Dreams

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Island Blog – Take the Risk and Fly

The Rose Bay Willow Herb (I’m so glad my parents didn’t weigh me down with this name) is waffling, backlit with sudden sun. I’m watching it doing this waffling thing and I get it. You beautiful lot, all purple and strong and waffling down there upside of a sealoch, are stalk stuck. For all you sway, that’s the it of it for you. The next bit is a windthrip of petals and then the aftermath. I close my windows for that. A thousand piloted seeds float in. Any window open and opportunity knocks, although it doesn’t, not for the RBWH. Indoors is not a beginning. It’s more a load of sweeperoo, and even that requires a lot of dancing about with brush and dustpan and for days. But, when I stop to catch these seeds, hold them in my palm, I am brillianced by nature. These seeds, flighter than dandelions but with a similar modus operandi, can go for miles and miles. How clever is that! We stop and start at traffic lights. We queue politely (heaven help us on that nonsense). We pause before speaking. We say ‘Sorry’ way, way too often. We can float, we can, in silence.

Trouble is, we are grounded and within a thoroughly controlled environment, rules, queues, strictures, opinions, cultures, or we believe we are, and, thus we limit our lift and our fly. Of course, I realise that plants don’t have parents, nor do they go to school, nor work, and that trio can define and control us. And, we cannot fly, not like seeds, not like birds. However, I will challenge this, not in ‘realism’ but in mind belief, in dreams, in the longing of those who just know there is something more than the grounded This.

I am old. I am experientially so. I have lived a bajonkers life. still am. I see, still, an upper age control, at times domination. I see, still matriarchal and patriarchal chains suffocating. I see, still the confines of religious beliefs, the social expectation, the racial bullying. It goes on. What I would say is this, only this:-

If you have a dream, a real focus, no matter your place, your state, your anything. Take the risk and fly.

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Island Blog – Knickers,Triggers and Dreams

Life is such a funny thing. Funny. Now, in my day, that meant fun. A captivating laughter of a word, an invitation into something less boring than the rest of life, an opportunity to be ready to go, to dance, to step out into a new lift, like a birthday, when it wasn’t. Nowadays, it means different things, a few of them, and the ‘thems’ both shrivel the word into something odd, weird, dangerous whilst adding the extra ‘ny’ as if that softens the meaning, which it doesn’t. It seems to me, as I grow ever older and not much wiser, is that the shiver and sliver of words and their meaning, as I knew them, grow roots in a day. I meet them, get them wrong, am laughed at by my young, adapt, even as I untangle myself from the unexpected twist and tumble of them. It thinks me.

I was thinking about knickers. Now, when you put ‘knickers’ into spellcheck, the kicking K is banished. I liked the K. There was a kicking thing about it, about knickers, and I have a lot to say about knickers. Too big, too containing, too long, too fierce, too much, way too much elastic. As if, as if, this containment was ever going to ‘prevent’ anything. How blind, how controlling were our forebears. That thinks me too, and I remember having a beautiful and dynamic daughter, way back. But fierce knickers were never going to make any of a difference to anything. We need fun, we all do.

Today, in my now life, with my now friends, we can laugh about knickers, with a K, We can remember the triggers, the delish of fun, of funny, and, to a great degree we still have all of that. We can share a table, warm and safe, talking of our times, times of fun, of funny, of ghastly knickers, of times of elicit freedom, never spoken of, our dreams, so soft on faces across the table. Actually, I don’t think that has zip to do with age. I have seen across much younger tables and watched dreams spill out, lift, rise, dissipate. That triggered something in me. I remember that urgency, that yearning face over other tables. T’is life. And, then, fun arises, laughter lifts to bonk its head on the ceiling, and return to flutter hope down.

I remember the damn knickers with a K, and those dreams.

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Island Blog – Fanacadoo

Do you ever arrive of a morning having travelled into weird worlds all night long? Or so it seems. All impossible things, unlikely people, extraordinary happenings happen inside the hours of sleep, none of which would survive five minutes in earthly mode. Beyond the borders of ‘possible’ lie these worlds, a convolution of stories read, tales told across a table, films seen, random encounters, daydreams, worries, fears, doubts and delusions of grandeur. I can fly. Sure you can. I can save the world, blow it up, murder (in a good way) stand watching a happening without moving into action, put out a forest fire all alone, win a house in Malibou, all possible in the depths of night, when my mind, which was programmed to sleep, chooses her own adventure series and plays it out all the way through.

Of course, I barely remember a sequence of plausible, believable events, oh no, but just patchy catches of the whole fanacadoo. As I lift from bed and move into the day, the images scatter, fractal, smokey, spiralling into the bedroom only to skinny through the gaps, as if they never were at all. Could this nocturnal experience be a helpful clearing of a cluttered mind, I ask myself? Or, was that unpleasant image, still inside my head despite my attempts to turn it scattered, fractal, smokey and spiralling off to skinny through the gaps, some sort of prophesy or warning? Over the years, I have learned to decide for myself the answer to those two questions. I say that I am not at the mercy of either of them, horns as they are of a dilemma, a waste of daylight to finger through such confusion with no chance of an Aha moment. I decide that my subconscious mind is a superior being and not in my control as I might like. If it can produce unbelievable scenarios in such brilliant technicolour, structured on nothing I have encountered, nor ever will, then it is at work on my behalf. Although I know that, at times, my own piddling worries and concerns can leak into my dreams, the costumes and scenarios fantastical, I trust there is a point to it all and not one my tug-boot daylight person is ever supposed to understand.

How freeing it is to address the night larks thus! I can dress and prepare for my day, knowing that a deal of fanacadoo has been addressed and processed. None of it is my business. It’s as if an inner counsellor has beavered away as I fitfully slept, lost in the story of the night. She has tidied up my mental loft. It is done. My remit is only to allow, accept and move on into the ordinary. But, with different eyes. This is important. If I can fly, save the world, turn into a mermaid, murder (in a good way) or even stand rooted and impotent in the face of something horrible, then I am delighted all this gets sorted in the safety of my bedroom. What I will never do again, having done it for many years, is to believe I am a bad person at heart, that, by dreaming this way I am showing my true colours. I refuse to accept this. I know who I am and how I will be around all other people, so that, even if it might be fun to turn into a mermaid, or to save the world single-handed, I do not relate to the backside of those (im)possibilities. My subconscious was simply filtering out, clearing away, processing and settling the who of me, the how and the what of this small human woman. I have a very vivid imagination, that’s all, and it is the work of the night counsellor to level my balance once again so that I can rise from it all with a chuckle, forget it all by elevenses and, most of all, know for certain that all is well, I am safe, my mental attic is swept and clear. This doesn’t deny the night stories, oh no, but it does put them in perspective, and one more thing………instead of moving into the day saying I didn’t sleep well, I say, instead, and mostly to the dog, What larks Pip, what adventures I had last night! She may look at me blankly, having curled into a slumbering danish, fast sleeping till a yawn at dawn, but I know how it was and I was there, I saw them all, even as those midnight images slip away like the steam from my coffee..

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Island Blog – Otherness

Sometimes I dream. I did last night, although how my mind can keep a dream steady and linear whilst my body tosses and turns as if at the mercy of a powerful element, is a puzzle. On waking, I and my dream, or the whisps that remain, fleeting as mist at sunrise, descend the stairs and head for coffee. It is light, albeit an early light, the half moon waning above me and I nod towards her. She will balloon again, as she always does, a constant, a consistent. Without her no tides would ebb nor flow and that would scupper many an expected result. I consider what is left of my dream and wonder, as if from nowhere, if it was my dream at all. I recognised nothing, not even the storyline. Is it possible that this dream was not mine at all, but someone else’s, a dream that came to me instead? I know that dream analysis can alert many so-called ‘gurus’ who can (so they say) interpret them, bringing them into the reality of a person’s day. Portents, predictions, prophesies. I am, I confess, cynical, but my own dreams, the ones I recognise and identify with, I can accept without any external explanation. My own dreams, when going through a tough time, have always involved my children, or some children anyway, and I know, in this dream, that they are in danger and I am the only one to save them. But my feet are stuck and my mouth empty of sound never mind words. I don’t have those anymore, thankfully. I sip my coffee and let the whisps dissipate with the sunrise. It doesn’t matter whether or not I hold on, whether or not I can piece together the as yet unwhisped images, nor the linear. It was just a dream after all and in my sensible chair with my hot coffee and the gift of another day ahead, I have ironing to do, a cake to bake, tsaziki to prepare and a perfectly ordinary day stretching out before me just full of reality.

But, it is important to me that I engage with the spirit world. I believe it is perfectly right to walk with my feet on the ground and my head in the clouds. I have done it for all time. Yes, it can unbalance me, confound me, send me reeling. It has, it does and it will because this is who I am, but age is a wise old bird and she reminds me of both of my Roots and my connection to Otherness and there is no disparity between those old friends. The confusion is in the me in between. However, to accept that I do live between the two (actually we all do but many run from one or the other) is key. It might mean I stumble at times, get lost in the dream, but I am old enough now to know that whatever I fight against will only grow stronger. So I don’t. I chuckle. I welcome. There is tea and cake at my table for the ones I can see and the ones I cannot. Otherness is invisible, messages come from Otherness, dreams too, sudden understandings, bizarre knowings, intuitive perceptions. Without these guides, I would just be a someone who believes that if I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist and that laughs me a lot. I have learned to be very thankful for my connection to Otherness although she, like the moon, can also disrupt days and nights. No matter. I need her. We all do. It is grand to be grounded, to be fully engaged with who we need to be in order to live well on the ground, but we forget the fairies, the angels, the whispers from Otherness at our peril.

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Island Blog – This Day

This day I would like to wander through a wood. Looking up at the map of the sky, fragmented by the leaves of the canopy, and then down at the dappled light on the autumn ground, I see my boots, one step at a time. And I love them all over again, for they are my favourites despite the chunk ripped out of one of them by an excited puppy with razor teeth and fast legs for running away. I can see him now with my boot clamped in his jaws, looking back to see if the puffing shouter was keeping up. She wasn’t.

In the wood I look for fairy homes, little round holes in the tree moss and I whisper a hallo. It’s always best not to irate the fairies I find, so a polite acknowledgement of their whereabouts is quite enough. I hear the sound of a wind combing the pines, singing with them, perfect harmony. Beyond the wood the tide rushes in, funnelled through nip-tuck lines of granite and basalt, ancient and immovable. Butter yellow lichen coats the faces of these rocks, as if the sun just landed there for a while, for me to see. Bubble, burble, swish and tumble, the mussels cling on tight. There are hundreds of them and, at low tide, I can slither across the slipper rocks to garner a feast. Wild thyme still blooms, scabious too and the flash of blood shows me where the rowans grow, their shout for attention, their hallo to the sky.

After my wander, I know where I’m going. There is a delightful tapas bar down a skinny side street, tucked in between a second hand shop and someone’s front door. The patron is big and very Spanish and his welcoming warmth greets me as I push through the door. Tables line the wall and tapas dishes, the counter. Bright smiles, a proffered glass of dry white with olives and crusty bread Señora? Si, gracias. I wait for friends to join me, for I am a bit early. As I sit my eyes roam the walls. There is a big painting of the bull run through Pamplona streets, the festival colours bright and full of sunshine. A portrait of the patron’s wife, now deceased, fills a side wall. She is very beautiful and there’s a sass in her eyes. Her hair is tumble free and dark around elegant shoulders. He has spoken of her with me, probably with everyone, for she was his one true love.

After a long and merry lunch, I wander through the streets, watching little gardens pass by. Voices lift in the air around me, ordinary people talking ordinary things. Where did we park? What’s for dinner? Where’s Wally? And yet not one of them is ordinary for we are, each one of us, unique, with our own life to live and our own frustrations, our own dreams. Who will live that dream? Only the brave.

I find my way home. Opening the door I smell the familiar smells and I breathe them in. This is where I live, where I am entirely myself. I may be alone now but I know who I am. Softly I relinquish the ties that bind, hanging them over a chair like a well loved cardigan. I put on some music, Sibelius. The swan of Tuanela was his favourite. Sinking into a chair I watch the day fade into dusk and I am filled with memories and gratitude as the beautiful and evocative melodies flow through the room, through me.

It is good, this day. And all is well.

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Island Blog – Tuning, Turning and Today

I awake this morning knowing that I have been out of tune with life for a bit. I know it because, on awakening, I feel in tune once more. Instead of a night of mares and violent interlopers and slugging through the days quite certain that my internal cheerleaders have downed their pompoms and left for Ibiza, I floated inside the arms of sleep all the way up to 3.30 am. Going quietly downstairs to make a cup of tea, I noticed how dark it now is. Only last week, it seems, it was light enough to show me the way. Perhaps, I say to myself, it is the turning of the seasons that has set me at a discord; perhaps it is the unwinding of lockdown and the threat of incoming, be it friendly or hostile. This bubble has lived us pleasantly since March 16th, weeks passing like minutes, moons waxing, waning and all days are Today. We needed nothing more.

Of course, the current subject matter of care home, separation, guilt, grief, loss and fear may also have colluded in my needing a re-tune. Time is the best one for that, but we are impatient; I am impatient. When I might expect to back on my feet instantly, life is telling me Stay Down Awhile, you ridiculous woman, but I don’t take kindly to being told. I battle on, expecting my mood to lift with my feet as I troughle round the daily do’s and grow furious when it stays limp as old lettuce.

Trusting, however, as I do, in the spirit world, the one I cannot see, touch or control, softens my wires and loosens keys that have gone rigid of late. The tunes I played sounded like a mess of angry cats; hurtful even to my own ears, going nowhere, no cadence, no major lift or minor bend, just a racket. From this morning, I can hear the lilt once more of harmony, melody, flow and the relief runs through me like warm honey. Nothing has changed. All will go ahead, in its own time, at its own speed and all will be well. I know this now, even as I know that discordant days will come again as we make the journey to a new place and time. However, knowing this doesn’t disturb the melody for I have learned that life is not a set piece of music, but, instead, one that changes over and over again. All I need to do is allow it all to happen, to accept the sad times, to sit with them, say Hallo, and wait for them to move away.

Times like these we learn from, if we notice, stop, say Hallo and wait in trust. I wish I had understood this as a young woman instead of turning from the darkness, fighting the demons with sickeningly inadequate weapons, thinking that if I sang loud enough the melody would find me once again. So much time wasted in ignorance. But I am thankful to understand it now because I do not believe in the bad press; I know the nightmares are just unpleasant dreams and that all days are, simply, today.

Which, I am reminded, is Winnie the Pooh’s favourite day of all.

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Island Blog- Rule of Thumb

The dawn turned the far hills blood red. Although Father Sun rises behind my home, he makes his presence known in casts of colour, short-lived but marvellous to see. The sky, flat and brushed with Payne’s grey, Rose Madder and Ultramarine looks like it is unsure about what to do next. Threatened storms may roar around us as they often do, we who stick out into the Atlantic like a determined finger, independent of any weather forecast. It thinks me.

In a few days I will have been married for 48 years. We both will. A lot of what happened over those years were not as I had dreamt, nor planned. My ideal of a marriage is not so unusual. White knight, independence, the freedom to make my own choices, take my own actions, sing my own song and all under the loving and approving smile of a benign king. I would share the throne, choose my own frocks, laugh loudly when I wanted, speak out my truth and be heard. I’m not saying this never happened because it did, but where I thought this would be a rule of thumb, I found, at times, that I was under said thumb and unable to rise to my full stature.

Did it damage me, this thumb thing? It did not. Instead I have learned that on many of those remembered and unremembered times, I had a lesson to learn. I would have been, and can still be, too quick to respond, to act, to speak out. My vivid and often unrealistic imagination could have launched me into trouble without that thumb. I thank the thumb owner, that’s what I do, now that I can look back and join up the dots. I married a man 10 years my senior for a very good reason, even though I didn’t do so consciously. Somehow, my sub conscious knew what was best for me, what or who would keep me safe from danger, from myself.

I would never, even in my wildest dreams, have lived the live I have lived, the one I shared with my king. I would never have known the exciting highs nor experienced the awful lows without him and his thumb. In balance, and this is where the dot joining comes in, my life, our life together has been extraordinary from the beginning and all the way up to the now. When I recall our adventures, the spontaneity of them, the sudden Let’s Go thing, the way we led our children into independent thought, creative action, kindness towards all living people and things; the way we laughed and partied, invited and welcomed, shared and made ourselves known in the work we collectively undertook. The way we steadfastly marched on through bad times, poor times, times when our inventive strengths pulled us through. And the way we made a difference, made memories that so many others share and still remember with fondness and a chuckle.

It was never plain sailing, not for either of us. I doubt that marriage ever is, for anyone. But, to survive and thrive through such a vast ocean of years is to have made many sail corrections. Thousands. Millions. And we have, and we still are making those corrections, working with the winds of time, rising over and over again, no matter how big the waves, how fickle the chop, how far away the next peaceful harbour.

I feel honoured and proud. We did it. We got through. And we are still here, still breathing, still sailing towards a new horizon. Together.

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Island Blog – Keep Your Dreams

In these times, it is easy but not comfortable, to begin to believe that the dreams we had before this enemy came among us are right now diffusing in the winds of change. They are not. We need, more than ever to catch them and to hold them close. What any of us wanted to achieve, those lifts of magic in our hearts, from heading up a corporation to being better at being who we are have never had such gravitas, such depth, such height, such a chance.

As I plant seeds, in the dark of the compost and soil and la la mix to make it as perfect as possible, I consider the dark. Seeds don’t need light to germinate. They just need time and patience. Once the shoots appear, things change, as we must, if we are the one who cares for this precious new life. And that goes for dreams too. We may be fedded up with the whole waiting game, we may lose faith, we may trouble ourselves with fears and doubts, but if we can just hold tight to those dreams of new life, breathe, walk, notice EVERYTHING around us, the cycle of life, Mother Nature’s gift to us, year on, and, if we are careful, year on again ad infinitum, carrying our dream like the most precious possession we could ever, will ever, own, then our future will rise and flourish and flower and give delight to so very many others.

Let’s do it.

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Island Blog 148 Dark and Light

 

Dark room wisdom

 

 

We were talking, my small-panted grandchildren and I, about the dark.  Was I, Are you, Button Granny, frightened of the dark?  I was having a ying tong at the time (ying tong piddle etc) and she, the smallest pants, burst in, quite the thing with this fairly big question.  Well, I said, thinking, or looking like I was…….I used to when I was little, and then, later, when I was bigger than little, yes I did.  Why?  she asked.

Good question.  They ‘why’ bit always throws me unless it’s obvious, such as Why did you not put your fingers in the fire Button Granny?  I thought more, albeit in a slightly compromised state (I can still think at such times, being a woman) and said, Well because I know the dark now.

How?  she continued.  Oh dear.  Well, I said (what would we do without that wonderful word of delay?) I think that I know that, that……there is nothing to frighten me in the dark anymore.  Oh, she said, and dashed off to complete her Angry Cabbages Puzzle, which, by the way, I do wonder at.  If cabbages are angry in her little mind, then what hope is there?  I had, earlier, read both herself and her bigger brother a story about an Elephant and a Bad Baby, who, together, stole two pies, two pork chops, with no thought for the poor pig, nor, I might add, the butcher, two ice creams, two buns and two apples, so I guess Angry Cabbages are small fry by comparison. I am consoled greatly to know that their parents think the book ‘dickerless’ too.

The dark is just the other side of the light.  I remember my lovely dad saying just that, as I shook him awake, about yay high, my little heart beating like mad, my feet light and running all the way to his side of the marital bed.  He rose and guided me to the bathroom, his voice soothing, regardless of his broken sleep, sleep he badly needed for his busy working day, yet to dawn, and laid a towel on the edge of the bath.  He turned on the taps to run tepid water into the tub and then lifted me onto the towel so that my feet dipped into the soothing water.  He talked about this and about that whilst I calmed, and then, softly dried my feet and lifted me back to bed with a gentle voice saying gentling things.  I don’t know if he stayed till my eyes grew heavy, but I do know that I never saw him leave.  He never asked me to tell him of my fears, just seem to understand them and then he washed them away.  I thank him for that, although he is now long gone, a Marine Commando, another dad who never talked about the war he lived through, at least, not the dreadful bits.

As a teenager I was still afraid.  Not outside, bizarrely, but within the walls of a house.  Once, when invited at stay with a schoolfriend, the daughter of a pig farmer, for the night.  I lay in the guest room, weighed down with warm bedding and I just knew there were rats in the room.  I said to myself, Don’t be Dickerless, but the rat-knowing part of me stayed resolute. Then, as I began to doze off from complete exhaustion, the house around me quiet (which meant the parents were in bed too…..) a rat ran over my blankets.  I saw it and I felt it.  I spent the night in the cupboard and cried so much at breakfast that my poor mother had to come and collect me, effusive with apologies and, no doubt, embarassed for ever and a day.  But I Saw the rat!  I wailed.  Uh-huh, she said.

The dark is something personal.  To each one of us.  Maybe it isn’t the night sort of dark, although it can be, but perhaps the inside dark stepping out.  A fear of something or someone.  Doubts can bring the dark.  Crime on television just before bed can continue to play out and develop in our dreams.

Dark is the other side of light.  As adults, sentient adults, we know this.  But knowing something and it settling into our bones can be a universe, a lifetime apart.  I know that when I am troubled, my dreams bring more dark than light. I have downloaded a Sleep App on my android phone (get me) by someone with the most boring voice I have ever heard, whose control over the english language would have sent my english teacher, Miss Machoolish into one of her dizzy spells, and it works, the boredom treatment, never mind the bright lights, the secret garden or any of the stuff he drones on about.  I just want out, so I fall asleep.

Now, I love the dark.  I know that, inside it, there is calm and peace.  I also know that night creatures move at such times, but they don’t want me, they want mice or wandering birds, and, although I may, indeed be a wandering bird, I am way too big for their taste.  I sincerely believe that television, for all its great dramas has bigged up the darkness with fear and we believe it.  Although I do acknowledge that, living on an island, my dark is just dark with not much inside it to worry any of us, I still think fear as food is something we don’t need.  We spend too much time, me included, looking at how things might go wrong.  Why should that out-balance them going right?  Perhaps more looking at the light in our lives would gentle the dark in us.

Dark is dark.  Light is light.  It is enough.

 

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Island Blog 147 If Not Now

georgebernardshaw385438

 

 

Today is Halloween and I already have a witch or two in my head, and if crossed, in my mouth.  Not a really bad witch, but one of those ones that knows her power and won’t take any messing.  I like her.  She is a tad unpredictable, but we work together pretty well in the main, perhaps because I am also a tad unpredictable.  Witches are really ‘storybook’ to me, I don’t do black magic at all, although the white ones are worth a second look. I pull them in and shape them up for whatever hurdles I need to cross on a daily basis.  My witches are humourous and feisty, clever and quick, kindly but firm, independent, solo, and able to lift above any situation with a switch of a wand.  They don’t sport warts, nor crooked chins, nor do they cackle unless it’s whilst watching the ‘bad’ guys fall into their own come-uppance, in which case, I cackle too.

My time on Skye was wonderful.  Every time I travel to new places, I meet new people and people fascinate me.  I watch them and I listen and I learn.  I stayed as a guest in a lovely home overlooking a sea-loch that raged and spat for days, driven mercilessly into a right stooshie by strong winds and heavy rainfall.  The rain travelled sideways, whipping into my face and grabbing the breath out of me.  It was hard to stand up whilst walking two lively spaniels whose main aim was to find rabbits and chase them, not possible whilst held firmly on a lead, but nonethless, their aim.  When we had the rare sighting of a car approaching along the single-track road, we had to bundle into the grass in a fairly undignified heap, the spaniels panting for breath and the blood cut off from my lead-holding fingers.  Waving was tricky, lifting just my hand and not a whole spaniel into the air.  I was treated like royalty and yet welcomed as part of the family and now I have new friends, new people to learn from, a new bond between us.  Just as an aiside, I belong to the Scottish Book Trust who can sponser such trips and I am always delighted to be invited anywhere in Scotland to talk about Island Wife, to sing my songs, to reach out to people who relate to my story, in book groups, libraries, or at any public event.  I know, shameless marketing!

Moving on…….

In every area of life, there are people.  Machines do a hec of a lot to assist communication, its reach and the speed of it, but we need people or there is no heart.  Talking of hearts, I believe hearts are inherently good, even when the outside of someone challenges that theory.  Nothing is black or white, we are all both, plus all those rainbow colours in between.  Of course, life can throw us from time to time, but none of us want to be remembered, or pidgeon-holed at such times, especially if the outside of us says different.  But we can and do define people, if we’re honest, by their behaviour on a certain day/week/month or year.  We may be asked to describe someone.  We may say…..well, she is very good at her job but dreadfully overweight.  Now why do we add that last bit?  Is it that we must balance a good thing with such an unnecessary comment?  It’s irrelevant to the profile of that person and, sadly, the one thing that will be remembered.  Her overweight is something she doesn’t like either, we can be sure of that.  I have heard such defining often and, to my shame, said nothing.  I remember one of my boys saying once ‘I wonder why we don’t stand up for each other’ and he is right.  Why don’t we?  Perhaps we don’t want to be the reason for any awkward feelings.  After all, we can just remove ourselves can’t we and think how judgemental that comment was and the person who made it.  It’s easier that way.  But aren’t we judging too by keeping quiet?  It has a name this keeping quiet thing.  Although we didn’t directly commit the crime, we affirmed it by omission.  We omitted to stand and be counted.  In this climate of not standing, we need to make changes.  I have a rule for myself.  If I wouldn’t say something direct to a person, then I won’t say it at all.  I can’t always manage it.  I am human.  But what I aspire to, and practice, will eventually become a habit.

We are all doing our best to manage our lives.  We fall, we falter, we stumble and we crack, but we are not china cups and we can mend.  Not one single one of us knows what it is like to live another’s life.  The saying that we should not judge another man till we have walked a mile in his shoes, is a good one.  Even living closely with another human being tells us little of what lies in their hearts, what dreams are shattered, what disappointments hurt, what shame or oppression has done to their sense of self.  Little choices make up our pathways, but we cannot all walk straight and tall if those pathways are not going the way we want them to.  We redress the balance as best we can, and it takes time to find the normal, sometimes a long time, often a long time.  If I have learned anything in my life it is that I am not an island.  Although I love solitude and am happy on my own, I still crave a warm smile when life feels like it’s wrapped me in chains and thrown a tsunami in my face.  Stopping to smile back, to ask How Are You? and to listen to the answer can lift me far higher than any job-well-done will ever do.  I may rush by you, Can’t Stop, and you may understand my busyness, and I may complete the housework in record time, but, I am smile-less deep inside and not lifted up at all.  Better, by far, that I dally a while with you beside the dried goods and coffees for a human encounter.  We are dead a long time.  Life is for us to live or it will carry on without us.

If not now, then when?