What I Think You Think Of Me
Is What I Think Of Me
Dear Friend,
There’s a picture my brother took on his mobile phone that sits on my desk. In a silver frame, the two of us with our mother on the shore in Cumberland. Kevin and Mam are in the foreground selfie style, and there’s me, dog lead around my neck in the background, kicking a ball for our German Shepherd, Santina. It’s Winter.
Mam’s smile is beatific.
I have another of our Dad and Mam laughing in the street in Dublin, identical silver frame. They sit either side of the engraved pewter tankard they gave me when I turned 18. It simply reads “Happy Birthday Michael”. The date 1986. Another time. Another world.
Three people, one of them a dog person, without whom I thought life would be meaningless, unbearable and yet, here I sit. At my desk. At home. A slight tightening in the throat, comforted as I breath into the tightening, feeling their presence all around me. Thinking of them.
Focusing on what and who matters.
How much of the anxiety we feel is about things that don’t, all thing said and done, really matter so much?
I wonder about my mother sometimes. She was like a bird. Light. Sweet natured. Active. Rarely critical of anyone. Wise when the occasion arose. An orphan by the time she married. I have her eyes. Sometimes I miss her physical presence. How would it be to sit and watch a re-run of Inspector Morse, Kit Kat and tea, outside, a storm buffeting the house, inside, the fire and the glow of the TV?
I often must remind myself as she did, to see the lighter side of life.
“Oh you have to laugh or else you’ll cry.”
Her catch phrase, I guess.
How often do we sacrifice our well-being to the fleeting demands of our crazy making lives? Losing our sense of humour, we’re temporarily in trouble. It happens a lot. Trivial frustrations and setbacks. When we find ourselves over reacting there’s often something more important hustling for our attention.
Social creatures we worry about what others think of us. How we are seen.
Who can avoid fear in this world?
Financial insecurity. War. Ecological collapse. Not exactly the setting for the utopian future we dreamed of as kids.
Selfishly I find it comforts me to be kind. In my thoughts. It costs me nothing.
The part of our mind that judges and criticises others is just as willing to turn and attack it’s owner. Judgement has a way of boomeranging back. If I’m judging others harshly then the assumption, maybe not one I’m aware of, is that others must be doing the same to me.
If we accept that being in the world is tough for everyone. No matter how puffed up or destructive that person may be. We all are temporary expressions of life. They will pass, as will we.
What matters is who we are. How we live.
If we are kind. If we look for the beauty in the chaos. We find it within ourselves.
What do you think people think about you?
The people that matter to you.
I can only speak for myself.
I think you are human. I think you are working it out.
I think one day you will see yourself through the eyes of a friend.
You’ll realise how beautiful you are. How your faults are what make you so.
They don’t matter.
You do.
Be kind.
Forgive.
Until tomorrow.
Love
Mikey.