Category: self awareness

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Any Normal Monday

I didn’t see the sun rise from the beach this morning – too late, I didn’t wake up till 7. Maybe another day.

I did do my half hour of combined yoga, tai chi and meditation before breakfast. It worked well. The mornings are filling up.

On any normal Monday, I would aim to leave home by 8 and walk to the leisure centre on the seafront. The pool closes at 9 for the parent and toddlers session, so I try to get there before about 8.30 or it’s not worth it. I could drive, but I’d have to faff around getting parking places at the pool, in the town centre, and back at home, and, honestly, I’d rather walk.

Which reminds me, my steps per day must have gone down massively.

I swim for about 20 minutes, then sit in the steam room for about another ten. Then shower, wash hair, dress, dry hair, go out and lean on the sea wall for a while. Some weeks over the winter, it’s been the only time I’ve been near the sea, these Monday mornings. Then I walk to the town centre, to a particular café where I have a bacon sandwich on granary bread, with brown sauce, and a pot of tea for one. I do killer su doku while I wait for my sandwich, drink tea and watch the world go by through the window. Then to the library for 11, where I buy a coffee and meet up with my writing buddies. Sometimes I even write, or more recently, edit (not my work though, a book I’ve been working on for a client – the one that I’m currently designing the cover for). Before Christmas (in the ‘black Friday’ sale, though I hate to admit it) I bought myself a notebook computer, so that (in theory) I can be more productive during these sessions.

About 1 o’clock, we start to disperse (the last two weeks I went I was the only one who turned up anyway), and I either walk home, or catch the bus. The bus also takes me back past the seafront, though only a small part of the way. I might pop into the co-op or the health food shop on my way home from the bus stop, if I need anything. At home I potter around till 3, when it’s time for the daily drama on Radio 4 extra, and crochet – usually yesterday’s square for my weather blanket. At 4 I’ll get an early dinner, veggie or at most pescatarian, because I have yoga in the evening. At 6 it’s 4 Extra again, and I get ready for yoga so I can listen to A Good Read at 6.30 so that I’m (in theory) ready to leave at 7, though always lose something, – cushions, water bottle, keys, money, coat – it starts officially at 7.15, but when I’ve got everything together it takes me two minutes to walk round the corner.

That is, any normal Monday.

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Knife Edge

This morning I added ten minutes of tai chi to my ten minutes of yoga and ten minutes of meditation. Now that the beds have been dismantled (not anticipating any visitors any time soon), there’s room in the spare bedroom/meditation room to do the first four moves to the four directions, and mostly for the rest of the moves I know so far, with a bit of adjustment. So the routine from tomorrow (because I did all the tai chi today at the end as an afterthought) will be: 5 minutes stretching/standing postures; 5 minutes tai chi to the four directions; 5 minutes for the rest of the form; 5 minutes floor stretches; 10 minutes meditation. It sounds like quite a lot but it’s not so much really. I started the yoga routine when I was in Prague and had a big room but hardly any furniture – or maybe before then, when I had the flat in Ramsey – anyway, I’ve never been consistent. When I was having chemo in 2017 I started again with a scaled down version that was mostly stretches and lying on the floor.

Now the clocks have changed, and sunrise is an hour later (by clock time), it occurs to me that the next few weeks are the best time for sunrise walks on the beach – added advantage being that there’s less likelihood of contact with other people. When I first moved here and was living in the flat on Beach Road, it was so close – 2 minutes up the road and then through the Rock Gardens – that I went all the time. Now there’s a 10 minute walk past boring houses before I get to the park, it’s not so appealing. That first summer was quite idyllic now I look back on it – that wonderful sense of getting away from the past and starting again (again!) but this time with the sense of finally finding the place where I needed to be, a place which was exciting and new, but where I could see myself staying for the long term, without a future where I would have to go back, or move on to somewhere else. A place where I could make a home – and have – more comfortably and easily than I would once have thought possible.

It’s been nearly five years, at the end of next month. I was asked a few months ago to choose: past, present or future? I replied: future, because if you expect the future to be worse than what went before, why bother carrying on? Now the future is confused and uncertain, hard to see, but that’s always the case, for each of us individually but also collectively. Throughout our lives we walk on a knife edge between what has happened and what might happen next. Though we may feel secure and comfortable in our certainties, none of us knows for sure whether we will see the sun rise tomorrow.

So tomorrow I will go and find it. Maybe.

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Paradoxes

If nobody reads what I write, have I been wasting my time?

Question which arose from a comment I received yesterday, pointing out that I keep repeating myself, suggesting that maybe I should try writing things that other people might find interesting, and offering an idea of how to do that. I replied that it was an excellent idea and he should try it, but I might just decide not share my writing any more.

I also realised that someone who was commenting earlier in the week telling me how wonderful I am might just have been taking the piss, and I got quite angry, not so much at him but at myself for not noticing at the time and responding in a suitably cutting fashion. Gremlins again – Gremlin 2 getting angry because Gremlin 1 didn’t step in and sort him out. Or maybe it did, and that’s why I didn’t hear a peep out of him yesterday.

Oh, the paradoxes of wanting people to take notice and then getting annoyed when they do. Or, probably more accurately, wanting to be anonymous and invisible and then being disappointed when they don’t notice.

Well, here I am again, shouting into the void. It is paradoxical though, I admit that. Why write about my deepest thoughts and feelings and then share it where it can potentially be read by anyone in the world (or anyone with internet access)? My usual answer is that I never expect anyone to read it, so it doesn’t matter, but then why bother at all, why not leave it where no one can read it but me? There’s a long and respectable history for that kind of writing.

I guess I keep coming back to this because there was a time when the people I met and the things that I shared in a blogging space had consequences in the real world which genuinely did change my life in fundamental ways. Of course, I have no way of knowing how my life would have been if I hadn’t met those people and done those things, but I can be sure, for example, that I wouldn’t be living where I live now – and that has made all the difference to the future I was anticipating, say, fifteen years ago – though there might have been other alternatives that would have turned out ‘better’, who knows?

So I am here, and I’m writing still/again, and maybe it’s because somewhere inside me I’m still looking for that flash, that transformation into another self, the portal into another world, the rabbit hole or wardrobe that will flip the dimensions, the two roads diverging in a yellow wood, the Crystal Space where all is potential and decisions must be made blindly, the ‘fast running rivers of choice and chance’ (David Crosby, ‘Delta’). The micro-choices that we make every day that can affect our lives and those of others – as the current situation reminds us only too well. Life is fragile. Writing is important.

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Cycle of Emotions

Are human emotions just illusions that conceal the deep heart of everything? Or are they the deep heart of ourselves?

I think: if I didn’t fight it every moment of every day, I would cry every moment of every day.

This morning I did something I’ve been thinking about for a while, restarting my morning routine of 10 minutes yoga followed by 10 minutes meditation. And the above two paragraphs are the thoughts that came into my head at the end of that time. Which some might say is an indication that yoga and meditation in the morning are not a good idea for me.

Yoga, meditation and writing 500 words first thing in the morning are very old habits, tried many times, discarded many times. In the quiet street outside my window I spot the occasional vehicle, the occasional jogger. Sunlight illuminates the top storeys of the red brick houses opposite; the bottom storeys shadowed by the terrace that includes the house where I sit at my computer.

The bucket has brought up some odd thoughts from the ‘writing well’ this morning, not at all what I was expecting to write about when I sat down, or planned yesterday evening when I thought about writing this morning. Maybe I’m getting back into the swing of this.

I don’t want this blog to turn into a whine-fest. That’s what I was thinking yesterday, when I walked by the sea. I can’t let it degenerate into a mire of self-pity, it’s too public for that. And I freely acknowledge that on most scales that mean anything in this everyday world, I have far less cause for self-pity than many people – most, even. Maybe I could even offer it out as something that might help others, a way of showing them: this isolation isn’t so bad, this lack of structure and excess of choice over how to fill the time, can be survived, can be dealt with and got through – look at me, welcome to my life. All those good, strong, positive people out there who are putting their efforts into making this situation better for others – that may sound sarcastic, but it’s not intended as such, I admire people like that, I really do, but I’m not brave enough to count myself among them. And if I tried, I’d only f*ck up whatever I tried to do – that’s my lame, selfish, mealy-mouthed excuse.

Self pity or self compassion? How do you tell the difference between the two? The former evolves rapidly into its close correlatives, self-disgust and shame. Ah yes, shame, the driving force of my vicious emotional circle – I am ashamed of myself for not being a better person, and that makes me angry and frustrated with myself, and that makes me unhappy which makes me sorry for myself which makes me more ashamed which makes…

Is this cycle of emotions an illusion that distances me from the deep heart of everything? Or is it the deep heart of myself?

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The Crystal Space

I went to my first kundalini yoga class last night. When I walked in, the teacher said:

‘You must be Lynn!’

‘LinDA’ I corrected her. ‘My name’s Linda.’ I’ve always disliked beng called ‘Lynn’. When I was a kid, I hated it, because I knew lots of Lindas and lots of Lynns in my school, and, well, if I was called Lynn I wouldn’t expect anyone to call me Linda, would I? These days I’m a bit more tolerant, but I still prefer being called by my actual name.

‘Oh, okay, Linda’ she said, with emphasis on the second syllable, but a smile on her face. Then the next time she addressed me she called me ‘Lynn’, and continued to do so right through the class. I didn’t bother arguing, but at the end, one of the other ladies said: ‘Are you Lynn or Linda?’ and I said, ‘actually, it’s Linda’ and the teacher said: ‘I’m so sorry, I’ve been getting it wrong all the way through haven’t I? My memory’s terrible’ and I smiled and said: ‘that’s ok’ because what’s the point of getting arsey about it?  But I was glad the other lady had brought it up.

The class itself was a mixture of the familiar and unfamiliar but definitely worth doing. There was quite a bit of chanting – which I don’t mind – and breaks between postures, but the poses themselves were pretty tough and held for quite a long time (I always went for the easy versions). Also some of the breathing was different from what I’m used to and quite hard to get right. The meditation wasn’t as guided as I’d been expecting – I may have to find another group for that – but it was all nicely balanced and the 90 minutes went surprisingly quickly.

And I did my half hour this morning, as well as going to tai chi later (actually I need to go in a few minutes so probably won’t finish writing and posting this before I go.)

I think the kundalini is going to be good for me. The thing it reminds me of most of all is the original yoga classes I went to from 1990 onwards, back in Turvey when Laura was a baby. That was Iyengar, and we didn’t do any chanting, but there was a lot of emphasis on the breath and also a long relaxation at the end – and it was an hour and a half.

So, now back from tai chi, and supping tea with my friend Ali. Sometimes, you know, I think my life is pretty amazing. Other times, not so much – but why not? What makes the difference?

I was thinking last night about an idea that came out of the meditation group in Bedford, years ago when I was first separated from my husband – I wrote about it in my blog and will have to look it up to be sure, but it came from a mishearing of something said by the teacher. I think it was ‘the crystal space’ – I thought he said it, but when I spoke to him later he didn’t know what I was talking about. It seemed to be a space of possibilities, where everything was open and life could lead in any direction, but the whole thing was about liberation.

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Sitting on a cushion on the floor

New blog day 2 – aha!!! Not sure why I said that but I had to start somewhere.

Got up okay this morning, did my yoga although I got stressed out at the start because I was trying to light incense sticks which kept snapping (or rather, an incense stick which snapped in half, then I tried lighting the halves, then I got another one and lit it and every time I tried putting it in the holder it snapped again so I ended up with about five pieces and I’m running out of matches and the windowsill in the meditation room/spare bedroom is a mess of ash and dead matches and snapped bits of incense stick because I never clean it up, excuse being that I never remember to put a clean bag in the bin…) Well, that’s how my life is, even when I’m specifically trying to bring serenity into it.

In the end I sat for the extra ten minutes at the end of the audio file because my mind was such a mess during the yoga and the sitting, though when it’s like that I’m not sure whether sitting for longer actually adds anything to what happened in the first place. It’s hard for me to distinguish ‘meditation’ from ‘sitting and thinking about crap’, although I’m pretty sure that most of what I do is the latter, and that can happen at any time, not just when I’m sitting in my meditation room on a cushion on the floor. So is it worth persisting even when you feel that way? Most of what I read and know about meditation implies that it is, and that that happens to everybody, but I think: ‘well, they don’t know exactly HOW crap my mind is, and I’m probably much crapper than them, they just don’t realise…’

I think that’s why I give up such a lot. But there again, I give up on everything – and probably for the same reasons.

I think I’ve got to a good place in terms of letting go of the idea that happiness is to be found ‘out there’ – in material things, external circumstances, other people etc etc. I don’t do the: ‘I’ll be happy when/if…’ thing any more, but there again, I don’t think I’ve taken that seriously for years. But… my therapist, B, talks about being kind to myself, doing the things that make me happy – and how is that not looking to external things? Maybe it’s a matter of degree – a world cruise vs popping to the café for a cream tea to improve my mood for an hour or so, something like that. Are café-sitting, cream teas and crochet forms of addiction? The contentment they induce doesn’t always last that long, but at least they’re relatively cheap, non-damaging and easy to reproduce. And I’ve yet to start escalating on to a harder version of any of them (interesting to contemplate what that might be).

Side-tracked again. What was I going to move onto? The idea that happiness is found in getting to know ‘one’s true self’. Ah, that’s a lovely can of worms for another time.