Keren Dibbens-Wyatt's Blog, page 21

76. Chancer (Empathy, Lent 17)

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Much like gamblers, people who chance their arms at things, tell wild fibs or exaggerate, are beyond my understanding. I am painfully trusting and naïve most of the time, and chancers, bounders and charmers find me an easy target. I AM learning, but I’m slow. But where does all that bravado come from?

The thing is, most of the world is a fabric of lies or hyperbole anyway. Nothing is really what it seems. So, adding a few twists here and there isn’t really going to hurt anyone. If it helps me get what I want, so much the better. If people believe I’m rich or clever, educated or confident, when I’m none of those things, they’ll treat me far better than if they knew the truth. Sometimes I even believe my own hokum, and the small, insignificant person at the centre disappears and I can really be free to live a fantasy of success. And often enough, that success comes. No-one is interested in you if you are depressed or needy or you aren’t already on the up. Chance your arm a bit and you’ll be surprised what falls in your lap. You don’t win them all, but you win enough. The truth is a very pliable thing, what’s the harm in moulding it a little?

Photo and text © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017

75. Cold Fish (Empathy, Lent 16)

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This is a horrid thing to call someone, isn’t it? It’s not a phrase I use very often, but as a highly sensitive person who feels deep and complex emotions about pretty much everything, people who aren’t moved easily are really hard for me to understand or connect with. If I hadn’t been poor and ill after my degree, I might have gone on to academia, but looking back I am glad I didn’t. I have learnt to develop emotional freedom, I wear my heart on my sleeve, and passion does not often translate well to such fields. Today I’m wondering what it might be like to have let logic override wholeness.

If I got worked up about things, it would affect my results horribly and I’d be accused of letting my hormones get in the way. So, I keep all my feelings at bay and just look at the words as though I were looking at germs through a microscope. I was brought up at an emotional distance and it suited me just fine. Histrionics are an anathema to me. First sign of Mediterranean passion or a temper tantrum and you are in danger of losing the plot, and me.

It’s not that I don’t feel things, but it’s better to train yourself to hide what you feel, and to minimise it where possible. For instance, I love my kids hugely, you wouldn’t believe how much, but I know that to bring them up well, great demonstrative gestures are not a good example to set them. If you fling it all out there, people can hurt you. If you lay your heart before someone, sooner or later they will trample on it. Best to stay cool, calm, collected, and let everything else out in my tae kwon do. Control is everything. Focus is undistracted and sharp, like steel.

 

Photo and text © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017

74. Carnivore (Empathy, Lent 15)

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I’ve been a vegetarian and not quite vegan for most of my life. I stopped eating red meat at 15, and white at 16. I had a few years in my 30s where I ate chicken and fish at the insistence of a nutritionist, but never felt happy about it and gave it up again. My reasons are mostly moral and just, really simply, that I love and respect animals. But I know there are many people who eat meat, who would say the same. I rarely push my views about this (if you want to know my opinion, and my ecological and Biblical arguments for vegetarianism, you can read them in Positive Sisterhood) because I feel what a person eats is between them and their own conscience. So, time for me to look at how the other side sees it.

Eating meat is natural, we have teeth made for tearing flesh. It’s part of who we are. It is up to the law to make sure animal husbandry is up to scratch. I’m just the consumer. Not my job to tell farmers how to treat their property. There are tonnes of safeguards and loads of animal rights groups keeping it all in hand. Just as I love my dogs and abide by the laws that protect them. To be honest, I don’t really think about cruelty, because why should I? Pretty much everyone eats meat. We always have. If we didn’t there probably wouldn’t be any sheep, cattle or pigs. If you want to bring God into it, he said we could eat meat after the flood, and Jesus certainly ate fish. So I don’t really see there’s any big deal about it. My body craves it, I give it what it wants.

Photo and text © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017

73. Flibbertigibbet (Empathy, Lent 14)

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Some people seem to flit from one thing to another, without settling down, seeming not to take any one thing too seriously. As someone who never does things by halves, I have always found this hard to empathise with. So it’s a good exercise for me to try to do that today as part of our Lent series on turning the tables.

It’s not that I can’t stick at things, I just get really, really bored. And unlike a lot of people, I’m honest with myself about that, and about wanting to get more out of life. I guess really it is that I am a kind of explorer. I do like to go deeply into subjects or activities, but once I’ve mined them or mapped them out, made sense of them, it’s time for me to move on. I have an insatiable curiosity. I want to know what things feel like, what makes different groups of people tick, and I want to try most things: experiences, languages, cuisines, cultures. People call me flighty but I am just fully alive to all the different ways of being. I need to figuratively roll them around on my tongue and see how they taste, and then on to the next.

Photo and text © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017

72. Troll (Empathy, Lent 13)

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I’ve seen a lot of trolling on social media this week, and sadly I don’t mean of the Round the Horne variety. Some people seem to take a perverse pleasure in people-baiting. I decided to give my imagination over today to wondering why.

Some people are so sure of themselves and I see how superior and self-righteous they are, they need taking down a peg or two. It is fun to poke them with a stick and see how far up it they will bite. Some won’t let go until they choke. It’s not cruel, they deserve it. My life is so full of pain that I need to goad others to let some of it out. It helps a bit to be nasty and swear and torment. If I didn’t do it on the computer I’d maybe get my air rifle out and go shoot some birds. Then they’d really have something to whine about. Why? They’re just birds. None of it means anything. These people with the comfortable mind sets and the pretend love of the “politically correct” garbage are so full of crap. I hate them. They are like piñatas just waiting for me to whack hard, I love finding out where the fault lines are, where they crack open like shells. It’s all bull.

Photo and text © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017

NB I know that Moomins are nice “trolls”, that’s why I chose them. Also a nice troll (if you like mad songs stuck in your head, is this Troll Song:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkTb9GP9lVI

71. Ethiopian (Empathy, Lent 12)

 

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We sponsor a child who lives in Ethiopia. M’s life is so different from ours, not just because of where she lives, but also because she is a different generation to us. We don’t keep up with her as much as we ought to, but from the occasional correspondence we have built up a picture of how her life differs from ours.

I live with my mother and my grandmother. My mother is sick with the illness so many people here have. My father left because of it a long time ago. He lives in the city but he does not send money like some of the other fathers. Me and my brothers and my grandmother look after my mother and the chickens. They are funny to watch, the way they run! I like to sit and watch animals and people, but I don’t get much chance to. I like to play football, but most of the time I am doing chores and going to the school project.

At my project we learn English, maths, and other boring but useful things we will need when we are grown up. When I am grown up I will earn money for my family. I change my mind about what I would like to do. Sometimes I think I will be a nurse and sometimes a hairdresser. I think I would really like to be an artist, but that would not buy medicine.

Photo and text © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017 (photo changed to protect M’s identity)

70. Shopaholic (Empathy, Lent 11)

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I used to enjoy shopping, occasionally. It’s been a very long time since I had any energy or money to spare on it, and even if I had those two things, I don’t think I’d be drawn to it as a leisure activity. I am no minimalist, our house is cluttered enough, although one never has enough books, naturally. But how does someone who does shopping as a hobby, feel about it, and why?

I love having a new outfit, there isn’t a person, maybe especially a woman, alive who doesn’t. It makes you feel all special, like you’ve been made clean, born again, yes, that’s it, it’s a kind of baptism! You can be an improved version of yourself. And then there is all the fun of finding the right accessories, and the thrill of trying out new gadgets for the home. My other half loves finding new things for the kitchen, I love my power tools. They are always improving things, aren’t they? And we want to have the best, easiest life we can. Why not? The older stuff goes to the charity shop and I get to enjoy selling bits on Ebay too. Win win. What else would I do, sit at home and watch tv?

Photo from Pixabay. Text © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017

69. Brexiteer (Empathy, Lent 10)

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As a passionate “remain” voter, this one is tough. I felt very strongly that I was not heard by my country, and that those in Britain who voted to leave the EU were very harsh, both in their vote and in their treatment of those who disagreed with them. Being told afterwards to “suck it up buttercup” (yes, really) was very upsetting. This Lent, however, I am trying to diminish the power of “us” and “them” by looking at things from the other side:

I truly think that the nonsense perpetrated by the EU, with its open migrant policy and its farming subsidies, has to stop. It is unfair and we would do a lot better to self-manage our own nation. We are spending far too much on housing eastern Europeans who claim housing benefit and then send all their wages back home. It’s a drain on the economy. High time that we took back control of our borders and the definitions of what makes our country so great, like funding the NHS properly, instead of paying huge salaries and travel grants to Euro MPs who barely bother to show up. Time for a shake up and a fresh start. Britain was Great once, and can be again. Radical surgery is the first step to a better future.

Photo (of my brilliant artwork, aged 9) and text © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017

68. Angry Young Man (Empathy, Lent 9)

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There are a lot of people I find hard to fathom as a middle-aged woman, but there are some I’ve always struggled to comprehend. Having grown up with three brothers, and as someone who went to a mixed comprehensive school, there have been any number of angry young men in my life. This Lenten practice is about trying to understand rather than dismiss. So, with apologies to Billy Joel, here is my attempt to do just that:

My maps and my medals are laid out on the floor, because they are so much easier to line up than the rest of my life. I like thinking about war, because I love the regimented nature of the military, I love the idea of finding glory, and I have so much rage and testosterone pent up inside me that imagining running into battle with a sword or a spear, roaring and brandishing my strength, is a way of expressing what I could never do in real life. So yes, I spend a lot of time in fantasy, gaming and warplay, watching films, being heroes who are a lot more together than I feel I am. Men who get to play out my dreams, with the beautiful women I’d never dare approach in reality, and the battles that I long to be part of, but which are denied me. I’m fighting everything, including my family, because there are no Grendels left to stand between me and my manhood.

Photo, embroidery design (!) and text © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017

67. Gold Digger (Empathy, Lent 8)

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Money makes the world go round, they say, and those of us who’ve had to do without enough of it know how true that can seem. Maybe it is not too hard to imagine why some people (men as well as women of course) might forego love for security:

I saw my Mum work overtime for a month to buy me and my sister shoes and P.E. kit for school. I saw her crying when I lost my swimming costume, because she couldn’t afford to get me a new one. I decided, then and there, albeit maybe not consciously, that I was never going to be in that position if I could help it. I’m good looking and I’ve made the best of myself. I’m not stupid, and I know I’m going to have to put up with living with a man I don’t have much in the way of feelings for. But we get on well, and he’ll look after me. My kids won’t want for anything, and I’ll never be as exhausted as Mum was. This is how the world has always worked.

Photo and text © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017