Category: General

Fateful purchase

What is the best purchase you have ever made?

I have a couple of favourite books and a teddy and they are high on the list. While everything comes and goes they still remain. Strangely though, they weren’t purchases as such. The books were sent to me as a kid’s art prize. Instead of receiving a single book there appeared to be some kind of mix up and I was sent a second. The adjudicators allowed me to keep ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ and it became my favourite childhood book. The teddy was a replacement after a family holiday. I felt guttered and by the time it was purchased, the original teddy was discovered languishing in the bottom of my sleeping bag. The books are still side by side on the shelf while the teddies remain together to this day. Sometimes the best purchases are the ones you fail to appreciate at the time. Years ago I made such a purchase and looking back, I realise how important it was. I had cobbled together some savings and with the help of an advisor, opened a small investment account. I was naive at the time (the advisor must have seen this) but this single purchase helped me attain financial freedom so many years later.

Unmoored

What does “having it all” mean to you? Is it attainable?

The concept of ‘having it all’ implies an appreciation of what is also ‘moderate’ and what is ‘minimal’. It also assumes a type of thinking process based on linear measure. There are numerous theories as to the origins of this type of thought (too numerous for this blurb) but it is fundamental in our modern Western way of life. Everything is measured and compared, everything is scrutinised and evaluated from numbers of grains of sand, kilometres travelled to the size of the universe. How much have you got in the bank? How tall are you? How pretty or influential are you? Science, engineering and technology are each based on specific terms of measurable analysis bringing us closer and closer to what would appear to be greater appreciation and understanding. Similarly, sport and artistic endeavour are measurable when applied to competition providing supply for the gambling industry. But the fallout is severe with addiction and personal financial loss.

However there is another way of living, another way of seeing that is quieter and seems to go unnoticed in today’s noise. Terms such as ’go slow’, ‘vibration’ and ‘present’ reflect something else that is gaining traction. There is nothing new in this of course. Writers such as Eckhart Tolle focus on contemporary dilemmas and reveal how we fall victim to abstract thinking. Burkeman in Four Thousand Weeks speaks of our artificial appreciation of time: ‘this strange moment in history, when time feels so unmoored, might in fact provide the ideal opportunity to reconsider our relationship with it.’

Gratitude

So if you reframe your perception of experience to include gratitude it is possible to shift from a negative to a positive attitude. If you allow this to happen enough in everyday experiences, a subtle but fundamental change can occur in your personality. Those around you respond to your positivity, and they in turn take on positive energy – a kind of flow from one person to another. Conversely, the opposite may occur whereby negativity flows from one individual to the next. We see this increasingly occurring on the internet, especially on social media. In turn, there is a flow of negative energy in the wider community from the virtual world to the real world. Interpreting ideas, concepts, situations or experiences can include positive or negative evaluation. A choice can be made to see things positively. Without meaning to sound too grandiose, we need to energise ourselves and the community in positive ways. Ultimately and depending on the intensity of our experiences, we can reframe them positively.

Inspiration

What is something others do that sparks your admiration?

There is someone in my life who continues to demonstrate patience, passion and resilience as if from an endless spring. They manage the day to day stresses and trials that life continues to throw at them without shirking or complaining while showing kindness and compassion to those around them. They have done this for decades and continue to do so to this day. This someone has endured life’s hardships while showing gratitude with a smile. I have witnessed them experience the death of two husbands and more recently, cancer and hospitalisation at ninety. They battle on and inspire others with their tenacity and positivity, their ideas, their love and passion. They paint, they sculpt, practice craftwork – in many and varied forms – and sell their work in retail shops indicative of quality and take up. They have worked for the Red Cross, taught in hospitals and brought up a family. Asked whether they would do it all over again and their answer is ‘yes’ without question. This may seem a tall order but they don’t see it as such and they take it all in their stride. Yes, my mother sparks my admiration.