Category: Article

Dark Days

The end of the year can be a difficult time for those of us who are alone, either through circumstance or choice.  In the northern hemisphere temperatures drop, the nights grow longer and Christian communities begin their Christmas celebrations.  More than any other time of year there is an emphasis on family values and sharing which can leave single people feeling alienated.  There is a stigma attached to being alone at Christmas.  Turkey for one?  So in this post I wish to share some inspiring quotes reminding us that solitude can be a positive and healthy choice.  Being alone does not necessarily mean feeling lonely and company is often overrated.  The beaming, perfect families of television commercials rarely exist in reality.  If you find yourself alone this Festive Period use the time wisely to recharge and regenerate your energy levels, treat yourself kindly and cherish your freedom.  I’m planning to lock myself indoors with a fridge full of party food, a bottle of the local whisky liquor and a pile of wonderful books.

Ten quotes to celebrate the gift of solitude:-

1. “… the highest and most decisive experience of all, … is to be alone with his own self, or whatever else one chooses to call the objectivity of the psyche. The patient must be alone if he is to find out what it is that supports him when he can no longer support himself. Only this experience can give him an indestructible foundation.”

Carl Jung (1943)

2.  “In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.”

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

3.  “The only antidote to fear is to go through it. Only by embracing loneliness may its tyranny be broken.”

James Hollis (1996)

4.  “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

5.  “My imagination functions much better when I don’t have to speak to people.”

Patricia Highsmith

6.  “Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away… and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast…. be happy about your growth, in which of course you can’t take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don’t torment them with your doubts and don’t frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn’t be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn’t necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust…. and don’t expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

7.  “There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more”

George Gordon Byron

8.  “The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.”

Aldous Huxley

9.  “I have to be alone very often. I’d be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That’s how I refuel.”

Audrey Hepburn: Many-Sided Charmer, LIFE Magazine, December 7, 1953

10.  “Orlando naturally loved solitary places, vast views, and to feel himself for ever and ever and ever alone.”

Virginia Woolf, Orlando

 

If you need support try http://www.standalone.org.uk

 

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Chilling Out

We are living through dark and difficult times.  It’s hard to stay upbeat and positive under the constant barrage of bad news:- fires in Siberia, more mass shootings in the  U.S., flooding and the horror of Brexit in the UK, riots in Hong Kong, a possible war in Iran….its an endless list.  There are days when I avoid listening to the news. Instead I immerse myself in quotidian activities such as housework, cooking or gardening to try and regain a balanced perspective on life. I find being outdoors amongst nature and animals the best therapy for a gloomy mood.  Also I love creative art – to paint or draw or take photographs  and truly observe the world in all its wonderful detail. It’s important to take time out doing something you enjoy.  It’s important to focus on the little things that make life worth living, to stop and look at the beauty around us.

Here is my favourite mindfulness exercise.  I hope you find it helpful.

1. Acknowledge FIVE things you see around you. Maybe it is a bird, maybe it is pencil, maybe it is a spot on the ceiling, however big or small, state 5 things you see.

2.  Acknowledge FOUR things you can touch around you. Maybe this is your hair, hands, ground, grass, pillow, etc, whatever it may be, list out the 4 things you can feel.

3.  Acknowledge THREE things you hear. This needs to be external, do not focus on your thoughts; maybe you can hear a clock, a car, a dog park. or maybe you hear your tummy rumbling, internal noises that make external sounds can count, what is audible in the moment is what you list.

4.  Acknowledge TWO things you can smell: This one might be hard if you are not in a stimulating environment, if you cannot automatically sniff something out, walk nearby to find a scent. Maybe you walk to your bathroom to smell soap or outside to smell anything in nature, or even could be as simple as leaning over and smelling a pillow on the couch, or a pencil. Whatever it may be, take in the smells around you.

5. Acknowledge ONE thing you can taste. What does the inside of your mouth taste like, gum, coffee, or the sandwich from lunch? Focus on your mouth as the last step and take in what you can taste.

 

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Play it Again Sam

If I had my life to live over I’m not sure I would do anything differently.  Life is a journey,  a series of crossroads, roundabouts and T junctions without any signposts to guide the way.  At each intersection we must make a choice.  Our decisions are based on limited information.  Emotions, intuition and experience colour our judgement and we choose what we think best at the time.  We evaluate, we take a risk or not.  Whatever path we take there will be highs, lows and plateaus but the journey will not necessarily be better, just different.

The truth is life is unknowable.  Crystal balls and tea leaves will not help. Surrender to your journey wherever it will take you for it is uniquely yours, your  own fascinating  story.  Enjoy the highs, learn from the lows, rest during the plateaus.  There are no good or bad journeys, only what was meant to be.

 

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Original Photograph created by the author

 

Moth Dance

Alone in my hospital room at night I watch tiny particles of dust and fluff swirl beneath the reading lamp.  They say dust comprises of dead skin cells, we sweep them away when we clean, removing all trace of our former selves.  Our cells are constantly reproducing and every seven years our bodies regenerate anew.  Your body is repeatedly recycling itself but not your mind.  Your mind is an entirely different story.  Our brains become less active, neural pathways die, our memories fade and disappear, we lose skills and alertness,  sometimes we even lose our sense of self.

But back in my mean small room, Ward 3A.  I’ve been here fourteen weeks now.  A reluctant patient, more like prisoner. So every night I sit, sleepless and thoughtless watching the dust  and wondering if these are particles of the old me, a shedding of  my past life. Occasionally moths enter through the open window and dance wildly in the pool of light, their fragile wings clinking against the electric bulb. Blinded and bewildered they circle.  In the morning I find their wispy bodies spent and shrivelled on my sheets.

 

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Self portrait by the author

 

 

 

My Secret Place

Before the onset of middle age and chronic caution, I often went out exploring the picturesque country lanes and tracks around the market town in North Yorkshire where I lived for ten years.  I would forget my chores, ignoring housework and assignments and set off in my old maroon Volvo 340 with my collie-cross dog, Flossy in the back seat. Sometimes I took a picnic. I would drive around for hours out of curiosity.  This resulted in a few scrapes such as getting stuck in mud, falling into ditches, trapped behind locked gates and lost on the moors. However, it was also the way I discovered wild and beautiful places hidden away off the beaten track. These were my secret places where I would go whenever I needed to recharge my energies.

One of these idyllic spots was by a crumbling stone bridge spanning a fast flowing stream and surrounded by a cluster of trees.

I would stay there all day, reading, dreaming and painting and see no-one at all other than birds, rabbits and the occasional fox. I felt completely relaxed and safe. Solitude to me is safety. My dog would run free, swim in the stream and then shake water all over me and my water colour pictures…often improving them in the process!

There was always a deep undisturbed silence free from the intrusion of traffic or human voices.  In the silence my anxious thoughts would unravel into peace and optimism. I would start to think and see more clearly.

According to the OS Map it was possible to ford the stream at this point but I never had the courage to try. I never found out what lay on the other side of the water or where the track would eventually lead.

 

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Photo by the author

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

Picking blackberries from hedgerows, making daisy chains, collecting acorns, playing conkers, wandering the fields looking for rabbits, daydreaming under a tree on a sunny day. These are the precious memories of my childhood when my relationship with animals and the natural world became an integral part of my imagination and personality.  I was lucky enough to grow up in the late sixties before the age of parental paranoia and health and safety fanaticism.  Children were allowed personal freedom to explore the world, test their bodies and minds,  learn about risk, learn about the magic of nature.  But times have changed. We live in an age of fear, much of it unfounded.  Kids spend more time alone with their tablets than playing outdoors.  I was sad to learn that the 2008 edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary aimed at children between the ages of 7 and 9 has omitted the following ‘nature’ words believing they are no longer relevant.

The obsolete words are catkin, brook, acorn, buttercup, blackberry, conker, holly, ivy, mistletoe.  No doubt they have been replaced by technology words like database, spreadsheet, voicemail, pixel.

Contact and knowledge of the natural world are essential to a child’s artistic and spiritual development, be it poetry, visual art, music.  How will future generations learn to cherish other living things and respect their environment if they don’t even have the right words?

 

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Photo taken by the author

 

Down But Not Out

Hi Everyone,

I’ve been away for some time but I’m back, or at least for now. Apologies for my absence from Blogging World and the world in general. So far I’ve spent five weeks trapped in a small hospital room in Inverness following a fractured femur. Tragically my treatment has not gone according to plan. After the initial operations to repair the original fracture I have acquired another THREE broken bones in my legs due to careless handling and bad advice from Occupational Therapists and Physiotherapists. And the worst news is that the fresh broken bones are not fixable. Any surgery could make things worst not better.  No one seems to know what the prognosis is.

I’m trying to stay positive but it’s hard. I don’t know how much mobility or independence I will ever regain. It’s also hard not to be consumed with anger for the so-called experts in this hospital who have damaged me and are now trying to sweep their negligence under the carpet. I have not even had a proper apology or any acknowledgement that anything has gone wrong.

Anyway, when my mind is not fried by morphine, pain and exhaustion I will try to post here on The Purple Hermit and I hope my followers and supporters will understand.

 

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Positive Poison

There’s a new church in town…the holy church of positive thinking.  The crux of its belief system is that we can control material reality merely by the way we think….a bit like magic.  It’s a dogma which has evolved from the all pervasive Cognitive Behaviour Therapy which underpins our mental health services, the cheap skate version of real psychotherapy.  It’s a belief system that blames the victim for all her problems.  If we get sick, get raped or mugged or burgled or abandoned or our home is flooded, we are somehow to blame because we have ‘too much negative energy’.  If we are poor or weak it is our own fault.  We should try harder.  Apparently, according to nit-wit pundits like Nigel Schofield we could all be rich and famous if we were only more positive.

While I wholeheartedly agree that taking a positive attitude when dealing with the many problems that challenge us through life is always to be encouraged and can make a huge difference in recovery from illness, this ideology has gone to a ridiculous extreme.  It’s mind over matter gone mad.  All the positive thinking in the world will make no difference when you watch your home burn to the ground or your child die of a terminal illness.  Is the child to blame for getting cancer? Did his five year old mind generate too many negative thoughts? Did you invite faulty wiring into your house through the faulty wiring of your mind? Are the desperate victims of wars in the Middle East to blame for their own suffering?  Perhaps if they improved their attitude the barrel bombs and drones would vanish in a puff of smoke.

The other nonsense people tend to spout is ‘Everything happens for a reason’ and ‘Everything happens for the best’.  Really?  Say that to someone watching their loved one disintegrate through Alzheimer’s Disease. They will not welcome your comment.

All this positive thinking crap just puts extra pressure and guilt on people who are already suffering  misfortune.  It is insinuated that their bad luck is their own fault and they need to try harder.  It’s a good excuse to run down our health service even further.  Why not just send people away from ER with a button badge telling them to always look on the bright side?

Here are the facts:-  1. We are mortal creatures who begin to die from the moment we are born.  2. There is a very concrete material reality underpinning our lives.  It will not shape shift to suit our desires.  We are living in a material world and we are made of flesh and blood.  3. We are not to blame for our own problems. Bad things happen to good people.  4.  Shit happens for no reason at all.  Life is chaos and the most important things are beyond our control.

So all you woolly minded purveyors of positive nonsense need to grow up and have the guts to confront the world the way it really is, warts and all.  Life is not perfect.  We all suffer and that suffering is unavoidable.  What happens is not all down to us but that doesn’t mean life can’t be beautiful.  Make the very best of what you’ve got and be grateful for every precious moment.

 

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Photo by the author