Letting Go and Moving On...

Letting Go and Moving On.

A big subject for me just now as I prepare to leave the house of my dreams, and I Googled these words to see if there were any hints out there to help navigate this rather bumpy-feeling path. I hadn’t looked before because I thought it was only ‘the death of a loved one’ or ‘a painful breakup’, or ‘a business failure’, etc, which could in anyway validate my enquiry.... After all my current letting go and moving on is a choice I have made, one I am blessed beyond measure to even be in a position to make, and one where I have had about three years to work through the discomfort and regret before I move next week. And yet there is still this heavy, clunky, fear-full grief around, a 'something which just is’ as part of all our lives at times, and yet one I notice I feel I don’t want to have, or maybe even ‘shouldn’t have’; being a teacher and mentor of releasing and relieving uncomfortable emotions. And so, because I am ever learning about my trade (and I have to get on with the packing) I am pondering this ‘clunky feeling’.

It seems most words are written for those who actually have no choice in the matter of letting go and moving on; it’s more ‘ripped asunder with having no idea where to go next’, and my heart bleeds for them. No, for me I am standing on the edge of a precipice which I walked up to all on my own. But it’s still as scary as hell - ‘what ifs’ filling my mind like white noise, preventing clear and rational thought.

I remind myself that we live in a ‘mind’ world - change your mind, think positive, tell yourself it’ll be ok, lots of good things will happen, worse things happen at sea, you’ll be fine, you’re doing great, don’t worry so much..... But our minds live in our bodies and our bodies is where we feel. My body is used to certain items and how they feel, how they work - like the sofa, the washing machine, the lawn-mower, and the background sounds, and the way the light enters a room. New ones will take getting used to... And these feelings are unconditionally valid to our bodies, even if our minds like to mock at their seeming selfishness. Just now I feel trepidation as butterflies in my stomach. I feel sadness as an ache in my heart. And I am simply using my mind to relate to you the feelings I have in my body. 

I know that seems a separation - me and my body - but we’re a team, a ‘one-of-parts’, a relationship; each bringing different things to the party that is Me. And the mind does not know it all, it really doesn’t. My body did all the experiencing, and which it well remembers, and it wants to warn me of and protect me from the unpleasant experiences, and to care for me and its part of me. It doesn’t want to experience more of the ‘making a(nother) big mistake’ stuff, or the ‘stress from trying to do everything solo’, or the ‘exhaustion from not taking regular rests’.

My body has moved house too many times to even count. And pretty well everyone of the moves were traumatic in reason and happening. So my body is resisting to the last. Calling out for reassurance. Reaching out to know it’s not alone. Checking this isn’t the same as all the others....

This house has been the first home I feel where I have felt safe. This house was where I thought I’d be forever. I saw this house in my mind’s eye in 1982. This house was the culmination of 28 years’ dreaming. And it was an out-and-out miracle when it came to me in 2010. So leaving it finds my mind being all grown up and my body being about three years old.  And my mind wants to shut my body up. But I also know this can have detrimental effects, if not now, later on down the line. 

So I am asking my body how it feels. What does it need? It wants to know it's being listened to. Nurtured and appreciated, not just used. And to be trusted to manage, not doubted. Mostly it needs to be acknowledged; to have the feelings felt, even the ‘I have no idea what I am feeling’ feelings. 

Given that there have been a lot of horrible feelings associated with ‘letting go and moving on’ for me, just maybe the ‘I’m not sure what I am feeling’ feeling is because it isn’t the same feeling as before. Just maybe I am doing this thing better than I ever expected. It just feels wrong because it is unfamiliar... I ‘should’ (ha!), in my role as Alexander Technique teacher, know that one because when we let go of familiar-but-unhelpful movement and life-reaction patterns the new seems all wrong. We need our AT teacher to not only reveal new ways of being to us, but to reassure us that all is going well, because relying on and needing our old sensory feedback can pull us straight back where we were before. I notice as I sit with this that something in me is expecting certain feelings - shame, guilt, embarrassment, resentment, anger, terror, self-damning, contraction, stiffness - but I’m not feeling them, and it’s weird. But it’s also pretty cool!

I’ve been able to do a lot more inner work here in this amazing Tree House; its been possibly the best teacher of my whole life. ‘TH’ taught me in to it, taught me during my stay here, and has taught me out of it too.  And held me safe during all of it. I am incredibly blessed. But, as the saying goes: ‘Ships are safe in harbour, but that’s not what ships are for’, and ‘TH’ said this to me about two years ago, and despite blocking my ears for ages before hearing, and then going through all those emotions a few lines back, I eventually listened, and now here I am, surrounded by boxes, change-of-address cards, and a sense of ok-ness I need to ok.

This ship-of-me will miss this beautiful ‘harbour’ very, very much. This me-ship is not gung-ho at all - really very timid - but will head out to ‘see’ anyway... 

No, I didn’t need others' words for letting go and moving on, however lovely they are; I just needed to hear my own. Listen to your own body’s words too? They are for you, by you, best for you.

What are you saying to your self?

I am moving home - soon. I sold very quickly 6 months ago, it fell through, new buyers were found, and now 9 weeks on, still no exchange. The thing which has me uncomfortable and squashed inside myself is the fact that I don’t seem to be ‘getting on with it’ - ‘it’ being everything which needs doing. Which is? Sorting, packing, clearing, tidying. Basically I think I should be sitting here totally ready to move out in half-an-hour’s time, and because I am not, I feel bad... Really bad.... 

This was/is creating some inner stress (!) and with my life’s work of learning and teaching awareness of responses to stimuli and being able to respond differently to any long-etched pattern*, I have been looking to see what I could do, or rather not do. 

How could I not do the not starting of the packing? Yes, that's right, how could I not do the not starting of the packing? Hmm. Just start it then? Yes, but it’s not happening though.... Why? 

Asking the question more firmly of myself and the ether this morning, I was gently moving around the house tidying and sorting (yes) whilst pondering my not getting on with just that..... (!) And my eye fell on two little laminated cards I make for students from time to time. Thinking of two students I would give these to tomorrow, something said, ‘Give it to yourself, too?’. And, despite being a quotation I use a lot in my work, I saw the card and its words more clearly for myself again.

Of course!! Duh! There it is, was, has been, yet again; the old inner words.... I said them out loud, with full inflection:

‘You ought to be packing!’

‘You’ll never be ready at this rate!’

‘If I were you I’d be all ready by now.’

What are you doing all day if not getting ready?’

‘Why don’t you just do what you’re told?’

‘Everyone else would be ready by now.’

‘Honestly, it’s shocking how you’re not way more prepared by now!’

‘Oh for heaven’s sake, no wonder you’re stressed because you’re not...’

‘I don’t know’ - with a lot of eye rolling...

‘You’ve So Much Stuff! It’s dreadful!’

'It's going be a nightmare, and all your own fault!'

‘Oh dear....’

‘You’re just no good at this, are you?’

‘It’s all going to go badly if you don’t.....’

Ha! There you are! The words which set up my belief that ‘I can’t do this thing’. Which, despite finding me actually doing it, still has me feeling bad as if I'm not. There’s the stress! There’s the ‘advice’ I’d be well advised to silence! Not ignore, for that’s the trouble; doing that is like living with negative white noise, noise my mind thinks it’s not listening to, but it is. As neuro-science now describes to us, we experience every single thing in every single moment of our life, our brain being the thing which works tirelessly to cut out what we don’t need in order that we don’t go crazy with over stimulation. But I can join in with this volume control with my own choice, and I do not want to hear this old stuff any more.

So, how to silence the words? Hear them. Consciously. Face them. Voice them out loud to myself. Feel how it feels to be talked to like that. Ask them to cease their unsupportive and bullying content. Then thank them for their concern and protection. And ask them to leave. 

I call them my ‘shoulder parrots’ - only their numbers often create the need for a long yoke on which to spread out either side of me - and they need to be asked, or even made, to fly, to go; they are old words heard and not necessarily relevant now. 

I know I have to clear and pack. I’ve moved many, many times. And I know it’s hard not having a date yet up to which to work out timings. But, as realised this morning, I am clearing and packing - and have been for weeks - it’s just that in my young life it seemed whatever I did was wrong - that I was wrong - so the old voices are yabbering away, pulling me down into doubt and self-unkindness...

Thanks voices, thanks awareness, thanks little card, thanks Lisa M Hayes; yes, being careful about what I am saying to myself matters, because I was, and am, listening!! 

What are you saying to yourself which, heard and silenced, could make a difference to your day? Say them out loud. Hear them from the outside. Hear how un-true they are. And, only after that, what could you say to your self instead? My words, because they’re true, are, ‘You’re doing just fine. One foot gently in front of the other and it will get done, Annie.’

(*Alexander Technique)

The ever-changing path of life....labyrinth style...

In June 2014 a group of friends and I put a classical "Chartres' labyrinth on the land here at Tree House. I then put the information about it on the World Labyrinth Locator webpage. And this morning, just as I am about to move from Tree House, there was a message on my answerphone from someone wanting to come and visit it... How typical of life! The first person ever to ask through this site, and it's covered in weed and not going to be here much longer!

So, as it was sunny this evening, I walked the labyrinth. I say 'walked it', for I - more correctly - gingerly stepped around in the grass and weeds, walking it more from memory than from seeing the path before me....

....which is so like life, isn't it?

I found a stone sitting in the middle of the path, nowhere near a space of a missed stone, so I picked it up, and found myself aware of how it will be nice to take this stone with me to the next house; a reminder of how a plan can come to fruition, and often in the most unlikely of times... To build a labyrinth had been a long, even if not understood, dream of mine, and in 2014, here at Tree House, it happened. So, take this stone and remember never to give up on dreams....

And then each step again gave me reassurance about life: in one part of the labyrinth the path was almost obliterated by weeds and grass - only my toes cautiously feeling out the track giving me any hint as to whether I was to turn 180 degrees on a switchback or to keep moving forwards...

Another part was exactly as I would wish the whole labyrinth to be; stones nestling lightly and visibly amongst smooth, low-growing moss - easy to see where to walk, and soft underfoot...

Then, almost immediately, there was the path, but with the early growth of fierce nettles beginning to fill it... And bramble strands ready to catch in my feet and trip me up....

A little further on the track was visible, but I had to step over large clumps of grass - grass which didn't want to depress under my step, instead to try and turn my ankle if I stood on them... Demanding, disempowering....

And then centre circle, the smooth egg-shaped stone still visible under the new spring growth, but this time of young foxgloves promising an abundance of tall, striking spikes of purple within only a few weeks. Feeding-stations of a thousand bumble bees and other creatures. That the low young plants almost totally obliterated the small white stones placed there by many a labyrinth walker over the last 3 years didn't seem to matter; the messages on them had now vanished - soaked into the soil for ever - leaving their love to be un-removable by anyone in the future. Again, maybe I'll take one or two of these with me to honour and remember all those wonderful people who came to help realise the dream.

So, even 'messy and unkempt' - grassed over, nettles and brambles thrusting forth - the labyrinth still gave me its gift, reminding me of the path of life; sometimes smooth, sometimes easy, sometimes clear. And sometimes rugged, demanding, invisible - only trust taking me forward. Maybe this is the best labyrinth to walk - real, honest, and life-like.

The Simple Piece of Music

The young woman walked quietly towards the piano - something tentative in her step, but also something deeply respectful rather than fearful in her movement. She took her seat on the stool, rested her hands in her lap and her eyes on the keyboard. Then her hands rose like two delicate moths and alighted on the keys for a moment before beginning to play. 

The piece was gentle, not of many notes, and had a dreamy feel to it - like smoke wisps rising and evaporating in autumn air. Her fingers moved softly over the keys, everything about the young woman seeming to be involved only in the wonder of facilitating sound from the wood, steel, felt, and ivory; a conversation amongst and a communion with them all. Anyone present was simply being asked to be a witness to the composer’s message, the piano-maker’s skill, and the wonder of hearing music.

A stillness fell in the room whilst she played; the simplicity of her playing seeming to offer nothing but the gift of a space for personal images and discoveries in the minds of those listening.

It was not a long piece - just two pages long - and it seemed to come to an end as quickly as it had begun. There was silence while, her foot on the sustaining pedal allowing the last sound to die away, her soft hands floating on the air above the keys.

A murmur of appreciation went round the room and a light applause. 

“You’re very good!” exclaimed one of the guests.

“Yes! You should make a recording!’ cried another.

A quiet mumble could also be heard... 

“Well, it was such a simple piece. She’s not that good - she even needed the music!”

“I know - bless her" came a reply. “She’s no idea how good good really is....”

The young woman stood up, having heard all the comments. She turned to the people present, winding her hands around each other in shyness as she bowed her head in acknowledgement of those listening.

“I’m not sure what you mean about good and not very good,” she said softy. “I love this piece of music very much and I wanted to share it with you to see if you liked it too. There are simple pieces, like this one, but which can still touch deeply - and simple is especially welcoming those for whom this type of music is unfamiliar. Then there are long and complicated pieces which need way more skill than my simple piece, but that I can’t play these is not because I am not good, or that I am bad. I just do not have the talent gifted to those who, even from the start, play at a level I would never reach even with years and years of study. My skills lie in a different arena to those of the talented pianists whose days are full of practise and performance, so the great big pieces are not for me to play. I enjoy playing music I can play, and I love this piece. I hoped you would hear only the sounds and not see me playing, because it’s not about me, it’s about the music. Please, the only thing I would like to know is whether the piece I played touched you, and if you would like more?”

The guests were silent - some smiling in appreciation of her brave honesty, some rather open-mouthed, but there was a poignant stillness in the room.

After a short silence someone spoke.

“I was touched, touched by your very presence at the piano...”

Then another, “I was touched too; the music calmed and soothed me.”

“And me - you took me to a woodland of my childhood, and I felt a tear in my eye at the end.”

One of those who had mumbled the judgement then spoke, somewhat hesitantly, as if weighing up each word...
“Thank you. Thank you for reminding me that music doesn’t really have anything to do with an impressive technique... Playing huge concerti might need all that, but music itself doesn’t. And that being touched doesn’t have anything to do with speed, agility, strength, volume, and certainly nothing to do with virtuosic gymnastics... It has to do with heart... In both the player and listener. With letting the composer’s voice be heard, whether their messages are short or long - I see now we need more of this ‘musical Haiku’, not ever more notes..... And about the listener’s mind being freed - even just for an instant - in the space afforded by the player.... You’ve helped me remember that each and every note I hear is a blessing; that if I knew I was to go deaf tonight, I would know beyond doubt that the notes you were playing were the most beautiful in the world. And that when I am in judgement of a player’s supposed ability, I miss the very reason they play; to reveal magic through music. To move me. To give a moment’s transcendence out of the melee of my life. And to offer me the opportunity to be touched - which I was. Deeply. Please, I would love to hear you play again - that piece, or another - so I might hear with fresh ears, without the stale habit of my judgements.”

The room was so silent the woman felt a little overcome. But she smiled and turned back to sit at the keyboard and play again.

“I don’t know anything else very well”, she said. “I’ll play this one again.”

As her fingers flowed over the keys, the room felt so different. The sound, reaching empty ears - ears hearing as if for the first time - seeming to have more space than ever to mix and meld, meet and ignite, play and create within each person....

At the end there was just a silence, one of awe and deep gratitude,. Then one voice, that of the guest who had initially grumbled, spoke softly...

“Thank you. Tonight I discovered how to truly listen”, was all he said. And all anyone in the room needed to hear.

To wait, or not to wait. That is the question... (8 minutes read)

I have been thinking a lot recently about a colleague's beautiful, wise, and helpful blog post* which includes considerations on 'waiting'. As in, Bruce rarely waits any more. He doesn't wait in line at the post office, or for news, or for a waiter to come take his order. Intriguing eh? A life without waiting? What does he do in that post office queue then? He stands in line. He moves forward a little. He stands. He moves forward. He greets the cashier and makes his requests, purchases them, and moves away from the counter to the door.... That way there is no waiting. Unless, as I see it, he tries to be further on into the intention than he actually is - both pushing and contracting in tension to be somewhere other than where he is right now. Falling into expectation and assumption.

And this fascinates me - an inveterate 'bad at waiting person'. A person currently 'waiting' for a house-buyer, 'waiting' to move, 'waiting' to start a new chapter in life, and not finding it easy.

Many years ago now, in the days leading up to the births of each of my children, I was a pretty hopeless case; not wanting to be left on my own in case.... Clutching my PhD in 'Waiting', I did nothing else so as to be ultra ready. (What, pray, is 'ultra ready'? We can be ready, or not ready, but not more than ready.) I was a bag of nerves - alert for any sign of labour. And then, when it happened - with my son in a rapid hour and a quarter - I was fine. Cool as a cucumber (or as cool as a cucumber can be in childbirth) and in the flow. But the days before? The not knowing when it would be? Hopeless.

This stress-from-waiting has tickled my curiosity many times in my life. And when Bruce wrote his piece, and spoke of its content in courses, I was drawn to listen deeply. How can I not wait, but instead just 'live until'? How can I just do what I am doing, or rest in the middle of doings, without the 'waiting flavouring'?

I considered this long and hard, but there was no substitution for discovering for how I was 'flavouring' the moments until until they felt like I was lost in waiting. For me, my 'flavouring' includes holding my breath (more usefully to know, not breathing out), a 'heightened' sense of awareness - aka, everything in me comes up to the top height all around my chest and head, and I'm not really aware at all; I am actually in fear, lost in my mind's 'what ifs'. My legs are tight and or jiggling -  full of 'be ready to move suddenly' - and my hands slightly clenched. I am not balanced over my feet, or over my sit-bones on a chair; I am living about 2 feet in front of my chest. Oh, and we won't mention my tongue and jaw - tight in readiness for a million 'buts' and 'what ifs'. Barely noticeable, but I have caught the tensions many a time and 'stalked' them to discover their deeper nuances. It's become ever clearer to me that I 'do' a heck of a lot as I 'wait', and whilst doing and waiting seem to be complete opposites, it's becoming ever clearer to me that they are secret and dodgy bedfellows.

Now understanding the traps of 'attachment', my 'flavourings' are no longer such a big reaction and daily I am glad of the work I do, because I can't imagine how I would be without it, but some of them are still there. I look for them; weeding them out from the melee of 'I'm stressed' at times of what might be called 'waiting'. Right now, in the 'waiting' to find another buyer for my home, I can talk about it, justify the slowness of the process, understand it, and act on some of the preparations for moving home, but the real change takes place when I stop doing what it is I do which constitutes me sensing that I am in waiting mode... What I constantly find I'm doing in most cases is trying to be cool, calm, and collected. So, next self-question is, what am I doing with myself when I am trying to be calm? I find I repress myself - squeeze, tighten, hold, compress, restrict, forbid myself - into the sort of stillness I long ago perceived to to be 'cool, calm and collected'. The ability to repress was a quality much lauded during my upbringing, but that's not the stillness I am after; it's fake. And there are too many vestiges of it still around.  In Alexander work we talk about 'inhibiting ones habitual way of reacting', and although this inhibition isn't suppression, instead the absence of the habit happening at all, it feels to me now that even that way might not necessarily be real each time; it isn't allowing for characteristic differences. I am looking for the space in between suppression and nothing; the being at peace with the way I am within the process I am in.

It's very important for me to discover with my students what their 'shoulds' are.... How do they want to be vs how they think they ought to be. And to discover that when the how they actually are is given permission and witnessed, they often find that their way is perfectly fine. So, what if my 'un-cool' way of un-supressed fidgety waiting isn't bad at all? What if it's just my way? What if some wait by simply being still where they are until.... And some wait by jiggling about? What if there isn't a right or wrong way, but only the way which most fits each person's authentic way of being? Today. Different - maybe - to tomorrow's way. And that when we say 'yes' to this, there is no friction, no suppression, no 'other than who I am', and so we feel fine all round.

When I rode polo ponies there were many pony-characters on the yard. All were fast on the pitch, but some were placid and quiet on exercise or on the yard. They stood still as I opened a gate, or we awaited our turn to come back onto the yard. But some were jigglers; they danced and pranced their way through exercise - never walking, instead jogging, skirting numerous invisible scary things along the way, nipping through gates ahead of everyone, and clip-clopping their hooves on the concrete in the yard as, tied to the ring on the wall, they swivelled back and forth, waiting (not) to be tacked up and un-tacked before and after the ride. That was just what they did. That was their character. And our job was to respond to them appropriately. Novice riders didn't ride them. You got a quiet ride if you felt a bit poorly. Mostly the head-groom rode the jiggly ones as he loved being jiggled. But no one said they were 'bad' horses. And nor were the horses who stood still and waited 'good'. They were just seen as different characters.

So, my students and I make discoveries around this: what is it they do when they are waiting for something? Some say they try to be quiet and just trust, but it's hell. Some say they jiggle about and they 'shouldn't'. And we play with just allowing what they do to be experienced consciously and find it's ok..... Ah, so letting what wants to happen happen stops the sense of waiting?

And the answer, I have found, is 'yes. Being able to not go into melt-down in the post-office queue is good. As is the less-likely reaction of falling to the ground asleep and tripping up the person behind you in the queue. But in the space between these are all sorts of responses; some standing, until moving, until more standing, until the transaction accomplished. Some jiggling about, dancing, weaving, swaying, filling the 'time until' with movement - just plain moving because they are movers.

What do you do? What is it you do which lets you know you are 'waiting'. Because something does let you know. Without this doing-of-something, you are just there, standing in line, or living until moving house day, or sitting in  a chair until a waiter asks you what you want. And we know this because when happy during the time we cease to call it waiting. When talking with a friend, even on the ubiquitous cell phone, or with lots of time, we don't call it 'waiting'.

So, waiting is a state of mind and the response to the mind lies in the body where it is interpreted. Waiting is not an event in itself. Go play with this? Maybe take another look at the image at the top of this post whilst noticing what happens inside you. See what you come up with? You can't be wrong. Let's make some new discoveries, and maybe feel lighter towards ourselves because of it? When do you wait? Where within yourself do you 'do waiting'? And most importantly of all, HOW do you 'do waiting' - how are you being in yourself which creates the act of waiting? Can you soften that into something different? I'm playing with this. Join me?

* https://peacefulbodyschool.com/2016/12/05/from-within-and-all-around/


PS Writing a piece on not waiting seems to be impossible to do without using the words 'wait' and 'waiting' over and over and over... How many times are they here in this piece?!

Being Enough - and Snowflakes. (6' read)

How do we do this ‘I am enough’ stuff which flies across our Facebook and Twitter feeds? What does it mean? Sounds good, doesn’t it? To be enough? To not be found wanting all the time? To chase those sibling monsters ‘NE’ (not enough) and ‘NGE’ (Not Good Enough) out of the room? 

But to ‘be enough’ surely suggests we don’t have to bother, or keep trying at anything? To do what it takes to achieve mastery? And I want to - don’t you? To feel that sense of purpose and success. At something, anything.... Making cakes, managing a family’s frantic timetable, getting that doctorate, playing the piano, or chess, knowing how to update your website, to paint, or groom cats.... But, contrary to our hidden beliefs, there is no one dream better than another for giving a human being a sense of achievement - it’s just that society tells you there is an importance hierarchy: ignore it - each of us has something we want to do well.  So, where does ‘I am enough’ fit into all the above? Into life itself?

For far too long, being enough has been to do with ‘doing enough’ (i.e, more. Oh, and more. Then more...) and ‘doing it better than everyone else’. But being enough is just that - being enough. And there’s one simple way of putting this: if you’re here on planet earth, alive and kicking, you are enough. YOU are enough, because there can only ever be one you, one me. So there is no one for you to be held against as comparison. Unless you are Dolly the cloned sheep, you are it in the enough department. As I am enough. I am enough Annie. You are enough ..................... (insert your name here.). How can you be more than you are? You can do more, learn more, get more - gain more certificates, if certificates are your thing, or a faster car, if cars are your thing, play longer piano pieces, if longer pieces fire your rocket, paint bigger canvasses if big canvasses float your boat, but you need not, and plain cannot, become more than you already are.

But what if you feel utterly useless? The worst creature ever to arrive on a planet - any planet? A total failure? Then to be told you can’t become more than you are is kinda harsh, and also very worrying! What to do? Where can you grow into? How can you change the feelings inside of not good enough if right in there is all there is ever going to be of you? .......

This is how - by coming to terms with the fact that you are enough where you are right now. Not deciding to believe it, but coming to terms with what actually is: enough is in the being ...................... (again, your name). A being, as you, who does contain extraordinary potential to achieve mastery in things of your choice, but a being who knows it is not what you experience which makes you you, but that you are you, and quite enough as you, way before you begin any experiencing. An enough you experiencing any number of things to any level of expertise you want - bearing in mind ‘expertise’ is subjective; to one it is medals, to another it is pure enjoyment, to some it is both. And each desire is as equal as the other. Each is quite satisfactory and the experiencing of all things will do nicely; each is your experience, not another’s expectation.  

When a friend sees you across the street and calls out and waves, they are not waving as they think, ‘Oh my, look at .............(you). So lacking. So not enough. So wanting’, any more that you think the same of her when you wave back. (Are you?) You might think her coat isn’t the one you would choose, but does that make you think she is less than enough? No, she’s enough-in-a-weird-coat. The only person who thinks you are not enough is you. (If anyone else truly does, sack them from your life immediately; they don’t get life at all.) Your not-enough-ness has crept in the back door because all the messages of family, school, college, employment, and mostly the media suggest you should be somewhere other than where you are right now, and someone other that who you are. You know the sort of thing: wear this, weigh that, look like this, achieve that.... Ya da ya da ya da ya-awn... Boring! Yet, advertising companies don’t pay and charge a squillion dollars per second for nothing; they pay for the skill to hook you in in a nanosecond, even when you’re not listening. And they are frighteningly successful, unless we poke our tongues out at them whilst saying, very firmly, 'Not listening! Not watching! It’s all a game of lies!' 

You are you. When someone hears your name they imagine you, not the person who lives next door to you. You. And if they see you with judgement, it’s their judgement, a mere subconscious habit because we live in a world which functions on judgements. (Note the popularity of shows like X Factor with all the suspense-music judging-moments. Where everyone thinks they know a ‘star’, and yet their ‘star’ isn’t the same as that of the person next door.) So, the only thought on seeing yourself in the mirror needs to be, 'Wow. That’s me. ME! A me I can call my very own!'   You’re a human being who is like a snowflake - all snowflakes are snowflakes, but each is unique. And whilst we might all express a preference for this pattern over that pattern (and isn’t that great; how dull if we all liked the same things!) preferring a certain snowflake doesn’t mean the one next to it is not enough? I’ve not met anyone who judges snowflakes as harshly as they judge people, so snowflakes have much to teach us. 

Thank God you sound different to anyone else. Thank God you look different to everyone else. Thank God you do different things, or the same things differently. Without that you would completely disappear - the very thing of which we are deep-down most afraid. Becoming white noise within white noise, beige on beige, you wouldn’t show up at all and the world would pass you by completely. Yet the already enough you tries to disappear in your not-enough-ed-ness, in your ‘I am failing to be the someone else who I deem is more enough then me’. 

It’s your very differences which make you ‘enough’. I’m enough. You’re enough. We’re here, solid, heavy-enough-not-to-fly-off-the-earth beings. When we bump into someone, we feel the bump of enoughness meeting enoughness.  If you were a shadow, full of holes, nothing but see-through-mist, maybe you would need ‘inking in’.... But you’re not. You are Here. Present. You arrvied. You have a birth-day. You are enough. And thank you for being you.

The Crazies.....

This is how it’s been going for me recently....

Messily. Stressily. Agitatedly. Exhaustingly. I-don’t-want-to-feel-this-way-edly.

Moving home; the second highest stress-inducer there is after bereavement, which it kind of is too. For me, in this case, anyway. And it’s Christmas time, too.

Why? Why is it feeling so tough? How am I being to experience this as 'tough'? That’s what I have been asking recently. ‘Stalking myself’ to see how I react to this whole moving thing. Watching lightly - corner-of-the-eye stuff, like watching butterflies, to see what it is I do to move house. 

The obvious is obvious: clearing stuff out - going through things to see if they warrant the moving and possible storage charge. That’s a tricky one in itself; do times of my life, and the photos, books, letters, crockery, clothes thereof have to prove themselves to me in order to stay? Does half my life have to be worthy of staying? Who says? It’s all worthy; it’s me! So, I recently decided to change my approach to the sorting; if I still like it it stays, if not, it goes. Yes, a sort of version of all the current books on Japanese and Danish clutter-clearing, but softer, more honouring of the life they have been attached to - mine. 

There seems such guilt around ‘having too much’, and yet out we all go, buying more much. I’ve been stepping into more gratitude and less guilt. More poignant tenderness than shame. More smiles than derisive laughter. (Well, some of the hair-do’s in the photos....!) Guilt helps no one. My take is that if I have these things, and have had, and have, the life I have, Aren’t I Lucky! 

So, lifting the guilt about, the resistance to, and the heavy burden of, revealed a path through and out of the fatigue.

Then came dealing with the fumbling, stumbling, ‘I’m-surely-going-mad’ness. And more crunching and crushing ‘I hope no one can see this’ness; I’m meant to be able to handle this; I teach how to handle things with more ease. I’ve taught it for 35 years, for goodness’ sake..... What is WRONG with me...???’ (Hark, the Herald Judgements Sing...!) I must have a serious illness... (Good Inner Panic-ers Rejoice...! It is the festive season after all.)

The frantic reasoning and management was clearly not working. What could I do? 

But, no, not that one. I’m not listening to that one. I CAN’T do that one; there is So Much To Do... 

But I did. I stopped. Only for a moment. But a real stop. Not an ‘I’m thinking about stopping’, whilst still careening along at 100mph. Not an emergency stop with screaming tyres and burning rubber, foot still firmly planted on the gas. And not a total collapse - a soggy sag, a flumph on the sofa, a despondent-give-up. Neither is a stop. Those are battle or victim. I know there is a place in between, I know there is. I just have to find my way there...

The place, being made by the very act of stopping, appeared the moment I stopped. Did I fix, hold, constrain, and resist my self? No. All I did was become very present to what I was doing. Not what I should be doing. Just what I was doing. Observing. Witnessing. Watching without judgement. That last bit is key; if I judged what I saw, I would immediately try to change it into a perceived ‘should’. I would interpret instead of observe. I would get caught up in the future should and lose the present now. 

So, what did I see? This is what I saw in the simple act of making myself a cup of coffee....

I click on the kettle whilst looking up at the mugs, and whilst moving towards the fridge for the milk. All at once... I know I can’t do them all at once, for they are one-at-a-time actions. They don’t need to be done all at once, but, of course, if I do them all at once I will gain more time for ‘it’, wont I? Nope. I wont. And what is this ‘it’ anyway? In my case it’s ‘selling and buying a house’. And, no, doing three things at once wont buy and sell a house any quicker or more smoothly. That’s as if I think I can gain life-time by playing all the notes of a symphony at the same time... The result is no music, just an ear-splitting crash! Oh, blessss....!!

Actually, how sweet something in me thinks that will idea work! Maybe a product of the ubiquitous early-years’ experiences of, ‘Hurry UP! We’ve to be somewhere important, and you’re holding us up!’, because the adult ‘important’ wasn’t important to me as a child; that puddle was... 

Where was I with that puddle? Content and un-rushed as I was? I was there. Present. Nowhere else. The puddle and me. Us, as one. Back to my coffee-making, where was I with the kettle? I was with the mug. Where was I with the mug? With the fridge. Was I with the fridge? No, I was with the squirty-cream inside the door. (It's an Annie thing.) Was I with the cream? No, I was with the chocolate dust I like on top and which lives on the shelf across the kitchen. Was I with the chocolate dust? No, I was with my laptop in my bedroom. Was I with my laptop - bearing in mind I’m actually still at the kettle....  No,  I was with my cousin in Wiltshire whose email I was going to reply to when I got downstairs.... Only I already ‘was’ downstairs, except I wasn’t; I was upstairs attempting to jab my finger at the kettle-switch and thinking I had an incurable disease because this simple task seemed beyond my capabilities.... And I was wondering why I felt even just clicking on a kettle 'had' to include all the things I wanted to lose - Messy. Stressy. Agitation. Exhaustion. I-don’t-want-to-feel-this-way-ness.

It gets to us all this thing; this busy-ness of not being present. I mean, how can being present to the kettle switch help me move house? How can watching my hand reach up to the chocolate dust in its old sugar-shaker on the shelf release me from the mind-twisting worry of whether it’s all going ok in my purchaser’s mind? How can observing my hand on the cupboard handle still my inner-judges and quieten their endless yabbering of, ‘You’re Not Doing Enough!’...?

And yet it does all these things. As I come to them all with every part of me I feel a release. I feel stillness within me. Not one I create, but the one that is there all the time. I sense the inner football crowd turning down the volume. Right there, softly, my fore-finger-tip alights on the kettle switch; its ease of depression happening with a surprisingly sensual click. My hand can both see and sense the brushed steel, squared-edged, cupboard handle. How good it feels in my palm and fingers. My eyes actually see the old glass sugar-shaker with its silver top, and even in a nanosecond takes in its story - the wonder of where it has been on its own journey, both with me and before I found it in a charity-shop 8 years ago...  As I pick it up I feel the coolness of the glass, and its hexagonal shape in my palm, the weight of it, it’s steady real-ness. Then the fridge, and the gratitude which simply self-ignites as I see its wonderful contents, and witness its continuously willing job of keeping food safe for my nourishment... 

I didn’t think or look for these things, I found them within the action. And the funny thing? I didn’t sense a stopping; I sensed movement. I felt in flow. I felt easy. I felt I was actually getting somewhere for the first time in days. Through stopping, I had stopped stopping myself.  

In a second things really did change into something quite different, and all by simply witnessing where I was now, and without judgement. 

I offer you your own curiosity. I invite you to get inquisitive. Discover how you are being whilst you do what you are doing. (Read that one again, slowly. 😊 ) Christmas is a pretty crazy time for most of us. Maybe a word or two of this can support you too. Or not. Both are really ok.

As I sense the laptop keys under my fingertips, gratitude for modern technology floods my body. The chair is beneath me. The coffee is coldly still delicious. The soft dog curled up beside me. The house sale? Oh, that. Well, it’s not here now; it’s for later, when I will consciously choose the time to be present to just that matter, and not down the road in my mind with the Christmas list....

Lots of love, and Happy Crimbo!