Category: Big Thoughts

When life hurts, we all have big thoughts. Let’s explore them together.

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The Good Old Days

Are you glued to your smart phone with endless doom-scrolling and messages and notification beeps? Do you wish you could switch off once in a while and go back in time – that magical time when phones were, well, just phones?

Turns out Gen Z, as ever, can teach us a thing or two. Apparently they’re leaving smart phones behind and choosing instead a ‘dumb phone’ – you know the ones, little clicky buttons, maybe a cheeky flip screen, too. The idea is to give their heads a break from incessant scrolling, or always being available. Imagine, they say, being able to have a cup of coffee, look out the window, and (shock) NOT TAKE A PHOTO. Goodness. 

It all sounds rather blissful to an old Luddite like me. But it’s a bit complicated. Without the little piece of technology in our hands we really don’t know anything. Where is that new cafe? No idea. Have you heard about the war / election / funny cat video? Nope. What’s your best mate’s phone number? Um, it starts with zero seven, I think? The technological revolution has indeed made the smart phone its epicentre. The world now revolves around these small, handheld devices: communication is via WhatsApp, even car parks use Apps, and without Google Maps we’d all be (quite literally) lost. It’s a bit sad, somehow. And here’s a scary thought – maybe our brains are changing too.

Gen Z are onto something, for sure, but I’m not sure the world will let them get away with it. Or maybe another revolution is on its way? After all, going backwards isn’t always a bad idea. To play my part, I’m turning off notifications, limiting social media (I’m only on Twitter but still, the scrolling and cat videos take their toll) and starting the day with my poetry book (or Calvin and Hobbes, depending on my mood). Everything in moderation as they say. Balance is all.

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Warm Heart

I know Spring is arriving and all, what with the daffodils and birdsong and general lightness in the air, but I’m still absolutely freezing. I’m sitting at my desk in full thermal base layers and two pairs of socks, but it’s not really helping. I just can’t get warmth into my bones.

A quick (ill-advised) internet search suggests all sorts of serious reasons for this: old age (thanks); low metabolism; blood sugar issues; anaemia; poor circulation; peripheral artery disease. Gosh. I’d really rather just blame my genes. Granny was always cold and would screech at us kids to “shut the door!” if we were popping in and out of the living room. Mum is the same and is never, ever, without a long-sleeve vest, even in the height of summer. A 1980s heatwave was possibly the last time Mum wore a T-shirt. And she didn’t like it.

The young ‘uns today are wearing shorts in all seasons, and I keep spotting them strutting around outside with not a care in the world. It could be fashion and influencer-based (I know), or they may genuinely not feel the cold. But even a flash of a bare ankle on a cold day makes me shiver and draw my scarf tighter round my neck.

Surely we should be stoic Celts who can withstand all sorts of inclement weather and strong winds? There are colder places to live. But my friend, Swedish Sara, has always said that it feels colder here in Ireland than at her home, where temperatures can reach minus 13. The damp air and general greyness seems to seep into our bodies. The Scandis have somehow mastered this. My forays into Swedish saunas during our year out in the van were a revelation: hot, hot, hot room; deep, deep, deep breaths; and finally, warm bones. Stepping out from those pine huts into a cold outdoors, with bare feet and arms and legs, I felt at one with the world. Who’d have thought that I could feel the breeze on my skin and simply smile and close my eyes? No shivering here. A cool outdoor shower woke me up in places I’d never even known I was asleep.

I’m wondering how to embrace this Scandi wisdom on cold, grey days. Maybe I’ll build a tiny sauna in my back garden. But meantime, I’ll remind myself of that old adage: cold hands, warm heart.

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Rest and Play

I’m getting really good at resting. I can make a whole morning disappear in the blink of an eye and all I’ve done is eat breakfast, look at the sky, read a chapter of a book and snuggle a cat. Before I know it, lunch time arrives and then I can maybe go for a walk, read another chapter, have more cat snuggles. You get the drift. But why did it take so long to learn this particular skill? And how come I still need to shake off a dusting of guilt now and then when I finally stop working or doing ‘useful’ things, and just sit?

It could be a mix of Protestant work ethic, patriarchal expectations and my own sense of self. I need to do something to feel reward; I need to be useful before I deserve a rest. And there’s the rub – resting feels different when it’s a choice, when it follows a fulfilling time, whether that be work, social engagements or anything in between. To stop and say ‘ah, that was good, that went well, I think I’ll have a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit now’. Those are the precious times of rest when our minds, as well as our bodies, get the recharge they need. We come out ready to move once again.

But if times of stopping are pushed on us – through redundancy, or unemployment, or ill-health – it feels very different. The lingering lie-in is depressing (because it happens every day), the collapse onto the sofa is sad.  It’s as if guilt and low self-worth rob our rest of its potential for fulfilment. 

Psychologists have a term for this: resting guilt. When we stop to take a break, sit down, put the kettle on, whatever that looks like for each person, the accompanying guilt takes a seat beside us and shakes its judgmental head. We rush the tea, can’t concentrate on the book, don’t notice the clouds in the sky. And soon ‘get back to it’ without feeling refreshed at all. 

So now that I’ve mostly learned how to enjoy a day (or even an hour) off, I only need to watch the cats for a quick reminder lesson in how it’s done. Talk about relishing the joy of a lie-in, the happiness of a wintery afternoon wrapped in a blanket, the swaggering ease of a mooch around the garden. 

It’s never a waste to stop and make a cuppa. And your body, not to mention the people around you, will thank you. I’m reframing any ‘wasted time’ as ‘resting time’. Take this as your permission slip to do the same. 

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Just a Number

This might sound strange but I have a favourite mirror in the house. It’s more flattering than any other (and don’t get me started on changing room mirrors – what were they thinking? Fluorescent tube lighting?) The bathroom mirror is beside the window and since it’s a small, dark room there’s only a little bit of natural light, so when I catch sight of my reflection it’s as if there’s a generous filter and (if I don’t squint too hard) I can’t even see too many wrinkles. Needless to say, this is the mirror I gravitate towards to fix my hair or makeup – it just makes sense.

But now and again I get a surprise when I catch sight of myself in another mirror, or when big birthdays arrive, or even when interacting with someone younger. I know that answering the question ‘how old do you feel’ is going to remind me of sore joints and grey hair and time ever-fading away. I’ll probably give a sad (and large) number in response. But how about this question: how old am I in my head? Not how old do I feel, but how old do I really think I am? It’s a great question. Think quickly and find your own answer. 

If you’re over forty, odds are that you’ve chosen a number that’s at least twenty per cent younger than your actual age. This is incredibly common in the western world. It’s a mixture of trying to stay young and the pressures of modern youth-oriented culture, of course, but there’s more to it than that. Maybe a traumatic event has stalled us at a certain point in our minds. Or a moment in time that changed us forever. But there’s also a sense of optimism and hope involved in believing that you’re younger – life is ahead, you’ve lots left to give, all those inspiring things. Rather than admitting defeat and zooming in on grey hair and wrinkles, we can look inwards and find a fount of eternal youth that keeps us skipping along the path.

One word of caution though: social interactions can get weird. If you focus too much on that youthful number in your head, you’ll forget that you’re not the same age as your younger friends. So step carefully when taking part in things. For instance, I won’t be joining Adam and Sally on their wakeboarding trips, but I’ll be around on their return to sit by the fire and have a nice chat.

And for the record I’m thirty five.

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Art is Life

I wish someone had told me at school that I’d never need to do quadratic equations ever again. Or know how to calculate the angles on an isosceles triangle. Instead, I sat in maths class and sweated and strained under those hideous numbers until nothing at all made sense. Luckily I avoided Mr McCart’s eraser missiles (other mates were not so fortunate – I’m looking at you, Louise) – an old-fashioned teaching technique that seemed to assume that terror, and a little bit of violence, would suddenly make the ‘maths light’ come on in our heads. All it achieved was chalk marks (I know, I’m a certain age) on our wool blazers and a sense of encroaching dread before and during class. On one memorable occasion my friend Karen was asked a mental arithmetic question and simply cried out “Seven? I don’t know!”, before slamming her head onto the desk and moaning loudly. We all sat with widened eyes as Mr McCart, for once, remained silent.

I’ve been thinking about those terrible classes recently because of the noise out there surrounding ‘useless’ degrees. You know, the ones that don’t lead to big-earning careers. I’m all for STEM education (and we need to get more women and girls onto these courses) but it’s making my heart sad to hear my beloved arts so maligned. Recent cuts to the arts are painful here in Northern Ireland. Of my two degrees (English Literature and Psychology) only one is a science and is now considered ‘useful’ but I haven’t gone on to earn big bucks as a psychologist. Instead, I studied the topic for the love of learning. Nonetheless I’ve used my new knowledge to great effect in my (charity) job working as a story teller with people in the criminal justice system. Both degrees have come together in the most unexpected way. It’s a small salary but the impact packs a punch. Who knows, it might even change the world. 

The arts not only change our hearts and minds but make the world go round. They speak truth to power. And there’s the rub – writers and artists are always feared by the establishment. It’s no surprise that dictators quickly go after artists and burn books. Art opens our minds to questions, philosophy, semantics, ideology and all things in between. Without William Shakespeare how could we know how to cope with grief, ambition, fear? Without Charles Dickens how could we know to question a society that leaves the vulnerable to starve? Without Margaret Atwood how could we get a glimpse of dystopia and the harm it can cause? Caravaggio showed us the divine. Van Gogh broke our hearts. Picasso opened our eyes. 

If we focus only on money and numbers, we humans will lose something very precious. Art, put simply, is life.