Ruthless Hurry

What’s taking so long?

More haste, less speed. Good things come to those who wait. Patience is a virtue. Some days I float around with a halo over my head, serenely putting up with delays and problems with an affable shake of the head. But other days I can feel frustration build and build over the tiniest things (a bluetooth speaker that won’t connect, for instance).

What’s going on? I heard a story a while back about someone who was struggling with anxiety. He asked his mentor for coping tips and the (slow) reply came: “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.”

I love this. But I hate it too. It’s so hard to accomplish – especially in December when the flurry of Christmas shopping, Christmas events, Christmas stress just won’t let up. I’ll throw clothes into the washing machine while trying to feed the cats while listening to a work podcast and unsurprisingly my brain will just shut down. It’s had enough. 

Happy Advent

But I repeat the phrase pretty much every day, the word ‘ruthless’ is particularly appropriate. Be strict with your self-care regime. Say no if something feels wrong. Chop the dinner ingredients slowly and maybe, just maybe, a little bit of mindfulness will creep into your daily activities. Breathe out. Look around. It’s amazing what slowing down can do. And it brings patience in its wake.

Advent is the perfect time to sit and wait. Looking ahead with hope as the twinkly lights and candles brighten the dark nights. It’s delayed gratification in action. After all, what’s the rush?

Words

It was National Poetry Day this week. Twitter was awash with gorgeous poems – the sheer volume of sentences and stanzas was a bit overwhelming. Because sometimes it’s just one word that hits home. A word to finish a stream of thought that tightens the throat and stops the breath.

Words have power. I don’t understand the alchemy of it but it’s magical. So without further ado here’s the poem that never fails – never – to stop me in my tracks.

The Committee Weighs In
by Andrea Cohen

I tell my mother
I've won the Nobel Prize.

Again? she says. Which
discipline this time?

It's a little game
we play: I pretend

I'm somebody, she
pretends she isn't dead.

Amazing Empathy

For Empathy Day on 10th June I made a short video for NI Libraries that (spoiler alert) discovered how reading fiction can help us learn this amazing skill. 

Incredible to think that when we say “I feel your pain” we might just be telling the truth. Neuroscience has shown that pain response areas light up in our brains when we see someone else suffer. This is probably why we flinch if we’re innocently holding up a picture for someone to attach to the wall and then catch sight of that inevitable thump of hammer onto thumb. It’s not your thumb but for a small moment it feels like it. And a general rule of thumb (see what I did there?) in this scenario is that the victim is the only one allowed to swear profusely. 

Empathy is a marvellous thing and surely offers great hope for the future of our social species. I hereby promise to walk in other shoes and reserve judgements. Happy Empathy Day everyone.

Books make us better people. I knew it!

Boxes in the Attic

Well I did it. I stepped out from the shadows and into the inter-web light. I’m blinking hard but standing still. Gosh, it feels weird! After many (many) years of avoiding all kinds of online malarkey I finally feel ready to speak and share.  And here’s the thing: it’s kinda fun. Scary, but fun. Blog post number one here we go!

I guess all of us have boxes in the attic. Or if we don’t have an actual attic we have boxes in our minds that Pandora has carefully sealed up and woe betide anyone who opens them. In the attic I’m picturing dust-covered suitcases filled with old photographs, old toys, that musty smell as you peek inside, all the while hoping you won’t disturb a rodent of some sort (or a grumpy ghost). The spiders in the eaves watch with disinterest as you lift items up and sigh.

Since such things have been assigned to a box and hidden away there’s usually uncertainty about what’s inside. Did I put my school prefect badge in this box? Are the old photographs from Granny’s flat in this bag? Wondering what’s there is part of the excitement about rooting around up there in dusty spaces. My friends Sally and Adam moved into a gorgeous eighteenth century coach house and soon discovered a safe of some sort embedded in the bedroom wall. Should they try to open it? Would they find a rusty key somewhere that fitted the lock like a fairytale? And biggest question of all: what the hell was in there? Years later and they still just sleep next to it. It remains closed and silent. I remain intrigued!

Whatever turns up, it’s inevitable that memories will follow. And memories are tricky beasts; good, bad, unclear. There’s a lovely moment in Amelie when she discovers an old toy tin and tracks down its owner, now an old man, in order to return it to him. His tears on opening that tin and seeing little toy soldiers are full of that odd mixture of late-in-life happiness and sadness. This is what memories can do. This is what boxes in the attic can do.

And sometimes those memories have been covered up for good reason. My wonderful mother-in-law, Rosie, found newspaper cuttings in her loft some years ago that described the 1981 hunger strikes here in Belfast. At that time Rosie was a young nurse and those traumatic images were folded away along with the newspapers and put in a box and never spoken about for decades. On discovering those papers, though, Rosie began to share her own stories and we family members sat at her feet and listened. It was incredible to hear all that she had seen and done during those terrible times.

And here’s what happened: catharsis.

It was truly an emotional act. Words have power. Spoken words in particular. The wellbeing industry is probably right – it’s good to talk. Something shifts when voices are heard and memories are brought into the light.

So once again, welcome to Shedwriting – where boxes are opened, light shines, and words have power.