Sue Vincent's Blog: Echoes of Life - Posts Tagged "action-and-reaction"
The sheep from the goats
So far I have spent most of the week playing catch-up after my long weekend while Ani has been playing catch with anything she can thrust in my hand to throw... and there have been some odd moves on that score! She loves being with her friends while I am away, but generally penalises me for my absence, as if she is keeping a secret tally. I scored points for picking her up with pig’s ears in the car and for my clothes smelling of strange creatures and landscapes, but inevitably lost them for not having taken her with me. But in all honesty, the idea of Ani loose in a county full of unpenned sheep, chickens and occasional llamas is just not feasible…
I came downstairs to mayhem this morning … the sofa denuded of all cushions, her bed dismembered and her toys across the room… I assume there was a fly or a spider or something… she just grinned, pleased with herself. She sees it as simply doing her chosen duty, regardless of the element of fun involved.
Me, I’m rather jealous of her apparent freedom to act without constraint. Of course we ‘had words’ about the sofa… there are rules and she knows she has to acknowledge them, even if she chooses to break them. She knows, too, which ones she can break with impunity, which invite mild censure and which she really, really cannot break without consequences. Not always the obvious ones either. She learned early on, for instance, that any attempt on books and shoes would get the true shock/horror tone that makes her slink off into a corner with her ears down… whereas the kidnapping of, say, my lunch would invite something that sounded similar but actually didn’t go anywhere near as deep and was generally shadowed by laughter.
Some would see her as badly trained and disobedient. To me she is a laughing free-spirit, who knows what must not be done in order to live peaceably in her environment and knows, too, where the boundaries lie between necessity and choice.
…Which I suppose is pretty much the same for all of us.
To live within a society means following its rules. Yet we can be like the proverbial sheep and follow them slavishly, conforming to expected ideas and behaviours, or we can use a little common sense and learn which ones are necessities and which are open to choice or interpretation. Don’t misunderstand me, I like sheep….yet if you have ever watched a collie at work you will know how easy it is to engage the herd mind and manoeuvre them, using, of all things, a dog that is trained absolutely to care for their wellbeing… and the sheep respond as if through fear, yet seemingly without it, conditioned simply to react.
The basic rules of any society are designed to protect the wellbeing of the populace… and these we follow for very good reason. Yet we have so many superficial ‘rules’ that regulate not only our behaviour but our self- confidence and our perceptions of each other and ourselves. Most of the time they are so deeply ingrained we don’t even notice them, but we feel their effects and sleepwalk through their consequences, blind to what we are allowing ourselves to do to ourselves.
Does it really matter if we don’t know which fork to use at a dinner table? A simple example, perhaps, yet the fear and sense of inferiority that brings to some people are very real. The minute we set foot outside our own safe pasture the unfamiliar territory can make our confidence drop and our perception of self suffers at the raised eyebrow of a society lost in its own constraints. Were we simply observing from a distance, we would see how little importance these apparent ‘rules’ have, yet caught within their mesh we can suffer. To choose politeness and dance to the local tune is one thing, to allow it to rob you of your own song is a different matter.
Yet we do it all the time with thoughts and actions, not because we choose or even because we can see a reason, but simply because we have not taken a moment to look… and judge ourselves often as lacking in comparison to the mirrored perception of others, wanting to see ourselves ‘as good as’ others.
It isn’t whether or not we fit the accepted mould that matters… but why. Whenever we bow down unthinking we are submitting to the herd mind and both abrogating the responsibility of our individuality and failing to celebrate our own uniqueness.
To rebel just for the sake of it is equally a conforming... an acceptance of the importance of the ‘rules’, even while admitting their fallibility. To dare to be different because we are, that is a different story. Why should we even have to ‘dare’? We are ourselves... each of us…utterly and absolutely unique… and that should be enough.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to have a talk with my dog….
I came downstairs to mayhem this morning … the sofa denuded of all cushions, her bed dismembered and her toys across the room… I assume there was a fly or a spider or something… she just grinned, pleased with herself. She sees it as simply doing her chosen duty, regardless of the element of fun involved.
Me, I’m rather jealous of her apparent freedom to act without constraint. Of course we ‘had words’ about the sofa… there are rules and she knows she has to acknowledge them, even if she chooses to break them. She knows, too, which ones she can break with impunity, which invite mild censure and which she really, really cannot break without consequences. Not always the obvious ones either. She learned early on, for instance, that any attempt on books and shoes would get the true shock/horror tone that makes her slink off into a corner with her ears down… whereas the kidnapping of, say, my lunch would invite something that sounded similar but actually didn’t go anywhere near as deep and was generally shadowed by laughter.
Some would see her as badly trained and disobedient. To me she is a laughing free-spirit, who knows what must not be done in order to live peaceably in her environment and knows, too, where the boundaries lie between necessity and choice.
…Which I suppose is pretty much the same for all of us.
To live within a society means following its rules. Yet we can be like the proverbial sheep and follow them slavishly, conforming to expected ideas and behaviours, or we can use a little common sense and learn which ones are necessities and which are open to choice or interpretation. Don’t misunderstand me, I like sheep….yet if you have ever watched a collie at work you will know how easy it is to engage the herd mind and manoeuvre them, using, of all things, a dog that is trained absolutely to care for their wellbeing… and the sheep respond as if through fear, yet seemingly without it, conditioned simply to react.
The basic rules of any society are designed to protect the wellbeing of the populace… and these we follow for very good reason. Yet we have so many superficial ‘rules’ that regulate not only our behaviour but our self- confidence and our perceptions of each other and ourselves. Most of the time they are so deeply ingrained we don’t even notice them, but we feel their effects and sleepwalk through their consequences, blind to what we are allowing ourselves to do to ourselves.
Does it really matter if we don’t know which fork to use at a dinner table? A simple example, perhaps, yet the fear and sense of inferiority that brings to some people are very real. The minute we set foot outside our own safe pasture the unfamiliar territory can make our confidence drop and our perception of self suffers at the raised eyebrow of a society lost in its own constraints. Were we simply observing from a distance, we would see how little importance these apparent ‘rules’ have, yet caught within their mesh we can suffer. To choose politeness and dance to the local tune is one thing, to allow it to rob you of your own song is a different matter.
Yet we do it all the time with thoughts and actions, not because we choose or even because we can see a reason, but simply because we have not taken a moment to look… and judge ourselves often as lacking in comparison to the mirrored perception of others, wanting to see ourselves ‘as good as’ others.
It isn’t whether or not we fit the accepted mould that matters… but why. Whenever we bow down unthinking we are submitting to the herd mind and both abrogating the responsibility of our individuality and failing to celebrate our own uniqueness.
To rebel just for the sake of it is equally a conforming... an acceptance of the importance of the ‘rules’, even while admitting their fallibility. To dare to be different because we are, that is a different story. Why should we even have to ‘dare’? We are ourselves... each of us…utterly and absolutely unique… and that should be enough.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to have a talk with my dog….
Fragments of Light
“…as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father. And I will give him the morning star.” Revelation 2:27-29
I was talking with my son about the way life works out. The daily round of events and occurrences great and small that seem to be scattered, like pieces of broken glass, across the table of time. Some events hit your life with all the destructive power of a truck at full speed. Caught in the emotions of the moment it is hard to see beyond the pain, the fear, or the grief. Some are joyous rays of light casting bright pools of colour in the shadows. Most are the simple small-doings of everyday.
Taken individually, like pieces of a puzzle, they can be difficult to interpret… a patch of featureless blue or indistinct green may be hard to place within the image… especially if you don’t know what the picture is to begin with. Yet with a little patience the pieces can begin to fit together. A detail here, a match there, and you begin to see the sense in the colours, to get an inkling of what the picture may be.
I am reminded of this when I am wandering round the old churches with their beautiful stained glass. Look too closely and they are just fragments of colour, odd shapes and sizes with little meaning. Stand back a little and the picture becomes clear. You can see how the seemingly random shards have been pieced together by a master hand to produce a glowing jewel of an image.
Some windows are simple; easy to read, as the images are those we readily recognise from life. A face, a form, a creature or landscape. Others are abstract and require closer attention and more thought before the design becomes clear.
In some places I see where fragments of glass have been salvaged from the destruction of history. There is no knowing what the original image may have been, yet the shards have been lovingly collected and fashioned into something new… different from the original design, but having a beauty all of its own when the light shines through.
All the fragments have their place. We may not always see the bigger picture to know where they are supposed to fit, especially when we are concentrating too closely on the details. They may seem as though they will never make sense, or even as if they do not fit our design at all. Sometimes it seems things need to be broken apart so, as a friend put it, the light can shine through. Even the most glorious window, after all, is colourless in the dark. It is only with the light that the beauty becomes visible. The fragments of glass may make the picture, but only the light behind it gives it life.
Our own lives are so much like these fragmentary shards, a jumble of bright and dark as we immerse ourselves in them, dwelling on the details and getting so close we have no hope of seeing what the picture holds. If we stand back a little we may get a better idea, seeing the traced design running through our days.
When you are lost in the events it is hard to make sense of them, but looking back you can sometimes see how all the pieces, light and dark, have their place and time, taking on a rhythm and a purpose, building up the picture that is our own becoming.
I was talking with my son about the way life works out. The daily round of events and occurrences great and small that seem to be scattered, like pieces of broken glass, across the table of time. Some events hit your life with all the destructive power of a truck at full speed. Caught in the emotions of the moment it is hard to see beyond the pain, the fear, or the grief. Some are joyous rays of light casting bright pools of colour in the shadows. Most are the simple small-doings of everyday.
Taken individually, like pieces of a puzzle, they can be difficult to interpret… a patch of featureless blue or indistinct green may be hard to place within the image… especially if you don’t know what the picture is to begin with. Yet with a little patience the pieces can begin to fit together. A detail here, a match there, and you begin to see the sense in the colours, to get an inkling of what the picture may be.
I am reminded of this when I am wandering round the old churches with their beautiful stained glass. Look too closely and they are just fragments of colour, odd shapes and sizes with little meaning. Stand back a little and the picture becomes clear. You can see how the seemingly random shards have been pieced together by a master hand to produce a glowing jewel of an image.
Some windows are simple; easy to read, as the images are those we readily recognise from life. A face, a form, a creature or landscape. Others are abstract and require closer attention and more thought before the design becomes clear.
In some places I see where fragments of glass have been salvaged from the destruction of history. There is no knowing what the original image may have been, yet the shards have been lovingly collected and fashioned into something new… different from the original design, but having a beauty all of its own when the light shines through.
All the fragments have their place. We may not always see the bigger picture to know where they are supposed to fit, especially when we are concentrating too closely on the details. They may seem as though they will never make sense, or even as if they do not fit our design at all. Sometimes it seems things need to be broken apart so, as a friend put it, the light can shine through. Even the most glorious window, after all, is colourless in the dark. It is only with the light that the beauty becomes visible. The fragments of glass may make the picture, but only the light behind it gives it life.
Our own lives are so much like these fragmentary shards, a jumble of bright and dark as we immerse ourselves in them, dwelling on the details and getting so close we have no hope of seeing what the picture holds. If we stand back a little we may get a better idea, seeing the traced design running through our days.
When you are lost in the events it is hard to make sense of them, but looking back you can sometimes see how all the pieces, light and dark, have their place and time, taking on a rhythm and a purpose, building up the picture that is our own becoming.
Sleepy bees and a joyous goat
The weekend started early… Wednesday afternoon to be precise. I had headed northwards, allowing extra time for the inevitable motorway delays that never happened, so I found myself within 15 minutes of my city destination with an hour or two to spare.
And there was a crossroads….
I knew what lay behind me and what lay ahead…. Left looked like a good option…I couldn’t see very much but that was because the road ran uphill. In that region, I need no further encouragement. Pulling over into a field gate, hoping to get a shot of a little bridge, I found instead a sleepy bee nestled in a terrestrial sun, and a sky that took my breath away.
And still the road headed upwards…and I inevitably followed. I was surprised to find a car-park in the middle of nowhere, it seemed. There had to be a reason for it, so I swung the car in, grabbed the camera and set out to explore. Up a few steps, along a wooded path by a field… then the way opened onto glory and sunlight on stone and heather.
Camera flare? Did I care? Laughing into the wind, a “joyous little goat, leaping on the crags”, as one dear friend put it… She’s right too. About the joyousness… the Pennines get me every time.
I don’t know what it is, whether it is the geology, limestone and millstone grit, the shape of the valleys and crags, the great boulder-strewn hillsides… Maybe it is the colours of the vegetation or the way the clouds come down to play… or something in the air…the quality of the light…
Maybe we are simply attuned to the landscape of home…
It lifts my heart and makes my soul sing, no matter how hard things are, no matter how much I hurt, no matter, even, how happy I am… all other emotion is brushed aside by that surging joy when I stand beneath that sky on those hills.
Over the weekend we were to be blessed with glorious weather and I was to play amongst the stones and the heather, discovering otherworldly landscapes… but I didn’t know that then… all I knew was that moment and that joy.
When the time comes to leave again, as it did early this morning, and I turn southwards for home there is a physical pang of separation as I leave the hills behind. This morning was no exception and the wrench brings tears, every time.
Yet I was treated to the beauty of a dawn over the magical landscape of Albion, before plunging below the mists into a grey and ghostly world. As I drove through the lower lands and cars joined mine on the roads it struck me that they, waking from sleep and setting out on their day’s journey, had not yet seen the sun. They did not know how beautiful it was above the clouds they saw as fog. But I had seen... I had been gifted a privileged glimpse of its delicate beauty.
The sun was already there, is always there, but sometimes, as now, invisible, hidden. Within that colourless landscape another dawn waited, distant and luminous. Just waiting for the right moment, the right conditions… the right landscape in which to reveal itself. I marvelled at the way that nature mirrors our own lives, all unnoticed most of the time, yet of course it would… we are not separate from nature but part of it… part of the fauna of this beautiful planet and the world around us has so much to teach us if we but look.
Like the bees, chilled by the cooler autumnal air and asleep, seemingly unaware, in the middle of beautiful flowers, we sink into slumber, forgetting the sun’s light simply because it is unseen. In the same way we seem to forget the simple, unfettered joys when the cold mists of worry and the pressures of the mundane world cloud our vision. Joy, too, is always there… a possibility, unseen perhaps… but not unknowable. Sometimes we just have to find the right road….
And there was a crossroads….
I knew what lay behind me and what lay ahead…. Left looked like a good option…I couldn’t see very much but that was because the road ran uphill. In that region, I need no further encouragement. Pulling over into a field gate, hoping to get a shot of a little bridge, I found instead a sleepy bee nestled in a terrestrial sun, and a sky that took my breath away.
And still the road headed upwards…and I inevitably followed. I was surprised to find a car-park in the middle of nowhere, it seemed. There had to be a reason for it, so I swung the car in, grabbed the camera and set out to explore. Up a few steps, along a wooded path by a field… then the way opened onto glory and sunlight on stone and heather.
Camera flare? Did I care? Laughing into the wind, a “joyous little goat, leaping on the crags”, as one dear friend put it… She’s right too. About the joyousness… the Pennines get me every time.
I don’t know what it is, whether it is the geology, limestone and millstone grit, the shape of the valleys and crags, the great boulder-strewn hillsides… Maybe it is the colours of the vegetation or the way the clouds come down to play… or something in the air…the quality of the light…
Maybe we are simply attuned to the landscape of home…
It lifts my heart and makes my soul sing, no matter how hard things are, no matter how much I hurt, no matter, even, how happy I am… all other emotion is brushed aside by that surging joy when I stand beneath that sky on those hills.
Over the weekend we were to be blessed with glorious weather and I was to play amongst the stones and the heather, discovering otherworldly landscapes… but I didn’t know that then… all I knew was that moment and that joy.
When the time comes to leave again, as it did early this morning, and I turn southwards for home there is a physical pang of separation as I leave the hills behind. This morning was no exception and the wrench brings tears, every time.
Yet I was treated to the beauty of a dawn over the magical landscape of Albion, before plunging below the mists into a grey and ghostly world. As I drove through the lower lands and cars joined mine on the roads it struck me that they, waking from sleep and setting out on their day’s journey, had not yet seen the sun. They did not know how beautiful it was above the clouds they saw as fog. But I had seen... I had been gifted a privileged glimpse of its delicate beauty.
The sun was already there, is always there, but sometimes, as now, invisible, hidden. Within that colourless landscape another dawn waited, distant and luminous. Just waiting for the right moment, the right conditions… the right landscape in which to reveal itself. I marvelled at the way that nature mirrors our own lives, all unnoticed most of the time, yet of course it would… we are not separate from nature but part of it… part of the fauna of this beautiful planet and the world around us has so much to teach us if we but look.
Like the bees, chilled by the cooler autumnal air and asleep, seemingly unaware, in the middle of beautiful flowers, we sink into slumber, forgetting the sun’s light simply because it is unseen. In the same way we seem to forget the simple, unfettered joys when the cold mists of worry and the pressures of the mundane world cloud our vision. Joy, too, is always there… a possibility, unseen perhaps… but not unknowable. Sometimes we just have to find the right road….
Cabbage
When I was small and faced with a plate piled with the over-boiled cabbage I detested, my grandmother told me to eat it first… get rid of it… so I could enjoy the rest of the meal… and to save my favourite bits till last. Like many of the things she told me, I never forgot that advice. She was right too, that means there is always something to look forward to… even when life gives you cabbage.
Which works out quite nicely, as I saved the best bits of my last trip northwards until today… and it does my heart good just to look at the images this morning.
It was a strange night, last night. I, who generally burn the proverbial midnight oil, was forced to bed at an unreasonably early hour frozen and rather unwell. I spent the night drifting in and out of strange dreams. Of course there were the inevitable reflections of my current preoccupation and I was editing and formatting in my sleep… sad, isn’t it? The rest of the night I was being taught.
It is quite odd, I had a conversation yesterday about the relevance of dreams. Most of the time they are, I think, simply the mind processing events and playing out emotions and worries symbolically, yet every so often there is one that has a deeper meaning. I lay there between the worlds last night, not quite able to surface enough to reach for the pen yet awake enough to know I wasn’t quite asleep. I watched and listened and learned. I remember being asked if I would remember the dream… and assuring my interlocutor that I would… and, of course, once fully awake I can recall only fragments of it on the surface, though I have no doubt that at some level it is all sinking in..
I don’t think it matters where this kind of dream comes from… and there are many theories, of course from the purely psychological to the rather more fanciful and even the deeply spiritual. What matters is the relevance and accuracy of the content and whether it makes a difference. Reading back over the page of scrawled notes from waking, I am pretty certain that they will.. and if that is merely the subconscious ordering and presenting its thoughts, then I’m fine with that. We have a tendency to seek outside explanations for many things, and sometimes the wisdom is already there within, just waiting for us to draw it to the surface.
I have a feeling that we generally know the answers to the things that truly matter to us, even though we may attempt to fool ourselves into ignorance… because we don’t want to see, or cannot face the truth. We may feel we go along with things in a selfless spirit, or feel we are victims of circumstance… yet even this may not be entirely true. Even when events themselves are outside our control, we still have a choice in how we act and the motives behind our actions are often left unexamined through fear of what we may find. Yet after all, most of the things that preoccupy us seem very small when placed against the backdrop of the wider world.
Looking at the pictures of the fabulous landscape I walked in just a few days ago, this is borne home in a profound way. We are the centre of our own universes, seeing everything in terms of how it touches or affects us. Individually we are very small and of little seeming importance. Most of us will never make a visible impression on the wider stage of the world. Yet we are each of us unique and part of a greater world in a very intimate way. Beautiful, magnificent though it is, we cannot even guarantee it exists except through our observation of it. In that respect we are of ultimate importance and we owe it to ourselves and the world to look out with clear eyes and heart. Even when life serves you cabbage.
Which works out quite nicely, as I saved the best bits of my last trip northwards until today… and it does my heart good just to look at the images this morning.
It was a strange night, last night. I, who generally burn the proverbial midnight oil, was forced to bed at an unreasonably early hour frozen and rather unwell. I spent the night drifting in and out of strange dreams. Of course there were the inevitable reflections of my current preoccupation and I was editing and formatting in my sleep… sad, isn’t it? The rest of the night I was being taught.
It is quite odd, I had a conversation yesterday about the relevance of dreams. Most of the time they are, I think, simply the mind processing events and playing out emotions and worries symbolically, yet every so often there is one that has a deeper meaning. I lay there between the worlds last night, not quite able to surface enough to reach for the pen yet awake enough to know I wasn’t quite asleep. I watched and listened and learned. I remember being asked if I would remember the dream… and assuring my interlocutor that I would… and, of course, once fully awake I can recall only fragments of it on the surface, though I have no doubt that at some level it is all sinking in..
I don’t think it matters where this kind of dream comes from… and there are many theories, of course from the purely psychological to the rather more fanciful and even the deeply spiritual. What matters is the relevance and accuracy of the content and whether it makes a difference. Reading back over the page of scrawled notes from waking, I am pretty certain that they will.. and if that is merely the subconscious ordering and presenting its thoughts, then I’m fine with that. We have a tendency to seek outside explanations for many things, and sometimes the wisdom is already there within, just waiting for us to draw it to the surface.
I have a feeling that we generally know the answers to the things that truly matter to us, even though we may attempt to fool ourselves into ignorance… because we don’t want to see, or cannot face the truth. We may feel we go along with things in a selfless spirit, or feel we are victims of circumstance… yet even this may not be entirely true. Even when events themselves are outside our control, we still have a choice in how we act and the motives behind our actions are often left unexamined through fear of what we may find. Yet after all, most of the things that preoccupy us seem very small when placed against the backdrop of the wider world.
Looking at the pictures of the fabulous landscape I walked in just a few days ago, this is borne home in a profound way. We are the centre of our own universes, seeing everything in terms of how it touches or affects us. Individually we are very small and of little seeming importance. Most of us will never make a visible impression on the wider stage of the world. Yet we are each of us unique and part of a greater world in a very intimate way. Beautiful, magnificent though it is, we cannot even guarantee it exists except through our observation of it. In that respect we are of ultimate importance and we owe it to ourselves and the world to look out with clear eyes and heart. Even when life serves you cabbage.
