Perfect no longer

 Perfect no longer

The only exam I ever failed in my life was A- level ART.  It was the painting that let me down. Well, I thought the portrait I drew of someone in my class was really quite good. But the painting ended up being totally black with a couple of yellow spots. The subject we were given was ‘Smugglers’. With a little stretch of the imagination you can see what I was getting at. Can’t you?

My mother was a teacher. I come from a dynasty of teachers. I usually worked quite hard at school. And, being of a reasonable academic intelligence,  I got by without too much sweat. I do recall taking medicine to prevent the attacks of diarrhoea that would assail me on the day of the exams.  Anxious?  Definitely.

The darkness of drawers

That ’ failure’ when I was seventeen, well that really stuck. Something my mother said recently rang a bell with me. A very loud one. It was about her fear of looking stupid. Yes, I thought, I know that one! Over the next few days I thought about my perfectionism. And how many times I’ve written articles or stories and haven’t finished them. Because the search for perfection is endless. So my creations can never go out into the world and live in their own apartments and pay their own bills. Because they’re not perfect. If they’re very lucky, a close friend or two might get to see/read them. And I have read some short stories in public. But much of my writing has languished, truncated, in the darkness of a drawer or in a file on my computer which then gets lost in the transfer to a new PC.

 My mother’s remark made me realise how much this has got in my way. And has paralysed my creative drive at times. So I decided it was high time I got over it. If not now then when? It’s time to care less about what others think and to muzzle that little nagging voice in my ear. 

That’s why I am painting. And it’s why I am writing this blog. I am pushing myself to publish it without spending three days (or even three hours) tweaking it. And not not even being sure how to use blogspot.

The taste of freedom from this particular demon is exhilarating!

Everybody's doing it.

EVERYBODY’S DOING IT

Everybody’s doing it these days! Getting older. Yesterday a friend sat on my sofa complaining about how he’s getting old. (He’s TWENTY years younger than me) And how he’s shaved off his, already tiny, beard because a few white hairs had shown up.

Okay  so I dye my hair..an  avoidance tactic too no doubt. But what’s with all the negativity?

Admittedly getting older is very difficult for some people. There’s the loss of faculties like hearing, sight and mobility. And HAIR.  Yes it falls out, turns grey or relocates to places that you really don’t want to have it. And there’s the loneliness. All your friends and relatives of the same age start shuffling off the mortal coil.

But hey, we get wiser don’t we? At least I definitely have. And I no longer feel obliged to get out and party on a Saturday night.

We have an influence on how we age! I‘m not spouting some new age nonsense about how you can think yourself rich(thin)..substitute the adjective of your liking. Nor am I talking about recommendations from the food police to have a yearly detox involving weeks of drinking cabbage juice and eating 6 almonds a day.

I am referring to how we think and feel about getting older. 

That we can reverse some of the effects of ageing has been proven. Harvard researcher Ellen Langer did an experiment in which 70 and 80 year olds lived for some time in an environment where everything referred to a time when they were much younger. In addition, they weren’t cosseted. They had to carry their own cases (in more ways than one). Extensive tests carried out before and after the experiment showed that many of the effects of ageing, which are bandied about as just par for the course, can actually be reversed.

 "My own view of ageing is that one can, not the rare person but the average person, live a very full life, without infirmity, without loss of memory that is debilitating, without many of the things we fear." Ellen Langer

CAN THE POWER OF THOUGHT STOP YOU AGEING?

I just don’t want to be carried along in an attitude epidemic. It’s like flu. Or colds. Another friend keeps saying how everyone around him is sneezing and coughing and how he’s bound to get a cold too. Get thee hence.

On a recent Horizon ( BBC science programme ) about obesity, researchers discussed their discovery that in identical twins one can develop the 'fat gene' and therefore the propensity to put on weight while the other remains slim and has no trouble with weight gain. Why?Because stressful events and how they deal with them influence the triggering of this gene.

Being surrounded by people telling you that getting creaky and cranky is an inevitable consequence of getting older is STRESSFUL!

‘Like second hand smoke, the leakage of emotions can make a bystander an innocent casualty of someone else’s toxic state’ Daniel Goleman

So please, no needless moaning.This woman has the right idea.

Paragliding Utah Grandma,101, breaks world record