So, what happened? What happened to Olive? What happened to the Power of Love?
A number of people have been asking me for more news on that extraordinary outburst of national interest in Olive Archer, dubbed by the media as an Eleanor Rigby, after the Beatles’ song, who was “buried in a church along with her name. Nobody came”.
So what happened with the call my wife had made for people to come forward who knew Olive Archer and would come to her funeral? As some of you may know, as things stood nobody was coming, as the woman had seemingly lost touch with her family and nobody had visited her in the 5 years she was in a seniors’ nursing home (see my earlier posting “Being alone”)
Very briefly, some members of the family, nephews and great-nieces, were found, and along with some who knew her in Swindon, a former mayor of Swindon (who also knew her) and The Great British Press, they filled the small chapel, acknowledged her worth as a human being and wished her well on her way. Articles in the national news and further TV programmes included the story in their news coverage. You can read about it if you click on this link “Olive Archer” or type the name into Google. The power of love.
Among the many aspects of this event was the powerful wave of emotion that seemed to wash around the country. We had so many calls from people who could not bear the thought of this woman alone in the home and nobody coming to her funeral. The reference to Eleanor Rigby really struck a chord. When my wife appeared on programmes, people wanted to discuss the issues. Cards and flowers flooded in. People were in tears. Many had their own experiences, perhaps for themselves or people they had known. I’ve had many conversations with people I know who have clearly been giving the matter a lot of thought.
What does it bring up for you?
There’s the whole issue of care for the very old, something that’s been creeping up on us for a long time and will really hit us soon, as more live longer and the population explosion hits the age at which they need care. Do we want a society in which large numbers of us are incarcerated in homes and not visited? This could happen given how many are now single and/or childless in lower age groups. What about when you get to that age? And what about how we care for one another per se? How do we show up around our compassion for others? We need to look to ourselves and our attitudes towards those less fortunate. What does that bring up?
What happened to the nuclear family? In the UK, we disperse, for whatever reason, exercising our choice about lifestyle and using – or abusing - our relative affluence. Role models of family life look pretty tarnished. We can afford it, just about, putting someone in a home rather than care for them at home. What about our independence and freedom? Others societies would find us selfish to say the least. Do you want, and can you afford, your parent at home, frail and infirm? How far does love go? What does that bring up?
And what about our communities? I’ve walking around our local towns here in rural Wiltshire recently and been very aware of how little I see older people sitting out (the weather’s been warm) and talking with others. The town centres belong to others. Very different to say southern Europe. Our villages here have lost their community and consist of the retired, commuters, and holiday homes. No village life as it traditionally was, no longer a labour-intensive agri-industry, no support network in which help can be extended to those who need it. What does that bring up?
We seem to have a view that when we get to a certain age, we’re past it. Ageism. It’s like we buy into an idea that when we get old, we’re somehow incapable. Notice how younger people talk to the elderly, like to children. It’s been really striking how older people are left sitting in rooms with little social contact and nothing to do. They look vacant and empty, like they are waiting to die. Yet when you go and talk with them they light up. I think we need to think hard about what is possible. Notice also that in the past we’ve had a great Prime Minister in his 80’s (Gladstone) and a great British law-making judge in his 90’s (Lord Denning). Do you fancy a PM in his (usually) 40’s or 80’s. What does that bring up?
We might be in part thinking about what we might do for others. But it is also what we can do for ourselves. Life is to be lived, in all its vitality. We are intrinsically worth it, at whatever age we are. We are blessed with minds and intellect. How we think is how we live. Giving up on life leaves us potentially in the space of empty despair, the depression that besets so many seniors. Or we can so grow and develop in ourselves that we are equipped to enjoy our lives to the full at whatever age we are and whatever our circumstances. Ultimately the solution to the dilemmas of life lie within us, both for ourselves and others.
If you want to be sent future postings to your e-mail in-box, put your e-mail address in the box in the right-hand column here, under the heading “Ways to subscribe”.
Why not e-mail this posting to a friend? Just copy this URL in the top line of your browser and paste it into your e-mail content.
Tuesday, 29 January 2008
Tuesday, 22 January 2008
What is it worth?
So the stock market is in the red, so to speak. This is one of those moments when we all start feeling poor and suddenly all that seemed to have value gets questioned. Is it really worth all that much?
It can feel very real. Your pension fund may have contracted by over 5% overnight, depending on how you’ve invested. Also if you own property, that too may now be worth a bit less. Then we wonder about the security of our jobs. Ando so it goes on.
Yesterday was also Blue Monday, that statistical date in the calendar just far enough away from Christmas, still in the throes of winter but also just far enough from the next pay cheque, when people are apparently most likely to be depressed. A headline in one of the newspapers today read “It doesn’t rain but it pours”, a wonderful British negative expression which here is also a reference to the recent bout of heavy rain and flooding in the UK.
So, how low do you want to get? Think of anything else that’s going on at the moment that you might be worried about? It’s interesting where the mind goes. Do you find a list can build up in minutes? You could probably think of a few others too, just to pile on the misery and confirm you in how you feel. Again, it can feel very real.
Yet it doesn’t have to be like this. Just pause to reflect on the temporary and illusory nature of things. In the material world, nothing stays the same. All things are in a state of change, of movement, impermanent.
Economies, now globally interconnected, are cyclical. They go up, they come down, and they go up again. Recessions, or cyclical declines at least, are highly creative times. As some aspects of an economy are coming to an end or are in decline, others spring up. It is important not to be attached to our expectations based on previous experience but to let go and tap into our creativity. This is so important, but so easy to forget or sideline when we feel what seems so real.
Also, what may be a serious situation to others may not be a negative one for you. While others may be feeling the pinch, and we should feel compassion for them, your particular neck of the woods may be doing well. It might be you are not aware of it right now: but looking back you’ll see how good it is. It’s important to keep the mind focused on what’s going well. After all, the mind is highly creative.
If we feel a sense of decline in the value of things, we need to reflect on our own value. What are you worth? Everything. When things get tough is when the tough get going. Here I mean toughness of mind based on clear, light centredness of awareness, where we manage our minds and focus on what we are creating, not what we think we are losing. What seems to be happening is an illusion in a world where material things are temporary. Centredness of awareness is true permanence, which you discover more and more of through inner work, if you like the inspiration I was referring to in the last posting. When we are aware of our real worth, we can create from a clear mind, uncluttered and unclogged with anxiety. Then you might wake up the next day, things seem a whole lot different and you can go about your purpose with a firmness of will and a belief in what you are about.
What’s that worth? Again, everything.
I’m reminded of those wonderful words at the end of TS Eliot’s last and greatest epic poem, “Four Quartets”, from which I’ll select a few key lines:
“We shall not cease from exploration
And at the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
........
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well
And all manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are infolded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one".
It can feel very real. Your pension fund may have contracted by over 5% overnight, depending on how you’ve invested. Also if you own property, that too may now be worth a bit less. Then we wonder about the security of our jobs. Ando so it goes on.
Yesterday was also Blue Monday, that statistical date in the calendar just far enough away from Christmas, still in the throes of winter but also just far enough from the next pay cheque, when people are apparently most likely to be depressed. A headline in one of the newspapers today read “It doesn’t rain but it pours”, a wonderful British negative expression which here is also a reference to the recent bout of heavy rain and flooding in the UK.
So, how low do you want to get? Think of anything else that’s going on at the moment that you might be worried about? It’s interesting where the mind goes. Do you find a list can build up in minutes? You could probably think of a few others too, just to pile on the misery and confirm you in how you feel. Again, it can feel very real.
Yet it doesn’t have to be like this. Just pause to reflect on the temporary and illusory nature of things. In the material world, nothing stays the same. All things are in a state of change, of movement, impermanent.
Economies, now globally interconnected, are cyclical. They go up, they come down, and they go up again. Recessions, or cyclical declines at least, are highly creative times. As some aspects of an economy are coming to an end or are in decline, others spring up. It is important not to be attached to our expectations based on previous experience but to let go and tap into our creativity. This is so important, but so easy to forget or sideline when we feel what seems so real.
Also, what may be a serious situation to others may not be a negative one for you. While others may be feeling the pinch, and we should feel compassion for them, your particular neck of the woods may be doing well. It might be you are not aware of it right now: but looking back you’ll see how good it is. It’s important to keep the mind focused on what’s going well. After all, the mind is highly creative.
If we feel a sense of decline in the value of things, we need to reflect on our own value. What are you worth? Everything. When things get tough is when the tough get going. Here I mean toughness of mind based on clear, light centredness of awareness, where we manage our minds and focus on what we are creating, not what we think we are losing. What seems to be happening is an illusion in a world where material things are temporary. Centredness of awareness is true permanence, which you discover more and more of through inner work, if you like the inspiration I was referring to in the last posting. When we are aware of our real worth, we can create from a clear mind, uncluttered and unclogged with anxiety. Then you might wake up the next day, things seem a whole lot different and you can go about your purpose with a firmness of will and a belief in what you are about.
What’s that worth? Again, everything.
I’m reminded of those wonderful words at the end of TS Eliot’s last and greatest epic poem, “Four Quartets”, from which I’ll select a few key lines:
“We shall not cease from exploration
And at the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
........
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well
And all manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are infolded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one".
Friday, 18 January 2008
Inspiration
I’ve been having a very busy and inspiring week: lots of ideas are flowing in about various projects related to my consulting work. Lots of it also involves reaching out and linking in with others to create things bigger than that which I might be doing on my own. This connection with others gives a great feeling of warmth and I feel alive with possibility, as though some things are about to expand and produce inspiring work to make a difference on a much greater scale.
Which got me reflecting on inspiration. It’s a big thing with me. For example I get talking with people around something that I enjoy and that interests me and I start to talk in an enlivened manner. I get enthusiastic and others then get enthused. The nature of enthusiasm is that it’s infectious. Like laughter, others pick up on it. I intuitively alight on some matter and the creative juices start to flow, a bit like this blog sometimes.
You might like to look at the words I’ve just used in the paragraph above: I’ll quickly select inspiration, enjoy, interests, enlivened, enthusiasm, infectious, alight, flow. I don’t know how you react to them. My thought is that with these, something happens inside us. They are strong, positive, uplifting words, relating to a strong inner experience.
If I take inspiration, in the Oxford English dictionary I notice where it says it is “divine prompting or guidance”; “the prompting of the mind to exalted thoughts, to creative activity”. It also refers to the drawing in of breath. To go further, the verb “inspire” includes to “breathe life, a soul into…”. Personally, I associate inspiration with a sudden lightening up, an aliveness, like I become alive with something. Enthusiasm likewise is derived from the Greek “enthousiasmos” originally to “be inspired or possessed by a god”. As regards flow, the psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi refers to the “flow state” as a mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterised by a feeling of energised focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. When I get inspired, I feel caught up in a wave of pure positive energy of enthusiasm and everything takes on a new powerful, energised perspective and I for a while feel unstoppable.
For me I need to trust the inspiration, just allow it to happen, let it roll. It come from within and explodes out there, either in writing, in developing ideas or in communication with others.
Trusting the inner voice, what lies within us, our inner power, our inner truth: it’s hugely important. It’s our life force, who we are. Through developing our self-awareness, we can get to know it more. Through inner work, like say meditation, we can get to work round its nuances, to see where it’s pure and where ego gets in the way. Learning to discriminate, to see what’s pure within us that we can express powerfully, our inner power, is a vital part of the inner journey. Then when we put it “out there” in the world and make our mark, it comes from a space of integrity. That’s what people will listen to and trust, what people will connect with. Or we can use it for what we need to do that helps us on the life path. Inspiration guides us positively forward, as we choose the steps which are right for us on our path. Inspiration creates for us what we need to create. It helps make things happen. It brings into life what lies dormant within. Its helps us fulfil our potential. It draws things and people to us. It links with synchronicity, those apparent chance happenings which are really co-created with others or with events and situations apparently out there but actually part of us.
So perhaps, this weekend, sit in a quiet, special place and go within, and spend a little time being still. Ask yourself what lies within you that inspires you. Ask what lies within that has a good energy around it. Ask yourself and then meditate. Don’t force anything. Connect if you like with your god within, or your inner spirit, or your inner life, or your centre, or whatever that means for you that you are comfortable with. Just sit there and be patient. Be alert and attentive. Don’t expect anything. Let go of any attachment to expectation or to getting a result. These things come unsought. It’s an allowing. If you get some words or a sense of some words, just notice them: whatever pops up. When something feels like it has an energy, just let it be there and attend to the energy. Allow the energy to grow and see what grows. See what you feel inspired about. Then, when you come back from your meditation, or contemplation really act on it. Put it out there somehow, so that the energy can turn into something positive, something you’ll act on and grow.
Maybe let me know what happens. En-joy!
Which got me reflecting on inspiration. It’s a big thing with me. For example I get talking with people around something that I enjoy and that interests me and I start to talk in an enlivened manner. I get enthusiastic and others then get enthused. The nature of enthusiasm is that it’s infectious. Like laughter, others pick up on it. I intuitively alight on some matter and the creative juices start to flow, a bit like this blog sometimes.
You might like to look at the words I’ve just used in the paragraph above: I’ll quickly select inspiration, enjoy, interests, enlivened, enthusiasm, infectious, alight, flow. I don’t know how you react to them. My thought is that with these, something happens inside us. They are strong, positive, uplifting words, relating to a strong inner experience.
If I take inspiration, in the Oxford English dictionary I notice where it says it is “divine prompting or guidance”; “the prompting of the mind to exalted thoughts, to creative activity”. It also refers to the drawing in of breath. To go further, the verb “inspire” includes to “breathe life, a soul into…”. Personally, I associate inspiration with a sudden lightening up, an aliveness, like I become alive with something. Enthusiasm likewise is derived from the Greek “enthousiasmos” originally to “be inspired or possessed by a god”. As regards flow, the psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi refers to the “flow state” as a mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterised by a feeling of energised focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. When I get inspired, I feel caught up in a wave of pure positive energy of enthusiasm and everything takes on a new powerful, energised perspective and I for a while feel unstoppable.
For me I need to trust the inspiration, just allow it to happen, let it roll. It come from within and explodes out there, either in writing, in developing ideas or in communication with others.
Trusting the inner voice, what lies within us, our inner power, our inner truth: it’s hugely important. It’s our life force, who we are. Through developing our self-awareness, we can get to know it more. Through inner work, like say meditation, we can get to work round its nuances, to see where it’s pure and where ego gets in the way. Learning to discriminate, to see what’s pure within us that we can express powerfully, our inner power, is a vital part of the inner journey. Then when we put it “out there” in the world and make our mark, it comes from a space of integrity. That’s what people will listen to and trust, what people will connect with. Or we can use it for what we need to do that helps us on the life path. Inspiration guides us positively forward, as we choose the steps which are right for us on our path. Inspiration creates for us what we need to create. It helps make things happen. It brings into life what lies dormant within. Its helps us fulfil our potential. It draws things and people to us. It links with synchronicity, those apparent chance happenings which are really co-created with others or with events and situations apparently out there but actually part of us.
So perhaps, this weekend, sit in a quiet, special place and go within, and spend a little time being still. Ask yourself what lies within you that inspires you. Ask what lies within that has a good energy around it. Ask yourself and then meditate. Don’t force anything. Connect if you like with your god within, or your inner spirit, or your inner life, or your centre, or whatever that means for you that you are comfortable with. Just sit there and be patient. Be alert and attentive. Don’t expect anything. Let go of any attachment to expectation or to getting a result. These things come unsought. It’s an allowing. If you get some words or a sense of some words, just notice them: whatever pops up. When something feels like it has an energy, just let it be there and attend to the energy. Allow the energy to grow and see what grows. See what you feel inspired about. Then, when you come back from your meditation, or contemplation really act on it. Put it out there somehow, so that the energy can turn into something positive, something you’ll act on and grow.
Maybe let me know what happens. En-joy!
Saturday, 12 January 2008
It's all in the mind
When I was in the butchers buying some meat as one does, I heard an assistant reply to a query about how he was getting on with a sigh and “I don’t like this time. I feel sort of heavy and tired. A bit fed up really. You know, it’s that time after Christmas”. This time of year can feel harder for people.
So, to fit the picture we got a good dose of bad weather this week, with heavy rain and minor flooding. Other years we often get doses of ice and snow in January. This is traditionally the coldest month and the nights are still long. Not surprisingly, for many this can be a particularly stressful time of year and often levels of depression are at their highest.
This is where one’s attitude and state of mind can be so important. It can be so easy to work oneself into a mental hole. Leave the mind to its own devices and it can take you to all sorts of places you don’t want to go. This is particularly when we need to take responsibility for our minds and manage it into sustaining a centred state.
In the famous study of survival in Auschwitz by Viktor Frankl in “Man’s search for Meaning”, he concluded that while one may not be responsible for how one got there, one was responsible for how one responded. This may seem extreme to the reader, but according to Frankl’s observations, it literally meant the difference between life and death for inmates. It’s up to us.
Do you feel yourself as, so to speak, at cause in how you manage things or at the effect of what happens? By “at the effect” I might mean do you find yourself thinking that conditions, what others do, events, or situations cause how you respond, how you react, what you do? Or do you see yourself as “at cause”, ie. what occurs is a result of what how you think, your perceptions, interpretations, beliefs, intentions, actions and so on? It is also worth thinking about what areas of your life are in one camp, while in other areas you might be in the other camp. And you might from time to time find yourself slipping from cause to effect.
Life may not seem that clear cut, but it is a useful distinction, one to remind oneself of when the going looks to be getting tough. When I see myself as at cause, I am acting from intention, out of my purpose, what I consciously choose to create in my life, and my state of mind plays a major part in this. I have written before in this blog about my approach to navigating the London peak time journey by train and tube in London. The congestion is phenomenal and I certainly used to feel very stressed. So my mental approach gets pretty crucial. Before I start, I remind myself about what I intend for the journey. I say to myself, “I intend to travel easily and effortlessly, to flow through the crowds with respect and love”. On Thursday and Friday this last week there were a series of delays and crowding was severe. I reminded myself of my intention. I also focused on my breathing and centred myself. I checked my attitude and the flow of my mind. When there were announcements of delays, I reminded myself to stay centred, in my case also using a mantra, and reminded myself of my intention. The result was a calm and focused couple of days.
In this example there are several aspects, such as the use of intention, which for me links in with purpose (such as travelling to deliver selfless service), the use of centring techniques, the benefits of meditation, monitoring my mind and staying on track.
Mastery of mind, being aware of the mental flow, sustaining a calm, centred state of mind, sustaining the conditions conducive to peace, calm and joyousness, living from intention, seem to me to be crucial to responding positively to what occurs in life. More than that, it seems invaluable in creating conditions in which the experience of joyousness can increase and the opportunity to be more powerfully at cause.
If you wish to learn more about this, I have an e-book that describes this process, called “Mastering the Mind”, which elaborates on this approach.
If you want to be sent future postings to your e-mail in-box, put your e-mail address in the box in the right-hand column here, under the heading “Ways to subscribe”, or click on this link: Subscribe to Meditations of a Life Coach by Email
Why not e-mail this posting to a friend? Just copy this blog’s URL in the top line of your browser and paste it into your e-mail content.
So, to fit the picture we got a good dose of bad weather this week, with heavy rain and minor flooding. Other years we often get doses of ice and snow in January. This is traditionally the coldest month and the nights are still long. Not surprisingly, for many this can be a particularly stressful time of year and often levels of depression are at their highest.
This is where one’s attitude and state of mind can be so important. It can be so easy to work oneself into a mental hole. Leave the mind to its own devices and it can take you to all sorts of places you don’t want to go. This is particularly when we need to take responsibility for our minds and manage it into sustaining a centred state.
In the famous study of survival in Auschwitz by Viktor Frankl in “Man’s search for Meaning”, he concluded that while one may not be responsible for how one got there, one was responsible for how one responded. This may seem extreme to the reader, but according to Frankl’s observations, it literally meant the difference between life and death for inmates. It’s up to us.
Do you feel yourself as, so to speak, at cause in how you manage things or at the effect of what happens? By “at the effect” I might mean do you find yourself thinking that conditions, what others do, events, or situations cause how you respond, how you react, what you do? Or do you see yourself as “at cause”, ie. what occurs is a result of what how you think, your perceptions, interpretations, beliefs, intentions, actions and so on? It is also worth thinking about what areas of your life are in one camp, while in other areas you might be in the other camp. And you might from time to time find yourself slipping from cause to effect.
Life may not seem that clear cut, but it is a useful distinction, one to remind oneself of when the going looks to be getting tough. When I see myself as at cause, I am acting from intention, out of my purpose, what I consciously choose to create in my life, and my state of mind plays a major part in this. I have written before in this blog about my approach to navigating the London peak time journey by train and tube in London. The congestion is phenomenal and I certainly used to feel very stressed. So my mental approach gets pretty crucial. Before I start, I remind myself about what I intend for the journey. I say to myself, “I intend to travel easily and effortlessly, to flow through the crowds with respect and love”. On Thursday and Friday this last week there were a series of delays and crowding was severe. I reminded myself of my intention. I also focused on my breathing and centred myself. I checked my attitude and the flow of my mind. When there were announcements of delays, I reminded myself to stay centred, in my case also using a mantra, and reminded myself of my intention. The result was a calm and focused couple of days.
In this example there are several aspects, such as the use of intention, which for me links in with purpose (such as travelling to deliver selfless service), the use of centring techniques, the benefits of meditation, monitoring my mind and staying on track.
Mastery of mind, being aware of the mental flow, sustaining a calm, centred state of mind, sustaining the conditions conducive to peace, calm and joyousness, living from intention, seem to me to be crucial to responding positively to what occurs in life. More than that, it seems invaluable in creating conditions in which the experience of joyousness can increase and the opportunity to be more powerfully at cause.
If you wish to learn more about this, I have an e-book that describes this process, called “Mastering the Mind”, which elaborates on this approach.
If you want to be sent future postings to your e-mail in-box, put your e-mail address in the box in the right-hand column here, under the heading “Ways to subscribe”, or click on this link: Subscribe to Meditations of a Life Coach by Email
Why not e-mail this posting to a friend? Just copy this blog’s URL in the top line of your browser and paste it into your e-mail content.
Tuesday, 8 January 2008
Aloneness in the New Year
Here you may now be, a few more days into the New Year, the festivities of Christmas behind you, getting back into your job if you have one, perhaps caught up again in the rush of busyness? Some may be wondering what happened to the break – where did it go? Others may feel the sense of let-down, back facing whatever isn’t working in their lives, maybe even feeling alone once again after the sense of connection that the feast period can bring.
This is when any commitment you make to have your life be different gets tested. This is when it’s important to have any intentions you set for the New Year forefront, to think about and refine and yet keep as a point of commitment. Any intention will surely be tested – that’s part of the process.
For a long time, I used to feel an anti-climax after Christmas. All that expectation and then what? Christmas after a while became false in my mind, as something that had really long lost its real meaning as a celebration of a birth. It seemed like a materialistic orgy, fanned by the advertising industry and our desire for more. Also, it was after Christmas that I would feel most alone. I remember once reading an Ernest Hemingway novel and then howling buckets at the seeming hopelessness of ever finding someone to share my life, that at one level I would always be alone. Then I found a nice philosophical basis for how I felt in Existentialism. Then I filled the gap by becoming a busy professional and busyness filled my life, until that is I got divorced and lost my mother to breast cancer and started to explore what my aloneness was really about.
I don’t know how much you resonated with the story described in the last posting. It has clearly impacted huge numbers of people. It’s been carried on almost all the major national newspapers and on a number of TV channels. And we’ve had a vast number of calls. Relatives have now come forward and so family will be at the woman’s funeral, along with a lot of well-wishers. However I was particularly struck by the people who said they could not bear to think of that woman having no visitors in the 5 years she was in a nursing home and have nobody come to her funeral. In the Sunday Times a columnist started her article with a conversation with two single friends about just this situation.
I finished my last posting by stating the point that unless we deal with our own experience of aloneness, in whatever way that shows up for each of us, we’ll very likely get that experience at the end of our lives. One thing we all share is our mortality. It is an existential reality.
I think one way this experience shows up is around relationship. We many of us search for another in our lives in order to fill the gap inside us, the fear of being alone, of not being loved, of feeling unlovable, of not being good enough or worthy enough, or what other way that is felt or thought about. Then we lose our partner and we are alone. I think a huge number who called us were alone and had lost someone.
My own take on this dilemma of existence is that we are never alone, we are at one. Our journey and our challenge is to re-discover who we really are all along. Also, for me, this is no mere rationalisation or belief but a felt experience. Our essence is pure joy, love, enthusiasm, aliveness, laughter, energy. To know this is to experience this in ourselves and to see it in others, whoever they are and whatever our connection with them. A lot of our personal development training is about this.
Your understanding might be different. But for both you and me, we have the same challenge, to transcend the human experience of aloneness, in whatever way that shows up.
If you want to be sent future postings to your e-mail in-box, put your e-mail address in the box in the right-hand column here, under the heading “Ways to subscribe”.
Why not e-mail this posting to a friend? Just copy this URL in the top line of your browser and paste it into your e-mail content.
This is when any commitment you make to have your life be different gets tested. This is when it’s important to have any intentions you set for the New Year forefront, to think about and refine and yet keep as a point of commitment. Any intention will surely be tested – that’s part of the process.
For a long time, I used to feel an anti-climax after Christmas. All that expectation and then what? Christmas after a while became false in my mind, as something that had really long lost its real meaning as a celebration of a birth. It seemed like a materialistic orgy, fanned by the advertising industry and our desire for more. Also, it was after Christmas that I would feel most alone. I remember once reading an Ernest Hemingway novel and then howling buckets at the seeming hopelessness of ever finding someone to share my life, that at one level I would always be alone. Then I found a nice philosophical basis for how I felt in Existentialism. Then I filled the gap by becoming a busy professional and busyness filled my life, until that is I got divorced and lost my mother to breast cancer and started to explore what my aloneness was really about.
I don’t know how much you resonated with the story described in the last posting. It has clearly impacted huge numbers of people. It’s been carried on almost all the major national newspapers and on a number of TV channels. And we’ve had a vast number of calls. Relatives have now come forward and so family will be at the woman’s funeral, along with a lot of well-wishers. However I was particularly struck by the people who said they could not bear to think of that woman having no visitors in the 5 years she was in a nursing home and have nobody come to her funeral. In the Sunday Times a columnist started her article with a conversation with two single friends about just this situation.
I finished my last posting by stating the point that unless we deal with our own experience of aloneness, in whatever way that shows up for each of us, we’ll very likely get that experience at the end of our lives. One thing we all share is our mortality. It is an existential reality.
I think one way this experience shows up is around relationship. We many of us search for another in our lives in order to fill the gap inside us, the fear of being alone, of not being loved, of feeling unlovable, of not being good enough or worthy enough, or what other way that is felt or thought about. Then we lose our partner and we are alone. I think a huge number who called us were alone and had lost someone.
My own take on this dilemma of existence is that we are never alone, we are at one. Our journey and our challenge is to re-discover who we really are all along. Also, for me, this is no mere rationalisation or belief but a felt experience. Our essence is pure joy, love, enthusiasm, aliveness, laughter, energy. To know this is to experience this in ourselves and to see it in others, whoever they are and whatever our connection with them. A lot of our personal development training is about this.
Your understanding might be different. But for both you and me, we have the same challenge, to transcend the human experience of aloneness, in whatever way that shows up.
If you want to be sent future postings to your e-mail in-box, put your e-mail address in the box in the right-hand column here, under the heading “Ways to subscribe”.
Why not e-mail this posting to a friend? Just copy this URL in the top line of your browser and paste it into your e-mail content.
Friday, 4 January 2008
Being alone, being at one
How would you like to be in a box, so to speak, at your funeral, with only two people there for the funeral, neither of whom know you?
Some of you who know us may have seen by now that my wife, an Interfaith Minister, has been on regional television, and now it seems in the national press, about a case that seems to have grabbed people’s imagination here. This is about the disturbing case of a cremation she is to officiate at near us in Wiltshire in which the deceased would have only my wife and the funeral director present to mark her life.
To make her preparations for the service, Akasha went to the care home, some miles from the woman’s home town, which seemed only to be able to provide two photos and virtually no information about her. She seemed to have no family. Nobody had visited her in the 5 years she had been there. Images from Dickens’ novels come to mind. My wife came home with the pictures, one of which showed the woman as a beautiful one in her youth. “How sad”, she said, “that this woman who probably had all sorts of hopes and dreams when young, was to end her days like this and no one would come to her funeral”. She sat with the pictures some days and then she went to a local newspaper in the place where the woman had lived all her life, the Swindon Advertiser who promptly ran a story about it right after New Year’s Day. This was picked up by BBC television and away it went. Many people started to call and soon there was a group who did not know her but felt strongly about it and were determined to be there for her. What a statement! What a demonstration of human bondedness, of caring, and, who knows, perhaps a realisation that “There but for the grace of God go I”.
This is not the place to go into anything further about this woman. However, funerals are not only about marking an ending. They are often also for the living, those left behind. It got me thinking. I know there’s a part of me that separates myself from others at times, and can be very in myself. In the past, I have cut myself off from others. My father spent the last few of his 94 years house-bound and unable to read, with hardly any visitors, alone with himself.
Perhaps you might like to think about what thoughts this story brings up for you – and for the very many who find themselves in similar situations, alone in senior persons’ homes, unvisited, left to their own devices, frail, not communicated with, alone in their final years. More and more of us face this, partly because more of us are single, but also because we are living longer, perhaps running out of friends who are still alive. Also, although we live longer, we many of us are not in good health.
In the UK, the nuclear family has been in decline, the elderly living separately, their children and grandchildren in different towns or separated by distance, and with insufficient financial and social provision for the former - no longer the granny living with the family, helping with the children, the source of wisdom and respect and the transmitter of memory.
Yet, this story also shows to me that when something happens that stirs our hearts, like an old woman without anybody at her funeral, the part of us that resonates in some way with her seeming aloneness feels touched and we reach out to her and want to be there with her, to honour her life and her presence on this earth with us, as she, or at least her body form, is symbolically removed from us.
At another level, I’m also tempted to think, she may not have felt alone herself. That is an assumption. Who knows how she felt in herself. Maybe in her final days she came to feel an at-oneness with herself, to feel complete with herself and with life. Maybe she found her inner contentment.
I am also tempted to think about how aging brings us face to face with the fundamentals of existence, that we are born, grow up, will age and will die. At one level our lives are finite. Aging and old age challenges us to learn to come to be at peace with ourselves, to feel peace, joy and contentment within, or we might feel sure that we’ll find the travails of our latter years hard to deal with, Christmas feasting, wealth, status, material comfort or welfare state regardless. And at this point, we are all the same: physicality is no discriminator.
No wonder this story stirs us.
Have a happy and compassionate New Year.
Some of you who know us may have seen by now that my wife, an Interfaith Minister, has been on regional television, and now it seems in the national press, about a case that seems to have grabbed people’s imagination here. This is about the disturbing case of a cremation she is to officiate at near us in Wiltshire in which the deceased would have only my wife and the funeral director present to mark her life.
To make her preparations for the service, Akasha went to the care home, some miles from the woman’s home town, which seemed only to be able to provide two photos and virtually no information about her. She seemed to have no family. Nobody had visited her in the 5 years she had been there. Images from Dickens’ novels come to mind. My wife came home with the pictures, one of which showed the woman as a beautiful one in her youth. “How sad”, she said, “that this woman who probably had all sorts of hopes and dreams when young, was to end her days like this and no one would come to her funeral”. She sat with the pictures some days and then she went to a local newspaper in the place where the woman had lived all her life, the Swindon Advertiser who promptly ran a story about it right after New Year’s Day. This was picked up by BBC television and away it went. Many people started to call and soon there was a group who did not know her but felt strongly about it and were determined to be there for her. What a statement! What a demonstration of human bondedness, of caring, and, who knows, perhaps a realisation that “There but for the grace of God go I”.
This is not the place to go into anything further about this woman. However, funerals are not only about marking an ending. They are often also for the living, those left behind. It got me thinking. I know there’s a part of me that separates myself from others at times, and can be very in myself. In the past, I have cut myself off from others. My father spent the last few of his 94 years house-bound and unable to read, with hardly any visitors, alone with himself.
Perhaps you might like to think about what thoughts this story brings up for you – and for the very many who find themselves in similar situations, alone in senior persons’ homes, unvisited, left to their own devices, frail, not communicated with, alone in their final years. More and more of us face this, partly because more of us are single, but also because we are living longer, perhaps running out of friends who are still alive. Also, although we live longer, we many of us are not in good health.
In the UK, the nuclear family has been in decline, the elderly living separately, their children and grandchildren in different towns or separated by distance, and with insufficient financial and social provision for the former - no longer the granny living with the family, helping with the children, the source of wisdom and respect and the transmitter of memory.
Yet, this story also shows to me that when something happens that stirs our hearts, like an old woman without anybody at her funeral, the part of us that resonates in some way with her seeming aloneness feels touched and we reach out to her and want to be there with her, to honour her life and her presence on this earth with us, as she, or at least her body form, is symbolically removed from us.
At another level, I’m also tempted to think, she may not have felt alone herself. That is an assumption. Who knows how she felt in herself. Maybe in her final days she came to feel an at-oneness with herself, to feel complete with herself and with life. Maybe she found her inner contentment.
I am also tempted to think about how aging brings us face to face with the fundamentals of existence, that we are born, grow up, will age and will die. At one level our lives are finite. Aging and old age challenges us to learn to come to be at peace with ourselves, to feel peace, joy and contentment within, or we might feel sure that we’ll find the travails of our latter years hard to deal with, Christmas feasting, wealth, status, material comfort or welfare state regardless. And at this point, we are all the same: physicality is no discriminator.
No wonder this story stirs us.
Have a happy and compassionate New Year.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
