The weak passages

Source: services. flikie.com

 

 

I look at myself in the mirror and there's a clear moment when I, the watcher, am looking at somebody else's face. I know it to be mine and yet it isn't. It's a strange feeling. I'm not a completely separate entity but I am looking at myself without judgement and with a bit more love, as if it's somebody else I am looking at.

It's funny how some of us find it easy to forgive others but we have so little mercy for ourselves.

I'm very tough on myself. I hate it when I don't function according to plan. It pains me when my reactions to certain situations, sometimes, are not the most dignified. I punish myself when I do something I regret. But one day I look at myself in the mirror and realise I can maybe try and love myself the same way I'd love somebody else. Talk to myself as if I am talking to a scared child, encourage myself and give myself emotional comfort. Would I forgive this person staring back at me for all the stupid things she's ever done, for all the times she has been weak and disappointing? I guess I would.

I try it for a few days. Every time I catch a glimpse of my face in some sort of reflective surface, I tell the girl in the mirror how wonderful she is. And it works. My inner dialogue changes and I stop judging myself so hard. I start wearing red lipstick and smile to myself more often. I stop caring about not being perfect. Because maybe I am.

Maybe it's supposed to be this way: maybe it is the 'weak passages' that make the strong ones stronger.


'When I was thirteen or fourteen years old, I use to take lessons in musical composition. Not because I was a child prodigy but because of my father's quiet tact. It was during the war and a friend of his, a Jewish composer, was required to wear the yellow star; people had begun to avoid him. Not knowing how to show his solidarity, my father thought of asking him just to give me lessons. (...) 
(...) I retain my admiration for him, and three or four images. Especially this one, seeing me out after a lesson, he stopped by the door and suddenly said to me: 'There are many surprisingly weak passages in Beethoven. But it is the weak passages that bring out the strong ones. It's like a lawn - if it weren't there, we couldn't enjoy the beautiful tree growing on it.' (Milan Kundera - Testaments Betrayed)

The Help

If you haven't read it, then I can tell you there's no time to waste! Go on, get yourself a copy and start reading now. It will have you laughing and it will have you crying. And to me, that's what a good story is all about: emotions you can't contain, whether you're on the tube, waiting for the water to boil or queueing at the bank.

It's a story about courage which will inspire you!

'The sun is bright by my eyes is open. I stand at the bus stop like I been doing for forty-old years. In thirty minutes, my whole life's...done. Maybe I ought to keep writing, not just for the paper but something else. about all the people I know and the things I seen and done. Maybe I ain't too old to start over, I think I laugh and cry at the same time at this. Cause just last night  I thought I was finished with everything new.'





It will tell you a thing or two about friendship:

'I ain't appologising to no drunk. I never apologised to my daddy and I sure ain't apologising to her.'
(...)
'I tell you, that Celia must be worst one you ever had to tend to.'
'They all bad. But she the worst of all.'
'Ain't they? You remember that time Miss Walters make you pay for the crystal glass you broke? Ten dollars out of you pay? Then you find out them glasses only cost three dollars a piece down at Carter's?'
'Mm-hmm.'
'Oh, and you remember that crazy Mr Charlie, the one who always call you nigger to your face like he think it's funny. And his wife, the one who make you eat lunch outside, even in the middle of January? Even when it snowed that time?'
'Make me cold just thinking about it.'
(...)
'What about that Miss Roberta? Way she make you sit at the kitchen table while she try out her new hair dye solution on you?'
(...)
'Took me three weeks and twenty five dollars to get my hair black again.;
'Miss Celia though' she says. 'Way she treat you? How much she paying you to put up with Mister Johnny and the cooking lesson? Must be less than all of them.'
' You know she paying me double.' 
'Oh, that's right. Well, anyway, with all her friends coming over, specting you to clean up after them all the time.'
(...)
'I think you done made your point, Aibeleen.'

 It will tell you a thing or two about self-esteem:

' You is kind. You is smart. You is important.'

It will show where a Mother's love really is:

'Don't let him cheapen you.' 
I look back at her, eye her suspiciously, even though she is so frail under the wool blanket. Sorry is the fool who ever underestimates my Mother.
(...) She narrows her eyes out at the winter land.
'Frankly, I don't care much for Stuart. He doesn't know how lucky he was to have you.'

It will make you think twice about letting a guy get away with being rude:

'Isn't that what you women from Ole Miss major in? Professional husband hunting?'
(...)
'I'm sorry but were you dropped on your head as an infant?
(...)
'Jesus, I've never met a woman with such long arms.' he says.
'Well, I've never met anybody with such a drinking problem.'

It will remind you that there are no real lines and that we are all just people.

'I watch Lou Anne slip away in the parking lot thinking. There is so much you don't know about a person. I wonder if I could've made her days a little bit easier, if I'd tried. If I'd treated her a little nicer. Wasn't that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought.'

The Help - Kathryn Stockett

Should've, would've, could've...

Source: ainiemos.blogspot.com

 "I have many regrets, and I'm sure everyone does. The stupid things you do, you regret...if you have any sense....And if you don't regret them, maybe you're stupid." Katherine Hepburn

How many times have I told myself I should have done things differently, I would have done this if I had that, I could have changed the situation if I had acted differently? If I'm honest, probably as many times as I blinked.

Regret is one of the last remaining demons I'm still fighting off, although it's creeping up less and less now. I learned about making peace with the past so I let go of a lot of the stuff I resented myself for. Yet sometimes when the stress and exhaustion take their toll on me and I find myseld emotionally unbalanced, I end up doing something stupid I then blame myself for with damamging effect to my soul. And it's worse every time because I should have known better.

Some people find refuge in drinking, others in drugs, some take comfort in eating,  others steal things, or pick up fights, we all have our way of dealing with the world when we feel weak and frustrated.

I seek men's attention. That's what I do (a psychologist would probably say it comes from the fact that I lacked my father's attention when I was a child). But I am unaware of the fact that this is what I'm doing and mask it up by thinking I've fallen in love with some guy and convince myself he must be the one. At first I blame them, when things go wrong. Then I blame myself for picking the wrong men. Then I blame myself for not knowing how to behave around men. Then I blame myself for being too emotional. Then I blame myself for lacking patience... Then... Then I start all over again.

The other day, I came across a message from the guy who dumped me without telling me, four months ago. It was an old message I hadn't read at the time. It was an appology. For being cold because he had been in a bad place emotionally. He told me I deserved better.  Turns out I am not to blame for this one after all. Because, I did blame myself for it. Plenty. For being to impatient. For making a scene and wanting to know what was going on, rather than just relax and don't care. For having been too keen, too eager, too open. For never saying the right things at the right time. For accepting to be ignored. For not accepting to be ignored. For seeking recognition from outside of myself. For everything I could think of. I was to blame.

Then I thought about this a bit more and realised I have been blaming myself for everything all my life. Because my mind needed a logical explanation to why things have gone wrong and eventually I would find it in something I did or didn't do. And the next time I tried to be better, act wiser, be different. But somehow it always went wrong and I would come up with more things to blame myself for.

But I'm tired of blaming myself. I'm tired of regret, I'm tired of covering temporary wounds up by seeking more attention from men who give me none. But I'm ready to make the most of my regrets. To accept them and make sure there's no more 'should've, would've, could've' going on in my mind...Because sometimes things just happen and we do our best with the knowledge and the skills we have at the time. We keep correcting course until one day things do go well. Because that's just how life is.
  
"Make the most of your regrets...To regret deeply is to live afresh." Henry David Thoreau

The women

Source: themightyvoyager.com

The women I'm talking about have nothing more to prove.
They are beautiful, they dress well, they wear high heels with ease, they are cultured, they are intelligent, they have a head for business and a body for sin, they exercise, they run marathons, they give money to charity, they sign petitions for Amnesty International, they like children, they are funny, they watch European cinema, they go to art galleries, they water their plants, they drink mocktails and they sky dive .
It seems like they have it all.

And yet they keep trying.
They run a bit longer, they work a bit harder, they look a bit slimmer, they eat a bit healthier, they read more books, they spend more money, they meet more people and they go to more parties.
But I'll let you all in a little secret: the women I'm talking about are secretly starving.
They're starving for affection.
And when they find it, they don't know what to do with it.
They eat it all up until they choke, they eat it all up until they throw up, they eat it all up until there's nothing left.

Nothing at all, but more targets to achieve, more races to run, more books to read, more places to see, more money to spend...

That time of the year again

Right, so the Paralympics are now on. But strangely enough so is X Factor. There's an eerie transition from the most extraordinary summer in London (albeit one of the rainiest ever), when people have felt just a bit more alive  (there isn't actually one person I spoke to who hasn't been deeply moved and excited by the Olympics and the events of London 2012), to that time of the year when days are feeling colder and X Factor is on TV again. It almost feels like... has it really happened?

I have nostalgia for lingering. Sometimes it feels like we ought to linger a bit more on the great events of life. And yet in London, things just carry on moving like on a production line. Olympics have hardly finished and soon enough there is nothing on TV about it. It's back to talks on taxes and property prices. The Paralympics are now on and we almost want to relive the Olympics fever but it feels like it's been left to go cold for too long and we're almost back to our usual numbness. I wonder if it's because the Paralympics are such a humbling experience. It doesn't feel right to be cheering one athlete against another because every single athlete there is a real life hero that ought to be sanctified. People that make us feel small and petty. Because we still complain about the weather, work, love life, lack of it, sex, the quality of our broadband. Even though we have all our limbs and all our senses, there are things we still moan about and that realisation of our spiritual smallness almost makes us turn on the TV and watch X Factor instead.

Yes, I want to linger a bit. I want to take some time and think about the good things that happened this summer. I want to take some time and think about what I want my future to bring and how am I going to turn the experiences of the past into inspiration for the future. But I can't, because life in London is like a big tsunami which just takes you away and drowns you into the everyday. And before you know it, it's that time of the year again...