Jane Wharam on......

Going Back To My Roots

  Last night I went to a College reunion, the first one in thirty years, and met people I haven’t clapped eyes on since 1979 and renewed acquaintanceships with friends I’ve lost touch with over the years.  The thing which most surprised me most though was that I didn’t just see a sad bunch of 50 somethings prancing around to ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’; instead, I saw a bunch of people having fun, who reminded me of when I was 18, several of whom still touched my heart.

So what is it about people from our formative years, which still has the power to move us?  I’d like to think that it’s about the essence of a person, which hopefully doesn’t change with the passage of time.  OK, our bodies start to give up – at one point we were playing the ‘guess the number of hip replacements in the room’ game! – but our souls are immutable and embody our core traits – kindness, generosity, curiosity, intelligence, humour or loyalty.  These traits make up the facets of our personality, which we have from birth, and they are then polished and honed over the years or buried and forgotten.  But they never go away.  In some people they are buried so successfully that newer acquaintances don’t even know they exist and in others, traits which aren’t very developed in youth start to shine as they get older.

 Funnily enough, I had been going to blog under this very title earlier in the week, but that was going to be all about going back to my academic roots.  I now find myself working very much as I did as an undergraduate; I research and write all day and quite often party at night (second adolescence, obviously!).  I was going to say that I’m reverting to my original hopes and dreams from my teenage years as I approach my Autumn.  But, of course, it’s so much more than that. 

 Where I went wrong all those years ago, if ‘wrong’ is the right word, and I’m not sure that it is, is that, having achieved my first goal of going to university – at a time when only 2% of the population did -  I started to lack balance and, more importantly, I started to lose my inner purpose and concentrated too hard on what felt right at the time – or, more accurately, what I wanted at the time, even if I knew that what I wanted wasn’t what I should have.  I certainly started to lose my self-discipline and that has taken over twenty years to get back.  Without going into detail, I made several bad choices back then, based on the gratification of the moment, and started to lose my way and my self.

 However, those traits never disappear and, having spent the last several years scraping the layers off, I now feel as though some of the better facets of my personality are starting to appear and develop again.  The organisers of the reunion  (who did a fantastic job, by the way) had made up badges for the attendees, which we wore around our necks like labels.  The badge consists of a picture of the person from their College years, their name at the time and what they studied.  I now have mine hanging next to my desk and the next time I feel unsure about which direction to take, I’m going to look at that girl and remember what she would do instinctively and weigh that up with the experience the woman I am now has acquired.  I’m going to go back to my roots.

Waxing Lyrical

I don't often do this - wax lyrical about a play or book that is.  Or at least not in my blog, as I tend to confine that to musings on my own internal landscape.  However, I will make the exception for the one-woman show I went to see last night called Waxing Lyrical.

Waxing Lyrical is written by and starring Judith Paris, an accomplished stage, TV and film actress and writer, and is the story of Mme Tussaud, arguably the first, modern female entrepreneur.  Judith takes us through Marie's life from helping 'uncle Philippe' in his famous wax-modelling studio as a young girl, through marriage, births, deaths and showmanship to her famous exhibition in London, now known globally as Madame Tussaud's.

The woman really was an inspiration, living through revolution, heartbreak, deception and treachery but all the while focussed on her ambition, talent and family. Judith brings her to life brilliantly and I have to confess that I even cried at one point, being so caught up n the performance.

Sadly, I don't have the time or words to do this fine performance justice here.  Just go and see it and judge for yourselves.  It is on at the New Diorama theatre, 15-16 Triton Street, Regents Place, London NW1 3BF.  But hurry, as it finishes on December 10th.

http://www.chifest.org.uk/pdf/WAXING-LYRICAL-STATEMENT.pdf

Maybe It's Just In My Head

You know when you get a feeling that's so strong, you almost feel as if something has actually happened?  Well, I have one of those at the moment; the problem is that I'm not sure what the feeling is about... It's as though there's something going in in the ether, something which affects me, but I can't put my finger on it.  I can't even work out whether it's good or bad!

I'm not going down with a cold, as I'm just getting over one, nor have I got anything looming, like bills, meetings or decisions, so I'm stumped.  All I know is that, just outside my field of vision, there's something waiting to manifest itself, which is unsettling. I sometimes think I think too much and don't feel enough.  And maybe that's the problem; I've been so used to analysing everything lately that I've lost the capacity to just let emotions flow through and around me.  It might just be the novelty of a feeling trying to muscle in that is causing the unrest. In fact, 'it' might be my subconscious's way of reminding me to balance thinking and feeling again.  I may have been living too much in my head of late.

So, until I know what it is, I'm going to take my own advice and think of something else - that and maybe immerse myself in a film or a book which captivates my attention and allows my emotions to work themselves out.  One of the lessons I've learned is not to allow myself to be frustrated by things I can't change.

And if it's just in my head, it will be gone tomorrow; if it's in my heart, I have the emotional capacity to deal with it, whatever it is.  And if it is anything momentous, I'll let you know!

 

 

An Exercise In Creativity

The writing group I belong to sets itself homework every month (we're nothing if not committed!) and last month's was 'show not tell'.  We had to write a passage of around 300 words showing that someone had lost something without telling the reader what that thing was and ideally also indicate a time of year, era and general background story.  It was much harder to do than I thought it would be but I eventually came up with the following piece.

I'd be fascinated to know what you think the back story is.  Wonderful thing, imagination...

'She suddenly remembered being made to read Proust, when she had longed to be outside watching the young men, all long hair and velvet loons, parading around the campus like peacocks.

 Finally she understood what he had meant in his description of remembering things passed.  As Jeremy left the room, all that was left of him was the smell and her memories.

 She had bought that leather jacket for him during the holiday in Milan, had loved the look of the tanned material against the white of his tee shirt and had just watched him in the days that followed; Jeremy on their balcony, silhouetted against the deep blue of the sky; Jeremy threading his way through the market, tall and blond against the shorter locals with their dark, lustrous locks.

 But now, mixed with the earthy, rich scent of the faded leather were the clean, spicy notes of the cologne he had taken to wearing.  He had just bent down to kiss her cheek, enveloping her in memories of Italian nights, lemons in clean, fresh air and his own, more subtle scent – that unique smell, which she could pick out in a room full of men.

 She had caught his arm, her hand registering the warmth of the leather, fingers feeling every small crack and flaw before sliding down to his hand, strangely cold and almost clammy in the heat of the room.

 The room was always kept warm for her and she hated it; hated the feel of the rug across her knees, cashmere, of course, the money had paid for that. At times, she would throw it off, like a child impatient with a toy, hoping that Jeremy would come in and hold her hand and reassure her, as he used to do, bringing their past with him.'

 

 

 

Ideas Net

I wish I could invent one.  The ones that come to me when I'm still half asleep are fairly easy to catch; I can grab them by the tail as I scramble for the pad by my bedside and then tether them to the page in vaguely legible handwriting - which gets less legible by the day, I'm sad to say.  No, it's the ones that creep up on me when I'm walking, usually through the park, and which I'm sure I'll remember because they're so beautiful and often fully-formed.   The problem is that they too have remarkable powers of evasion and have slipped out of sight, never to be recaptured intact, by the time I get to the tube and can fish out notebook and pen.

Why do ideas creep up on us when we're least expecting them?  One minute I'm enjoying watching the children and dogs playing on the grass and the next minute, wham, a scene from a screenplay or the opening line of a short story flits right across my line of vision.  It's always slow enough to register but too fast for me to ask it any questions, like 'where did you come from?' or 'how the hell did I get from the bloke tryng to give me the boot camp leaflet to being in a Greek villa in 1979?'

If I do manage to invent one, I'll let you know but in the meantime, maybe I should start carrying a dictaphone with me - or can I record on my mobile?  Or maybe I should just spend the rest of my life poised over a blank page, pen in hand.  But maybe not.  The thing about ideas is that they can't be forced and they love to play hard to get.  And the thrill of the chase and then the capture of the few that don't run fast enough are worth the ones that get away.

 

Whose Truth Is It Anyway?

Is there any such thing as truth?  Or even 'the facts'?  The more I think about it, the less sure I am. From what I observe on a daily basis, truth, like beauty, is firmly in the eye of the beholder.

I remember a dinner party, where I was having a debate with a devout Christian; he would brook no argument about a particular passage from one of the gospels, as it was "the word of God".  My take was that it was an anecdote by someone who had contributed to an important set of stories. Who was telling the truth?  I feel that we both were, according to our own perspectives.

But the truth or the facts need not be based on a belief system.  I was recently at an event and commented on the gorgeous shade of turquoise a friend was wearing.  She thanked me but shook her head, as her husband looked on in bewilderment. "He thinks it''s pink!" she laughed.  And, to him, it was.

And then there are arguments, often over whose version of 'the truth' is correct.  "You said...!" "No, I didn't..."! is a common refrain. Are these disagreements situations where one person is right and the other wrong?  Or are both parties right - or wrong?  If there was an impartial referee with a comprehensive list of what both people had ever said to each other, would he or she be able to show them the 'truth' of what they'd said?  Probably not, because a lot would have depended on how they said whatever it was that caused offence and the circumstances at the time.

There are many more examples of variations on 'the truth' from eye-witness account of events, which often bear no relation to one another, to people with differing political beliefs reading the same speech and coming up with wildly different messages.  None of these people is actually telling lies, they are just remembering differently or colouring what they read with their own beliefs.

So is the truth the majority view?  In a world of very few absolutes, maybe it is. That may not help the two people having the argument but it is of use in wider society.

If the opposite of truth is lies, lying to oneself in opposition to the majority view can be devastating. According to research, most paedophiles believe that they are having a 'loving relationship' with the child they are abusing.  To the vast majority of people this is clearly a lie and totally repugnant but to the perpetrator, it is the truth.  In such cases and to safeguard the vulnerable, truth  must be acceptable to the majority.  The only caveat with that model is that the majority view must be informed and free of bigotry. 

My truth is that I try to keep an open mind and heart and examine a subject from all angles before making up my mind about 'the facts'.  If I can avoid hurting anyone, I will and I have my own moral compass, which may or may not tally with yours.  Do you know what yours is?

Practising Or Preaching

So there I was, blogging away happily, trying to make a current story fit with the brief I’d been given, when it hit me that I really wasn’t practising what I preached.

 In a recent interview I said that any aspiring writer should write every day.  So far, so good – I write at least a thousand words by tea time.  However, what I also said was that anyone trying to sell his or her product should showcase it at every opportunity.  Not so good...

 You see, what I do is write.  I scribble about the financial climate, health, beauty, death and the care system, to name but a few sectors, but none of this writing sees the light of day under my own name.  My own website is gathering cobwebs and my new site is still unfinished three months after buying the domain name!

 Not being born under the sign of the shrinking violet I am therefore about to put an end to all that!  From now on I will write a blog at least once a week on a current topic and actually offer an opinion.

 That may or may not be a good move but it will demonstrate, to me at least, that I am capable of writing from the heart and not just for the bank balance...

 As for the new website, watch this space.  And if you don’t get alerted to its unveiling by September, remind me that I should practise more and lecture less!

 

Human Being

It could hardly be described as a garret, this beautiful house where I am currently staying.  In fact, it has everything one could need – technology by the bucketload, a kitchen to die for, comfort abounding and is surrounded by the beauty of nature. I can even see the flickering of the fire from the wood-burning stove on this grey, damp afternoon.

 So why choose here to kick start my writing again?  Well, partly because I have the place to myself, my friends who own the place being away on an extended holiday, but mainly because no-one knows where I am.  They have an idea of the town but no-one has the address and definitely no-one has the telephone number. If I had a drawbridge, I’d pull it up!

 Don’t get me wrong, it’s not as if I’m a recluse; I love the company of people and would generally be considered the life and soul of the party type.  It’s just that, now and again, I need to stop my world and get off for a while.

 And everyone would benefit from time spent just being rather than thinking or doing.  It’s just that a lot of people genuinely can rarely find time for themselves and many that do live alone are afraid of the silence I’m currently experiencing.  No TV, no radio, e-mail and mobile switched off, no noises from the street, no-one else in the house.  As I sit and become aware of my surroundings, all I can hear is the hiss of the logs and a clock ticking quietly in the background.

 When one is beset with problems or caught in the full flow of stuff happening, the temptation is to keep ‘doing’; the art of just being is lost in a swirl of activity aimed at sorting things out or just working to earn the money to pay bills and creditors.  We think ourselves crazy as we formulate plans for how we can improve our lot in life. The thing is, we all need time to stop and just be.  Being helps us to focus and have clear sight.  Being often sorts out the wood from the trees.

 A lot of this weekend has been spent doing – nothing.  Space has been stared into, the insides of eyelids have been examined and blood has been heard coursing through veins.  As I‘ve concentrated on my breathing, time has slowed down and muscles have relaxed. A few times I’ve drifted off to sleep and other times I’ve ended feeling energized and clear-headed.

 Not everyone is as lucky as I am, I know.  I have the luxury of an empty house and no-one to look after but myself; I don’t have to stick to meal times, expectations, shoulds and oughts.  But everyone can make time to be alone in their head, even if it’s just for a few precious moments before everyone else wakes up.

 In that time, just ‘be’.  Don’t mentally write shopping lists, plan menus or sort out the day’s wardrobe.  Listen to your blood flow, feel your breath in your body and enjoy the beauty of being alive.

 Do this every day and you will be amazed at how much more ordered your thoughts are, how much more mental energy you have and how those elusive answers pop into your mind.  

 If you can find another few minutes every day, write down how you feel in a journal and note how much calmer you are, how your creativity improves and how much more focussed you become as the days go by.  Once being becomes a habit, you’ll wonder how you ever did without it - I know I do.

 

Who Are You?

I've been tweeting lately about making lists of strengths and weaknesses and this is, of course, in an attempt to find out who you are and, more importantly, liking yourself, warts and all.  Here's the beginning of the chapter in 'Emotional Intelligence: Journey to the Centre of Your Self', which shows how to discover more about what makes you tick:

SWOON

 

‘People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own soul’

Jung 

 

They really will.  We once had a client who started to go to a therapist to get to grips with some problems she had.  She’d been going for weeks and getting nowhere and then, suddenly, they seemed to make a breakthrough and the therapist felt that the next session would uncover a particularly nasty scar, which was preventing her from moving on.  Do you know, it took that woman 15 years to go back to another therapist and she made all sorts of outlandish excuses as to why she couldn’t continue.  You see she was afraid that round the next corner would be the pain she couldn’t face, so she walked the other way and carried the pain with her for years afterwards.  Jung was spot on.  Or, to bring us a little more up to date, there was a popular record in the 1970s called ‘I’ve Never Been to Me’, which is about a woman who covers up her emotional pain by rich living but has never taken a good, hard look at her inner self.  Let’s try that now.

 Just for a moment, think about WHO YOU ARE. The usual tendency is to recite a list of positive, or negative (depending on your frame of mind) attributes to create a ‘you’ template and often the list of negatives is far longer than the list of positives. But how well do you actually know yourself and how many seeming contradictions are there in your personality?   For example, you may think of yourself as a timid person, who suddenly finds herself furiously berating someone for being cruel to an animal or you may think of yourself as the strong, silent type, who unexpectedly weeps buckets at a sad film. Do you see yourself as others see you?  Who are YOU?

 If asked to describe a friend, people will often say that the other person is a salesman or policeman. But that’s not actually true, is it?  That’s not what the person is but more accurately what they do, and this is an important distinction. If we fail to make it, we get lost in the identity of our labels – lawyer, accountant, cleaner, politician, husband, housewife, editor, consultant and even student and child. All of these are just describing words and probably only describe aspects of our personality anyway. Think of the Krays.  It has always been said, often in the same breath, that they were vicious gangsters, who disfigured people for showing disrespect, but unfailingly loved and protected their old Mum.  These facets of our personality may represent a portion of how we express ourselves in our world, but ultimately not who we truly are. No wonder we can feel dissatisfied with our lives; as Francesca Cassini puts it so poetically, ‘our labels of identity create our own imprisonment’. 

Quick exercise – labelling

Imagine you are sitting on a windswept beach somewhere you love. Make it your favourite time of the year. The tide is coming in and the sound of the surf on the shore fills the air. What word would you use to describe the ocean? Powerful? Majestic? Awesome? Frightening? Bleak? Wild? Uninviting? Cold? Cruel? Then again you may see the sunlight glint off the cresting waves, and you may love surfing, so the descriptive words may become Exciting, Breathtaking, Challenging, Inviting, Creative or even Empowering. And we can choose many other descriptions, such as Deep, Passionate, Energetic, Romantic……  You choose your descriptions.  Whatever you call it, it’s the same sea……  A rose is a rose is a rose.

Now, focus within and see yourself as the ocean. Imagine your mind like a powerful beam of light, arcing round a lighthouse. As your light sweeps the ocean, focus on one facet of your personality within it, choose a word to describe that bit of you. Then choose another and another. You may begin with descriptions of your body, then your mind, your emotions, your intellect, your education, or your history.  Each part is only part of the whole and yet the whole is you – good, bad and neutral, brilliant, dull and colourless.  None of us is made up wholly of good or bad; we’re just all an amalgam of various parts, all shades of so many different colours.

As the ocean encompasses all possibilities and potential, so do we; it simply depends on where we choose to focus our attention.

And, as a last thought, we keep using ‘facets’ of your personality.  What else has facets?  Yes, precious gems, and that’s how you started out in this journey of life, as a pure, perfect, precious gem of a person and you could be again.

You may have wondered why this section is entitled SWOON.  SWOON will help you become more self-aware.  Just as we did with the lighthouse, we are now going to imagine ourselves as a product – we’ll call it a YOU – and, remember, it should be a brilliant, shining gemstone.  And for this exercise, we have to sell our YOU to the hardest market to crack – ourselves.  Like any good marketers, we firstly need to do an analysis on the product, only instead of SWOT or PEST, we are going to SWOON – we are talking about emotions after all!

Get some A4 paper and, displaying it in landscape format, draw up the following grid:

Strengths	Weaknesses	Opportunities	Obstacles	Needs
Kind
Loyal
Funny
Intelligent

 

And this is only the start..... 

 

 

Oh, happy! I remember that.....

Those immortal lines coming from an episode of Fawlty Towers, of course, when Basil appeared to be harking back to a time - presumably pre-Sybil - when he had been happy; the implication being that her presence prevented him from being happy now.  But, while we laughed at the idiotic Basil and his ranting, pompous hapless antics, we didn't seem to notice that he epitomised a way of being exhibited by many of us- i.e. that his mood or well-being was a direct reaction to the mood or actions of someone else. Which is a shame.

A friend called me the other day to say that she is reading my book 'Emotional Intelligence: Journey to the Centre of Your Self' and had been aware of a light bulb moment' when reading page 56, (yes, she could name the page, which is more than I could!) where I say that 'if you push the responsibility for an action onto the other person, then you aren't taking control and you can't be free.' What I was talking about was the choice we all have to take control of our own moods and emotions. Take responsibility for how you feel.  Yes, someone else's words and actions might be unkind but that doesn't necessarily mean that you should feel upset or angry.  You can choose to feel those things but it's not compulsory.

So, feel the happiness welling up from inside yourself, not flowing from someone else.  They're them and you're you and however close you are to them, you can't be them, nor should you allow them to control how you feel.  If some people bring you down, avoid them.  If you live with them go for a walk or think about how much you want that situation to continue.  Seek out the company of people who allow you to be and don't try and impose their own black moods on you.  Make 'happy' your current choice, not a distant memory.

 

 

Bedbugs Not Biting

Being in bed with a bug (well, there's no accounting for taste!) but being on the mend, so I'm able to do stuff, I thought I'd tidy up my blogging activity and have been messing about with rss feeds and the like.  Having now given myself back the headache I thought I'd lost, I've finally managed to accomplish one of the tasks I set myself - linking to my author profile on Amazon.  However, being somewhat cynical of my technical accomplishments, I thought I'd practise with a previous post and then go and check.

So, here's what I wrote on December 29th 2009 about New Year's Eve, as I thought the timing was apt for now.  I still hold with what I wrote then - in fact, I wrote a very similar mail to a friend just the other day - but would like to report that 2010 was pretty good.  Let's hope that I'll be writing with as much affection about the year this time next January....

'Certain friends are concerned that I want to spend New Year’s Eve on my own at home and I have to say that, up until fairly recently I would have been equally dismayed at the thought of someone I cared about being alone on the 31^st December.  In the frantic past I have hosted parties and dinners, been to glitzy events and spent the time à deux; all of these have been appropriate to the time and situation I was in and I’ve pretty much enjoyed all of them. Since I’ve been on my own, I have actively sought company on this special evening, as to be alone would have seemed a sign that I was Billy No Mates!  The thought of being purely in my own company on that date has filled me with horror, as I’ve always been keen on symbolism and had more than a whiff of superstition about it – if I’m alone on the cusp of the new year, does it mean that I’ll be alone for the whole 365 days?  However, I’ve finally come to realise that, firstly, I am never alone in the spiritual sense of the word, and secondly, like Christmas, New Year is a man-made date, which merely puts a mark in the sand.  It’s a needed period, and has a special time in every religion from Judaism to Wicca, as we all ought to reflect on what’s gone on in our lives and why and visualise what is to come. 

 Having started with friends, I like to think about who has come and gone in the past year.  Some, like Mervyn, Jeff and Jack are no longer of this world but in their time in my life, they played an important part and will always be in my heart.  Others are friends who loomed large for a long time, but now seem to have melted away. They may return, they may not but I will spend some time that evening thinking of their contribution to where I am now and what lessons I have learned from their presence – and absence – in my life.  Then there are the newcomers, who seem to have been many this year, probably because I have finally opened up to the endless possibilities life has to offer.  I am sure that some of these friendships will endure for the rest of my days here, whereas others will only walk alongside long enough for me to work out why they came and then move on.  Some offer simple pleasures, some are complicated and their important presence will take more working out but all the relationships will be fascinating and will help me to understand myself better.

 Which brings me back to my own company and the title of this piece; it’s all a matter of timing.  This New Year’s Eve there are invitations I would have loved, which haven’t materialised and invitations I have had which don’t fit with my current mindset.  It’s not that I don’t want to spend time with these friends – and I am blessed that I have had many from people I consider to be important players in my life – It’s just that I actively want to spend time with me on December 31^st.  I want to get to know myself even better so that, in 2010, I can be a better and stronger friend to my fellow players and myself.

 Happy New Year to everyone; may you do what you love and love what you do and may you get to know and understand yourself better so that you can be happy with your choices and, if not, change them or change the way you look at them. Remember that the only person who is with you all the time is you, so get to know and love yourself and then everything else will fall into place.'