Sue Vincent's Blog: Echoes of Life - Posts Tagged "pushing-the-bounds-being"
Out of Season
He probably didn’t need to laugh quite so much.
I have an excuse... I have flu… migraine...I’m not well…
My son had found me, head in hands… and knowing this had asked what was wrong.
I knew I shouldn’t have told him….
…to be fair, he has every reason to laugh.
I’d just turned the phone ringer volume up…
..in case Ani needed to call me.
I know she is a very clever dog, but…
Yep. I’m losing the plot.
To be fair, I’m not alone.
The roses are in full bloom, primulas sparkle in the pale sunlight, the fish are active, jumping at the clouds of midges above the pond. Geum’s dot the garden with flame. Perfume from the choisya blossom… the clear blue of campanulas and the deep purple of hebe…and the bright yellow of winter mahonia….
It is November. It is cold. Even the garden is confused.
It seems many things are bending normality to suit themselves.
And really, why ever not?
Who says we have to conform to a normality predefined by who knows who? And who does define it anyway? When you really think about it… we do.
There is no law that says you have to get old when you reach a certain age, retire to the armchair and wait for a decorous finale… And no rule that says a child cannot be as gifted as a Mozart… Or the fallacy that old dogs can’t learn new tricks…
Lots of platitudes, accepted norms… yet really, there is nothing set in stone. Fear, perhaps, is the definer of normality. We fear to step outside the narrow boundaries that we see as acceptable…And while we do so we narrow the boundaries of acceptable behaviour more and more, setting our own limits just a smidgen inside the safe zone. Being conventional, behaving as one ‘ought’, becomes an unconscious boundary we fear to cross.
We look out at a society whose concept of the ‘usual’ is defined by its own fears of standing out from the crowd... falling flat on its face… looking ‘silly’ in the eyes of others. Why should that matter? It is those who take risks…go out on a limb for an idea, an ideal, an innovation that get things done and move life forward for the rest of us.
As teenagers we push the envelope of acceptability with fashions and music, crusading ideas that challenge the normality of preceding generations. I think that is perhaps the only reason we, as a society, haven’t imploded, or followed the example of the mythical Oozlum bird. Each generation pushes the bounds out a little further… perhaps so it has a slightly bigger prison of normality to play in as it, in turn, ages and settles for convention. The revolutions of our youth become the bars of mediocrity in middle age.
There are also some who defy normality through fear of being swallowed whole by the gaping maw of age or mediocrity. Fear, on both sides of the equation, defines… and has a lot to answer for. Yet we are the ones who give it life.
Those who defy these unwritten rules are cast in one of two roles... they are either labelled with epithets such as Bohemian, hippy, weird… you know the type of thing… those half envious names that we secretly wish we could live up to, while endowing them with a tone of quasi-indulgent superiority. Or we hail them as examples of what we could be. The dividing line seems also to be defined by society... if you are successful, you may be hailed as the latter category... the rest serve as a measure of our own slavery to convention.
Yet we all have that spark within us that makes us unique. The rebellious teenager still lives within each one of us, ready to challenge the limits the mundane world seems to impose. We are all capable of the inner freedom to be great… even if that greatness is never seen beyond the confines of our own hearts and minds.
I have an excuse... I have flu… migraine...I’m not well…
My son had found me, head in hands… and knowing this had asked what was wrong.
I knew I shouldn’t have told him….
…to be fair, he has every reason to laugh.
I’d just turned the phone ringer volume up…
..in case Ani needed to call me.
I know she is a very clever dog, but…
Yep. I’m losing the plot.
To be fair, I’m not alone.
The roses are in full bloom, primulas sparkle in the pale sunlight, the fish are active, jumping at the clouds of midges above the pond. Geum’s dot the garden with flame. Perfume from the choisya blossom… the clear blue of campanulas and the deep purple of hebe…and the bright yellow of winter mahonia….
It is November. It is cold. Even the garden is confused.
It seems many things are bending normality to suit themselves.
And really, why ever not?
Who says we have to conform to a normality predefined by who knows who? And who does define it anyway? When you really think about it… we do.
There is no law that says you have to get old when you reach a certain age, retire to the armchair and wait for a decorous finale… And no rule that says a child cannot be as gifted as a Mozart… Or the fallacy that old dogs can’t learn new tricks…
Lots of platitudes, accepted norms… yet really, there is nothing set in stone. Fear, perhaps, is the definer of normality. We fear to step outside the narrow boundaries that we see as acceptable…And while we do so we narrow the boundaries of acceptable behaviour more and more, setting our own limits just a smidgen inside the safe zone. Being conventional, behaving as one ‘ought’, becomes an unconscious boundary we fear to cross.
We look out at a society whose concept of the ‘usual’ is defined by its own fears of standing out from the crowd... falling flat on its face… looking ‘silly’ in the eyes of others. Why should that matter? It is those who take risks…go out on a limb for an idea, an ideal, an innovation that get things done and move life forward for the rest of us.
As teenagers we push the envelope of acceptability with fashions and music, crusading ideas that challenge the normality of preceding generations. I think that is perhaps the only reason we, as a society, haven’t imploded, or followed the example of the mythical Oozlum bird. Each generation pushes the bounds out a little further… perhaps so it has a slightly bigger prison of normality to play in as it, in turn, ages and settles for convention. The revolutions of our youth become the bars of mediocrity in middle age.
There are also some who defy normality through fear of being swallowed whole by the gaping maw of age or mediocrity. Fear, on both sides of the equation, defines… and has a lot to answer for. Yet we are the ones who give it life.
Those who defy these unwritten rules are cast in one of two roles... they are either labelled with epithets such as Bohemian, hippy, weird… you know the type of thing… those half envious names that we secretly wish we could live up to, while endowing them with a tone of quasi-indulgent superiority. Or we hail them as examples of what we could be. The dividing line seems also to be defined by society... if you are successful, you may be hailed as the latter category... the rest serve as a measure of our own slavery to convention.
Yet we all have that spark within us that makes us unique. The rebellious teenager still lives within each one of us, ready to challenge the limits the mundane world seems to impose. We are all capable of the inner freedom to be great… even if that greatness is never seen beyond the confines of our own hearts and minds.
Eastern promise
I was up and out very early yesterday . I didn’t get very far… the lane at the end of my street to be exact… before I stopped the car and got out. The sun was cresting the horizon and the view over the fields was too beautiful to miss. Pushing my way through the gap in the hedge I stood among the last of the nettles to watch.
Dreaming when Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky
I heard a voice within the Tavern cry,
"Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup
Before Life's Liquor in its Cup be dry."
Omar Khayyam
It only lasted a few moments, as the sun lit the clouds, turning them to molten gold, but that burst of glory made the day begin in beauty. I was, not for the first time and certainly not the last, grateful to live away from the town, where dawn is seldom truly seen. The sun makes its appearance there much later, obscured by rooftops. In the town the horizon becomes our habitations and places of work… here I see the Sun-god caress the curved body of Earth with a lover’s tenderness, bathing her in the delicate grace of his light.
The bigger the city the less likely we are to see the world waken to a true dawn with our skyscrapers and edifices. We see the light flood the sky, perhaps, as it is doing here now. As I look out of my window the sky is suffused with the pale grey of a pigeon’s breast as the sun rises beyond my horizon… soon the eye of heaven will open above the distant hills. The sky is cloudy, I may not see that moment today… perhaps there will be but a blush against the clouds…or maybe just the silent creeping light suffusing the sky.
For now there is quiet… no birds sing welcome to the dawn. In a few more minutes they will lift their voices in joy and busily begin their day. I sit here frozen with the door to the garden standing wide for Ani and listen for the first song to begin. I cannot know what is to come… I can only wait in stillness and wonder.
Ah, fill the Cup: -- what boots it to repeat
How Time is slipping underneath our Feet:
Unborn To-morrow, and dead Yesterday,
Why fret about them if To-day be sweet!
Omar Khayyam
It doesn’t really matter if I, one small being with one pair of eyes, see the dawn in splendour. This morning the cloud is heavy and only the faintest flush of rose touches the world through their blanket. But as I write the birds begin to greet the morning, silhouettes turn from black to grey, less stark, less imposing, melding into the background of the day. Colour begins to warm the monochrome landscape and the whirring of busy wings becomes a subliminal thrum as the feathered denizens of the garden begin their busy quest for food.
Dawn crept upon a misty world almost unawares, stealing in behind the clouds. Yet I only have to listen to hear the world wake and know a new day has begun. Beneath this sky a world wakes or sleeps, holding all that I love in a single embrace.The sky may stay cloudy, or the mists may part to reveal the blue of beyond. Like the dawn, it is there, even though it is veiled from sight. As winter shrouds the world in frozen, misted shadows there is comfort in that thought. Beyond the horizon is always a dawn waiting to unfurl, beyond the clouds the azure canvas waits for us to write our dreams upon it, beyond the curtains of darkest night a new morning waits silently in the wings and will not miss the cue. An eternal dance where the veils that are dropped reveal both dancer and watcher to be one and the same, sharing the rhythm of the heartbeat of creation.
Dreaming when Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky
I heard a voice within the Tavern cry,
"Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup
Before Life's Liquor in its Cup be dry."
Omar Khayyam
It only lasted a few moments, as the sun lit the clouds, turning them to molten gold, but that burst of glory made the day begin in beauty. I was, not for the first time and certainly not the last, grateful to live away from the town, where dawn is seldom truly seen. The sun makes its appearance there much later, obscured by rooftops. In the town the horizon becomes our habitations and places of work… here I see the Sun-god caress the curved body of Earth with a lover’s tenderness, bathing her in the delicate grace of his light.
The bigger the city the less likely we are to see the world waken to a true dawn with our skyscrapers and edifices. We see the light flood the sky, perhaps, as it is doing here now. As I look out of my window the sky is suffused with the pale grey of a pigeon’s breast as the sun rises beyond my horizon… soon the eye of heaven will open above the distant hills. The sky is cloudy, I may not see that moment today… perhaps there will be but a blush against the clouds…or maybe just the silent creeping light suffusing the sky.
For now there is quiet… no birds sing welcome to the dawn. In a few more minutes they will lift their voices in joy and busily begin their day. I sit here frozen with the door to the garden standing wide for Ani and listen for the first song to begin. I cannot know what is to come… I can only wait in stillness and wonder.
Ah, fill the Cup: -- what boots it to repeat
How Time is slipping underneath our Feet:
Unborn To-morrow, and dead Yesterday,
Why fret about them if To-day be sweet!
Omar Khayyam
It doesn’t really matter if I, one small being with one pair of eyes, see the dawn in splendour. This morning the cloud is heavy and only the faintest flush of rose touches the world through their blanket. But as I write the birds begin to greet the morning, silhouettes turn from black to grey, less stark, less imposing, melding into the background of the day. Colour begins to warm the monochrome landscape and the whirring of busy wings becomes a subliminal thrum as the feathered denizens of the garden begin their busy quest for food.
Dawn crept upon a misty world almost unawares, stealing in behind the clouds. Yet I only have to listen to hear the world wake and know a new day has begun. Beneath this sky a world wakes or sleeps, holding all that I love in a single embrace.The sky may stay cloudy, or the mists may part to reveal the blue of beyond. Like the dawn, it is there, even though it is veiled from sight. As winter shrouds the world in frozen, misted shadows there is comfort in that thought. Beyond the horizon is always a dawn waiting to unfurl, beyond the clouds the azure canvas waits for us to write our dreams upon it, beyond the curtains of darkest night a new morning waits silently in the wings and will not miss the cue. An eternal dance where the veils that are dropped reveal both dancer and watcher to be one and the same, sharing the rhythm of the heartbeat of creation.
