I no longer want to train to be a waiter – my father does – he also wants to be a rigger… Wikepedia describes a rigger as: “A rigger is a person or company that specializes in the lifting and moving of extremely large or heavy objects, often with the assistance of a crane or derrick.” This is my father to a T – just without the crane or derrick…
My father is 94 – perhaps when I am 94 I will return to my ambitions of carrying ridiculous numbers of plates, packages – to try and move stuff from one place to another with the minimum number of journeys – there is definitely something genetic in this – I have watched my father do just this for decades … my neighbours often tease me when they see me staggering about with a massive plant pot twice the size of me …
…but not today…
Today I woke up with all the joys of Spring – but with an empty diary – a few weeks ago this would have led to a deep unease – but I must be moving towards enlightenment (!) – today I am perfectly chilled and accepting of this – so I have had a lovely day: pottering around the house, popping out town to get a few things, having a cuppa with Cristal in between her massages… but as the day has gone on I have found it more and more of an effort to move my body – or even my brain cells…
There is a very interesting experiment by Professor Baba Shiv from Stanford University in which he gets volunteers to remember a number – half the group have a 2 digit number and half the group have a 7 digit number to memorise. Then the volunteers are sent off individually across the university campus and asked to repeat the number to another researcher who will be waiting for them. As they make this journey, each volunteer is stopped by another researcher who thanks them for taking part in the study and offers them some refreshment – they can choose between some fruit salad or a piece of cake.
The reason this experiment has gained some notoriety is because of what happened when they examined the correlation between remembering more or fewer numbers and whether the volunteers chose fruit salad or cake. Those who had to remember a 7 digit number overwhelmingly choose cake whereas those with a two digit number had a definite preference for the fruit salad.
So why I am writing about riggers and chocolate cake and fruit salad – one answer to that would be that I am tired and my brain is all over the place – and there is a great deal of truth in this… but it is more than this…
What the Baba Shiv experiment showed was that even something as simple as remembering a longer number can increase our stress levels considerably – make our brain fuller…and when our brain is fuller we function less well – we have less capacity to make healthy choices – we feel less buoyant and more in need of comfort.
I had a lovely time when I was staying with my parents but I feel HUGELY responsible for their welfare and wellbeing – they have fabulous neighbours who have been amazing, and a wonderful woman who cleans for them – but apart from them – it pretty much boils down to me… and just like the 7 digit number – it may not consciously feel like a lot most of the time – but it is there – and it saps me…
So as the day has worn on I have realised that I am getting more and more tired … which just goes to show that I can still believe that miracles are possible – because if someone had e-mailed or rung and wanted an appointment today I would have put them in…but no one did…so something wiser than me kept my diary empty today – so this is just to say – thank you 🙂 much appreciated… I had the best time today – doing very little…
