Winter

The days and weeks tick by. Sometimes I feel I am on watch in a cold, grey place surrounded by deep mists and everlasting twilight, as if I have to remain ever-alert, ready to act, hour after hour. I am growing lazy, all this standing and walking, a rifle or cupid's arrow slung over my shoulder, my feet cold, my mind at once swimming with ideas, hopes, possibilities and empty as a painter's canvas, white, virgin, masquerading as a white on white heavily misted interpretation of the woman I want to be or think I am. The sort of painting if hung in a gallery would not be to everyone's taste, but one needs just one heart, one pair of eyes to see, to love, not thousands.

So I am on watch in a place where nothing happens, an apparently plain canvas with nothing to say, no artfulness.

This is not good.

Should I try and leave the frame, go in search of adventures, life? And how? I am praying for colour to return and, at the same time, I am content, excited, hopeful, alive. I am thankful, grateful, amazed. 

Meditation

I am trying to learn to mediate. I want to do it regularly. Sometimes when I use the app I have downloaded for it (love the sound of the woman's voice) I feel as if I'm in a soup with bits in it. As if I'm in a blender on slow speed, bits of me, my worries, fears, neuroses, concerns, all swimming round and round in a cloudy soup and I feel mildly panicked. Then I remember or am shown or am drawn to a stillness in the centre, a place of utter peace and stillness. It feels like the beginning and the end, the source of love, light, all that is real and, unlike the soup, it is solid and light and I am it and in it and I know it to be true. Is this meditation? Am I supposed to do more with this? Go further? I remember "your job is to stand, simply stand" as the storms go past. So I try to not try, to strive, but simply (complicatedly) to just be. 

This is happiness. Yes, I want for a companion, a dearest to be around, laughing, a best friend. But despite their absence, I am the happiest I have ever been in my warm, white little house with a fire laid for later, a candle burning, a 7-mile walk in my loins, dinner ready. There is a pulse underlying the bricks, the blood, the stuff of "real" life. I am blissed out here at home, on my own, sated, full to the brim with thanks and things I love, people I love. This is happiness, this ordinary pleasant whiteness. 

Something deep in me has been seeking this pale peace forever. And here it is. I reach out into time, past reality, through the ages and rock and my soul kisses yours. I love you long time. 

I keep failing but apparently that's normal

My attempt to love others and be more open minded and positive and less judgmental would so far earn me, at best, a poor C grade.

Probably not even that. 

And that'd be on a good day.

In the last few weeks I have made some new friends and won over a few colleagues I'd never spoken to and who I had assumed a long time ago I didn't like and would never like. One is an older woman, she is mumsy and purses her lips as if judging everyone's round her. I couldn't stand her and would avoid her face, her looming sort of judgement. If she walked into a room I would turn away. 

The other day I was forced to sit next to her in a training session. Turns out she is quite funny and quick to learn things. She was good to work with. She might be judgemental, I'm not sure about that, but she wasn't at all dull in the same way nobody is dull once you get close enough to see them. 

It's both harder and easier to re-wire my thinking than I'd expected. I am enjoying trying to do it, but I'm far from making the changes I'd assumed would be simple.

But (and there's a saying that it's only what comes after the 'but' which counts) I recently met a man who told me how hard he had found studying for his PhD alongside working full time and he said: 'over and over again I failed, it felt I'd never get to the end, never achieve what I set out to, that I'd been kidding myself.' 

He persevered and three years later did earn his degree, though of the initial cohort of 14 candidates only seven lasted the distance and graduated alongside him. He told me that when he kept hitting walls and thought it was too hard, he learned that intelligence wasn't enough. He needed to think differently. So he learned resilience.

It's not very sexy, but resilience seems to be the golden ticket to lots of things in life.

I may have earned a lukewarm pass in my project so far (and that is flattering myself) but I'm going to try to keep going. 

Dictionary dot com says this about it:

re·sil·ience

  [ri-zil-yuhns, -zil-ee-uhns] 

noun

1.

the power or ability to return to the original form, position, etc.,after being bent, compressed, or stretched; elasticity.

2.

ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity, orthe like; buoyancy.

Origin: 
1620–30;  < Latin resili ( ēns ), present participle of resilīre  to springback, rebound.

To me, 'Return to the original form' after being messed  around by life, by prejudices, by mistakes, is deeply comforting. 

I borrowed the picture from http://pattischmidtcoaching.com/articles/bending-with-the-wind/