What can be more humbling than a snow-capped mountain?
Humility is not thinking less of yourself,
it’s thinking of yourself less.
C. S. Lewis
Which shouldn’t be mistaken with not thinking for yourself, mindless following, or allowing yourself to be walked over.
It’s taken time, but I’ve come to the conclusion that you can’t be humble without self-belief. This idea germinated in my mind from a lesson I learnt in meditation.
First you are a child, naïve and unknowing completely dependent on the world. Then you grow and learn. Seeing yourself in the mirror, you recognize that those eyes staring back are yours and yours alone. Nobody else is quite like you. You learn ‘I am’. This ‘I’ discovers that the world is full of others and sets out on a quest to define itself by the arts of copy and compare. We collect possessions, buy clothes, adhere to labels. This continues until death. Unless of course, insecurities fall away, and you begin to see yourself as not quite so individual after all. In some wise moment the individual realizes that there is a bigger picture in which they are not quite so important as they previously felt.
Like the other 7 billion people in this world, I shy away from pain and gravitate towards comfort. We all want to belong.
Realizing a vision takes discipline. Photo of the first of the Egyptian pyramids – Djoser’s step pyramid at Sakkara 2700 BC.
I have scribbled ‘you’re only as strong as your willingness to surrender’ on a post-it note above my desk.
Mad methods
I like to keep my desk uncluttered, but beside the monitor, in a pint glass, is a drink of screwed up pink paper Hello Kitty heads, each with three tasks on. Their only purpose is to remind me of progress. I like how the glass fills slowly, day by day as I tackle more and more minor challenges which otherwise would just feel like an ache behind the eyes.
Pink paper Hello Kitty heads with three items on. If I’ve more than three actions listed at a time I become overwhelmed. Three tasks at a time is a good limit. It gives me focus.
Dedicated discipline
Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great, describes a paradox thus, “You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
Discipline is the how. My discipline is under scrutiny; the Hello Kitty pint glass, the ticking timer, the check lists and plans all conspire to get me my dreams.
Surrendering – stopping resisting authority – is not a natural strength of mine. I am a fighter, perhaps not always for the right things at the right time, perhaps sometimes somewhat blindly, but you can be assured that I’m going to sit up and act.
Appropriate acceptance
This whole idea of surrendering or accepting, comes up again and again, especially in mindfulness. Wise man John Kabat-Zinn tells me very kindly in his book Meditation for Beginners, “No one is saying, ‘Just accept it.” As we have seen, especially with horrific occurrences and circumstances, coming to acceptance is one of the hardest things in the world. Ultimately, it means realizing how things are and finding ways to be in a wise relationship with them. And then to act, as appropriate, out of that clarity of vision.” Stoic philosophers, such as Seneca, remind me that there are things I can control and things I can’t and trying to sway those I can’t is a waste of my limited resources.
“I can be resourceful,” I say. “Let’s double check.”
The ‘most brutal fact of your current reality’ is often this need for acceptance. And the discipline required to accept isn’t something that can be tossed into a pint glass, or confirmed with a tick. It’s never-ending. You’re always accepting, always forgiving, always surrendering.
And yet, you can’t give up. There’s still that need for unwavering faith. Hope.
When I first saw one of these in a greengrocers, I had no idea what it was.
“When you pick a paw paw or prickly pear.
And you prick a raw paw, next time beware.
Don’t pick the prickly pear by the paw, when you pick a pear try to use the claw.”
Baloo, The Bare Necessities, The Jungle Book
Prickly Pears in Napoli
In a greengrocer’s, in the outskirts of Naples, DeepThought and I had a minor argument about an aubergine. Apparently, I shouldn’t have bought an aubergine; he didn’t like them. But how was I supposed to know when he was busy enjoying having the delights of a fig of India, known to me as a prickly pear, peeled and sliced for him by the smiling young Italian woman behind the counter.
A prickly pear: it’s a fleshy fruit, with largish seeds which like seeded grapes remind you that what you’re eating has a purpose other than tasting sweet. You can eat the seeds. They crunch. These cacti fruits grow prolifically in southern Italy. But don’t just yank one free with your bare hand. This isn’t a fruit that’s smooth like a sweet mandarin, it’s covered in tiny spikes.
We took a couple home with us. Alongside the aubergine. And inevitably, a couple of hours later, (after DeepThought had been surprised by liking aubergine), it was necessary to dig out a pair of tweezers.
If you take off one of the big paddles and plant it in a pot, it grows. And grows. And grows.
Prickly Pears through History
Reading through Colour: Travels Through The Paint Box by Victoria Finlay I discovered that prickly pear plants are the homes of little white cochineal bugs which when crushed make a beautiful red dye. Lipstick red.
The journey of these plants from South America is a story of this dye. A plantation of prickly pears sprung up in Madras as part of a plot by the East India Trading Company to crack the Spanish monopoly and produce the dye themselves. The plants were brought from Kew Gardens and men began dreaming of the riches they would have if only they could get hold of the live bugs. The bugs though had other plans.
Prickly pear cacti were also taken to Australia with the intention to start up a cochineal industry there. Unfortunately, not only did all the bugs die, but the cacti went wild and have since become a prolific spiky weed.
Harvesting tools.
Prickly Pears in Sicily
In Sicily, in the middle of a grey siesta in a break from a storm, I went hunting my own prickly pears. Sicily is a good place for prickly pears, the Sicilian variety is apparently high in all sorts of wonderful vitamins. I didn’t have to hunt very far – I found pink pears on the driveway.
I took with me the prickly pear picker (I lack suitable claws) and a plant pot in which to place my pears. The trick is to place the cup around the pear and then twist. It’s easier said than done. My pears went rolling down the drive.
The next morning, I ate them for breakfast. They taste a bit like watermelon.
Another square, another equestrian statue. Lyon, France.
The words that feel the least helpful to hear as someone who travels are ‘good luck on finding yourself’, ‘running away from your problems doesn’t help’ or ‘what are you going to do when you get back?’. It kind of assumes you’re going through an identity crisis, got a major emotional problem you can’t face, or you’re having an extended holiday.
If you need to find yourself, your life or the courage to deal with your problems, a foreign country probably isn’t the best place to begin the hunt. If you want to travel for travel’s sake, you just have to grit your teeth and get on with it.
Travelling doesn’t help you to find your place in the ‘real world’
You might be under the unfortunate delusion that travel is somehow a magic path to ‘finding oneself’. Finding oneself is aptly described as discovering who one is and what one wants to do with one’s life.
It doesn’t quite work like that. By travelling you expand who you are, but you do that whenever you face anything new or challenging. Travel is just one source of novelty. It can only stretch who you are in the way you engage with it. It can’t alter the past. As for discovering what you want to do with your life, isn’t it more convenient to discover one of the many options closer to home?
Rather than trying to discover my place in the real world, I’ve given up on it. Giving up is less poetic and doesn’t fit the ‘find yourself’ travel genre, but it comes with less illusion.
Travelling changes people, but so does a new job, a new house or a break-up. Comparatively, travelling seems a rather small agent of change.
Why running away never works
Wall art in Calvi, a small Italian hilltop town.
I’m sitting in row 26, either seat A or F, a window seat. I breathe in the enhanced aeroplane air and tug my beautiful red Indian shawl tight around my body, like a small child. Inside my head, a war is taking place.
I’m supposed to be excited that I’m going home. Home is filled with people who love me, people who are desperately eager for me to return (I hope). Home is full of the familiar – my bed, my clothes, my balding pink teddy bear. It is supposed to be the place I treasure the absolute most.
Once I get back to England, I know I’m going to be fine. Once I feel my mother’s arms around me I’m going to wonder how I could possibly have stayed away from all this love so long. When I see the smiling faces of my friends as we plonk ourselves down in our seats, twisting our bodies towards each other like jigsaw pieces that fit smooth, I’m going to be so grateful to see them.
And yet, high above the clouds, there’s a battle going on in this crumpled body. When you travel to run away, all you do is postpone the inevitable. You’re still you. The enemy is still the enemy. The problem is still a problem. Hurt still hurts.
How to guarantee that you don’t belong where you are
This weed does not belong in the beautifully tended lawn in front of the tower of Pisa.
Travelling can sometimes reduce a painful feeling of alienation by making not-belonging feel expected and normal.
I don’t feel I have to belong wherever I’m travelling. Fitting in doesn’t matter. I can wear summer dresses on a crowded Italian piazza where every other woman under the age of thirty is in skinny jeans. My uniqueness is what entertains people, and as the traveller with hopefully plenty of stories to tell, I can entertain. But even more importantly, you can practice your English with me, you can get your sheep fed by me and your children dragged home from school. I have value.
However, most of the time, when you’re away, you’re alone. There is nobody to disappoint when you’re alone. Nobody who is going to laugh at you. Nobody who is going to ask you awkward questions about your bank balance, your pension or your prospects. There is nobody who knows you. Nobody.
Loneliness. Is it worse to be the valued guest in a foreign tribe, or feel like an alien in your own?
While you’re busy validating your feelings of loneliness by making yourself well and truly alone, the people back home are talking to one another. They’re going to the cinema, going out for birthday meals, they’re hugging and laughing together. They’re giving each other those minute signals that say – I like you being around.
Happiness comes from friendship, not travel
Happiness, according to Ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus, and assuming that you’ve covered your basic survival needs, comes from living in a space of friendship, finding freedom through fulfilling work and giving time to rational analysis and insight so that you understand your anxieties and needs.
Epicurus lived among friends, worked alongside friends, spent time conversing and hypothesising with friends. But Epicurus could do this because his friends wanted to live in a house with him, wanted to work alongside him and wanted to philosophise with him.
If you’ve got friends you can live in close proximity to, meaningful work to do and time to think, lucky you. Don’t waste to much time travelling.
Some of my friends enjoy a somewhat philosophical conversation. Others it makes uncomfortable. Some of my friends don’t mind me staying over a couple of nights on the sofa. Others would prefer that we just have coffee somewhere so they don’t have to worry about the inconvenience of hosting. Some of my friends would be happy to do a small contained project with me, if it didn’t get in the way of their actual jobs and actual lives and all the other things they need to get done.
Home is an unsolvable puzzle; travel is a beautiful illusion
Could be an Italian lake, or it could be in Yorkshire.
I travel because when it comes to getting the volume of interaction I want from friends whilst doing meaningful work I am a failure. As is typical in our modern society, when we left university my friends scattered all over the place to build their own busy lives.
Travel provides an environment where the expectations have changed. Nobody expects you to spend your entire life travelling. Nobody expects you to spend your entire life with them. But for the time you’re there, they’re more than happy to discuss different worries and outlooks with you – your judgement doesn’t scare them. They’re happy to work alongside you and they appreciate your efforts. You’re teaching their children, cleaning their plough, felling their trees, sawing their wood. And for the short time you’re staying there, you’re welcome to a glass of wine, to sprawl out on the sofa, to eat the last slice of cake and join them for a barbecue at their parents.
On the way to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park for the champagne opening of Tony Cragg’s exhibition, A Rare Category of Objects, which has taken over the underground gallery and formal gardens, the Grandfather asked me what sort of sculpture I liked.
What I don’t like
Occasionally, I find piece of art which I particularly dislike. One of my diaries is filled with half a dozen or so pages complaining about a few select pieces of art from the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA). The one that stands out in my memory is a pile of Egyptian newspapers neatly stacked and weighted down with rocks in a white room. The idea of capturing something of Cairo’s street life, showing what media distribution looks like to the typical Cairo citizen and making a political statement about the freedom of the press, seemed reasonable enough to me. But I’d only a few months previously I’d been in Cairo. Egypt’s capital is not neat. It has an abundance of atmosphere. Comparatively, the well-meaning stacks of newspapers on the gallery floor looked clinical.
The only feeling I had, was of how disjointed art can be from reality.
Sculpture that feels like home
I’m a Yorkshire lass, and I’m lucky that my grandparents have always been happy to take me to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
On the hill, rolling down from the formal gardens, is Barbara Hepworth’s Family of Man. These shapes, did not look anything like a family, or human beings. They have some familiarities, as if joined on one level, but they’re shaped differently, and stand apart, as if lost in their own thoughts. They became familiar friends to me, I saw them year on year.
Now my grandparents refer to a sculpture (one of many) by Henry Moore called Mother and Child, which as a very small child I was apparently fascinated by. In fact, so fascinated that I insisted on bringing the Father to see it. By which time it was gone.
But it’s Hepworth’s Family of Man that called to me at a slightly older age and was some of the first art that struck me on an intellectual level. It was called a family, but it wasn’t anything like my family. Who was the father? Who was the mother? I wanted to know, definitively, how the pieces related, where they can from. Whether they liked one another. If they were a family, which one was most like me?
If I like it, I don’t know why I like it. All I know is that Hepworth’s family sucks in my attention.
Maybe it’s in my blood, but the appreciation of Moore and Hepworth feels ingrained. Their work, that feels so familiar, even pieces which I’ve never seen in my life, talks to me like a familiar song might soothe you.
Sculpture as touch from a distance
When I was in Pompei in the autumn, I was met by a calm face, which stared past me, in a serene peace, like an Ancient Greek sculpture, but it wasn’t carved from marble, its face was blue, not white, and some liberties had been taken with its positioning in the Roman forum.
A fallen Icarus in the forum of Pomepi – sculpture by Igor Mitoraj.
Igor Mitoraj’s sculptures, huge, light, elegant, struck me with mythical enchantment that still returns when I cast my mind back.
Our social structures, deeply ingrained sense of ‘personal space’ and what is inappropriate, keeps us at a safe distance from each other most of the time. Whilst small children cling, touch and cuddle, if you’re like me, you’ll not relax to most people’s touch but tense slightly. There are very few people whom I’d be comfortable leaning up close against whilst watching a film say.
Tony Cragg, Points of View, 2013
And yet, it’s this sense of touch I feel when I see such a sculpture as Igor Mitoraj’s colossal characters of mythology. Tony Cragg’s wooden sculptures are similar. They invite you to touch and explore their shapes, but you’re forced to do it from a distance, in your head. They create a sense of longing, an echo of loneliness.
What sort of sculpture do I like?
Sculpture that, whether in a conscious or subconscious way, makes some sort of connection with me. It can be completely abstract, or it can be representative of something or someone specific. I can’t say this sort of sculpture or that sort of sculpture. There’s no definitive answer.
All I can say is that now, in this moment, that sculpture in front of me connects, or doesn’t connect.
And even then, even when I feel a connection with a piece of work, I might not know if I like it.
Take, not sculpture, but the well-known ‘Weeping Woman’ painting by Picasso. It makes a deep connection with me, but it reminds me of feelings which although not pleasant or comfortable, are significant and meaningful to me. I like that it talks to me, but it doesn’t mean I like how it makes me feel.
Art is complex, it has to be, because the messages it tries to show are complex.
It’s not Chartres cathedral, which inspired Victoria Finlay, but the glass work in Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia is pretty impressive.
Colour: Travels Through The Paint Box by Victoria Finlay
This is a history book, a science book, an artist’s aid and a travel log. It’s a magical book.
It was a gift from Tall Aunty, who was the first person I remember being jealous of for being able to draw better than me, and whom I made it my goal to draw like. Tall Aunty drew me little cartoon babies sitting I believe at our kitchen table when I was aged something so small that my colouring between the lines was worthy of remark.
If ever a book was written for me, then Colour is that book. It is a travelogue, a gathering of stories about one woman’s mission to discover the origins of traditional paints. There are nine chapters: black, white and the seven colours of the rainbow chosen by Isaac Newton. The Chinese rainbow has only five colours. That this book mentions Newton, as well as Roman emperors, Egyptian make-up and Mexican skirts should tell you a lot about the variation of stories it includes.
Victoria Finlay is an impressive character. There may be some hero worship going on here. Her hunt for Lapis Lazuli (in an Afghanistan mine to which none of the miners recalled any woman ever visiting, 2001) and Iranian saffron demonstrate a mind-set which is remarkably enlightened.
She has a book on Jewels. I don’t yet have a fascination with jewels, but I think I might develop one just to read more of her work.
Thank you Tall Aunty.
Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me by Javier Marías
The Mathematical Genius leant me this book some time ago. Previously he’s leant me things like Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore and Bertrand Russell’s Power. These books I love, but they take some brain work to get through. They are what you might call intimidating. Russell’s language defies my dictionary and I have absolutely no idea what Kafka on the Shore was about, although I felt I enjoyed it.
Anyway, you can imagine how I felt whenever I looked up at the bookshelf and saw another of the Mathematical Genius’ books staring back at me. A bit like you feel in that moment before you go for a run. You know, once you’re out there, you’re going to enjoy it. Yet there seems so many reasons not to start.
True to type, Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me was not written for ease of reading. This didn’t mean it was difficult to read – it wasn’t – but that the author didn’t keep to short sentences and simple structures. The style of writing, whilst initially off-putting with its page long sentences, was, by the end of the first third, proving delightful. At times, the sentence structures were so riveting that I became distracted by them. I found myself envious of Marías’ confidence, and his playful attitude. He wrote like someone who loves language and its form. I was bewitched.
And then too, there was his mastery of theme. I never clicked as to the power of theme until reading this book. I tried to articulate back to the Mathematical Genius exactly how much I was enjoying how these reoccurring images and ideas were so beautifully woven into the protagonist’s thoughts. He gave me an understanding grin.
I shan’t spoil the story, except to say that to be in a house with someone else’s small child and the dead body of the married woman you were about to begin an affair with, is quite bad luck.
I’d have no hesitation about reading more by Javier Marías.
A Female Genius: How Ada Lovelace Lord Byron’s Daughter Started the Computer Age by James Essenger
Borrowed from the Father who taught me I could code before most people I knew could use a computer.
Ada Lovelace, in the mid-1800s, realised that machines would, one day, be able to write music.
This makes her remarkable. She possessed considerable mathematical talent (it was thought that she could think like a man). As she was a lady born of a good family (where good should be read titled), she had time on her hands. And in developing her mathematical talent she had the wonderful support of her mother who believed that for Ada’s sake, rationality and logic were desperate necessities and that serious study of mathematics and a restricted social schedule were the best ways of forcing these necessities upon her.
Ada’s mother feared that her Byron blood would bring Ada to ruin. Her father Lord Byron was a romantic poet, with a tendency to spend money he didn’t have and indulge in sexual practices that horrified his wife.
James Essinger certainly chose a fascinating life to cover. I’m certainly curious to read more about Ada, Babbage and the Analytical Machine, but not by James Essinger. Whilst the subject matter was great. The writing style was lacking.
“A woman of seven and twenty,” said Marianne, after pausing a moment, “can never hope to feel or inspire affection again.”
No comment on the quote.
I tend to underestimate how much I am going to enjoy a Jane Austen book. I think this is partly because she is so well known, but also because of the number of film and TV adaptions I’ve seen which are enjoyable, but miss the depths of the books.
In my memory, characters such as Mrs Bennet and Mr Darcy, from Pride and Prejudice, feel sometimes almost as caricatures. Maybe it’s me who’s changed? It could be so because I’ve been reading the book as part of a course on Literature and Mental Health. Therefore, I haven’t just been reading, I’ve been contemplating the mental wellbeing of the characters as they fall and bruise throughout the story. I’ve been interested in more than just what happens next.
If you’re interested in my further thoughts on Sense and Sensibility I wrote a blog post on heartbreak in response to the Literature and Mental Health course.
The blurb on the back of my copy of A Heart of Darkness, describes the book as ‘a chilling tale of horror’. The narrator is a seaman called Marlow who goes to the Congo to work on a steamer in the period when colonisation was taking place with an inhumane madness fuelled by the desire for power and ivory. The story is semi-biographical, as it was written on Conrad’s return from the Congo.
Unlike Sense and Sensibility which was an intriguing read from the perspective of mental health, I’m not sure I’d dare go anywhere near A Heart of Darkness with such a curiosity. The power addicted, obsessed Kurtz who is the fascination of the story, is the sort of insane mentally ill that feels impossible to relate to. The idea that I could have any empathy with such a character disgusts me. And yet I’m reminded that I am only moral as much as my upbringing has taught me good morals, and if born into different circumstances, I might have been something else entirely.
This little glimmer though, of the odd Russian chap who Marlow meets on his journey amused me.
“If the absolutely pure, uncalculating, unpractical spirit of adventure had ever ruled a human being, it was this be-patched youth. I almost envied him the possession of this modest and clear flame.”
I love that line, the ‘pure, uncalculating, unpractical spirit of adventure’.
Do you have any books you’d recommend I read next?
Cookies help to deliver content on this website. By continuing to use the website, you agree to the use of cookies. (Grandma this isn't anything strange, just click OK.)
