Inertia

Now before I start I want to hold up my hand and admit I know what it feels like to have this particular type; I had it for years and it was only a chance remark which broke the hold it had over me. I won’t say I am completely as free as one of my friends but I am better.

What am I talking about?

The fear of getting lost.

Strange how a one time adventurous person can become almost forced to stay within the bounds of what is known to them. On the other hand, there are people I know who seem to have developed this as an art from an early age and it prevents them from doing so much.

Take for example a bright young woman who is quite happy to get into her car and travel pretty much anywhere, but suggest she catches a train to London and she freezes. Here’s another, wont travel anywhere in the car they don’t know but would travel anywhere on a train, bus or plane (that’s me by the way). Two states of inertia yet totally opposite in their development.

Where does it come from and how does it keep running?

The fear of getting lost is something which has to be cultivated for a period of time, rooted in our primitive brain. We start collecting this fear slowly, developing it with skill and patience because it would be far easier just to accept the journey and go to where-ever it is and find your way, but people with this inertia spend hours developing the art to the point where they can break out into a sweat, shake and cry just at the thought of the journey into the unknown. I have no idea how long I cultivated and tended my fear but I did do a very good job and should be awarded a special prize for the effort I went to in making sure the panic began at least two or three days prior to the journey and created complete insomnia the night before. Wow! That must have taken a great deal of practise that’s all I can say.

But what is the fear based around? Well getting lost of course. But if you have never been there before, and you know nothing about the place how can you ‘get lost’, there is nothing you have been to before to get lost into? And that’s the rub. The fear is not being lost but the not knowing where you are and that is subtly different?

If you did not know where you were in your neighbourhood, you would know you had gone wrong (not lost) and using landmarks, return to the route you should have been on.

So the fear is not knowing where you are; OK that makes sense. So if you get scared of not knowing where you are, take a map!

It is tough making those who have this affliction realise, in this day and age with global tracking, it is impossible to be lost, just switch on the GPS on your mobile and look on the street map app you are bound to have these days. The flashing red dot is you! So there you are, on a street map, showing you where you are, so you are not lost, you are just in a place unfamiliar to you, where you haven’t as yet learnt the land marks and because they are so important to your well being they get learnt very quickly!

The young lady with the fear of London is now saying, “Yes, but...” she has a million and one excuses not to do it just in case; don’t we all.

How do you get over it? Accept it as illogical and just do it, the sweats and the panics go away after a while.

And what if you are one of those who cannot, best will in the world understand this fear and have to cope with someone with it?

Patience, please, we have spent ages developing this fear and it will take a few tries before we manage to get a grip on it; say useful things like, ‘get a map out’, or ‘how can you be lost in a place you have never been to before, you just don’t know the land marks yet’, or ‘get out your phone, now lets find the flashing red dot that equals you’.

Words of encouragement, words of independence and hay, one day we may be as free and easy as you. Well maybe.

And another month passes

Wow, another year and I am still writing and people are still asking for me to continue. So we enter the seventh year and if this was a marriage we would be reaching the point where the itch to look outward at something new would be creeping in. wonder where the emphasis of our minds will foray during this year; one of changes all round I suspect.

So far the weather has proved interesting and it has surprised even the most hardened of us to its ferocity. December saw the lowest temperatures on record for this country, with readings almost as low as Siberia, and Australia is experiencing flooding which again is only ever recorded once before in their history. The extremes are coming and as Brisbane has proved it doesn’t matter how far above sea level you are, there is still a chance of flooding. Well, the only thing we can say is we didn’t reach some of the potentially low temperatures as experienced in the Russian Steppes, but then minus 21 is certainly low enough for me.

The birds have found it a struggle, finding much comfort, I suspect ,in the fat balls and seed I have kept coming all through the worst of the weather. OK, so some of the birds would be not your favourites such as starlings and pigeons but they all have their place and they all deserve a chance. Nothing worse than freezing to death; after all we have the central heating, what do they have?

Gardeners World have a very interesting article this month about the common birds in the garden and how to feed them throughout the year. They have tips on what to feed when, which, if you want to have plenty of visitors, would be worth reading. They have a handout of identifying birds which I would imagine would be of interest to children and they are running a piece of research into which birds come into the gardens when. I suspect they will give this to RSPB when done as it will give further information to the comings and goings of our birds and to some extent where we are losing them and perhaps where we maybe gaining.

New research shows the interest children have in new toys is approximately one month. This means by the end of this month, the items purchased at great expense and possibly overdraft, will be confined to the back of the cupboard never to see the light of day unless you remind them of the purchase. Ouch, that is what I call an expensive month of playtime.

So its January and that time or year when resolutions are going to be set. How have you done this I wonder, or have you, like some of the people I know, avoided even setting them because you can guarantee it wont succeed. What was it one of the clients said, “I want to give up the chocolate but the problem is chocolate doesn't want to give up me!” And that’s the rub; in this magazine I will give one explanation why these resolutions do not work and ways in which you would side step the problem.

To all of you, have a great year and let’s make 2011 a fantastic one regardless of what the pundits agonise over.

A lady I met once

Wandering through a store the other day I noticed something on the counter. It had a ticket on it saying 70% off and looked very pretty. Interested in having a closer look, I picked it up and opened it out. As I did so, a rather terse comment came from the lady not far from me, “I think you will find that is mine!” and with that she pulled it out of my hands. Obviously she had laid claim to it but had failed to keep it in her hands.

This ‘mine’ culture is very strong and has been for a very long time; in days-gone-by the jumble sales would be like this. I can remember hearing a story on the television of how a woman put her coat down to try another on and someone came along and tried to buy hers! She had a bad time getting it back from what I remember.

So how important is it to teach our youngsters the ‘mine’ attitude and where does it apply and not apply? I can often recall times when children would have done well to stand up for what was theirs and claim rights over things rather than allow the bully to take it away, because they could.

The lady in the shop looked at me straight in the eyes and accused me of stealing her goods and it was people like me who gave people like her a bad time in life and that people like me should be locked up. What could I do except grin from one side of my face to the other? Such stupid statements, such amazing presumptions, and incredible deductions, I am so glad she doesn't run our country or our laws, we would all be in for a bad ride.

She became very angry and shouted, “What do you think is so funny? You think you own the place…..” It went on and she really did disappear into a string of fascinating assumptions but I allowed her to finish and when she stopped I smiled widely, and said, “I am so sorry I didn’t realise you were buying that as a present for your daughter, she will look wonderful in it.” and with that I turned and went on my way. Of course she wasn’t buying it for her daughter and yes it was a put down but it gave me the out and her something to be confused over. Perhaps she could add that to her tirade of insults for the next person.

A circulated email leads to thoughts in our time

A teacher asked her young pupils how they spent their vacation. One child wrote the following:
"We always used to spend the holidays with Grandma and Grandpa. They used to live here in a big brick house, but Grandpa got retarded and they moved to Florida and now they live in a place with a lot of other retarded people.
"They live in a tin box and have rocks painted green to look like grass. They ride around on big tricycles and wear nametags because they don't know who they are anymore. They go to a building called a wrecked centre, but they must have got it fixed, because it is all right now.
They play games and do exercises there, but they don't do them very well. There is a swimming pool, too, but they all jump up and down in it with their hats on. I guess they don't know how to swim.
At their gate, there is a dollhouse with a little old man sitting in it. He watches all day so nobody can escape. Sometimes they sneak out. Then they go cruising in their golf carts.
My Grandma used to bake cookies and stuff, but I guess she forgot how. Nobody there cooks, they just eat out. And they eat the same thing every night: Early Birds. Some of the people can't get past the man in the dollhouse to go out. So the ones who do get out bring food back to the wrecked centre and call it potluck.
My Grandma says Grandpa worked all his life to earn his retardment and says I should work hard so I can be retarded some day, too. When I earn my retardment I want to be the man in the doll house. Then I will let people out so they can visit their grandchildren."

How many of you had the opportunity to watch the programme, The Young Ones, where they placed a group of one time famous celebrities in a house where everything was 1975 and they watched as they re-gained not only independence but also some agility?
By the time we reach our early puberty we have already worked out exactly how we should behave at different times of our lives. Scary isn't it. By the time we are 13 or 14 years of age, we have already experienced what is expected of us. And how do we experience that? Well by the people around us. We have seen our grandparents, we have seen our uncles and aunts, we have seen our parents and the work that they do, and we know, what they do, is what we will do as well.
So that little girl who wrote about her grandparents was already making images and expectations ready for her old age, and this was becoming a marker for her to attain (or fight against) when she reached the appropriate age. So what was she looking at as the expectation of her old age? Did she see balloon rides, sub aqua swimming, travelling abroad, living life to the full, or did she see lack of stimulation, rapid degeneration, stagnation of the mind?
In the programme, the Young ones, we watched as a group of people who were buying now in their mid-70s or even 80s, experienced life together in a world they knew so well. They were surrounded by all of the trappings of that time, and slowly but surely their minds developed that way of thinking again. By giving them challenges they soon discover that the expectations they had laid down when they were children weren't necessarily for them. If you think about it, they were laying down these images of expectations of old age during the Second World War. This was a time when 1930 values were still operating, even though the war effort meant a degree of emancipation for women whilst the men were at war fighting. So, what did 1930s values say about old age and when did it begin? For women did it mean at 60 you stop doing anything except basic housework? Did it mean for men, but at 65 they were on the shelf and of no use?
The early baby-boomers are now reaching retirement, and having kicked the system all the way through it will be interesting to see how they respond to this idea of retirement. Will they be interested in climbing into old age people's homes in the same way that their parents generation did? Already we see large estates of semi-sheltered housing for the over 50s and these are being snapped up by people who really do want to step out of the world as it is today. Talking with some of them it is clear they wish to be with people of their own they age, and one question I ask is, why is that? Is it because they have the same background and therefore a similar understanding of the world, or is it that they just do not understand the youth of today and their world? I suspect it's a combination of both with a heavy leaning towards being amongst people with similar memories, such as shared pop festivals, world events, and fashion styles.So perception is laid down very early in life. Does that mean we cannot change it? The answer that is no. We can change our perception whenever we choose to, the only thing that maintains our perception is habit. We have become habitual lies into one way of seeing and hearing the world, and we have become 'typecast' in the way we express ourselves.
I will give you an example. When I was at school most of the teachers were bilingual and as a consequence when they got angry with you they would resort to German. If you wish to remain on the right side of your teachers it was a very good idea to become bilingual yourself, and by the time I reached the second year of senior school I would imagine that my German was almost as good as my spoken English. I remember my mother commenting that one day she came into school and for parts of the conversation she had with the headmaster and myself we all spoke in English, but when the headmaster and I spoke to one another we resorted to German. I didn't even realise. But one thing I did note and that was when I spoke German I perceive the world differently, and that was because of the way the language constructs itself. Joe is a very precise language and doesn't have words for things in the same way English does. If it wishes to name something it will do so by describing its parts so therefore it is a very descriptive language; when English wants to name something new it comes up with a new word, for example mobile, laptop, etc. We know that if we use the word hoover, we are talking about a vacuum cleaner. But the word hoover doesn't describe it in any way at all because it is the name of the manufacturer. We tend to call an MP3 player and iPod again this is the manufacturer's name and doesn't describe the item, but we know exactly what it's talking about. We say iPod, and we have a perspective on that.
These may seem trivial and small but when added together they become a very large whole. If you start putting together the words blue, grey, set, shampoo, little, old, Cardigan, slippers, hot cups of tea, the words start to produce an image perspective inside us. To me these words conjure up a little old lady with blue rinse hair, shuffling about in her slippers, wearing a tatty old cardigan. I carry this perspective of old age, and fight it with every fibre of my being. Fortunately I know it's there, and I know where it's come from, and I also have the skills to avoid it, because as far as I'm concerned there is no such thing as old age, there is just as state of getting older. And there's another difference, if you keep the verb, getting, still in its active state, you allow yourself the privilege of remaining active yourself. If you replace that by a statement, old age, then you create a static image which you can at some stage step into. This is what the little girl had done. Instead of allowing herself to grow old, and enjoy every step of the way, she had created a situation of presuming there was as point at which you would step through a door and move into what was called, Old Age.
If we can create a perception as powerful as that, where else have we created perceptions I wonder? One friend of mine is only too willing to share with other women is the perception that marriage is a wonderful state in which everything is wonderful. She laughs when she says,' it in the vows if you read it carefully enough, you know, the for better or for worse bit, kind of gives the game away.' And yet how many women plan and spend a fortune on their wedding day not thinking about the days will come, and when some of those days aren't so much the fairy tale of the wedding day, it doesn't match their perspective of what wedded bliss should be and they bail out with a quickie divorce.
If you look at the definition of the word perception you are told it is the process of gaining awareness or understanding of the sensory world, and when you look at the words associated with perception you find constraints, communication, control, instruction, meaning, mental stimulus, representation. What happens if your representation is flat, it had no perspective, what I mean by that is you have placed no three dimensions on it? This is what often happens when we make statements like, old age, getting married, in a relationship, having a baby. Each one will carry an image and that image will have a few senses attached to it, but will not indicate its relationship in time. As we have already seen, getting married, very rarely goes beyond the day itself and perhaps the honeymoon. This is where the image stops and when reality kicks in, it often doesn't live up to the image held within their perspective. My friend turned round and said when you say the word, having a baby, you are invariably not looking beyond pregnancy, and it isn't until you reach six or seven months you realise that that lump can come out! Then you start thinking about the birth itself, and all that's going to entail, but you still don't think about the 20 odd years you have a child to bring up. That as she said is not part of the perspective.
If you want to think about your own perspectives, then stopped for a while and think about what it is you are wanting to achieve over the next 10 years. Write them down as the list and then have a look at them and see if you can pickup any statements where the verb has ING on the end. If it does then chances are use have a degree of three-dimensional perspective in that particular area. If it doesn't then there isn't any three-dimensional perspective, you have created a two-dimensional image with no substance, and as such it cannot and won't materialise. So how do you make it three-dimensional? Ironically, put the 'ING' on the end.
Here is an example;
a client I worked with recently wanted to run her own business. When she told me what it was she wanted I listened very carefully to the verb is in the sentence. It had become static, she wanted to run, instead of saying, I see myself running my own business. We worked on it for a while and then she went away and because she had now changed the verb in the sentence she found she was miraculously coming up with three-dimensional thinking. To cut a story short, it is now three months since that conversation, and her business is already beginning, she has four clients, and the possibility of quite a few more once they see how these people get on. As she said, 'I could see myself running a business, but I couldn't see the three dimensions behind it, because all I was looking at was a two-dimensional picture.'

That was September then...

The acts and power of the Second World War and all of its influences have certainly left this world now. That became very clear when our present Prime Minister made the comment he did about being the junior player as it were to America's dominance during 1940. To the people of the baby boomer generation and their parents, that was a big gaffe. However, it does illustrate just how far removed the present generations are from the influences that the Second World War had upon the world. The way we spoke to different countries, the way we traded, and the way we acted, was very much based upon the experiences of both the First and the Second World War and as a consequence the actions of those years dictated how we lived our lives. It gave us a set of values and beliefs that were very strongly formed from loyalty, patriotism, socialism, equality, and the right for all to live in peace.
Looking around the world now, it is interesting to see how many of the younger generations are in the throws of civil unrest, demanding independence from their domineering patriarchs. Once more the pendulum takes its full swing, and we can see we are returning to a state of independence, self determination, and operating a set of values not seen since the 1970s riots in Great Britain and America. Thinking back to those times, many changes happened in society as a result, such as equality for men and women, the acceptance of gay and lesbian life, the ending of apartheid in places such as the United States and Great Britain. There was change too in the way monetary policies were utilised and as a consequence we moved from a socialist outlook and attitude to a more monetarist one, hence the 1980s boom.
My question is, with the uprisings we are seeing now, what changes will be put in place as a consequence? How will it affect society in that area, and how will that society move on? What major changes will happen to them as happened to us?
It was interesting coming back from Spain the other day. I went into Maidstone to do some shopping. Usually I remember to take my MP3 player with me, but for some reason, I left it behind and therefore had to listen to some of the inane chatter that many of the youth of today engage in. By the time I came home I really did want to be back in Spain. It brought me up short once more, as it made me realise I was sensing the difference in value sets. To be honest those exhibited in Spain suits my values far better. It made me think, why do we choose to live in the place that we do? Obviously we have to find the right house, and if we have children, we have to take into account the schools and what they offer. I know of many a family who has moved into a particular school's catchment area just because, and have no real interest in the neighbourhood they are moving to. Often they settle in quite happily, but sometimes they don't and they remain separate from the world around them.
What was it that sold the area you live in to you? What was it you had to satisfy to make that move worthwhile? What aspects of the area did you ignore? And has the area lived up to your expectations whether they are good or bad?

Whilst away I watched film about a man who had lost his sight by the time he was three years old. When he was in his 30s he was given the opportunity of having an operation which would restore his sight, and after some deliberation he decided he would have a go. As his surgeon said, ‘what have you got to lose’? Interestingly enough he has a lot to lose, and it wasn't until he gained his sight he realised just how much there was he was losing.
One of the first things he realised was he was completely disorientated. He had developed a feeling world in which he could sense rain, size of buildings, position of doors, and other essential things that helped him get around the world. He had no sight and yet he had a rich imagination one that had been fuelled by all of the explanations he had been given by sighted friends and family. But the question here is whether the actual sights live up to the expectations he had inside his non-seeing brain?
When he first opened his eyes, he would have been as a newborn child, with no idea as to what was a face, a body, an apple, or any other object that was in the room at the time. Imagine seeing movement for the very first time. He had no idea of depth of field because he never had to have knowledge of it, and yet the sighted world presumed, wrongly, that now he has his sight everything was fixed. It wasn't. He had gained a sense and in many ways he had lost his others. They were still there, and he could still access them, but this new sense, sight, was interfering with his original brain processes. He was disorientated.
So we present our children with new situations and we wonder why they are disorientated. We give them new hurdles to climb such as 11+ examinations, GCSEs and so on and we wonder why some of them are drawn towards this new experience, some of them hope it will go away, and some of them just accept it and plod on through.
I looked into some early research into corneal replacement surgery and the restoration of the sight in people who had become blind. The first surgery to be recorded was in the 1950s and this was on a subject who when he first saw for the first time, felt really disillusioned and let down by the whole experience. In fact he became so overwhelmed by it all he believed it was the worst thing that ever happened. Now in those days, psychologists were few on the ground and he didn't get the support that really and truly he needed, and as a consequence he found the adjustment to this new world very, very difficult.
If we return to our children for the moment and think of how they adapt, then we can see a potential parallel. We give them new experiences to give them a wider experience base but we must also remember to give the correct psychological backup to make them feel safe secure and inquisitive. If we wrap them up in protection, when do they get to experience the full force of what they will have to live in? When will they have t adapt to a new set of senses they had been protected from. I realise this is a tenuous link but there is one here. The man in the film had been ‘protected’ from the need to understand large aspects of the seeing world and he operated very well in it. He was then thrown in and told to cope. For the first few months he didn’t and that’s a rational 30-something man. Protect our children too much from the world and we are denying them the development of their full set of senses too.
I always find it very difficult when I come back from Spain, adapting back to English life is always a tough one for me. This time I sat down and had a thought, what was it that I was finding so difficult to adjust to? I came to the conclusion there were three main things; the way of life revolving around the siesta from three o'clock till five o'clock, the much milder climate, and the difference in light levels. It wasn't until I got up the following morning and opened the curtains I will eyes just how rarely alights source we have here in England. I chat with my mother, an artist who understands these sort of things, and asked her what was the fundamental difference between the light. She reminded me of some of the continental artists and how gaudy colours appear to us when in fact they're not. When whereon the continents especially Spain or southern France, the light is very clear and as a consequence we are able to see the colours with complete clarity, hence the bright blues and the clean pinks. In Britain we have what is known as the grey pall which hangs over us, rendering most of the colours greyed. Without that clarity of colour and that brightness of light is it any wonder so many people suffer from SAD? I have already installed daylight bulb into my bedroom but I suspect I will be doing the same in the living room and in the bathroom. A question I must answer, what is this type of light that comes from these halogen energy bulbs that we get these days? Is that deficient in some of the necessary colours within the spectrum?

The Great British Cooked Breakfast

Sitting outside a transport café, enjoying a mug of tea and the last rays of the hot sun, two cyclists came and joined me.
They too, ordered tea and sat down with their iPhones to plan their route to Tunbridge Wells. From what I could gather they were cycling around the UK and were from America, apart from that I took little notice, too wrapped up in my own newspaper to pay much attention to them.
Until, that is, it came time for them to pay and move on. As they stood up I did my usual which was to imagine those really tiny, thin saddles and imagine the pain after being on one for a day and marvelled at how they coped. I watched one of them as he teetered on his cycling shoes and looked at their carbon fibre machines.
As I drifted back and fore, I heard the second one come out of the café and with amazement, referred his mate to ‘look inside’. They could believe the amount of greasy food these people were eating by choice. I did chuckle when one of them said to the other, ‘it certainly keeps me wanting the healthy food seeing the size of them.’
It brought into my mind the family I had seen in Spain, unfortunately British, who all resembled butter balls, from the 30 something mother and father to the 6 something daughter and the 8 something son. What are we laying down for the NHS to deal with I wonder. If its not obesity, it alcoholism and both are getting worse.
I watched as the two cyclists re-mounted and cycled off into the distance and came to the conclusion the more they saw the over weight and under-fit, the more it would give them horrendous stories to tell their mates when they got back to the good old U.S.A.
Oh dear.

A not so gentle rant

Man has always used the natural world as his larder, I have no problem with that. Man uses the natural world as his way of over-indulging his already overweight torso, and I do have a problem with that.
Gluttony is a vice; a presumption that everything on offer can go into the mouth whether hungry or not. Too much food equals excess calorific energy and that means fat, laid down in equal parts to the level of gluttonous overload.
How different the world would be if we all ate only to our needs. Still enjoying our food, but in proportion to our activity and requirements.
How little some would find themselves eating; how much smaller, children's portions would become, when the overindulgent parents no longer fed them 'for two'. How much more food there would be in the food chain of our oceans and forests; how much smaller the fields, the shops.
How much fitter the world.