Calm descending...

Some scarves I knit!

I sit and knit and sit and knit. I am happy and feel content in a strangely novel manner. What can this all mean? I have not done much differently to usual. I have not begun to meditate or take long, pointless nature walks or even changed my way of looking at the cold, grey weather outside my windows and yet, I am fine. I love this new space and am just happy that I have reached a level of awareness that allows me to notice these things.

Right at this moment I am sitting in a dimly lit room, television on, Deborah Kerr on TV singing the theme tune from one of my favourite movies, 'An Affair to Remember', and just relaxed and easy in myself.  I feel unpressured and unhurried.  There is nothing I urgently have to do in this moment. Yes, there are my annual taxes due in eight days, but eight days is a long time.  As I watch this terribly soppy old film I know that if I watch it all the way through  until the end I will sit in anticipation of the moment when Cary Grant discovers the reason Deborah Kerr didn't meet him at the top of the Empire State Building six months earlier and tears will roll down my cheeks because it's so romantic and sad. I've seen the film about a dozen times. I can almost recite the dialogue and still I cry at the end.  Like an old, old friend, the tears arrive and I sniffle and cry unashamedly. I so enjoy the sentimentality I allow myself now. I am just an old romantic.

I recognise I am getting older. I see it in how much slower I am content to take things. I see it in the small thiings that give me pleasure, the tiny interactions between neighbours and friends in which I delight. All these things seem more important now. When I was younger I had little time for this. I was often in a hurry and somehow felt that I had to pack lots of activity into a day in order to feel alive. Now I feel completely alive regardless of what I do.

I am more interested now in spiritual pursuits.  Actually this is a great name for a new board game, 'Spiritual Pursuits', a game of chance.  I can just see it, you progress round the board  not be finding the right answers but posing good questions.  The players could ask the questions and the enlightened masters of the past and present worlds could provide some answers.  The board would,of course, be a mandala, preferably one you design yourself.  Maybe I'll work on this idea since it tickles me to imagine it.

So, today, as we once again approach 'Blue Monday', unofficially the worst day of the year, what has changed for me that has made me feel so much more balanced?  Why am I in this better space now?  Again, I am busy with definitions so that I can understand my state of mind.

I am certainly not particularly more accepting of people's foibles.  Spending time with friends I am always ready to see the things that irritate me, that get my blood pressure rising, but maybe just a tiny bit,I am also able to allow all those things and see that once again, we are all doing the best we can.  If someone's attitudes or entrenched positions disturb me, I have been a little more willing to take a step back and see whether these attitudes impact directly on me, or if they are simply another person's attitudes and behaviour and stepping away from it is the best action I can take.

Today I read a quote from Dr. Wayne Dyer, a self-help guru. He said,  

"Attachment to being right creates suffering. When you have a choice to be right, or to be kind, choose kind and watch your suffering disappear."

Maybe I am learning to be more kind.  I know that I have just slightly less need to be right all the time.  Don't get me wrong, I still like to be right.  Hey, I'm still me, but maybe I've also seen that there is quite a price to pay for always needing to be right.  The price I've identified is that I get to live in a world where everything and everyone is wrong.  What an unpleasant environment to inhabit - the world of wrongness, where I get to sit at the top of the heap and be Mrs. Right.  'Not worth it', I am beginning to think! Also I can see how much energy it takes to keep proving others to be wrong.  I am beginning to want to take things a bit easier and any wasted energy I identify is a plus for my mental health.

So, on approaching the doldrum days of January, on this Sunday afternoon,  I have a huge pot of oranges cooking on the stove, the marmalade jars sterilising and the assembly line process of making marmalade is well in hand.  I enjoy the repetition of this act, from year to year the making of these many jars of marmalade gives my daily life a nice sense of tradition and continuity. It feels good to repeat these things every year and see that it is me who changes.  This year it just seems very simple.

Actually today it all seems pretty simple. Knit, relax, watch TV, chant a bit, make marmalade, cook soup, bake bread.  I am beginning to get it - there is no need to complicate things, life is complex enough.