Life – Page 46 – Achilles & Aristotle

Over Exposed

Restless night
Facing the alarm.
Breakfast Bonjour
Make up ladies
Chatting gamely.
Mic up
Sit down
Camera in 3, 2, 1…
And On
Sit still
No twitching
Make eye contact
Without flinching.
Engage erudition,
Not anxiety.
Talk – but not too much
Disagree with that,
Work with that
And dodge that.
Remember the punters
Time’s up
Final word
Presenter pleasantries
Get away
Done
Survived another one

From studio to studio and up and down the country, a week of TV news and radio advocating foreign languages leaves me both tired and – when it sinks in – I suspect elated.

It’s all gone very well, but it’s a bonkers way to live. One for the adrenaline junkie methinks. The whole TV news experience permanently teeters on the edge of disaster – presenters, producers, guests, packages, everything last minute, everyone running about.

Seems to me no-one is calm in TV, they just learn to look that way. My top tip, get your head and your breathing right and you give yourself half a chance. Get as manic as everyone else is and you’re in trouble.

Achilles, Life, Poetry

The Comforts of Family

They know us too well,
But in some ways, not at all.
We share most everything with them
But fear to share the worst.
They see us change
But always want us the same.
They effortlessly hurt,
But love us blindly.
And when you fear you have let them down,
You haven’t,
Because they are you
And they are yours.

I helped someone this week, and in the process we reflected on the comforts of family. Our families sometimes constrain and limit us – but mostly in our own heads.

We sometimes fear they expect more from us. But generally they just want us to be there and with them. Careers and success can be gaudy wrappings; families care most and know us best.

Achilles, Life, Psychology

No Pain, No Gain

One hesitates to admit to loony sounding practices which invite ridicule, but… mindfulness meditation really does reach the parts other things don’t.

Sure you can read, philosophise, listen to music, exercise or get blotto to blot out a whirring mind. But when it comes to finding out what’s at the heart of the whirring, you have to stop distracting yourself and start meditating.

Mindfulness meditation is learning to connect your mind and body – but without the help of the Buddha. Simple really, focus on your body and breathing and it reveals a deeper understanding of what’s in you mind.

It generally starts with thinking about your feet. More accurately focusing on breathing, and then stopping your mind racing by working up from the feet, to the legs and upwards, concentrating on each zone of the body in turn.

Hey presto, the mind stops racing. Result! But as I discovered this week that’s just a foundation. A very useful one; but it’s not the sum of what can be done.

Turning towards difficulty has been this week’s task – and this has brought some uncomfortable realisations. Quite literally uncomfortable too, as the challenge is to clear the mind, conjure up a difficult thought – a fear, anxiety or problem – and then really feel it. And keep feeling it even when it hurts too. Ouch!

In various runs at this, I have found, thinking about one situation makes my thighs cramp and my face literally twitch with anxiety. Another makes me clench all my arm and chest muscles in controlled fury. And a third – which I thought I feared, I don’t. I also discovered I’m no great fan either of ridicule or being ridiculed…

So what happens next? Well the answer is not to suppress and bottle all this stuff. Recognising mental events often trigger a set of physical responses – which pass, and aren’t so bad really – breaks the vicious circle.

Just like the dentist (where I was yet again on Monday) one way is clench up and hate every minute. Another is to breathe, relax, close my eyes and enjoy half an hour to myself – as the dentist buzzes, whizzes, picks and saws.

I’m off for more dentistry right now and quite looking forward to the chair. I’m learning that when you stop avoiding discomfort and turn to face it – it hurts much less.

Children, Life

Tree Hugging

Not exactly wilderness (within comfortable earshot of the roar of the A303) but wet and muddy enough – we holidayed this half term in a forest with the inlaws.

Not under canvas, thank God, given a major gale/minor hurricane (depending on your appetite for exaggeration) blew down trees all around – but in a sturdy log cabin, courtesy of the Forestry Commission.

And very good it was too. Walking, biking, den building, hot chocolate drinking, pumpkin lantern making, trick or treating and best of all climbing up a very tall tree…

Now at 9am sharp on a damp Wednesday, the sight of eight dangling ropes confirmed my view that younger and bolder members, of the extended family, were the right guinea pigs.

However hoisting yourself with a ‘foot loop’ and ‘hand knot’ proved a little too much for my father in law’s replacement hip. He wisely withdrew. And in went ‘Dad’ as an unfancied, but unusually eager outsider.

And how glad am I that I did. Hoisting myself up a long rope, to the top of a tree, turned out to be the buzz of the week. And an whoosh down the zip cord with a reasonably elegant landing, had me crowned ‘King John’ for treesmanship – with a local beer to crown it.

What a great feeling – hanging in the still-leafy canopy with the autumn sunlight streaming through the branches. Step in, clip on, hoist yourself up and whizz back down – tree hugging has never been more fun.

The New Forest confirmed, sometimes it is good to try something completely new.

Life, Poetry, Work

Say it with pictures

Is there anything more naff than emojis? I’d always thought they were about the lowest form of communication known to man. But…

I was wrong. Perhaps it’s my recent trip to Japan – but saying it in pictures sometimes says it better than words.

This was my week:

📥📝📯📨📤🚜💩🐓💣👴👵💤👃🏃⌚️🏠🌵🌛🔙🔜⁉️

Probably only one other person in the world truly knows what this means. But the laughter we shared on opposite ends of mobile phones puts emojis on a par with poetry.

As Aristotle almost said, perhaps sometimes the job of the poet is to say something transcendent and universal about the human condition – in no more or less emojis than are needed…

🔚