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.

Idleness, contemplation & the machine

When I draw, I feel I should be reading, when I read, I feel I should be cooking, when I cook, I feel I should be tidying up. We should do something productive all the time. If you are productive you are good, if you are not, you are a sloth, and you'll pay for the consequences with guilt and less real happiness. Because happiness comes from being productive. Do you sense that there is something wrong here? Who taught us all of this? And when? "Work ennobles" evokes some dark memories. Something has gone wrong, perhaps from the industrial revolution onwards. I am not sure. But we talk of ourselves as if we were machines, we talk about being wired up wrong, needing to reprogramme ourselves, change software, recharge our batteries. In this desperate need for productivity, we've also tried to suppress, eradicate or redefine a lot of feelings, emotions and nuances. Melancholy doesn't exist anymore, sadness has been replaced by depression, with its diseased, malfunctioning machine connotations, definitely something to eradicate. Because the only acceptable feeling is happiness. You must strive for happiness at all costs. But not just any happiness, only the real one, the one that comes from hard work and success. The happiness that comes from a walk on the beach is no good. And what happened to reverie, contemplation, boredom? The machine should never be bored and should never be idle. So, instead of daydreaming, we text, watch videos, play games, read and write on our social platforms. There is no boredom to prompt us to look deeper, there is no search for meaning. That would be idle, and might lead to melancholy. Perhaps, if we went for a stroll in the woods, sat on the beach staring at the sea, lied on the grass counting fluffy clouds, perhaps if we did all this, we would shatter into a thousand tiny pieces. Before this madness of man machine productivity, contemplation was seen as one of the most spiritual pursuits. Reverie is as important as work in a balanced life. Try to do something new today: do nothing. And see what happens. You might be surprised.