Today I learned something new about cars and the people who drive them.
I just discovered my best friend (let's call her X) now owns an Audi convertible, same car as my other friend (let's call her Y). I always thought of my friend Y as a person who was wildly materialistic and greedy for confirmation of her success. I know my best friend X to be a beautiful soul, whose goal in life is to give and receive love, to live well but with great kindness to others and to share her happiness and success.
I was shocked to learn that both these women now own the same car. What was I missing?
In talking to X about her new car, I understood she had longed for a car like that since she could point at pictures in a book. She told me the car made her feel beautiful, secure and serene. If I were to question Y she would probably tell me the same thing word for word.
Why the huge difference in their personalities then, or more importantly, why my own prejudice against Y?
I think it's this: X is loving, quick to forgive, honest and full of positivity and laughter. She laughs at her own need to drive such a car, she knows it's a dream that she's finally been able to fulfill and gives thanks to God every night for her good fortune at being healthy enough to work and to be able to afford such wonderful luxuries.
Y on the other hand is still unhappy. I know she feels lonely at not being able to share this "obvious" success story with her family (from whom she is estranged - they lack ambition and prefer reading to mingling at cocktail parties). I know when she parks the car in her drive at night she dreads walking up the path to her rambling house where marital uneasiness and discontentment are waiting.
I don't envy her. I'd like to take her home and treat her to a night of Reiki and Reflexology, Angel cards and Tarot readings. I know she'd laugh and clap her hands to feel so close to her centre for once in a very long time.
It would be a pleasure to show Y the joys of living a more positive life of giving and sharing and living in the moment. But sadly young souls like Y often scorn any notion of self-love and enlightenment. Instead of inspiring curiosity and personal interest, such words conjure images of glamorless hippies in baggy thai-dye clothing and hairy legs with crystal Ankhs around their pasty vegetarian necks.
I never talk to Y any more about the lighter side of life. She's simply not interested. As someone a little more enlightened with a little more knowledge, ought it not to be my duty to instruct her in the ways of more elevated aspirations? Yet for all my healings and holistic therapies I realise my distance from Y is little more than my soul's proud and ugly prejudice against her for her spiritual immaturity. Why else would I be so quick to criticise her choice of transport and yet so willing to indulge X in her very same dream?
Monday, 20 July 2009
Thursday, 9 July 2009
Good Negatives
Sometimes it’s nice to be cold.
After a more than a week of insufferable muggy weather, today it’s chilly. I’ve had to put the heating on and I’m even wearing my favourite cardigan. And I’m delighted. I think there’s something very comforting about feeling a little cold, a little vulnerable, afraid that you’ll not quite make it back to perfect cosy balance.
The same applies to negative feelings. Negative feelings are the ones we’re usually more familiar with. We know how to deal with them. They’re like old friends. We tolerate less than perfect relationships. We wear the clothes that hide our bodies away. We feel relief when our bedrooms are messy again (there’s something unnatural about tidy surfaces anyway) and we bicker once more with our partners with secret glee when the making up period has passed (ah, back to normality).
When you’re trying to improve your situation, however, positive feelings of happiness and joy might at first seem “odd” and “unnatural”. But they must be considered small obstacles on the path to betterment. Feeling good about yourself, being honest, open and accepting may also make you feel initially more vulnerable, but isn’t that infinitely more desirable than being trapped in a negative cycle of “I’m sad – I’m used to being sad – so why change”? And besides the awkward newness of the emotions will quickly pass and become part of who you are today, much in the same way that the new haircut which made you so self-conscious at the time becomes a fixture after just one day.
So step outside your comfort zone and dare to try a new way of thinking and acting. Put a new dream into motion. Or do something so simple but so profound: be honest – with yourself. Soon you’ll experience a new feeling. It might be unfamiliar at first. It might not even have a name. But you’ll recognize it by the way others look at you and by the way you’re compelled to check your reflection every five minutes. Happiness may not come naturally. We have to seek it out, believe it and demand it.
Go on – make the choice to be happy today, right now. You’ll never look back!
After a more than a week of insufferable muggy weather, today it’s chilly. I’ve had to put the heating on and I’m even wearing my favourite cardigan. And I’m delighted. I think there’s something very comforting about feeling a little cold, a little vulnerable, afraid that you’ll not quite make it back to perfect cosy balance.
The same applies to negative feelings. Negative feelings are the ones we’re usually more familiar with. We know how to deal with them. They’re like old friends. We tolerate less than perfect relationships. We wear the clothes that hide our bodies away. We feel relief when our bedrooms are messy again (there’s something unnatural about tidy surfaces anyway) and we bicker once more with our partners with secret glee when the making up period has passed (ah, back to normality).
When you’re trying to improve your situation, however, positive feelings of happiness and joy might at first seem “odd” and “unnatural”. But they must be considered small obstacles on the path to betterment. Feeling good about yourself, being honest, open and accepting may also make you feel initially more vulnerable, but isn’t that infinitely more desirable than being trapped in a negative cycle of “I’m sad – I’m used to being sad – so why change”? And besides the awkward newness of the emotions will quickly pass and become part of who you are today, much in the same way that the new haircut which made you so self-conscious at the time becomes a fixture after just one day.
So step outside your comfort zone and dare to try a new way of thinking and acting. Put a new dream into motion. Or do something so simple but so profound: be honest – with yourself. Soon you’ll experience a new feeling. It might be unfamiliar at first. It might not even have a name. But you’ll recognize it by the way others look at you and by the way you’re compelled to check your reflection every five minutes. Happiness may not come naturally. We have to seek it out, believe it and demand it.
Go on – make the choice to be happy today, right now. You’ll never look back!
Monday, 16 February 2009
Hair days
Well in February there was an awful lot of fuss about the hair. Chest pains yes and many hours pinning back my hair and viewing myself from four thousand different angles to see if I’d look better with the back of my neck showing. Every time my arms got tired and the pins fell out (there were at least a dozen) and my hair fell down to my shoulders I’d think, No definitely better long. Only to gather up all the pins and start again. My poor nerves.
All because I happened to make an appointment with a rather expensive hairdresser, famed for his love of short hair. But then those canny business heads always keep you shorn to keep you coming back. There was hardly enough time to buy a glossy before D-day, though somehow I did manage to spend the equivalent of a new haircut on ten or twelve hair magazines in the space of twenty-four hours. (I had been growing my hair for two years after a very serious Neveragain story where a moment’s madness nearly cost me my sanity. Like an animal I seem not to have learned from my mistakes. Though I must be comparing myself rather with a worm who can’t remember why a flock of birds in a freshly ploughed field might be dangerous.)
I was getting it cropped one minute and layering it the next. Tying it back, with a fringe, without a fringe, heavy eye make-up, natural look, groomed, teenage, glamorous, mature, youthful, Saturday night, Monday at the office. With a black marker in my hand I labelled photo after photo of beautiful girls with fancy faces and discussed the pros and cons of their style in such detail, truly unaware of my obsession, until a friend of mine casually said, Your poor hairdresser. I caught on then that maybe I was going a little overboard. Suddenly my scribbles and comments became a ledger of my mental health, like a white crocheted hat or stripy socks and red ankle boots. So many times the ponytail in the jaws of a pair of nail scissors thinking, If I just hack it then there’ll be no choice.
So it was all about the choice. A smart friend (lover) said, You don’t have to get it cut, you know. And with this came the ultimate relief. Better than an iced lolly on a burnt tongue or a wee wee in a layby on the way back from Bangor. I could simply get a trim.
Needless to say I walked out feeling totally cheated out of my money. And I’m back at the mirror with sore arms and the bobby pins.
All because I happened to make an appointment with a rather expensive hairdresser, famed for his love of short hair. But then those canny business heads always keep you shorn to keep you coming back. There was hardly enough time to buy a glossy before D-day, though somehow I did manage to spend the equivalent of a new haircut on ten or twelve hair magazines in the space of twenty-four hours. (I had been growing my hair for two years after a very serious Neveragain story where a moment’s madness nearly cost me my sanity. Like an animal I seem not to have learned from my mistakes. Though I must be comparing myself rather with a worm who can’t remember why a flock of birds in a freshly ploughed field might be dangerous.)
I was getting it cropped one minute and layering it the next. Tying it back, with a fringe, without a fringe, heavy eye make-up, natural look, groomed, teenage, glamorous, mature, youthful, Saturday night, Monday at the office. With a black marker in my hand I labelled photo after photo of beautiful girls with fancy faces and discussed the pros and cons of their style in such detail, truly unaware of my obsession, until a friend of mine casually said, Your poor hairdresser. I caught on then that maybe I was going a little overboard. Suddenly my scribbles and comments became a ledger of my mental health, like a white crocheted hat or stripy socks and red ankle boots. So many times the ponytail in the jaws of a pair of nail scissors thinking, If I just hack it then there’ll be no choice.
So it was all about the choice. A smart friend (lover) said, You don’t have to get it cut, you know. And with this came the ultimate relief. Better than an iced lolly on a burnt tongue or a wee wee in a layby on the way back from Bangor. I could simply get a trim.
Needless to say I walked out feeling totally cheated out of my money. And I’m back at the mirror with sore arms and the bobby pins.
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