Smelling Roses

If you’re someone who’s joined me on one of my many previous tangents, you’d be forgiven for thinking that I’m one of those perpetually ‘happy people’ whose glass is eternally half full.

I’m also aware that it may appear as though I’m determined to model everyone in my image and I’d forgive you for thinking that too.

The truth is, there are times, days, weeks even, when I’m as prone to rage and tears and frustration as any other being who has graced, is gracing, or will grace this earth.

Sometimes my response to the world is warranted and sometimes my reactions are so inexplicable that in a more rational moment I find them laughable; so much so that often they physically evoke laughter within me.

It’s an incontrovertible fact that there are phases in life of varying length that are infinitely harder than others.

It’s also worth noting that the spectre of adversity is far from absolute.

To be unreservedly honest, not so long ago there was a spell when I unwittingly saw everything through ever-so-slightly beige-tinted spectacles.

And it took a season or two for me to discover that this is much more exhausting than trying their rose-tinted counterparts on for size.

I understand feeling indifferent towards life can be entirely warranted.

But for me, I’d simply and unnecessarily fallen into the clutches of apathy.

Fortunately, the day dawned when I unconsciously decided my attitude wasn’t one my life deserved.

More importantly, I discerned that with so much hardship and hurt in the world, the last thing I wanted to be was an additional source of negativity.

There is of course a time and a place for such expression.

I admit too that I’m hardly an eternal source of sweetness and light.

Nevertheless, when it comes to writing, I consciously devote these moments to trying to lend a little optimism to just a few reader’s lives.

Growing older seems to have had something to do with my choosing to respond to life hopefully.

For me, part of it has been coming to understand who I am and which of my ‘wants’ are a priority, whilst simultaneously comprehending that life is unpredictable.

As of this morning, ‘not wanting too much’ has become one of my new favourite phrases and it encapsulates exactly that; the acceptance that you can’t ‘have it all’, not in the defeatist sense, but in the sense of appreciating what you do have.

It serves as a reminder to not see all that goes awry with your thoughts, plans and wants as a failure too.

How easy it is to concede to our omnipresent and unreliable narrator depends on your situation.

Nevertheless, in principle, it offers freedom.

Freedom and space to slowly foreground what matters to you.

Whilst some wants will be new, others will simply be newly illuminated.

Regardless, every single one counts.

The past year has perhaps been responsible for giving many of us greater clarity.

On the other hand, maybe it was just a catalyst and I would have realised all this eventually.

They say with age comes wisdom and as I wandered the fields earlier I encountered an epitaph that may prove it:

‘What is life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep and cows.
Take time to sit, contemplate and enjoy this view.’

Knowing how ephemeral life is only makes it more worthwhile to imbue the ordinary with meaning.

Attempting to see the best in our surroundings, if we can, isn’t futile.

It’s a way of embracing something that fundamentally makes no sense.

Life really does look better tinged with pink.

A Place for Pride

I love my job.

Really, I do.

Naturally, there are frustrations and elements of my work I’m not so keen on.

But that doesn’t detract from the fact that I’m privately proud of how I spend the majority of the hours in my week.

Knowing that I’m lucky to be able to say that saddens me sometimes.

I truly wish that everyone was as quietly content as I am.

Then again, perhaps there are plenty of people like me.

From countless conversations across the course of my relatively short lifetime, I’ve discovered I’m in good company when it comes to being unable to ‘blow my own trumpet’.

Those who shout the loudest have that curious ability to make themselves seem numerous, but I have the feeling we humble beings are the multitudinous majority.

The funny thing is, there’s nothing inherently wrong with feeling pride. It’s the quality of its expression that matters.

You can sense when someone is genuinely fulfilled. It possesses a potency far greater in power than that of a plethora of empty proclamations.

For me, it’s the privilege of reading, hearing and sharing people’s stories that consumes me with comfort. That and the fortune of being involved with something that’s a source of positivity and change.

Job descriptions and quotidian tasks don’t always attest to the appreciation we personally associate with our whiled away working days.

Indeed, I can’t be alone in occasionally having to remind myself of my motivations.

Nevertheless, they’re always whirring away at my core. Just as they do in so many others.

It’s this that leads me to interrogate ‘success’ as something prescriptive. As though there’s a paved path to follow that will inevitably lead you to the ‘top’ (wherever that is) and thus to satisfaction.

Of course, depending on who you are, this could well happen.

However, given that our relationship with ‘success’ is entirely relative, why ascribe to the pressure of ‘the process’.

It took me a while to realise that ‘education’ is not synonymous with ‘school’.

Education eases its way into our lives in myriad forms and much more can be learned through listening to people than by competing with them.

Gloria Steinem emphatically echoes this far more eloquently than I in My Life on the Road.

As the title implies, it turns out that Steinem too took some time to discover that whilst there may be a greater gulf between ‘the path’ and ‘the road’ than semantics suggests, taking the seldom trodden track often lends itself to learning worthwhile lessons.

Gracious gratitude grips her every word; warm whispers of pride caress her every paragraph.   

Ironic as it may be, sincerity seems to thrive in modest pride.

Some might say this rather contradicts my point.

Most would silently smile.

We’ve always known there’s no finer place for pride than in this peculiar paradox.

We’ve just rarely felt the need to tell you.

Reminiscing

Why do the first 100 pages of a book disappear in the blink of an eye and yet the next however many hundred pages always seem to go on forever?

Whether for better or worse, I’ve encountered this strange phenomenon for what feels like aeons.

Whilst I suspect there is probably a psychologically sophisticated answer, I ask more out of the desire to discern whether the sensation is shared.

I realise that reading is not for everyone and perhaps unlike many ardent bibliophiles I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with that.

Nevertheless, for those of us who find reading pervading our proverbial path, there’s nothing more wonderful than curling into a corner with our favourite companion.

I’ve grown to be increasingly envious of ‘real’ bookworms, like my sister, who picks up almost anything and tears through it in a matter of days. She has the rare and honed flair for reading at all times; with the television on, with the dog barking, whilst holding a conversation, in between baking brownies and so on.

Once upon a time, that was me too.

Now I find myself reading only a pinch of pages before gently falling into the clutches of sleep.

Still, those few hundred words mean just as much to me.

With reading possessing so much cultural currency, now it seems more important than ever to remember it doesn’t have to be performative.

The feeling of professing genuine passion for a tome and passing it onto another is second to none.

But we shouldn’t ever feel as though we have to read ‘this’ or ‘that’. And in an ideal world, there would be a ban on the phrase “I should read faster/slower/better/more.”

Anything that’s meant to be an escape deserves to be devoid of the word ‘should’. The whole point is that it’s a release from the world of chores.

In this case, it’s about simply reading and remembering why you enjoy reading.

And if you don’t read, it’s about pursuing whatever else it is that makes you happy.

Because the thing is, it’s the greatest privilege to be able to listen to people speaking sincerely about the excerpts of life that they love.

The infectious enthusiasm for reading emphatically confessed by Fi Glover, Jane Garvey and Marian Keyes during one particular episode of Fortunately is an exchange that not only seems apposite to mention here, but is one that will stay with me forever.

Amongst their many utterances were the following:

“Anyone who teaches a child to read, well what a gift that is.”

“You’re never alone when you can read, you will always have a friend.”

“It’s a unique relationship, between a book and a reader. It can’t be replicated. It’s utterly beautiful.”

I remember my Mum teaching me to read.

I dread to think how many nights a week she readily sat with four-year-old me, carefully placing keywords on laminated sheets sent home in my reading folder.

I’ve since learned of her apparently infinite patience on evenings where we’d repeatedly tackle the latest instalment of ‘Biff, Chip and Kipper’, on account of my infuriating tendency to only be content once I’d read every word without mistake.

I recall battling our way together through young adult ‘classics’ too, concealing our confusion with laughter as we found various novel forays oddly tedious, contrary to popular opinion.

My memory holds reels of footage of my Dad reading the Foxwood stories to my sisters and I every night as we went to bed, his varied voices bringing the characters and their tale to life in the twilight.

In hindsight, I find it funny that my Nan once read the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone to me and that I decided I didn’t like it.

She must have introduced me to it just a touch too early; little over a year later, that volume and those that followed took their place among my most prized possessions.

I can’t help but notice that if it wasn’t for all these authors putting pen to paper, I wouldn’t be able to tell half as many stories of my own.

Marian Keyes was right. If you’re susceptible to reading, it truly is “the greatest gift.”

And one that keeps on giving.