Thoughts and Contemplations

A Cup of Tea. A Pen. A Sunday Afternoon.

| sophiekemsley

A cup of tea and a pen, and a Sunday afternoon.  
The call of seagulls filtrate through my bedroom window.  I look outside to spot them and my eyes are instead met by the calm of a clear, white sky.  Lighter evenings.  Longer days.  Spring has arrived and with it has come a new chapter in this incomplete novel of life for which we compose our own storyline .  As the smell of roast lamb makes it’s way up the stairs, I look at my work and remind myself that it’s time to focus, Sophie, focus.

Sunday afternoons are the chill-out time of the week, the time to relax, the time to focus within, to inhale-exhale, to light some candles, to listen to instrumental tracks, to feel at peace.

Every other day of the week is usually so busy, so frantic.   Our time to reflect is lost in the constant movement and pushed further and further down our list of priorities, below the likes of ‘create that spreadsheet‘ or ‘buy those train-tickets’.

But Sundays.  They make me think about everything that’s really important in life.  Family.  Friends.  Life experiences.  Travel.  Adventures.

Sunday is the day when all the negative things in life become irrelevant.  A day to let go of our worries, a day to acknowledge and walk away from that which is holding us back, a day to shelve any anger and a day to forgive.  The horizons in front of you are broad and bright when the body is free of negativity and full of love and passionate desire.

Sundays are for getting nostalgic for the past but excited for the future.  A day of appreciation and anticipation.  Fond memories twinned with the birth of new dreams.  New targets and ideas.

A sense of exuberant spirituality.
Life is here and we are living it.

I love them all, on Sunday afternoon.

Happy Sunday, my friends.

Song of the Day:  Jean-Michel Jarre – Computer Weekend

A classic piece from the French master of electronics.  One of my favourites for a Sunday afternoon.

Natural – The Best Way

| sophiekemsley

At a time when technology dominates and we’re more likely to be looking at our phones as opposed to out of the window it’s becoming easier to be blind to the beauty which surrounds us.  It’s especially easy to do this when you’re living in a country like England.  Grey clouds.  Office-blocks.  Litter.  Viscous traffic jams.  The angry honks of road-rage.  Ugly, rain-soaked 1960’s architecture.  These are the things we’re used to seeing on a daily basis when we’re making our way to work, or heading into town to buy a new pair of tights and some milk.  The metal-concrete infrastructures are unsightly but they keep our country economically afloat and so we have to accept them.  You can’t run a country from a muddy-field… as much as I wish it were possible.

But sometimes, it’s just nice to have that wonderful soiree with nature.  It’s the one thing that’s always been there, even when recession hits and companies submerge into liquidation, there’ll still be a fresh sunrise each morning reminding us that life goes on, and what’s more important?  Nature is more powerful, more valuable than anything and it makes me sad to see people abuse it.  Earth is seldom more beautiful than in it’s most natural state; because nature is real, raw and magical.  It’s no surprise that we often look to nature when we need a bit of time-out from the rest of the world.

Still trees seem to listen – they have centuries of experience, and glistening rivers seem to advise – no matter what the obstruction, they never cease to flow, flowing on until they reach the ocean.

Below are just a couple of photos, taken locally, when nature has put a smile on my face.  It really is a beautiful world.

View from train on way home from work, February 2012

High-tide at Epple Bay, January 2012

Snow in the Westgate Gardens, Canterbury – February 2012

En-Route to Dungeness – November 2011

The secret of Dungeness

| sophiekemsley

I had just turned ten years old when my parents first took me to the remote shingle peninsula at Dungeness, on the south coast of England between Folkestone and Hastings.  It was during the half-term holidays of late October 1995, and we were staying with my Grandma in East Kent for a few days and, whilst there, taking day trips to various different attractions in the area.

“What’s at Dungeness?” I remember asking my parents, hoping that it was something like it sounded – a creepy ‘dungeon’ of sorts, where I might be able to find the witches and wizards I’d read about in all my childhood books.  A good place to visit around Halloween, perhaps?
“No dungeons.  The closest thing to a dungeon is the power station, but we’re really going there to have a look at Derek Jarman’s cottage”
“Who’s Derek Jarman?”, I asked, though I had already concluded that I was probably not going to be at all interested in the answer.
“He was a film director who lived in a cottage at Dungeness.  He made music videos for the Pet Shop Boys and had an interesting garden.”
Oh er, wowee.  The cynicism more commonly attributed to teenage years made a premature appearance that day.

I remember the day clearly.  My Nana and my 18 year old cousin, Matthew, came with us.  It had been a tight squeeze in the car, especially since on the way we had stopped in the nearby village of Tenterden in which Mum had decided it would be a good time to buy a new wicker laundry basket, which was fairly large and spent the rest of the journey in the back of the car, swapping between the laps of Mum and Matthew.  We listened to Mike Oldfield’s ‘Tubular Bells II’  and I spent most of the trip chewing my way through a packet of blackcurrant flavour Hubba Bubba.  Limited edition, strange taste.  It’s safe to say I wasn’t anywhere near as enthused about Dungeness as the rest of my family were.  “There aren’t even any sweet shops” I sulked to myself in the back of the car, whilst everybody else crept around the cottage, peering into the windows and admiring the garden.  My parents hadn’t been lying when they said there wasn’t much at Dungeness.

Sixteen years on, there still isn’t, but growing older I realised that that was entirely the appeal.  We went back on average once every two years.     Coming all the way from Watford, we’d usually eat lunch in the Britannia Inn restaurant there.  Best scampi and chips I’ve ever had… and they always provided you with plenty of tartare sauce.   It’s hard to make a whole space of nothing sound attractive to anyone who has never been there.  It’s not pretty, it’s not vibrant and colourful.  It’s desolate and barren.  Black.   But, when you’re there, you feel a connection with the Earth that cannot be found in many other places. Dungeness, with it’s black power station looming over the peninsula, acres of shingle, a few beach-houses and bewildering iron sculptures is a haven for the creative or for those who just want to have a bit of respite from the rest of the world for an hour or so.  It’s safe to say the place attracts more visitors than there are visitor-attractions, because somehow the car-park of the Britannia is always full and Channel 4 even used the backdrop of the pylons in one of their idents a few years ago.  For somewhere that has so little, it seems to give so much.  Indeed, it’s a fabulous place, but only if you have an imagination.

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Sunday 13th November 2011 and we are back in Dungeness.  It’s our first visit since moving to Kent and since it’s much closer, we can afford to stop at the quaint nearby village of Appledore along the way, and drink rose tea in an ornate tearoom painted in pale pink with decorative fine bone teacups hanging from the ceiling and on shelves.  In an antiques shop next door I am pleased to find a postcard of Lancaster, my student home in the North of England, from 1908.  The postcard had somehow made it’s way from Lancaster, all the way to Austria, and then back to Kent, in the South of England.  A lady called Alice writes to her friend Miss B.J Woolley who is out living in a convent in Austria:

“Nov 4th 1908:  Thank you so much for your good wishes dear.  Just this card to let you know I am going on all right.  I hope the Daily Mail reaches you each week, and that the paper ‘The Ladies’ Field’ which Ada sent you came safely to hand.  Much love, hoping you’re well.  Yours, Alice.” 

We leave Appledore, myself having taken lots of photos, and continue on to Dungeness.  It’s my first time going to Dungeness with a decent camera in tow and I revel in using the ‘Pin-Hole’ and ‘Film Grain’ special effects whilst photographing the random relics that make this such a special place.  As usual, the Britannia Inn is busy and the barren, shingle beach-front is dotted with various  weathered, iron-shaped relics sculpted by artists whom all saw something special in Dungeness.  I decide to head towards what looks like, but isn’t, a wooden abseiling wall about 300 meters away.  It looks somewhat out of place in such a flat, empty mass of stones.  Along the way I notice a sole page of newspaper flapping about in the coastal breeze.  It’s caught on a rock.  I’m captivated by the headline, “Floating Space Junk Hits Tipping Point”.  Even more intriguing is the date on the paper, ‘September 3rd 2011′.  It is over two months old yet still looks so recent, untouched by rain, it’s print as clear as when it was hot off the press.  I wonder if somebody placed it there on purpose for the benefit of an artistic photo, one I take advantage of as I crouch down with my camera and try and get a shot which isn’t imposed by my shadow.  Or, maybe it really has been there since September 3rd.  In an area so untouched, it would not be beyond reason.

As I head back to the car I spot a painting of an eye on the side of the road, and see it as another photo taking opportunity.  Upon closer inspection I notice that just behind it stands a wooden placard advertising a shop.  ‘Crystals, incense, tarot’ etc.  It’s obviously a very spiritual outlet, based in what looks like a 1980’s caravan, and it’s open every day of the week until 5pm.  I decide to take a look inside.  As I make my way along the path that leads to the shop I begin to sense a strange feeling, similar to the one I get just before entering a haunted house at the carnival.  A handwritten note in the window at the entrance strictly forbids photography inside the shop.  Eek.  I step through the colourful bead curtain in the doorway and suddenly feel as though I’ve finally found that dungeon I used to assume gave Dungeness it’s name! Or something like that anyway.  The space inside the shop is small and cramped, but every corner is covered with a variety of wacky and wonderful goods.  As I look around at all the plaster-cast models of witches, smell the fragrances of a million incense sticks and feel the tickle of feathers from the dream-catchers above my head I begin to feel a little uneasy.  There is nobody at the counter but behind a door I hear the sound of a couple of women laughing, or are they witches cackling?  I half-expect to see the corpse of a witch behind the counter and am quite pleased that the counter-clerk isn’t there,  with just the two of us in such a small building perhaps she’d want to make small talk.  I’m not sure I could manage small-talk with a potential witch!  Ironic, given what I’d been hoping for from my visit in 1995.  Despite my somewhat naive unease, I love this shop.  It’s interesting –  I’ve only encountered a shop like this once before, and that was all the way out in rural Tennessee – a remote hut in the middle of the mountains.  Here, you can almost see the spirituality dripping from the walls.   Spirituality is something I’ve only really taken an interest in over the past year and a half or so.  I’m much more open to the idea of the spiritual world.  There is no proof that it doesn’t exist, and I’d like to believe that there is definitely the potential for a spiritual energy out there,  enhancing our souls and channeling our energies into positive connections inside and out.  I definitely feel that connection sometimes, and I’m intrigued to know more.

I have two pounds in my purse and would quite like to buy something.  Two pounds isn’t enough for most of the items in the shop, but I see a tray of brightly coloured gemstones, each of which possess certain qualities, or so the labels attached to each tray say.  They are £1.10 each, within my budget, so I decide to buy one, and read each description to see which one would fit me the best.  I eventually decide to purchase a green aventurine, a smooth, rounded quartz pebble in a shade of muddy green.  It is a stone which is said to bring good fortune, clarity of mind and good adventures during travel.  It is also supposed to dissolve negative thoughts and emotions, and bring about peace within.  It is not the prettiest stone available, but it seems to possess the most appropriate of powers and so I decide to buy it.  At the very least, even if it does nothing for me, it will be a souvenir of this strange little shack of a shop.  By now, some other people have entered the shop and the noise of chatter has caused the shop owner to finally show her face.  She has pale skin, jet black hair in a bob, and knows these people well.  They discuss a previous purchase.  I take my little stone to the counter and also decide to buy a ‘lucky Chinese coin’ for 40p.   The counter-clerk gives me a wry smile.

“That’s £1.50 please”
I hand over three 50ps.  No change required.
“Thanks Soph” she says after taking the money.

I leave the shop and head back to the car.  Something the counter-clerk said has made me feel slightly uneasy.  I recall the dialogue again, in my head.
Wait a minute…

Thoughts from Above

| sophiekemsley

From the window of a passenger jet making it’s way over the Atlantic in 2009

One of my most favourite places to be is up in the air.  Thirty-five thousand feet up to be precise.

It’s not so much about the fact that if I’m on an aeroplane, then I must be on holiday – although that too creates the association between flights and fun.  Actually, it’s more about the concept of being so high up,  and the rare chance to be so much closer to the stars as I glide through the upper-regions of the troposphere with 150 strangers.   Flight also provides us with that so mesmerizingly  natural view of the planet below us; a view which can evoke memories of pages from all those Physics and Geography textbooks that we used to begrudgingly carry around in school and chuck back into our lockers as soon as class was finished.  Aerial views of the jagged coastlines below us – defined at night by lamps which dot their glowing amber hues along the borders to contrast with the black masses of ocean next to them- bring all those world maps we’ve ever looked at to life.  We remember that we live not just in houses, towns and countries, but Planet Earth – just one shiny bluey-green marble in an unfathomable, mysterious mass of infinite black space the total contents of which nobody has ever been able to say for certain.

In any given second of commercial flight we are looking down on thousands of civilians, doing thousands of different things, in thousands of different circumstances.  They may be living  in homes which vary from the glamorous to the squalid, fulfilling acts from the most innocent to the most illicit, or experiencing events from the most joyful to the most tragic.  Suddenly, my own circumstances, my successes and failures, highs and lows, seem less significant.  With the humblest of meaning, my whole life seems less significant, because I am just one of 7 billion others who share the planet with me.  The disappointment served by the frozen, inedible, sour tasting carrots in my in-flight meal turns from one of contempt and concern that I won’t have eaten enough on this long-haul flight, to just another of life’s little inconveniences that we ought just flick away with our forefinger into the depths of time and never dwell on again.

There’s another thing I think about during flight:

“From way up high, I drink a coca-cola and look out of a small sheet of plastic at the Earth below me where it came from, but whilst Earth appears so big, it is not so big that it can survive on it’s own forever.  It is not so big, that separate nations can shirk their responsibility for the wellbeing of their neighbours.  When stars that are lightyears away can appear as small as specks of dust, but be as bright as the bulbs directly above our heads, we are reminded that we each, as individuals, are merely passengers through time, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have footprints to leave.  Each of us has a contribution to make.”

One of the things I value the most about Challenge to Change – the charity I volunteer for which aims to help rural Asian communities adapt to the threats of climate change through sustainable methods, is that – like all international charities – it relies on nations working together to support one another, just like they should do.  We also seek to inform people in the UK about the effects their CO2 emissions can have on homes on the other side of the world.  Charities such as CtC are here to show that there is no place in society for ignorance towards other parts of the world anymore.  Generally, international aid and environmentalist movements are just two of the wonderful ways in which modern day Earth is finally managing to interweave each fragment of it’s landmass, or each patch of it’s tapestry, together in recognition of the fact that all 7 billion of the globe’s inhabitants are united in at least one thing – their position in the Solar System.  We are thankfully so far beyond the archaic days before global exploration, when one had no concept of a world beyond their backyard.

Today, we live in an age where, the unfortunate obstacle of money aside, we can be on the other side of the world within the space of a few hours.  Time Space Compression was the name that 20th century Geographer David Harvey gave to the idea of the world seeming smaller and smaller in size due to the emergence of innovative technologies like the internet and travel, and there aren’t many clearer demonstrations of this than the ability to send a message to the other side of the world in realtime, or being able to wake up in one continent and fall asleep in another.  These are both things which we could not do prior to the 20th century.

On the other hand, the world can still seem significantly larger if you were to compare the standards of living in somewhere like the tiny African nation Burundi with the most expensive, luxurious home in Beverly Hills.  We are still years, possibly centuries away from being a planet in which the smallest of African states can boast the same economic status as the likes of the USA and the Middle East.  Perhaps there will always be such divide, and perhaps it will always be the one thing that keeps us believing that the Earth is big when new ideas such as the aforementioned time space compression theory will try telling us that it isn’t.   To me, the world is both big and small, and it is during flight, looking down on it all, that I realise this the most.

When people proclaim that the Earth is a big place, I think about the internet and mainstream aviation and struggle to wholly concur.  When others utter the phrase, “It’s a small world” (usually in reference to the sporadic meet of familiar faces in distant places) I consider the economic differences between East and West and struggle to wholly concur that as well.  To try and weld our wonderful planet Earth into any kind of labels seems to take away it’s magic.  It is what it is, but it may also be what it isn’t.  And I like it that way.

Song of the Day:  Miniature Tigers – The Wolf

Fun-loving indie-rock from Brooklyn, New York.  Further evidence to support the notion that any band who’s name includes that of an animal, has a keyboardist, and comes from the East Coast of North America, will automatically be pant-wettingly awesome and produce genius lyrics like “I’ve got nothing keeping me here, I’ve wasted all the love that I hold dear.  I’ll throw a dart: L.A. The wolf has run away…”

I love you, Miniature Tigers!

Just a short thought…

| sophiekemsley

“For goodness sake!”, I whispered to myself, frustrated,  as the customer in front of me at the counter in River Island fannied around with her purse for what seemed an eternity, laboriously counting up the coins she needed to hand over to the cashier to pay for her new pair of plimsolls.  I looked at my watch and noticed the time – 11:27am.   I was determined to catch the 11:35am bus home as that would be the one that ran nearest to my house.  Rain was looking likely and this particular bus ran only twice an hour, so I needed to pay and dash as quickly as possible if I was to have a chance of catching it.  The customer continued to take her time resolving the payment, and then a balloon burst inside one of her shopping bags, which resulted in her toddler being terribly upset and only exacerbated the pandemonium.   I was tense, and also a little bit frustrated after eventually conceding that there was no way I was going to make that bus anymore.

I slunk out of the shop, later than planned, and wondered what could fill my time up for half an hour before the next bus arrived.  It was at this point that I checked my phone and noticed a missed call from my mother.  It transpired that she was in town too and wanted to meet for a coffee – something I can never turn down.

Had I got out of River Island when I wanted to, I would have bolted towards the bus, paid my fare and sat down before checking my phone – at which point it would have been too late for me to go and meet my mother.  Instead, I met her, we had our coffee, and during the additional time in town I remembered something which I had set off to buy in the first place, but had forgotten about in my frenzy to try and make the 11:35 bus.

I guess it was just like they say:

“Everything happens for a reason.”

Well, perhaps not everything.  The example above is a very simplistic and convenient one.  There are many other experiences which are a lot harder to understand.  For example, I’ll never see a reason for somebody planting a hoax bomb by the station last night, which consequentially evacuated the city and wasted everybody’s time.  Though maybe, I do see one positive outcome – that being the first-class response of the police and emergency services, which will surely have made myself and other residents of Canterbury feel a lot safer about living here.

Maybe it is not that things always happen for a reason.  Perhaps it is just that there is just good and bad to be found in everything, provided we make the effort to look for it.   Things are only ever what we make of them and sometimes it is not about what has happened, but how we react to it.  Everything we experience teaches us in some form or another and as such there is always a lesson that can be taken away and used for our next experiment.

Just a short thought anyway…

 

Song of the Day:    Socratic – Diamond in a World of Coal

I’m not usually a fan of these American alt-rock bands that have nasal-voiced vocalists (think Panic at the Disco or My Chemical Romance) but there’s something quite original and unique about New Jersey indie-rock outfit, Socratic.  This song is one which particularly grabbed my attention this week.  Beautiful.

 

 

 

Finding a home for the Past, the Present and the Future

| sophiekemsley

If you’ve ever had the impressive motivation to enter a gym, or wandered around the sports and fitness section of a department store, you’ll probably have seen one of those exercise machines upon which you place each foot on a separate pedal and swing your legs back and forth one after the other.  Their proper name is a ‘gravity strider’ or ‘airwalker’ and they provide the same fitness benefits as a brisk walk; the bonus being that you don’t need to worry about the weather.  You can even position it in front of the t.v and do it whilst you watch The Simpsons, if you really want.  Its really quite novel.

Sometimes, when I see these machines in full swing, they remind me of the motion of our minds a little bit.  Sometimes we are forward thinking in the future, other times we are backwards recalling the past, but seldom are we in the centre – the present.

Ahhh, tenses.  Everybody loves to philosophise over the tenses.  You’ve probably heard dozens of infamous sayings about how important it is to live in today rather than yesterday, or tomorrow.  Even one of the best-selling books of all time (Eckhardt Tolle’s ‘The Power of Now’) was about that very idea.  For many, it is seen as the key to being spiritually sound and happy – and that’s an idea that most people would find extremely hard to refute.  I’m not going to refute it either, though I am going to try and figure out whereabouts in the jigsaw the past and the future really belong.

It seems to me, that most of the time we are thinking about things that happened in the past, or speculating over the things that we think may happen in the future.

“I wish I could go back to…”…. “I wish I hadn’t said such and such” … “I wish I’d done that differently” … “I miss a million people and things”… “Do you remember when we…?”

Sound familiar?

Now how about:

“I can’t wait until…” … “I am going to do that!”… “One day, I’d love to…” … “We should go to…”… “I will…”

If you’re anything like me – the above phrases will be most familiar to you.  You probably have a number of different words you could fit instantly fit into the ellipses.  Its fun isn’t it?  Reminiscing the good times and speculating over the exciting times ahead.  It can also be extremely nauseating – regretting over things you may have done or said which you just can’t change, and never will be able to change, or missing things that you can never re-live that pale in comparison to whatever you’re doing now.  Looking forward can be just as nauseating – you can set out many plans and goals but you can’t be certain that you’ll ever be able to enjoy the glory from them.  A lot of time wastefully invested into thinking about something which might not even happen!

Sometime during the third year of University, we were in the middle of a Criminology lecture which was not the most interesting of all.  In fact, it was so boring, that I cannot recall the proper name of the module nor what topic we were learning about that rainy Friday afternoon in the Marcus Merriman lecture theatre, Lancaster University.  I merely remember being sat with my unkempt, spotty, studentified head face down on the desk in despair,  stomach full of Pot Noodle and Snakebite, trying in vain to battle the zzz’s.  That was until our lecturer, Professor Can’tRememberTheName, used an analogy to describe something which really stuck out in my head as describing a habit that most of us have.  The analogy was that of a boat on an open sea that was being manipulated by several different steering wheels, all trying to steer in different directions.  The result?  The boat stood still, and went nowhere.  See yourself as the boat now, sometimes living in one direction (the past), other times living in the other (the future).  The result?  Staying still, going nowhere.  Could you ever contemplate that a boat and an airwalker and even an human mindset could have so much in common?

The present is the only tense that we are ever assured of having.  Therefore, it needs to be the one which we prioritise.  Yesterday is not the present.  If today is Monday, even the soon to arrive Tuesday is not the present.  Now is the present.  Your eyes on this sentence is the present (I must say, you are using your present wisely at this moment), but now that sentence becomes the past and now this current sentence is the present.  So let’s use it.  Let’s do the things we want to do whilst we know we can.

But where does that put the past?  Where does it put the future?  You definitely need those as well.  Just ask Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens’ ‘Christmas Carol’.  We can only ever put our lives into perspective and make the most of ourselves if we can have visions of all three.  The past is our teacher and Hindsight is that annoying fellow student in class who would start saying the answer to the question just after the teacher had started saying it, and would then pass off the answer as their own with a fraudulent grin.  The past gave us immense pleasure and intolerable pain but still we stand; now with more knowledge, appreciation and wisdom.  The past gave us all of the people we care about and all the qualifications we have.  We would be nowhere without it.  Be careful not to dismiss it.  Though there may be things we don’t like to remember, sometimes it is those things in particular which taught us the most.  Everything we ever did, taught us something, even if it was only trivial like, “don’t hold on too firmly to the escalator handlebar or you’ll spend the rest of the day with traces of hard-to-remove black rubber on your fingers”.   To dismiss any of that just because its not happening right now would make a mockery of everything you ever experienced.

Then too, the future – the one that keeps us facing forwards.  Thinking about the future is what provides us with hope and excitement.  Having a bad day?  TOMORROW WILL BE BETTER.  Though the uncertainty may also scare you, but at least you have the time to try and guide yourself in the direction you want to go in – draw out that map!  Plan your route.  But don’t use it as ‘back-up’ time to fulfil the things in life you really want to fulfil.  There is no tomorrow.  Nobody ever goes there.  Have you ever received a postcard from that golden, heavenly Land known as Tomorrow?

No.

It is today which we have.  Today is all you will ever have.  So let’s really think and understand now that infamous, wise old saying that you might find scrawled in a flowery font on the back of a menu in some kind of new-age, hippy dippy café-bar and lets put our whole heart and souls into it and really…

…Cherish Yesterday

Dream Tomorrow

Live Today…

 There’s no wanting in the present.  There’s no wishing in the present.  There’s no regretting in the present.  There’s only ever living in the present, so let’s not wait any longer to do the things we really want to and lets put the present in its rightful place at centre stage where it cannot be avoided; and the past and the future stored safely and discreetly in the wings for when we need that little bit of perspective or hope.

Song of the Day:   Girl Talk – Down for the Count

Massively under-rated away from the Americas, mash-up D.J Gregg Gillis has been making creating fresh party anthems for masses through ingeniously blending together popular songs in a way that leaves you in a state of absolute awe… Once you’ve stopped dancing, that is.


Me Vs The World?

| sophiekemsley

A few weeks ago I published a post about love.  I wrote about how, as humans, our ultimate desire is to find somebody who we can fall in love with, and share the rest of our lives with.  I stand by that sentiment, but now I’d like to focus on the alternative state of being single.  Is it really so bad to be unattached?

Essentially, being single is something we need to learn not to be afraid of.  Unless you’re lucky enough to have met “your one and only” already, then being single is a state you need to embrace, and even learn to like, as unattractive it may seem compared to the beautiful vision of unearthing your soulmate and falling in love.

It’s strange how one of the things we fear most is essentially the one thing we feel as though we have the least control over – being alone.  Nobody likes to feel alone.  That’s why we have families; that’s why we have friends.  We interact with others because we enjoy sharing stories and laughter with others.  We like having people to care for, who will care for us back.  Without this, we can feel lonely.  We each need the occasional personal space to gather our thoughts, but to be in this state for too long can lead to derealisation – we could lose ourselves in our imaginations.

And there will be days when the lack of a partner hits us harder than normal.  For me, it only takes the vision of a pair of teenagers on the street, loved up and arm and arm, to hit that sensitive spot in my tummy and react, like a metal fork touching a filling, and taunt me, “Why haven’t you found that yet, Sophie?”  “You’re getting older now, Sophie” or even just, “Stupid Sophie who nobody wants yet you’re about twice as old as those lovers”.  It can lead me to remember those visions I used to have as a young child, writing out my dreams in class, “Wen I am 25 I want to b living in a house wiv my husband, 2 chilldren and pet cat”, and then I feel as though I’ve let my infant self down.

However, my past paddles into the world of dating and relationships, which clearly all failed, have reminded me of one thing:  Love is something that we cannot force, and we should not actively look for.  Love is something so beautiful that it should come naturally.  We cannot phone up and order it, like a pizza; and much like a distant vision on the horizon, it does not make its way any closer to us just because we use a pair of binoculars (or *cough* a dating website *ashamed cough*).

We simply have to be patient, and wait, and whilst we do so, we need to find that inner peace in ourselves that says, “Hey, single? So what!” and allows us to continue having fun, and not let us feel inferior because nobody has fallen in love with us yet.  Our eventual spouses will be the ones we have decided we love enough to share the remainder of our lives with, but let’s not forget about all the years of our lives that will have preceded that.  Being single is our natural state from birth, and as humans we are an embodiment of a conscience.  Our conscience is the one person we have in our life who we know will never abandon us – similarly, it is the one person that we can never escape from.  Our conscience knows all of our secrets and all of our thoughts.  It knows much more about you than the person you marry ever will.  When you make a mistake it will be your conscience that makes you feel guilty.  When you try your hardest at something, and nobody else seems to realise, your conscience will be the one person guaranteed to give you a proverbial pat on the back and say, “I saw you trying, even if they didn’t”.  It is yourself, that listens to all of your thoughts and will never tell you to shut up, but it will also be the thing that does not need to be polite when telling you all the things that you have done wrong and what you need to change.

With this in mind – why, when we are single, do so many of us, myself included, pre-occupy ourselves with the disdain of not having found a relationship yet, when even a future partner will not be as understanding of ourselves as…. Ourselves!  A relationship with another stands for nothing if you cannot first enjoy the company of yourself.  We can obsess about finding a relationship out of fear of being alone but listen to your heart – can you hear that quiet voice?  That’s the voice that’s going to guide you, and never going to leave you.  Do you still feel alone?

I may wish for a relationship, but I cannot force it, nor would I want to.  Being single should not be viewed as a negative quality in somebody.  Rather, lets just remember the things we have, and not the things we want, and carry on living each day to the full until the time comes when love will find us.

(Disclaimer:  If still single in 10 years, may look into the laws of marrying plants)

Song of the Day:   Janet Jackson – Love Will Never Do Without You

Emily Hutchison, since you asked, this one is for you!

Armour – A must for every wardrobe…

| sophiekemsley

Something strange happened this afternoon.

I had been out shopping in the morning, and had returned to get on with some work, when all of a sudden, I got the strangest sensation in my tummy.  Don’t worry, I’m not about to divulge the details of any unpleasant digestive problem, although it did feel slightly similar… Have you ever had it, where a ‘bad-feeling’ has just seemed to spring out of nowhere and grab you by the stomach?  Perhaps I have a sixth sense (but unlike the boy in the movie, I lack the benefit of Bruce Willis being around to help), maybe I’d just drank too much coffee in the morning, or maybe it was just…nothing at all.  Either way, it got me thinking about those “unwelcome surprises” that life can throw at us.  You know the ones I mean.  You can be merrily getting by in your life, fulfilling a daily duty or enjoying a pleasant daydream, when all of a sudden you might find out something you don’t want to know, or see something you don’t want to see, and you get that ‘bad-feeling’, and it can then ruin your whole day, without you having a say in it.

There are very few people in the world who can call themselves psychic, and have the ability to predict the future.  For those of us without a crystal ball, life is a mystery and we simply do not know what will happen next.  Things can change – they can do so in a heartbeat, or they can do so over a longer period of time, in a more stealthier fashion.  Unfortunately, we are unable to control what happens with a lot of things.  All the planning in the world cannot prevent inexplicable events.  Sometimes, the hardest thing is knowing what to do next.

But something I’ve realised… is that we can learn to be resilient to these surprises.

Resilience d0es not equate to foregone victory in a future battle, but, in keeping with the fighting analogy, it can be regarded as a ‘suit of armour’.  Resilience makes you stronger, and better equipped for facing things.

What does resilience consist of?

Resilience is a form of certainty which can counteract the ongoing threat of uncertainty by acting as a constant, permanent set of rules which you can swear to yourself that you will keep to, no matter what.  Should things go wrong, you can then depend upon this set of rules to help you deal with the matter.  The rules may vary from person to person.  I’ve decided these are mine:

No Matter What Happens:

  • I will keep following my heart.  It might not be as logical as the head, but it adheres to my dreams.
  • I will continue to stand by the people who are most important to me, relentlessly.  Unless they take a piss on me or something.
  • I will strive to find the best solution for whatever problem I face.
  • If there is no solution available, if something is already done, then I will just stand up, and look forward.

This set of rules will be there to give me guidance whenever I need them, and it is the certainty of that, that provides me with some resilience.  It won’t prevent upset, it won’t stop the unwelcome surprises from happening, but it will give me the direction I’ll need to cope with it if something goes wrong.  Do it, make your own set of rules!  Think about whats important to you, and vow to hold onto it or stick to it, whatever happens. Do with an ‘ooh!’, DOOO IT!

Meanwhile, some shorts for you…

Stupid moment of the week:  “Sorry, we’re going to have to leave, we didn’t realise how fishy it was going to be in here”    said a friend to the waitor, as she and I decided to leave a restaurant after sitting down and looking at the menu.  I guess we should have known better, it being a fish restaurant, in a seaside town famous for… seafood… and all.

Discovery-from-unintentional-eavesdropping-of-the-day:  “Vanessa went with them to the Carvery, but she couldn’t find anything that she could eat, because she is a vegetarian”,explained a lady to her companion, who were walking in front of me in at an exceptionally slow pace in town…  One wonders why Vanessa went to a carvery in the first place, if she’s a vegetarian, but alas, I will never find out.

Epiphany of the Day:  I seem to write about food an awful lot on this.  Can anyone say, ‘dinnertime’?

Loves.

Song of the Day: The Drums – Book of Stories

Bouncy indie-pop with a 1980’s feel from Brooklyn, NY.

Opposites Attract

| sophiekemsley

Good and Bad

Happy and Sad

Up and Down

Smile and Frown

Hello and Goodbye

Laugh and Cry

Don’t worry, the above isn’t meant to be a poetic masterpiece, I was just thinking about how emotions will always be about each of these things – opposites, not to mention all the feelings in between.  We have to be able to familiarise ourselves with all of them, because there are some that we won’t always be able to avoid and the more we can accept to take the rough with the smooth, the better equipped we will be to cope with the things life throws at us (often unexpectedly).

Sometimes, one side may outweigh the other, or be longer in duration.

If things are more to the left-hand side, smile about it, write about it, take a photo of it, be thankful for it, love it and enjoy it.  Then try and spread it to others.

If things are more to the right-hand side, then keep a positive flame burning inside at all times, just the smallest flame can bring some light the darkest cave.  Free yourself of fear and ill-feeling.  Keep your love for those you care about relentless, let it withstand any bad weather and wait for the next sunny day to remind you why you did so.  Keep saying the things you mean, and keep meaning the things you say.  Have belief in all your actions, that’s the only way you’ll never have regrets.

But particularly, remember the rule of opposites – we can only recognise the experience of one side of the diametric if we have experienced, too, the other.  There is no emotion that should be denied.  Embrace them all, and learn from them, they each have something to teach you.

Today’s weather seems to have combined the rule of opposites into one.  Its lovely and sunny, but also pretty windy.  Perfect weather to be catching a bus into London for a few drinks and a lot of dancing.  I love it when friends have birthdays!

Loves.

Song of the Day:

My Last.FM/Spotifying browsing yesterday guided me to this song.  I like it a lot and no doubt it will be the soundtrack of my bus-ride today.