I sit at my desk aware of the steady rain. The street beyond the window is lined with cherry trees. There are no blossoms now that spring is underway, just the red leaves, and a tall yellow conifer separates the gravel yard from the street, either side of the tree there is space enough to drive the car in and out. It’s a quiet, cosy neighbourhood in a picturesque retreat on the south coast of England. Two strands of matching yellow ivy make their way slowly up the window pane.
This much makes a beginning. If I were to add that I am female and forty you might read no further. There would be something predictable in that.
This is to be the continuing record of my particular view of life, no artifice and not much story, no intricate plot to keep you guessing. All that might interest you here is the way in which it compares with your particular view, your own daily existence. We all have much in common. This is a reasonable way to go, isn't it?
This writing is therapy for me. Like most work, it not only helps me to feel better, it also gives me the illusion I am doing something potentially useful. Imagine that - to carry on an inner dialogue for long enough that it feels like actual toil, from which one is permitted to take short rests. Who am I trying to kid? But that's the beauty of it - I don't have to kid anyone. It's a solitary occupation.
My parents think I am a failed teacher since I quit because I couldn't stand it a moment longer. They keep their view hidden from me very carefully, stored along with all their other contentious views. But I happen to know that I chose to stop teaching on moral grounds, not because I couldn't handle a classroom full of squawking teenagers throbbing with apathy and aggression. The parents have given up waiting for me to have something published. During the last year I have had three books rejected fifteen times each. I have taken this badly. Mother now tactfully avoids asking how I am progressing. Her favourite author is Catherine Cookson.
I have always liked to write, but I seldom had much to write about. I can remember making a start on a novel when I was about age ten, one miserable Sunday evening (Sundays were always miserable), but the more education I received the more difficult it became.
I used to think that someone had to benefit from what I did in order for it to qualify as work, so after teaching I wrote books, imagining that my life and character would be automatically exonerated by their publication.
My father told me in my teens that it was irrelevant whether one enjoyed what one did for a living or not. Work was just work, he grumbled, you did it and endured it because you had to. Jean's children are of the same mind. Different things are of different value to different people, so is everything therefore of equal value?
As of this moment I believe that everyone does what he or she does because of biology, that life is a result of our bodily functions. The organism came before society, it learned to adapt to other organisms and then society evolved. The problem is to know what is good for you.
If you feel miserable it is because of the way you perceive whatever has made you miserable. To alter your perception or attitude is usually easier than trying to alter the misery because you have more control over yourself than you do over outside people and events. Some people are apparently able to suffer great loss and hardship with strength and dignity. Perhaps they have a strong belief in some supreme outside force which strengthens their spirit. Whatever it is, it works.
It is difficult to recover from some great blow if you are reduced in spirit because then you don't have the energy required to make the effort to get back on top. You can't see what you should do, what is really wrong. It is a difficult chain to break. How do you know when you feel as well as you can? Anyway, to feel better comes first in order to have the required energy to cope. Julian said life should be a series of small treats.
I used to perform the role of teacher at the local comprehensive school. When I look back at this, the first image which comes to mind is of a group of us standing bunched miserably together in front of the "daily-notices" board in the staffroom. On it were pinned time-table changes, staff-substitutions, messages about bad pupils and National Curriculum updates such as whether we had to give tests that day or not. Whether by design or accident I know not, but the board was positioned right underneath the bell and this made our brains rattle even before we got to the classroom. The longest time during the whole day in between two bells was forty minutes; at the beginning of the day and during breaks there were a number of extra warning bells, warning of final bell-calls. All part of the conditioning. So I hated the notice board. It never offered good news - news of extra time off or more pay or the cancelling of your worst classes.
Yet this place in front of the notice board had the power to unite some of us in a way unlike any other geographical position in the school, more so even than the assembly hall because it was the spot for pre-battleground camaraderie. The tension leaked out of us into the atmosphere and hung there collecting. When the school is long-gone that spot will still hold the aura.
Perhaps it is the same in other jobs, but there are always those colleagues who are able to put on a brave face and curse back at the notices: those who find some way to rise above it leaving us silent ones linked by our suffering, certain of our captivity. If everyone had behaved the same way it would not have been so bad, but when people start acting as though they enjoy what they are doing it makes a person feel more separate and disadvantaged than ever - what have they got.... what do they know....?
It's the same in the rest of life: life is hard and difficult and we all suffer to some degree every day. Yet always there is some happy-faced individual cheerfully overcoming his lot. Probably even I am capable of behaving as one of the prancing happy types when things have gone well for me for more than two days in a row, although it seems unlikely. A person should remember that he is not necessarily helping matters by allowing himself to be seen to rise above it all. His certainties belong only to himself. Perhaps the only important thing I learned at teacher-training college was that teaching has to start where the student is, not the teacher.
While I'm on the subject there's the Oprah Winfrey show which comes on at 5.00pm, my low point in the day when I turn on the TV to zone out. Sometimes the issues she presents are interesting, at least distracting, but if I watch too much I find it depressing. I have worked out that it is because she comes over with so much certainty in what she is doing, that it is the show's mantle of self-assurance which palls. "These are everybody's views", she seems to be saying. If only she would offer a gesture of humility.
Is there a point where you have identified with something so much that suddenly you find you have been converted? Like those who succumb to a religious cult; a religion; a politic, Nazism - sometimes it gets to a person before he can take control - someone already weak and looking for some certainty. Religion is especially potent, it goes deeper than anything. If you identify with a huge power, you feel huge too.
The same with falling in love which happens when you're least expecting it and when you might not even want it - suddenly you feel better, you feel great, because now you have become bigger - now you are not only yourself but the other person as well. Your whole world is enlarged.
It is tempting to proselytize when you are feeling in a wonderfully enlightened state of being because you feel so good and you want everyone else to feel the same. But there are no permanent answers. Give me a balanced soul, neither depressed nor joyful, and I will feel at ease: Jean, for example.
But why worry? "Don't let it get to you” I hear CL tell me. It is disappointment I suppose. I seek inspiration. Doesn't everyone? I'd like to be a follower, a believer: it is easier to follow a map, refer to guide-book, to look up the answer to any question - it's easier to follow a leader and it feels so good while it lasts.
My latest gripe with the Oprah Show was her programme on the power of prayer. Here was a scientist to confirm that it was now a proven fact that prayer works, in all sorts of situations with all sorts of different pray-ers and pray-ees. I can accept this as a possibility, but the show went on to stress the rightness, what Oprah called the "coolness", of God. It presupposed that we all want and need to know that there is such a supreme-something, and that we might be pleased to know that "It" can be called on to intervene, if required. She made it clear that she knows without doubt about the existence of God, that He or It or whatever you want to call it is part of her life, and that, (together with a good diet plan, a personal trainer and lots of money) He gave her the strength to get where she is. There is also the supposition that we all want something more than we already have. She offers this prop of that outside, ultimate something (as all religions do) to give hope not only for the now but forever! This is the meaning of joy, to discover that God is here now and also forever. This is the ultimate security. "Don't worry, everything is all right - all you have to do is believe this; lean on this idea."
Wouldn't it be more strengthening for a person to learn how to do without props - to learn how to suffer better?
We were told that there is a certain way to pray for maximum return: you have to know what you truly want, you have to be clear about it, you have to have total faith and you have to surrender yourself, i.e. not care whether you get what you want or not; or rather, leave the outcome to the Power. The more people there are praying for something, the more it works.
Again the invitation is that we all get together and believe - for our own good, of course. Isolation is not promoted as a good thing. Once again there is a prescription: you have to change, do a) this, b) this and c) this if you want the ultimate, eternal peace. However, if many minds can achieve something with the power of positive thought the same can be achieved through negative thought. Who decides what is positive and "good"? What is good for one is not for another.
Sorry Oprah, you're just too self-confident for me right now. Once I was too, but I could not sustain it. After I had achieved my goal, someone set up new goal-posts. Only for a short time did I enjoy perfect peace of mind, a feeling of being on top, in control. Then the game of life continued anew and I had to start all over again to try and achieve another goal - you can't rest on your laurels for long. In the new game they'd changed the pitch, the opposing players and the rules. And where was my team? This time I can't yet see the ball let alone the goal-posts.
So I sit on the fence and fend off the opposition single-handed. When I listen to Oprah tell me about the power of prayer I feel as though the crowd is against me and supporting the other team. Perhaps I should surrender and go over to the other side. I sit alone on my fence with my demons, trying not to succumb to them. When I see my way clear I'll make a run for it.
You know how your teacher used to go through your paper with you to show you where you had gone wrong? When I am done with life, I hope someone will go through it with me so that I will finally understand my mistakes.
So many words. Words are an unburdening, an outpouring. In itself it is not living, it is self-healing. Words can never express perfectly. The perfect state is silence: feeling no need to talk or write or express; happy just to be. Everything else apart from silence is to redress the balance, heal the rift, mend the gap between what you want and what is. “Those who can, do; those who can't teach (or write)”. We can describe the world with words but it is not the thing itself only a description which approximates to the real thing. To really know anything, you have to know it immediately, intuitively, without thought.
Even thought is the result of failure. When action satisfies we don't need to think. To think is to confess to a lack of adjustment which we have to stop to consider. The greater the failure, the greater and the more searching our thoughts become. I own up to this. Confucius is perhaps the first clear example of a man in this situation.
As well as thought, anything which is forced achieves less than that which comes naturally. To enforce the law you need a "strong arm" for pushing and where there is friction there is pain. If deep down inside you want something most desperately, how can you stop wanting it? We have over-developed brains which make us want to find out "how", or to be told in words; we need to rationalise and explain and prove. We have egos.
Gentle spring rain falls on a warm grey day. I have moved from my desk to the kitchen table. In the back garden the sparrows make a racket as they peck the peanuts under the tunnel of wisteria while others sing unseen from the hedges. A cat purrs nearby, lovingly. Soft cat, soft rain. I continue to write only because it feels right to express, not because I hold out hope of success anymore.
Now I am self-contained. I have, on the face of it, everything I want: Jean, the partner I love and with whom I live a quiet life in a cottage by the sea, three cats, one son, who lives in town in a bedsit, an estranged husband who is now like a brother; and the parents. At age forty I am surprised that I am a person of independent means with time and leisure to do what I will. It should be good, but I seem not to have the talent or vision to do something useful with it, so I think hard for ways to justify how I live because I don't feel entitled to what I now have. It just came to me: I have heard those words so often from Jean and sneered at them, I would tell her: "things don't just happen to you, you allow them to, you have chosen to be where you are now".
I do not feel as satisfied as I used to when I returned home from a day's teaching. Now every day demands that I do something excellent and gives me endless freedom in which to do it. I know I could go back to work, to teach, but I don't want to. I could start giving tours of England to the Americans again, but I don't want to do that either.
Before I met Jean, I was unattached to anyone or anything and in love with life and health and spirit. The challenge was to remain free in spirit as well as live a life with Jean. I have moved on. Meanwhile I try to appreciate, because what I apparently have is a near-perfect existence. Or so CL observed.
Since I stay at home writing I have no work-mates. My friends have moved away or gone silent - we have less in common now - but I like to be alone to reflect. I like to walk in the country. A near-perfect life is very stressful. I expect I'm just like anyone else for whom life provides the same admixture, although I do seem to have ecstasy and grief in huge proportions.
There is no end, you see, no final answer. Every age and stage brings a fresh set of problems for which life so far has not prepared you (me). Everything comes in relative degrees. No solutions, no absolutes, just relativity; polarity; opposites; balances; compensations and resolutions. Every element in life swings back and forth, off and on, comes and goes. Life contains the whole spectrum with everything in it, including misery. There has to be misery else what is joy? Name any state of being that does not have its opposite. If you can think of anything that does not possess an opposite, then you are now in the world of spirit, the world of God.
I try not to need approval. I try not to have hope. I try to like myself. When I feel depressed I say: what's the point? Why do anything? Wise, balanced souls tell me in response: "of course there is no point, no reason, no end, and no guaranteed reward. Expect nothing from life and then you can't be disappointed." Or else they describe to me their version of God, their faith.
In winter, on those endlessly grey, cold days I think - if only it were spring - all I need is a little sun and warmth... while the truth is that I can be depressed even on the sunniest, springiest of days when nature is at its most radiant. It is the conflict between what you have and what you want that causes stress and depression and the only solution I can see is to go along with it, understand it, wait for it to pass, and remember that there is the view that all the multiplicity of people and events are, in fact, just one big event, everything is a continuing expression of one initial bang, or act of creation, therefore not only is everything right and as it should be, but we are all related parts of the creator.
I can sum up life in one phrase: bodily functions. We make our pains and pleasures by choosing to act according to how we feel. So here I am, sitting like a fat toad squatting at the start of middle-age. In childhood and youth-hood everything was possible, now I have fulfilled some of life's potentials and examined the others and seen that there are clear limitations. People treat me more indifferently making no allowances for youth. Now I am fair game.
I noticed this suddenly - not that I care about being old; I was just unprepared for it. I dislike transitions at the best of times: Sunday night turning into Monday morning; to adjust to a holiday; to adjust to work. Jean tells me (she is 70) that it will all get better once I'm through this "middle" part; it won't last much longer, she says..... Every time I think I've had an original idea it turns out someone else thought of it already. When you are young you don't realise this.
If the degree of depression is equal to the degree of one's potential for happiness it should all balance out in the end. See how I seem to hold out some hope? Hope means more disappointment. But without hope what have we?
With this depression thing, you have to believe it will get better, that is what hope is. I can I allow myself time off the merry-go-round to try and get better, time to stop. It is okay once and a while to stop. Sometimes you have to let go.
Every morning I wake up with a pain in the head and neck because of the invisible pressure to conform and to do something useful. I know that's what it is because when I go away from home, even for just a couple of days, I'm better. Nobody says anything directly to me but I know what they think. No one really knows exactly how right or wrong he is, nor how his pain compares with the pain of another.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment