A lovely summer afternoon - champagne, good food, great cakes and of course, outstanding cheesecake. The end of my birthday draws near and I feel absolutely replete. It was a good decision to spend the day with close friends. No big parties this year - just good friends and lots of good food. And now off for a short, well-earned birthday girl nap...
My early evening nap turned into an entire night's sleep and so there was no blog entry for yesterday. I guess I'll let myself off with a caution this time. The afternoon with my friends was delightful. Somehow it turned into a separate men and women day. The men, with bottles of beer, in the garden and the women, with plentiful supplies of cheesecake, in the living room. How strange. We don't usually divide in this way, but it turned out really well. I think the men connected with each other on a good level and didn't need to listen to our discussions about plastic surgery, end of life, corsets and soap operas. I have no idea what the men talked about, but it probably wasn't undergarments. Surprisingly, no one wanted to watch England vs Germany World Cup football, even though I generously offered. This turned out to be a good decision since the English lost decisively and without this information there was nothing to interfere with the celebratory mood in the house.
I've been busy thinking about next steps in my life. I am more than aware than ever that right now I have 'red light' body issues. I have been big before, but right now this seems harder to deal with than usual. I am also very hard on me and heap negative criticism on myself at the drop of a hat. It doesn't help in this moment to tell myself that I am beautiful, etc., because when I am in this space I don't really hear that voice very loudly. It's as if the positive body messages come from my conscious outer voice, the one I programme to be encouraging and uplifting and is desparately trying to convince the inner me to listen and, more importantly, believe what I am saying. The other voice, the inner negative one, is very loud and seems to be working overtime right now. It feels like a very deep unconscious voice that I am trying to wrestle control from. As I write this I recognise that it sounds as if I am at war with myself. Maybe that's one of the reasons that I keep gaining weight - to try and lay in supplies in preparation for the siege of battle. After all, I grew up with my mother telling me that it was good to carry extra weight in case you got sick, or in case of unknown, but terrifying, emergencies.
So, as a way of beginning to declare a ceasefire with my body and all those multiphrenic (i.e. having multiple identities pieced together from the multiplicity of mediated messages in our environment) voices in and outside my head I am doing more meditation and studying more about how to bring more compassion to myself. This feels like a good idea at the right time. The day of mindfulness meditation that Ralph bought me for my birthday is a step in this direction and a new book I got called 'The Compassionate Mind' are all good beginnings. Now all I have to do is read the book and follow any instructions.
I was talking with a friend this morning about the accumulation of awareness and understanding about my life. I am a great accumulator of trivia. I vacuum it up without even realising that I'm filling my dustbag of a mind with more information. I actually like doing this and the more information I have, the more secure I can fool myself into being, but the information and awareness on their own do me no good whatsoever. I have never been someone who can change because of facts. I need to have actions to put with all this intellect. All the history and factual evidence for why I am the way I am does nothing towards moving me in a direction of change. All it does is fill my head. There is nothing wrong with a head full of information and justification and history and reasons, but for me, there is nothing particularly helpful about it. OK, so I now know why I do what I do, but so what??? Can I change it, do I have the tools or spur to action to move things along??? This is why going and doing a workshop, a group, a day of meditation work well for me. It's the third piece of the jigsaw - the first is awareness, the second, understanding and the third piece is action. For me, having the first two pieces without the third is an incomplete puzzle. A pretty frustrating 'so what??'
The 61 year old Cynthia is awake today and ready to move things forward. Let's hope tomorrow's 61 year old Cynthia doesn't get too tired. It has been known to happen.
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