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Tuesday 14 June 2011

Remembering

This morning I woke early after an anxious night. Redundancy is approaching and I've been scaring myself with my thoughts about finding work, money, etc and paralysing myself with indecision and doubts. I have started reading  The Mindful Manifesto  and reconnectiing with the practice of mindfulness, trying to be aware of my thoughts and how they effect my body and emotions. So I sat for a while with my anxiety and allowed some space to observe the inner workings.
Quite out of the blue I remembered this....
I was 8 or 9 and we used to live in a flat above a shop that my mum and dad ran. A small lorry pulled up outside the shop and the men got out and came into the flat and started taking our furniture and putting it into the back of the lorry (I had no idea then what bailiffs were or what they did).
I remembered lying on my bed frightened and my dad coming and lying beside me and trying to reassure me. I also remembered being next to the lorry (the timing and sequence of these events is lost to me, as is so much of my childhood) and as the men were putting the side flap of the lorry up a metal pin that held it in place fell on the floor. I picked it up and handed it to the man, as any child would do, and I remember my mum saying to me 'what did you do that for?'. The question being, of course, an accusation 'what was I doing helping those nasty men'.
More scary thoughts driving to work, and when I got there I was performing some checks on the mobile library I drive when it occured to me how boxed in I was with my thoughts, how stuck. At the same moment I happened to look up and became aware of the sky.
It was beautiful. Blue. Vast. A vapour trail from a plane had etched a line across it. My spirit seemed to reach out to it and open up to it. I had the thought that there is so much more going on than what we are thinking or feeling. So much life out there to be lived. So much more than just me and my thoughts.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for this JK. Thanks for letting us know how you are. Bishop Trevor Mwamba says to Precious Ramotswe in Tea Time For The Traditionally Built that 'There is plenty of work for love to do', and I think you are doing some of that work.

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  2. Thank you John I appreciate you taking the time to tell me this....

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  3. 'We cannot see our reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can'

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