Character

Dear friend,

Something felt off kilter on waking this morning. The room was at an odd angle, almost imperceptibly slanted. The light in the room was shot through with grey. Dippa was in the communal dog bed watching, the way Santy would also watch, for signs of stirring under the duvet. Maybe a hand slipping out for the first hello the day.

Chiara was already up and meditating at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee set before her. I’ve always been a sucker for the warmth the bed in the mornings, especially when it’s cold in the room.

Those months and years when depression was visiting, I could have slept my life away if it wasn’t for hunger and boredom and a fear of missing out on something that was happening downstairs.

This morning I’m missing out on meditation time with Chiara, so I kick off the duvet. It’s the same principle as diving in a cold lake.

When you’re depressed you’ve lost hope or you can’t find a meaning for anything. I was also addicted to being right about anything and everything. There wasn’t a thing I didn’t know, at least something about. I got that from my Dad.

My poor old Dad.

Glued to whatever was coming out through the television, whisky and water on the little green leather topped wooden stand next to his chair. No books.

I couldn’t understand why he never read books. That made him a bit of an outsider in his own home, compounded by the fact of his childish tantrums and fits of frustration.

You never knew when he’d go off his rocker for something or the other. It was highly unpredictable. I guess him and Mam were doing their best at being grown ups and holding things together. Easy in one way because you could at least just try to copy the generation before and not so easy because the sixties had happened.

You could still in those days more or less do what you were told and get away with it.

We can’t do that now.

It doesn’t work any more.

If you do as you’re told you can end up on a zero hours contract or standing in line at a food bank on your day off work.

Or maybe with a good salary but unhappy with what you do.

We do have to work out how we want to live.

Principles are great.

When you’re down, or when I was down, I’d let the things I believe in slip out of my hands.

Things like being polite.

You can be too polite. As in when you’ve had a rubbish experience in a place and they ask you if every thing is okay and you say yes, when it’s not.

All the good manners that Mam was keen on, and which me and Kevin lapped up when we were kids. For a while I experimented with manners being passe. About the same time I started to think of human beings as pretty treacherous and low things and not to be trusted .

It was unfortunate to be one of them. For a while I wondered if maybe I was an alien and I might get beamed up. I was sure I hadn’t wanted to come here.

There was this feeling of being amongst strangers that crept up on me.

Seperation.

The sickness that has driven some of us insane.

You have to believe in separation to have enemies.

That way you’re not attacking yourself, and you can make it look like you hate some other human being who has nothing to do with you, other than they are wrong and unjust and guilty of all you secretly fear about yourself; in the darkest dimmest parts of your mind; where you brew up your own personal hell.

Time also got involved this morning.

It relates to the next section of my personal peace manifesto.

It’s about character. Here’s a story you’ll like about character.

I got into a foul mood this morning.

It felt as if I was trapped in too small a place and that’s one of the things I find most difficult. I’ll spare you the details but it was to do with how I spend my time, choosing between offers and options and feeling a weight of expectancy from others.

All of it invented by my mind.

When Katie was fifteen minutes late dropping off Zara, I was simmering and didn’t want to make an appearance. It was hard for me to make eye contact and I muttered something about having a busy day and the dogs will have to have a short walk.

It felt okay.

But it felt bad too.

Chiara was great and listened to me rant. I knew I was ranting but I just had to let it run. The less I resisted it the less it hurt. She was awesome. She asked a few well timed questions and offered some sound advice and I was out of the worst of it.

Within an hour I was back at my desk working and crafting an apology to Katie.

The joke is I was getting wound up over demands that were pulling me away from an online course about finding peace in the present moment!

The false self can get you with just about anything.

At least it has a sense of humour. When the false self is laughing you know you’re in trouble.

It’s okay to have a quirky, messy or messed up character traits.

“It just means that you’re human’, Chiara said as we went out with the dogs.

That’s all.

Human.

Till tomorrow

Love

Mikey