Skip to main content

The privilege of being taken for granted.
(On our departure for Sri Lanka)
We have just been told that we can now meet with people from another household.    There will be a lot of benefit from this because nearly all research shows that people who mix with others tend to be happier.   Human contact with friends and family is built into our DNA and psyche and is a vital part of our mental well-being and happiness.  As we draw towards the end of mental health awareness week such a relaxing of restrictions could not have come at a better time.

So, what are you looking forward to most about meeting up again with people you love and care for?   There is so much extra joy in the anticipation, don’t wish this coming week away but savour the waiting and the expectation of sharing finally face to face, even if you can’t hug!   Think of all you appreciate about this person, what makes them so unique, what their gift to the world is and what a difference they make in your life.  Write some of this down.  

Friendships and family relationships that have been part of our lives for years, (for some of us even our whole lives!) have become so close and intertwined with our own that it is inevitable we have grown to take them for granted.  This is not a negative comment, but a simple fact that the closer someone is to us the more they become integrated into our very being.   This is incredibly empowering as it means we don’t have to double guess them all the time, or question their love or care for us.  Their love for us is part of the building block of our lives which enable us to thrive and flourish, knowing they have our backs and we are secure in their love.  In this way every parent wants their children to ‘take them for granted’.

The lockdown has given us all a chance to really appreciate the value of these deep mutually loving relationships that have been part of the ‘warp and woof’ of our lives.   I love the definition of this phrase: ‘the essential foundation or base of any structure or organisation’.  The chances are that the people we will be reunited with shortly help make up the structure and base of our lives and without them we would simply not be who we are.   Let’s use the gift of this enforced separation, which may never come again, to really express something of how valuable and precious these love relationships are. 

For many of us it will be family, and they can sometimes be the hardest to express our deeper emotions and feelings to.  We feel awkward and shy about shifting the conversation onto another level than the usual buzz and comfort of the everyday chats we used to have.  Personally I think it is worth it. 

I remember my parents coming to Birmingham to visit us just before we moved to Sri Lanka.   The three of us had a quiet moment on our own and I found my voice cracking and tears forming in an upwelling of emotion as I tried to express how much I would miss them and my concerns for them in our absence.  

Have a great reunion with your loved ones and tell them why you take them for granted(in the right way!).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Curiosity in Lent

  Lent starts on Wednesday and I've decided this year to cultivate  curiosity. I'm not sure where this will lead me but it came off the back of a school assembly I led yesterday for 200 17 year olds.  I was referencing Jesus' famous saying ' you will know the truth and the truth will set you free'. ( John 8:32). Amidst all the revising for exams and the importance of learning facts and answers I was hoping to inspire them with the sense of wonder they had as children and the curiosity that led them to ask questions.   Good questions sometimes are even more important than good answers. After a day today walking with Ina in the Trossachs and hanging out in our van afterwards reading and chatting and snoozing  I  felt the challenge of my own words the previous morning.    Lent is so often seen as a period of contraction, a narrowing of appetites, restricting of habits, scrutiny of motivations etc.  It is hard to get excited about Lent the w...
Post a Comment
Read more

A deep breath and a covenant prayer.

  It’s 9pm on the 31 st of December and rarely have I felt so uncertain about the coming year.    There seem way more instability than usual in our national and international systems and given the record of early 2020 and 2021 all bets are off that there’s not something else coming down the track.   Or perhaps October 7 th was that and it just came early.   Or maybe it is the metastatic fall out from that day which will dominate early 2024.    Tonight I’m at the top of a big wave,   hovering there waiting, feeling rarely more alive just as the pre-reptilian bit of my brain flashes all the danger signals.   A deep   breath. And yet I am reminded of the prayer I led my church in this morning, written in the mid eighteenth century by John Wesley and since become an integral part of the Methodist Community’s life. I am no longer my own but yours. Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will; put me to doing, put me to...
Post a Comment
Read more

Re-enchantment

  The magical wonder of snow can be lost by a couple of degrees warming turning the white falling flakes into dismal rain.    It is precisely the same elements of moisture and air, humidity and wind, yet the shifting of the one variant of temperature creates a totally different outcome.  I have only managed three snow days in the mountains this winter, due to a combination of mostly busy diaries and a very unpredictable weather which meant days set aside for a climb would sometimes be literally a washout.  Ina and I did have a good summitting of the Cobbler with the spikes on our boots giving us the grip we needed in the the last snow of the season, and I felt again the sheer wonder of walking in crisp, hard snow as the world fell away around us. It looks like it's gone for the year now though and we have to wait 9 months probably to get out onto the white stuff again.  The hills just look wet and sodden now and most uninspiring... and yet...they are exactl...
Post a Comment
Read more