Woke up with odd fragments from a dream in my head this morning. I was standing on steps leading up, and there was water below me. The woman in front pointed out I was still holding my phone so I tried to throw it back to the ground, but it fell in the water. I asked her (it might have been my daughter) if she could dive, and she dived straight into the pool and got it for me. Now, those steps must have been to a diving board or a water slide, so why was I on them when I’m terrified of both those things? Then later I was on similar steps going up a hillside but they ran out and I had to go the rest of the way just on the hill itself.
Returning to my therapy session, the therapist asked what she called ‘the death question’ – if you knew you were facing death what would your reaction be? I wasn’t entirely sure what she meant but I had an answer – two, in fact. When I had cancer in 2017 I decided that the best thing to do was focus on doing the little things that made me happy each day – like: listening to the radio, knitting and crochet, reading etc – more or less the same things I’ve been doing for the last three months.
Then I remembered the feelings I had at the end of 2011, when everything significant in my life seemed to have fallen apart or be falling apart. There was a lot of nonsense around about the Mayan prophecies and the end of the world, and though I didn’t take it seriously, I thought: what would I do if I knew the world was going to end next year? And that gave me the impetus to go travelling.
These two things might seem quite different: focussing on the everyday versus making a huge leap into the unknown – but in the details they were very similar. The happiest memories I have of my travels are of those little everyday moments: sitting in cafes; looking through train windows; finding my way around unfamiliar places; walking through parks; reading my Kindle or writing on my laptop; su doku. Doing and going where I wanted, not having to deal with other people or think about their needs or what I ‘should’ be doing; being free; being myself.
Why does my mind keep being drawn back to those big gaps in my life: career, relationship, financial self-sufficiency, writing? I can’t rectify the first three now, it’s too late, I have tried to accept them and be glad that I can cope so well without them. The last one is the one that still nags at me.
There are two ways of dealing with that gap between aspiration and achievement: lower expectations and/or take steps to get closer to the goal. I am a past master of lowering expectations, but not so good at finding ways of making progress.