It is incontrovertible – when I brush my teeth I become borderline incontinent – some link between having my mouth open and my bladder – I say borderline because I do manage to get to the loo – but it is a dash – not helped by my habit of wandering round the house trying to do odd chores with my spare hand … whilst brushing my teeth …
What else shall I confess to while I’m here … I recently had to chuck my PVC apron in the washing machine as I realised that I was recoiling from wearing it, as the underside – that touches my clothes – had become more disgusting than the wipeable PVC side that catches all my spills 🙂
But despite all this, I have been experiencing increasingly happy times 🙂 With “Is that true?” like an irrepressible parrot in my brain, I have been questioning all sorts of thoughts and assumptions. The trick is to spot them – and pin them down!
I haven’t got much work at the moment, and instead of doing my usual – making the best of things – trick of telling myself that this is great, that I probably needed to slow down anyway, that I can do all those jobs I’ve been avoiding etc etc and becoming my own little Pollyanna … instead I was utterly ruthless …
…and discovered … according to the inside of my head … that this whole notion of two partners in a couple working full time has been born out of mad Thatcherite expectations of measuring one’s worth and success by clawing one’s way up a ladder of material aquisition – and is now cemented in our culture by the inflated level of house prices …
In saner times it was the norm for one partner to stay at home or work part-time so that the business of taking care of the house and garden, shopping, cooking etc could actually be done at a reasonable, enjoyable pace during the day – rather than dragged out of us – squeezed into a few hours at the end of a full working day… anyway so reasoned my brain … I found it quite convincing 🙂
And it brings me back to the wisdom of the great proponent of “Is it true?” – Byron Katie – she talks about embracing “being nobody special” and “doing the dishes” and, of course, she reduces our lives down to four basic units: “you sit, you stand, you walk, you lie horizontal” … And I find it very comforting that actually I don’t need to do much more than this …
My mind spent a lot of time last year telling me stories of how I was going to grow my business and get really good at marketing and make more money – and it was all tosh….. The more I tried to push, to control things – the more resources I used up – including money! I was very busy, but I had loads of outgoings – and – I probably saw about the same number of people, and helped them just as much as I do now – but made a lot more fuss and bother about making it happen – and that fuss and bother cost me money as well as time and energy and I ended up no richer – either in terms of money or job satisfaction – and my work life balance was way, way less good…
So as long as I keep questioning those stories in my head that say that my currently life is slow, aimless, self-indulgent … that I am a failure or my life is empty … I’m going to continue my current rather blissful existence of discovering I can live more simply and cheaply by taking things slower and enjoying my life – really savouring the delight of what I have – already – right here, right now – and by golly I’m having the best time 🙂
