Category: pursuit of happiness

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The Hermit (Part 2)

Weekly therapy session on Skype yesterday. The evening before, I was feeling quite down, but by the time lunchtime rolled around I was wondering what we were going to talk about.

She remarked that for the second week running I seemed to be quite happy and content with life. This week I did my shopping in Sainsbury’s, and used the self checkout, so I didn’t even have to interact with the checkout person, as I did last week in the Co-op. Not having to be with people suits me. I think about good friends I’ve known, how much I’ve enjoyed spending time with them, some who’ve helped, bullied or cajoled me onto new paths through my life, and the joy of my children and grandchildren, I’m aware of all those things, but still I think: enough, now it’s enough just to be on my own, doing what I want, when I want, how I want. ‘Snow can hurt your eyes, but only people make you cry.’ I’m even managing to be kinder to myself, less judgemental over the chaos, quietening the critical voices. I think about the times when I was travelling, how I revelled in just being, in anonymity and invisibility, looking out of the window of a train, or sipping coffee on a café terrace, just to be somewhere without feeling I needed to justify myself to anyone. That’s how it is now: sitting in my garden in the sunshine, or in my bay window listening to the radio and crocheting, or at my PC in the mornings pouring out my words from the wellspring of my soul. This is who I am.

I talked to her about my thoughts on the stages of grief, somewhat apprehensive that I’d taken it the wrong way, or that she’d say it was outdated or I was oversimplifying (a little knowledge is a dangerous thing). But she was genuinely interested in what I was saying, she explained some of the background, where the original ideas had come from and, yes, it has been distorted and misused but it still has application, and no, it’s not just ‘pop psych’. She said I’d latched on to the crucial point that it can be hard to distinguish between ‘denial’ and ‘acceptance’, that it can be cyclical and it’s not always a straight progression to a nirvana of acceptance.

I think perhaps this time of being home alone, of not pushing myself out into the world to interact with others, has been exactly what I need. So much of my emotional life has been taken up with that sense of incompleteness and failure as a person, the hopeless quest for a soulmate to fill the void in myself. Enough.

But the time will come when I’ll have to go out there again, and I will have to be with people, and things will happen that will bring me down. I don’t know how to prepare for that. But at least now I recognise the danger.

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Reading (Part 2)

On any normal Monday… I’d be getting out of the pool around now. Except that it wouldn’t be a normal Monday, it’s Bank Holiday – not that that makes much difference to me. Five years ago (261 weeks) it was Bank Holiday, and I had breakfast at Rocksby’s, sitting outside on the prom, watching the sea and the boats and the Isle of Wight across the water and marvelling that I was here and how exciting it all was, never mind all those boxes I had to unpack. Rocksby’s is gone now, or rather, the basic structure and a couple of the staff are still there, but even when it’s open, it’s not the same, and the bacon sandwiches are terrible. Everything changes.

I rang my brother yesterday, it’s a thing we’ve done on and off over the years since I’ve been on my own, ringing each other on the first Sunday morning of the month. It’s been a bit erratic over the last couple of years while I’ve been going to writers’ group on Sundays, but as he said last month, now he knows where to find me on Sundays (or any other day). I told him that I’m enjoying not having to go out and interact with people, and he said something like: ‘that must be a blessing’ which was such an unusual word for him to use that I had to ask him to repeat it. But it’s a good word, appropriate, because yes, I have been feeling blessed, living in my cosy, stress-free bubble.

I told him I’d thought of him because on Saturday I heard a play on the radio about the life of Arthur Ransome, who wrote the Swallows and Amazons books, which I know he loved, and his daughters loved, and my sister loved too, though to be honest I was never all that interested in them (though I didn’t say that to him). It was one of those things that my two elder siblings did that I felt I should do as well (like staying married to the same people for fifty years), but didn’t really appeal to my nature.

That got me thinking about the kind of books I did read in childhood, and at first I could only think of Narnia and The Wind in the Willows. Partly, I realised, that was because they predominantly came from the library, we didn’t have many books of our own and the ones we did were mainly Ladybird and Observer books, things like that, vaguely educational. It’s not that Mum and Dad didn’t read books, they did (though, as I realise now, it’s not always so easy for adults to find the time), but they also got them from the library – books weren’t a high priority for spending limited cash, when there was an abundant supply which could be borrowed, and were reserved for birthday and Christmas presents.

My preference in books was always magical, which I may come back to another time.

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The Hermit

In our Skype session on Thursday, my therapist commented that I seem much more relaxed and comfortable than when we used to meet in her office. Then, apparently, I was always fretting about my phone, or my keys, or something, always apologising for being two minutes late. Maybe so, but it’s not just that. Our first couple of Skype sessions were pretty stressful too.

This life suits me. Sometimes I just slip into quietness – in a good way, a happy, here-and-now way, a ‘mindful’ way, I guess. Well, it could be just tiredness, but even then it’s a healthy, dozy, peaceful sleepiness, not a mind-buzzing agitated fatigue.

I told her about the worst thing that happened in the week – the encounter with the checkout lady in the Co-op – and realised then that she was the only actual real world person I had encountered since our session the week before. I explained that it’s being with other people that bothers me, though I felt ashamed to admit it.

‘Why do you think that’s shameful?’ she asked.

I blustered a bit.

‘Well, it’s not good to be… misanthropic, is it?’ (though I realised as I said it that’s not a good word, I don’t exactly hate other people in general, I’m just not comfortable about interacting with them) ‘…it’s not right… it’s… inhuman!’

‘Why do you think it’s inhuman?’

Because good people like other people and like being with people. Don’t they? Isn’t that what makes us human?

Well… sometimes I like being with people. What about all those happy pictures I post of myself with friends and family? Ahh, but you can never judge anyone’s mood, personality or attractiveness by looking at the pics they post on social media. Not mine, anyway. Obviously, I only share the ones where I’m looking vaguely human, which gives a completely distorted image of what I see when I look in the mirror.

Now I’ve allowed myself to be distracted from what I was going to say, which is – for example, take the May Day gathering I mentioned yesterday, I enjoyed that – but I can guarantee that I was apprehensive beforehand. Being with other people is always stressful for me, however well I know them, it’s an ordeal because I’m on eggshells in case I do or say something stupid, like taking the wheeled basket-holder in the supermarket, when I should have asked for a normal basket. But I used to work at a regular job, how did I manage then? Because most of the time I got away with it. – but I still felt that sense of dread every day.

I think I’ve tapped into something very deep here, something that goes way beyond introverted vs extroverted. It’s hard to admit, because it does sound quite bizarre, but it explains a lot.

And as my therapist pointed out, in spite of all that, I’m prepared to share this here, with anyone who bothers to read it – perhaps because I don’t really believe anyone will.

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May Day

Today’s memory is from a year and a day after the previous one (a lot can happen in that time – in fairy tales, at any rate).

On the beach at sunrise with a smallish group of friends and friends-of-friends, one of them a Pagan celebrant who led us in a ceremony of welcome to the sun on May Day morning. I remember chanting, facing in the four directions (towards the sea, the land, the sun and… towards the pier? -it’s all I can think of in that direction!) There was also singing, djembe banging, some mandolin playing, probably dancing and definitely consumption of brandy supplied by her partner (not something I normally do at six in the morning, not even on May Day!) And breakfast in the Beach Café.

Thinking back, I realise I hardly ever see that group of people any more. When the world passed around the sun again, I had entered the year of my own personal self-isolation, of chemo and surgery and radiotherapy, and when I emerged from that into 2018, it seemed as though everyone’s life had changed, not just mine, the dance had shifted, we had all taken up new positions and our paths no longer intersected – except sometimes on Facebook, repository of friendships and social medium of choice for my generation.

That wasn’t the only memorable thing that happened that May Day, however. When I got home to the flat, I had an email from my ex husband, saying that he’d received and provisionally accepted an offer on the old family home; obviously my formal agreement was needed, but that was hardly in doubt. The beginning of the real end of that chapter of my life, a summer of driving up and down between here and there, clearing out everything, including the attic where so much of my past had accumulated; helping him initially to move into his new place in Bedford (and in the interim our son and his fiancée from their tiny studio flat in Guildford to a two-storey maisonette), and finally, in October, moving into this house, with one van of stuff transported professionally from the flat, and another trip for me up to Bedford, another rented van loaded and driven down by my daughter’s partner, another drive back southwards in my Micra with another terrified cat in a basket on the passenger seat.

If I’d known on that spring morning that it would be almost another six months before I was finally settled in my own home… well, I don’t know what I would have done. But it happened, all the dusty accumulation of the past, the physical stuff and the emotional clutter which had haunted me, all moved, all resolved, and here I was.

Maybe the stress of that year contributed to my body’s next bombshell – who knows? But I got through that too. And here I stand, and every day, whether May Day or any one of 365 others, the future still knocks on my door.

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Avoidance

I sat on the edge of my bed earlier and said, out loud: ‘I love you. Don’t do this to yourself’. At the time it didn’t make any difference, as I knew it wouldn’t. But thinking back on it now, and writing it down, it seems significant that even when I was trying to encourage myself, it was framed as a prohibition and inherent criticism.

In my head all this feels entangled with a kind of grief, and the stages of grief (which I’ve heard about so many times, but have only a hazy perception of now and am probably taking out of context). As I recollect there are four main ones: denial, anger, depression and acceptance. I feel as though my whole life (not just in lockdown) is a cycle of the first three, without ever reaching the final stage – or at least, only in a partial way. What feels like happiness to me is largely denial, avoidance, coping, filling life with distractions and temporary pleasures. Bob Dylan has a wonderful phrase for this, I think it’s: ‘transient joys’, but I’m not sure of that, or even what song it’s from. Maybe if I can let it run in my head for a few minutes I can pin it down. Aaagh, no, I’ll have to look it up and I’m not doing that now! There I go, getting distracted again, when what I was really thinking as I wrote that was – maybe that’s true of most of us? That the pleasures we seek out from whatever sources: work, play, art, creativity, writing, reading, entertainment, sex, sport, nature, food, drink and other addictions, maybe even the company of other people – are ways of burying existential sadness? Well, maybe that’s not everybody, but perhaps more people than would admit to it.

But for years I’ve been saying/thinking that all the activities with which I normally fill my life, (swimming, yoga, tai chi, writers’ groups, choir etc) are ways of forcing myself to go out, to be with people, and that I have to bully myself into doing them. At the start of the lockdown I speculated on how I would cope without them. The answer initially was that I was quite happy to have an excuse not to go out – I sit in the garden, I do my 30 minutes exercise/meditation in the mornings, I write, interact on social media, listen to the radio, crochet, etc. I don’t even take advantage of the ‘daily outdoor exercise’ we’re supposedly allowed. I go to the shop once a week when I run out of milk and that’s it.

So why don’t I make a flask of coffee and walk to the seafront, instead of sitting here moaning? Why don’t I at least get off my backside and do some housework?

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Day 24 – Dark of the Moon

I woke.
It was dark.

I thought I would get up
and walk to the sunrise.
I stayed in my bed
and listened to the radio.

We all skate on the surface.
We walk on the knife edge.

Don’t look down,
don’t look back.
Shit happens,
keep smiling.
See the bright side.
half-full.
Stop thinking.
Stop doing.

You’ll never do enough.
You’ll never be
good enough.
You’re half full,
half empty.

Sun rises,
sun sets.
Moon wanes,
moon returns.
Spring rolls
into summer.

This is all there is.
Don’t fall off the edge,
Don’t shatter the glass.

Linda Rushby 24 April 2020

Now the words are coming and I can’t stop them – however banal, however dark. Why don’t I just ignore them? Why do I need to write them out? What happens if I don’t? I’m sure I’ve written about this before, somewhere back in the past, in the morass of words I’ve written and then never read again. Do all those unwritten words fester somewhere in the back of my mind? Things that go rotten do one of two things: they infect what’s around them and spread the rot, or they make compost for other things to grow in. What about my thoughts, my words? Which way do they go? Maybe both – but which predominates? They don’t seem to have borne much fruit so far.

Part of me thinks that writing them out helps in a way, it’s therapeutic, it helps to defuse those thoughts – maybe (but they still come back). There might be some value in writing them. But then, what about the next step, is there any point in trying to share them? What is that compulsion that makes me think it’s a good idea? Who reads them, and who of those really hears them, who responds, who finds them interesting, who is repelled by them, who ignores them and moves on? Anybody?

I want to be clear that none of this is directly related to the current situation. They’re just thoughts that come to me even in the best of times (and anyway, as I’ve said, these last few weeks of inactivity have suited me quite well.) Maybe the self-imposed pressure to write poetry has influenced the form that my thoughts are taking in terms of presenting themselves in lines and stanzas, I’m not sure – and the chain of connections from thinking that way, to writing them out, to blogging about them, and so on. Maybe.

Things have happened in the wrong order today. If I’d got up when I woke, at 4.30, how much would I have done already? At least, I would have had breakfast and gone for a walk to the sea. At 5.30 I checked the time for sunrise, and found it was 5.50, so only twenty minutes to get up, dress, make a flask of coffee and get there. I stayed in bed and listened to a play on podcast. Then got up and wrote. No coffee, shower, cat-feeding, yoga/tai chi, breakfast – just this drivel.

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Day 18 – Istanbul

I saw a photograph today,
of a sandstone palace,
frosted with blue and white tiles.
And I thought of Istanbul,
though I knew it couldn’t be.

‘Germany’ I guessed,
‘another of Mad King Ludwig’s confections’
(I’ve been caught out like that before).
But no, it was Seville, and I thought
‘Aha, Moorish influences!’
and ‘I must go there one day,
to southern Spain.’

But oh, Istanbul,
beautiful, dirty, noisy city of my dreams.
Byzantium, city of Constantine,
with your minarets and domes, gardens and palaces,
cats, magpies and wonderful cafes,
sunshine and storms and clinging fogs,
and best of all, your waterways,
ships and ferries and fishermen on Galata Bridge.

The taste of that fresh fish sandwich,
bought from the boat, where I watched them fry it
over a brazier by the water’s edge.
Or the tea I poured from a double pot,
the russet colour, clear as the glass I sipped it from
as fragrant as the roses in Gülhane Park
a sensual delight, sweet as the pastries
in Hafiz Mustafa’s.

Perhaps one day I’ll find
my way back to you,
(though somehow I know I won’t)
but you’ll always be there
in my heart.

Linda Rushby 18 April 2020
Gulhane Park, Istanbul May 2012

http://damson-tree.co.uk/travel/?cat=39

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Passing Time

I was standing in the street in my dressing gown, it was 10.45 and I wondered how come I had slept in so late.

Then I was in bed looking at the clock, and it was 5.17, and I realised I had been dreaming. I was reassured, because that made so much more sense.

Thinking of what to write every day is difficult (except when it isn’t, when it just pops up) but the writing itself is easy.

The days go by so fast, even though I do hardly anything, one day after another, hard to tell the difference. The longer it stays like this, the less I feel inclined to interact with people. Life is so much easier this way. I think it will be a shock when external things start up again. I’ll have to make decisions then, do I make myself go out or do I carry on as I have been doing?

Over the last couple of years, people have said to me: ‘You do such a lot!’ and I’ve thought: no, I don’t, not really. When I listed all the external things I did each day: Monday: swimming, writers, yoga; Tuesday: tai chi; Wednesday: coffee (sometimes) etc etc it might sound like a lot, but it was just me, making myself go out, trying to make myself be sociable because I thought that was what I needed. But I wasn’t DOING anything – I would meet ‘the writers’ in the library, but I would never actually write anything. Now I am staying home and writing, but still I’m not actually writing ‘anything’, just spewing out words. Passing time, revelling in the dullness and emptiness of my life. Sometimes crocheting or weaving, but not to make anything – I’ve unravelled this latest cardigan so many times that by the time it’s finished I’ll probably have made it twice, then it will just go in the wardrobe and I’ll never wear it. The weaving and the weather blanket, both completely pointless (though I’ve promised this year’s weather blanket to my daughter, and I gave last year’s to my son). But the point is in the process of the making – it passes the time and makes me happy. And then there’s killer su doku – can’t even pretend that achieves anything.

The same goes (in spades) for the writing, of course. I’m quite impressed that I’ve kept it going for as long as I have – though in the past I’ve done it for years – why did I give it up? Maybe partly because it takes up a huge amount of time, that’s why the mornings go so fast, and afternoons are always filled up with the radio, so that’s the day gone. It’s interesting, though, to reflect that it’s not these things that make me stressed. I’m calmer and happier now, and that’s because I’m doing these things by myself – these pointless, meaningless things – and I don’t feel like I have to make myself go out and be with people.

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Day 9 – A Strange Road

I stepped onto a strange road
and oh, the excitement of knowing
the not-knowingness of the world.

The future an empty page.
The adventures I planned,
and those that I hadn’t.
The paths that I travelled,
the places I saw,
the people whose paths
crossed with mine.

Then one day I stopped,
and looked around
and saw there was no one
who made me their centre,
their lodestar, their true heart.

I have known
the devotion of children
the whispers of lovers
the kindness of friends,
and I’m grateful for these.

But only one person
can fill my void
and I must learn
to be that one.

Linda Rushby 9 April 2020

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Chasing Happiness

Saturday, 05 January 2019   2:30 AM

Already this year I am feeling besieged by the happiness gurus. For example, yesterday I read this:

‘If it doesn’t make you happy, something needs to change.’

Why? What? What needs to change? How can you predict what is going to ‘make you happy’?  And how are you supposed to change it? What to? How can you ever predict the consequences of what you do (long term, in their entirety)?

Why does everything have to ‘make you happy’ anyway? How does that work? Never do anything that stretches you, or scares you, or that might take you somewhere you weren’t expecting? What sort of life is that? Life is full of risk – you either jump into it or you don’t. And if you don’t want to right now – well, that can be okay too, but not necessarily forever.

Happiness is a chimera – in both senses. It is both an impossible quarry and a composite, an impossible composite of disparate elements that really shouldn’t (oh dear, we don’t say ‘should’ and ‘shoudn’t’ do we?) be together – that don’t make sense together. And what about the word ‘disparate’? I’ve been picked on in the past for using it, but fuck that, I’m writing this and it’s absolutely the word I want to use right there – if you don’t like it, go and get a fucking dictionary. Pretentious, moi??? I’m not using it to impress or intimidate you but because it says what I want to say better than any other word I can think of.

And in the end, that’s the point, isn’t it? Who’s writing this anyway? Maybe what makes me ‘happy’ is using the exact words I want to use, and I know what I’m saying and how I want to say it, so why the fuck not?

Probably I should take some of the ‘fucks’ out of this – probably I will, whether I ‘should’ or not. Everyone plays around with words in their own way. Why shouldn’t I?

That word ‘quarry’, for example – it also has two meanings – both the thing being pursued (the chimera of happiness, in this case) and a source, a place from which things are extracted. What am I extracting here? (Apart from the Michael – or the urine). Meaning, of course. I’m digging in the quarry of the English language to pull out meaning, and that is my raison d’être’ (maybe bits of other languages too). It’s what I do, and though I say it as shouldn’t (oh, there go the ‘shoulds’ and ‘shouldn’ts’ again!), may I say I do it brilliantly. I do it in the only way I can, and as only I can, and it would be very gratifying if someone (anyone) would read this and say: ‘that’s amazing, that’s fabulous, I just love the way you play with words’. But even though I know that’s a pretty hopeless quest (and a hopeless quarry) I will continue to do it even if I’m the only one who reads it, because it is the process of doing so that MAKES ME HAPPY! and…

What was the question again?