paleontologist in particular, and realised that I am passing the same habits on to her. I looked at us all, and acknowledged that we are not perfect. For me, that is a pretty huge thing to be OK with. I’d never want other people to strive to be perfect – that would be crazy, and very very dull – but me, I should be perfect. Obviously. But today, I knew that we were not perfect, and we would never be perfect.

None of us are perfect. And we are brilliant.

*For those of you who have absolutely no idea what I am talking about (which, I’m aware, will probably be everyone) there is a radio series called Cabin Pressure, which is both hilarious and, somehow, just about appropriate for family car journeys. One character, Arthur, is spectacularly incompetant, but has a heart of pure generosity. He responds to everything, particularly the things he does not understand (and there are many things that fall into that category), with “Brilliant!” If you are also trying to do the environmentally friendly thing of not flying, and then messing it up slightly by driving a diesel car half way across a pretty large country, I highly recommend this as something to keep you all entertained.