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How we view things really is malleable over time. A rock cannot learn anything. It sits and sulks at the utter meaningless of its life. While a willow can learn to adapt to unexpected changes in the wind.
My journey to the city stirred up so many memories and emotions. Should I could go on feeling sorry for myself? That my wife was ripped away from me, with little warning, after 55 years of marriage? Or, should I be grateful that I had her kindness and companionship? Through thick and thin for all of those 55 years.
I could go on feeling sad and nostalgic at every new memory which pops up, of our being together. Or, I could learn to warm to those countless memories. Of our long, complex and mostly enjoyable life together.
What if there is some meaning to everything which crosses our path? That everybody we meet has some lesson for us. If only we are open to that possibility. What can we learn from a neighbour who fills his land with rusting vehicles and equipment? That he is a raving lunatic and to be condemned for his foolishness? Or that we should keep a more honest eye on our own, hoarding behaviour? However trivial. Or completely life changing.
What if we view almost everybody we meet as a passive teacher by example? A strong character actor. Or a mere extra on the stage of life. Dealing with their own issues or failing to do so. Whether their example is negative or positive. That person gives us free clues about our own behaviour. About how life can, or should not be lived. At the very least their role can be held up to the light. As an example for our own contemplation.
Without knowing in advance. How will we know if the picture is a strange negative? Leaving us baffled as to its meaning. Or a colourful slide? For projection into a much wider understanding of life.
Negativity closes doors to opportunity and potential. Positivity allows growth from greater insight. If we prejudge the message contained in every small picture. Or personal role presented to us. Then its true value is already lost. Before we can even examine its content.
The front hall by artificial light. It is too dark outside to achieve anything useful.
My mother-in-law told me off for greeting strangers during my stay at her rural home. "The Danes don't greet strangers!" She admonished. I still went on nodding and smiling at every stranger I passed on my bike rides. How was I to judge if their day was cursed or improved? By my simple, human acts of recognition. I offered the greeting openly and without charge. What they made of it was their choice entirely.
My mother-in-law descended ever deeper into solitary confinement. Entirely of her own making. Thirty years later I met a former neighbour at a party. She remembered a sour old woman. With large and dangerous dogs.
9.20 7C/44F. pouring with rain as the trees rock. No real point in a morning walk. I might as well have morning coffee instead. It is already warm indoors and I am spreading the heat.
When a person wears two hearing aids. For correcting very different hearing loss, between each ear. How do I know what is my normal hearing level? Is it 0dB? Not a daft question. The brain has to adapt to new stimuli. Coming from an ear which has been almost deaf for decades. Suddenly everything sounds louder and high pitched in particular.
I have no useful memory of the sounds I now hear through my left ear. The theory is that the frequency response of each ear has been adjusted and amplified [by the aids] to some adjustable but [presumably optimum level. I can use the app on my phone to play with balance and level independently. I also have three programs to cope with different, background noise levels.
10.45 8C/46F Dark overcast and pouring down. The drive is almost continuous puddle. I have all the internal doors open to take advantage of the mild conditions to warm the house. Several logs are burning well. To compensate for the greater heat loss in the entrance hall and bathroom.
11.15 It is brightening up! Sunshine! I am tidying potential, charity shop fodder in the lounge. I moved a mirror from the lounge to the front hall.
13.15 Lunch over. I had a short walk before lunch. Lots of puddles and minor flooding on the fields. Now I am going shopping. With some more charity stuff to distribute.
14.30 Returned from the shops. A long, rural, traffic detour due to roadworks. Lots of flooding elsewhere. What was very unusual was seeing sheep in the fields. Indoor cattle and pigs are the norm as far I was aware.
I took a box of my wife's knitting and sewing bits and pieces to a village wool shop. Her customers have been delighted with my wife's many knitting books. It is better that others can enjoy my wife's things. Rather than their remaining unused in boxes at home. Or worse, being discarded. If the wool shop gains or retains customers, because of my donations, then all the better. Another village shop survives against all the odds.
18.15. Still tidying. Found more china cats. Collecting everything electrical together in clear tubs. To save searching when I need something. I seem to have wasted a lifetime searching for "stuff!"
Dinner was mackerel on toast. Followed by soup and a roll. I kept feeding the stove until bedtime with all the internal doors open.
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