Tagged by Grace

Thanks Grace, I'll take any excuse to think about music! These sprang immediately to mind but an hour from now the list would be different...

1. Street Spirit - Radiohead
2. Sweet Child of Mine - Guns n' Roses
3. Green Eyes - Coldplay
4. Time for Heroes - The Libertines
5. Guiding Light - The Veils
6. Five Years - David Bowie
7. Common People - Pulp

The eagle has landed

A secret consignment of boxes arrived by truck. We hauled them up two flights of stairs and began panting very hard. After suitable recovery time, a day was spent opening, examining and positioning a large number of items. Two old ebony elephants now stare at each other from their new niches.

Love

“If something is beyond your sphere of influence you should stop trying to control it.” This maxim makes logical sense but is a nearly impossible code to live by when it is very human to try to change something in order to improve it. When some factor stubbornly resists my efforts I feel anxious and fretful, even hurt. Everyone knows which things are indisputably beyond our power to alter (like gravity and the weather) but some things appear tantalisingly close enough to change. People, perceptions, places…

I hear you say, “There are only two certainties in life, taxes and death.” Everything else is a lottery, I know that, yet frustration sets in when I fail to improve factors which shape my daily existence. I am still learning to accept the beauty of things as they are and to stop striving for perfection. But if I regard much of my life as highly important am I doomed by the following formula? ANXIETY = UNCERTAINTY x IMPORTANCE

I suffer anxiety because I get wrapped up in a web of perceptions and misperceptions. What do people think, what do I think of people? Even those who say perceptions don’t matter are fibbing. Fundamentally the common man wants to be liked or at the very least to meet with approval. Fear of rejection makes us try to mould ourselves. Only the most selfish could truly care less.

Perhaps a new way to look at this is to say only the trivial falls short of perfection. The important things are already perfect. Like Nature, we can’t improve upon nature in all its majesty and glory. Art in all its forms only mimics nature so is close to perfection. Love is unconditional and forever – the very definition of perfection. One day soon I will learn to live in these true terms, in a state where anxiety melts away.

“But it all boils down to one quotable phrase,
if you love something give it away.”
Bright Eyes – One Foot in Front of the Other