Tuesday 28 October 2008

Insight, On My Mind

"I can't believe I got here
Or how long it took" (Mike Scott)

Sometimes a journey from A to B can take you through Z. And sometimes B wasn't the place you expected to end up. I'm finding the most logical explanation is that it is how it is meant to happen, and that, inevitably, there will be something discovered along the journey which is needed at its end, perhaps something which makes sense of the end.

In my mind's eye I see myself filling in a jigsaw puzzle, and each person in my life hands me a piece, sometimes more than one. To start with, like most jigsaw puzzles, it doesn't seem to fit together, I don't seem able to judge the dimensions, decide which way is up, or tell what it's going to look like when finished. Finding the corners was the first task,and then building the frame of the edges. Those pieces need to hold together firmly, fence in the mess of pieces which will be needed to complete the picture, give it strength and form, but they are not enough to be able to identify the final result, they are the essential groundwork.

Now I'm beginning to realise that every person is giving me a piece with a picture of themselves on it, they are all part of me and all part of what I will find at the end of my journey, as well as sustenance of spirit, peace, love, energy, faith, and hope. Enough of the pieces are now in place for me to see what I am to become, and to see how small and great a step it is from where I started.

Monday 20 October 2008

Who do people say I am?

One of the main things I remember from academic study of human behaviour was the need to approach from three angles; what people do, what people say they do, and what people think they do,beautifully summed up by INXS as

"What you do
and what you say
Do you know the difference
anyway?"

Doing and saying are things which are easily evidenced, imagine a courtroom prosecutor "Do you deny that on the night in question...?", what people do and say might be witnessed and recorded, but what they think is quite a different animal, and not so easily expressed, despite the wonderful story of the footballer who asked the referee the immortal question;

"What would you do if I said you were a cheat?"
"I'd send you off"
"What would you do if I thought you were a cheat?"
"I can't send you off just for thinking"
"In that case, I think you're a cheat!"

Speaking with forked tongue has become so ingrained in our nature that total honesty is the preserve of the very young, very foolish, or very tactless. We even find it hard to be honest with ourselves, that asking the question "Who am I?" can elicit a tall tale.

So it's time to go back-to-basics, write down all the things I can possibly be, and then cross out the ones which don't fit. In the interests of simplicity I have chosen to take a gender neutral approach, avoiding anything which is specific to either gender.

I am a child
I am a sibling
I am a friend
I am a colleague
I am a member of a faith
I am a responsible person
I am a reader
I am a writer
I am a photographer
I am a dreamer

Jumping off the page at me are the three groups that the list can be organised into, those definitions which are reciprocal, those which are complementary, and those which are individual, and it is interesting to see how many fit into each category. My grandmother taught me that "To have a friend is to be a friend", it is an equal and mirrored relationship. "Thou smilest not and he's gagged" tells us that it is the nature of the artist and poet to seek an audience, the responsible person to have charges in their care, it is only possible to be a parent to another who is the child, again there is synergy, although the dynamic of the relationship may not appear equal. But the last two on the list do not fit, I consider myself a photographer and not an artist, the major purpose of my photography is not to display or raise comment, but for personal pleasure, and my dreaming (I was tempted to write the somewhat misleading term "lover") is often not reciprocated or fulfilled by another. Love, sadly, is not dependent on return, although to blossom fully it must be. But in itself, like photography, it is evidence of a very different kind of relationship from the reciprocal and complementary relationships with other human beings, if anything it is evidence of a relationship with the world, or creation,and with the one who created it. And for the human being to be genuinely fulfilled a relationship with the created order is as important as relationships with others, it is a grounding of a benchmark or an anchor point we define our location from, without it we are merely drifting.

Tuesday 7 October 2008

Ordinary Time

I'm taking time out for reflection.
I can't say my reflection has ever really been of great interest to me, it looks at me in a slightly accusing way, and does the opposite of whatever I do.
Perhaps it is just naturally contrary, I'm not sure that I'm always right, but I'm sure that I'm not always wrong, so it can't be always left, surely?
I don't think that's the only reason I don't much like looking in the mirror, I can't say "Mirror, mirror, on the wall" even in jest, I get the feeling I wouldn't like the answer much. I don't feel that the mirror is there to give me answers so much as it constantly questions me, sarcastically and not at all constructively. So I choose to look for my reflection in other surfaces, specifically in the eyes of those around me.
I've had some good times lately but I can't help wondering if I've made all that I could out of them. I'm looking for ways that I've grown as a person over the last year, and hoping I don't find any ways in which I've withered as a person.
I came so close to achieving what I thought I wanted, before seeing that I was pushing a square peg against a round hole. However much I'd like to see an end to these cycles of hope and loneliness I can't be with someone whose world view runs counter to mine.

"Strawberry Man
at the end of the day
you and your van
need somewhere to stay..
take my car keys
keep my shoes
someday I may need
a favour from you" (Mike Scott)

I count the things that I've done for other people today, and I count the things other people have done for me. And the world doesn't owe me, I owe it.