Chains, change & choices

I feel trapped. I feel so trapped and so sad to be trapped that for a while I felt I wouldn't be able to write my Monday post this week. Then I thought that perhaps I could write about being or feeling trapped, and see if I can do it while it hurts, while my vision is still blurred by pain and sorrow. I don't want to tell you why I feel/am trapped, I've learnt that, unfortunately, only a few pains go away by talking. The rest of them go away by change. And here is the point I am trying to analyse. Should you force change or wait for it? Please, please, obviously, think for yourself, do what feels right to you, I cannot advise you about what is trapping you and what course of action or inaction you should take. I just like to analyse things, take them apart and see how they work. I needed peace to lick my wounds, and wherever I turned I found a new bar to my cell, until I was completely surrounded by bars. I sat on the cold floor of my tiny cell. If I had been a cat my tail would have wagged furiously. I am not a cat, so I cried instead. But I cried loud, so loud, because I wanted something to break, the sky, the walls, my heart. I wanted change. Now. I wanted out of the cell. Now. But nothing did break and I calmed down, eventually, out of sheer exhaustion. Slowly, I started touching the bars of my cell, tried to see what they were made of. Most of these bars have been there for three, four years or longer. Some have been there forever. So why, all of a sudden, I didn't see any way out and all hope was gone? Because I'd had enough. I had allocated a certain amount of time for the endurance of these pains. But they were still there. It was not fair. Not fair. Life should be different, things should get better. Life should be fair. I deserve better. I wanted to gather up enough negative thoughts to create enough negative energy to break the bonds with rationality and cause change. Change would set me free. And because I can't see a rational, viable change in the near future, because I cannot see a change that I can bring about in a calm, mature way, I want to gather up enough frustration to explode into irrationality and break the chains. A lot of people do that, too many people do that. To end up in even smaller cells, hurting all their loved ones in the process. Caressing the walls of my cell, I crawled towards my headphones and listened to my favourite music and, slowly, I fell asleep. This morning, I woke up in my cell, with all the bars still in place, but a shift has occurred. A tiny shift. It was raining, I opened the window, the air felt fresh, and my rhododendron had nine pink flowers sparkling with dew. My husband had rescued it from a skip over ten years ago. And when it makes flowers, it does it for us, as a thank you for having saved its life. Miracles do happen.

On ageing

The time comes every ten years to renew one's passport, get new passport photos and end up comparing the now and then. As the changes in features (and hairstyle) are not massive, that gives me the rare opportunity to investigate a more philosophical aspect. After long examination, I've come to the conclusion that the eyes are different. Not so much in the way they look, but in the way they SEE. Are they wiser? Sadder? Not really, they have just seen more. More good things, more bad things, more indifferent things. As we continue our journey through life, we simply see more. Getting old, though, is something different. A lot of times it's a choice. A child learns to walk, he falls, gets up, and tries again. In life we fall, we get up, we walk, we fall, get up, walk, until one day some of us say, "I'm old now, I don't want to get up again". So they sit on the cold floor for ten, twenty, forty years. That, to me, is being old. The rest is just change, the scenery outside the window is always moving, the past is moving, our desires, sometimes, our interests, our jawlines, why not. Our faces. But new avenues open up in front of us, new possibilities, new adaptations, new discoveries, all in that blend of good, bad, indifferent. As long as we keep on getting up, we can keep on exploring.