Recipe for long-lasting marriages

Recently on the internet* there has been the heart-warming story of a 96 year old man who, within a month of losing his wife of 73 years, had written the lyrics of a love song to her, and entered it into a competition.  Although the song did not meet the contest’s criteria, the organisers were so touched that they wrote the song for him.

For most of us it is almost impossible to contemplate a marriage lasting that long, when so many people these days seems to marry in haste and repent at leisure.

By contrast, for the last year or more, a young woman I know has told us every week of some detail about her forthcoming wedding (due in a few weeks). She is not spending stupid amounts of money on it, thank goodness, but what grates on me is her obsession with The Day rather than with The Marriage or The Groom.  Why do brides fixate so heavily on one day in their entire lives which - in fact, according to probabilities – will be repeated later in their life, even if not with the same histrionics?

It seems that men and women approach marriage with very different intentions, understanding and mind-set.  It is not at all uncommon for a man to know almost at the outset, and often when he is really quite young (almost too immature to know his own mind, one would have thought) that this is the woman he intends to marry.  Delve into any of the super-long marriages celebrated in the local newspaper and the husband will say, “I knew immediately this was the woman I wanted to marry.”

I don’t think women go into marriage with the same frame of mind at all.  Most women are incurably romantic in the sense that they visualise the wedding ceremony, the dress, the new signature, the babies, in the aura of every man they date. It may be to a lesser degree with some boyfriends than others, but it’s there.  The potential husband – unconsciously no doubt – is seen as a means to an end.  A means to escape from an uncomfortable dwelling place, loneliness, a boring job etc.  Plus a means to fulfil a biological necessity to bear children and acquire a secure roof over their heads.  While men have the same biological drive to reproduce, marriage as a precursor is not programmed into them as it is with women.

Consequently women go into marriage with the immediate benefits taking up the whole of their vision; men go into it with a vision of the long haul.  No wonder areas of irritation such as the toilet seat being left up, worry women rather than men – that wasn’t part of the vision when they were being fitted for The Dress!

So what is the glue that holds marriage together?  Since for every man who stays married for 40, 50, 60 years, there is a wife who stayed married too.  When one thinks of the upheaval in a couple’s life when babies arrive, it is a miracle that any relationship survives beyond that point.  It speaks volumes for the husbands who, not being so bodily or psychologically involved in the baby-growing process, don’t opt out at that stage.  Women  by that time are fixated wholly on the pregnancy, the birth, the rearing etc – no wonder many husbands feel cut adrift at that point. Marginalised perhaps.  Surplus to requirements.

Which raises the question of loyalty and fidelity.  Not the same by any means.  This may be a difficult concept for many women to grasp, but while some men may be unfaithful to their wives, they remain steadfastly loyal.  Conversely, while most women remain faithful to their husbands, they aren’t always loyal.  Women, while remaining nominally faithful to their man, will think nothing of criticising him behind his back – whether it’s leaving his clothes on the floor or being ‘demanding’ too often when the wife would sooner say ‘no’.  Men – generally speaking – never criticise their wives behind their backs, and are unlikely to discuss their wives even with their close friends.  Yet women feel totally betrayed by a husband’s casual infidelity, usually without acknowledging that there may have been some missing element in their marriage that caused the husband to play away.  In the film, The Women, Meg Ryan features as a betrayed wife.  At one point she is surrounded by 3 indignant and supportive friends, one of whom has the temerity to suggest that the betrayed wife may have played a causative role in the infidelity.  The others howl their derision at such a notion, but perhaps a male scriptwriter saw his chance to give the other side of the story for once.

In a marriage lasting 40, 50 or more years, the couple must encounter every combination of circumstances that test their unity, affection, persistence and loyalty, but still they stay together.  Men are generally enormously devoted and loyal to their wives and get little credit for it.  I hope my young female acquaintance marries such a man, and appreciates him for what he truly is, rather than concentrating on his minor peccadilloes.

 

 

* http://www.zenmoments.org/sweet-lorraine-love-song/

Love is not Time’s Fool – from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116

The energy of healing

We are taking a different view of ‘nothing’ these days.  Not so many decades ago, a black hole would have been considered ‘nothing’.  Now it is a fascinating field of research for astrophysicists.  A few years back, an atom was considered to be the smallest unit of substance; now it is known  that at the heart of an atom[1]  is space – or nothing.

Is there really nothing there?  If you don’t know anything about modern electronics you would assume that electromagnetic waves were nothing, and ask, like Joanna Lumley is obliged to say in a recent ad for ‘on demand TV’, “How does all that stuff get into my computer?”  In fact when you think about it, computers function on nothing, ie on zeroes.  Apparently, to the ancient Greeks and Romans, zero did not exist; yet modern mathematics and computer science is based entirely on the presumptive existence of nought or zero.

If there is an energy in all these ‘nothings’ why is it difficult to believe in a system of medication or healing that purportedly contains ‘nothing’?  I refer of course to homeopathy and its relation, the Dr Bach remedies.  We are such avid believers of everything we read in the press or on the internet that it is only too easy to find these safe and harmless medicines branded as placebo.  Leaving aside the question of ‘Does a placebo have energy?’ – which it surely must, as any substance, pharmaceutical or otherwise can have a placebo effect – why do we assume that because there is ‘nothing’ in these remedies, that they can’t have an impact on the human psyche and therefore its outer layer, the body?  If a human body consists of atoms and sub-atomic particles, and if the heart of an atom is ‘nothing’ or energy, why is it difficult to believe that the energy in the remedies speaks to the energy  in the human atom?

We are beginning to understand more and more that energy, while it may be intangible and not measurable in many of its forms, is all that there is:  it is the cause and foundation of everything known and unknown.  We are not as stupid as Joanna Lumley’s scriptwriters would have us believe.  Sixty plus years ago we might have asked ‘how does all that get inside a computer?’, but our generation takes that sort of ‘magic’ for granted.

The next step forward for the human race must be to accept, even if we don’t fully understand, that energy rules our entire existence.  We can’t always ‘see’ it or quantify it at this stage, but it will surely happen in the future.  There is a branch of medicine now called psycho-neuro immunology – it’s where your emotions or mental reactions to aspects of your life cause ill-health.  In other words, your mental or emotional energy is adversely affected or not vibrating at an optimum level.  What we need to rectify that, is a system which addresses the resultant dis-ease, not at the physical level but at the energy level.  A system that cures bad energy with good energy. And lo, homeopathy was discovered 200+ years ago, ready for the day when we could accept that only energy can restore energy!

 

 

For more information on the Dr Bach remedies, see  www.bachcentre.com

 

 

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[1] This is not an essay on physics – I understand there are smaller units such as quarks, for those who study these things. 

Ethical dilemmas

      

Haven’t we all watched houses being built on a flood plain and wondered at the cupidity of the developers? 

It is clearly down to greed, indifference to those who will suffer when the floods come, poor research or even the unfailing human ability to hope that the worst will never happen and everything will continue to be fine.

In our position as detached observers, we see the planning application going through – more stupidity or worse on the part of the local council, in order to fulfil its housing quota, plus any benefits that accrue to it – and then the houses being built, which of course brings work to tradesmen and solicitors (so that’s all good then); and finally we see hopeful, happy, relieved families move into their proudest possession.

Then the inevitable happens and the beautiful new homes, someone’s pride and joy, are flooded.  The developers, council, builders and peripheral artisans are not affected.  The only people adversely affected are those who in all innocence bought the house of their dreams.

But don’t we all build our lives on ‘quicksand’ at some stage, or in some aspect or another?  When I first saw the film, ‘The Devil Wears Prada’, I thought it was about the Meryl Streep character being such a poisonous witch, the eponymous devil.  But on the second viewing I realised the truth: people sell their souls to get what they want in life; or what at that point in time they think is the most desirable thing to have.  The would-be journalist in the film, played by Ann Hathaway, eventually pulled back in time, but not before she had committed terrible errors of moral judgement to achieve what she thought was desirable.

Most people probably think they do not sell out to the devil.  But greed, lust, envy and the rest of the 7 deadly sins are in fact all ethical choices we have failed to make correctly.

I had a dream the other night in which I sneered at the stupidity of a supermarket locating its store so close to the sea that the first high tide started to swamp it.  When I woke I realised this was an allegory, a message for me about an aspect of my life.  I am not interested in owning a Prada outfit or a brand new home on a flood plain, and I don’t think I’m greedy; but perhaps we all need to look at our lives sometimes and wonder if we’re really living life as ethically as we had always thought.

 *******

For further reading: “Ancient Wisdom, Modern World: Ethics for the new millennium” by the Dalai Lama.

 

 

Healing Rain

I wrote this poem exactly a year ago so I think it deserves an airing.  I still like it as much now as I did then - which one can't always say for one's creations.  I was thinking a lot about grief at that time - I believe Helen Steiner Rice called it, mourning for the future that will not be.

When you're in mourning, for whatever loss you may be suffering - you may not be aware of your friends and loved ones pouring out their love, but it is falling on your soul nevertheless.  All we can do for others at a time like that is, just pour out love in whatever form we can, whether it's help, prayer or just cake.  We have to do it without any expectation or reaction or even visible success.  But we have to go on doing it, because that is what love does.

I have just read about the woman who started The World Needs More Love Letters in New York.  She was lonely and isolated, and felt others must be the same.  So she took to leaving simple 'love letters' on park benches and on buses hoping that someone in need might spot them.  They were brief, such as 'Don't give up on your dreams'.  Now it has turned into a huge project and the idea is spreading throughout the world.  See more at www.moreloveletters.com.   (With acknowledgement to Positivenews.org.uk)

 

Healing  Rain

I am the rain falling soft on your soul,

falling on your parched lands,
filling up the rivers of your tears.

I am the rain falling in the darkness of your night,
filling your sleep with dreams of hope.
When daylight comes, there will be green shoots.
Through your tears you will see rainbows of glory
for I make all things new.

I will melt your bones

that dried to stone under the torturing sun
and you will be renewed.
I pour out my healing and your soul draws it in.
I am refreshment and re-creation and
my touch is soft on your open palms.

I will wash away all the dust of dispiritment,
baptise your feet and hands, bless your clouded face.
There will be rejoicing and you will learn to smile again.

 

The Legacy of the Socks

It’s strange how the smallest action, even one that seems quite personal to ourselves, can have such an unexpected impact.

An elderly neighbour of mine had a thing about his feet.  It was of no interest or concern to anyone else, but  he was almost obsessive about keeping his feet clean.  Perhaps it was a side effect of having worn army boots for many years.  Apart from washing his feet every day – I’ve never seen such pink plump feet on anyone other than a baby – he was paranoiac about fresh socks, to the extent that he wouldn’t wash his socks alongside anything else: they had to go in the washing machine by themselves. 

So it came as no surprise  really, to find when he died, that he had 25 pairs of brand new socks that were still in their packets, plus another 18 pairs that were as good as new.

It seemed such a waste to throw them away.  Luckily the Salvation Army soup kitchen in Bournemouth was only too grateful to have them, as every night they would have homeless and poor people turn up without socks or other basic clothing.   On occasion, the organisers had removed their own socks and given them out.  Now  43 of the local homeless benefitted unexpectedly from the passion of one stranger.

If something as trivial and personal as a hygiene obsession can have such unexpected effects, what about our everyday words and actions?  Our thoughts and intentions?  Often we don’t see the impact that these create, whether it’s holding a door open for a young woman struggling with a pushchair; or being rude to a traffic warden.  Our smallest action sends ripples out into the world, for better or worse.  No wonder it is said that God sees even a sparrow fall.  To me, that means no action goes unnoticed, each carries its own energy out into the world at large.  Love, like God, is not blind but all-seeing.  We may be blind to what we do but love is not: Love sees the ripples before the stone is cast.

Does goodwill make a difference?

May 24^th this year is World Goodwill Day. Goodwill – we are told – is Love in Action.  I love those near-palindromic  sayings that hold true when reversed: Love is Goodwill in Action.
What is goodwill, aside from the bland phrase that we use at Christmas? Interesting, isn’t it, that we use it at Christmas and almost never again during the rest of the year.  Surely the word is more about ‘will’ than we normally allow?  Surely ‘will’ and ‘good’ bear equal importance in that word?  Yet normally, like ‘peace’, it has a fairly insipid connotation.

When you re-structure the word as the will-to-good, how much more powerful it becomes in an instant.  The will-to-good – now there’s an ideal to make you think.  If there were more  will-to-good throughout the world today, ‘peace’ would follow automatically.  So now we have:

                 the will-to-good; and

                Goodwill is love-in-action; and

                Love is goodwill-in-action

Is your individual goodwill worth anything on World Goodwill Day, or any other day of the year?  Only this week I saw a snippet from the Dalai Lama on a friend’s Facebook page.  It said “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”

In a world where everything is measured in huge numbers – global population, the bail-out for Cyprus;  numbers so vast that we imagine winning a mere £1 million as a pittance – it is easy to convince ourselves that our widow’s mite, the two penn’orth we can contribute to well-being in this planet, is negligible.

But my view on this is that we are like the  hairs on a gecko’s feet.  It can climb walls, not because its feet are sticky, but because each is covered with thousands of microscopic hairs.  Each hair only makes an infinitesimally insignificant amount of contact with the wall, but combined with all the other hairs, the total makes for powerful adhesion.

That’s how an idea or an ideal grows and becomes a way of life.  Each of us contributes our miniscule amount of goodwill to society; but that, when added to that which already exists, enables the  human family to climb towards a fairer, more tolerant and compassionate future for the whole of the planet.

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 World Goodwill is a principal activity of the Lucis Trust - see

http://www.lucistrust.org/en/service_activities/world_goodwill/purposes_objectives

 

Are we the books we read?

They say we are the food we eat.  Are we also the books we read?  I don't mean that lovers of murder mysteries are murderers.  More that we are attracted to the books that chime with some of our dearest wishes, our fantasies, lifestyle or how we feel about life in general.

Myself, I don't want to read books - fact or fiction - about child molesters, serial rapists or violent and murder.  I know these things exist, I can read about them any day in the newspapers (every day probably in some papers or on the Internet!) but for my leisure reading I want something more wholesome. Am I alone in this?  I can enjoy the occasional whodunit, but I prefer the sanitised variety of writers like Agatha Christie, where there is very little violence. 

I can understand the demand for romance and adventure stories, as it is a form of escapism.  The same applies to most chick lit, which I admit is my guilty pleasure.  I can understand anyone reading for a form of escapism - fantasy sci-fi for instance; but does escapism really include the full gamut of horror, death and destruction?

Do the people who read really violent novels (or violent biographies, or watch violently terrifying films) feel they are mere voyeurs?  Is that the thrill?  A guilty pleasure, like fantasy sex?  More importantly, should we indulge our fantasies, our baser nature, to this extent?  Is that what gives rise to pornography, sex-based killings, violent sadism in military contexts and marriages etc?

We worry about the influence on our children from watching violent computer games or films.  Do we adults think we are exempt from being influenced by such things? The more we indulge in these off-limits pleasures, the more they seem acceptable.  I have a particular fear and conviction that the more we hear about underage sex and child porn, the more acceptable it becomes, because our shock- reaction gets dulled.

Richard Bach, of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull  fame, says in The Bridge Across  Forever, “Touch all the books of Nevil Shute, they’re encoded holograms of a decent man… The writer printed the person he is on every page of his books, and we can read him into our own lives …”  Probably my two favourite writers currently are the Dalai Lama and Alexander McCall Smith.  I love their gentle and gentlemanly approach to life.  It reminds me, that amongst the rest of life's mayhem, there is another way to live - and one that we would all be the better for attempting to emulate.

 

Buddha and the power of thought

With the Wesak festival of the Buddha coming up, it's a good time to remember one of the Buddha's sayings as recorded in the Dhammapada:

We are what we think.

All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with an impure mind
And trouble will follow you
As the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.

We are what we think.

All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with a pure mind
And happiness will follow you
As your shadow, unshakeable.

It is always interesting when you hear someone complain about how rude everyone is, how unhelpful, or how surly.  It is hard to resist the thought that that must be an unhappy person, who either attracts ill-will or who only sees ill-will in those around them.  It is not a fact that 'everyone' is obnoxious; it is merely one observer's opinion: one observer's thought which is of such an energy it becomes - to him or her at least - fact.

How many of us have started the day in a neutral mood, only to come across one person who is less than polite or helpful.  Before we know it, the day turns into one of those days where everybody we come into contact with is irritating or abrasive.  How much of this have we brought on ourselves by absorbing the energy of the first encounter and 'passing it on', often by dwelling on it and endlessly repeating the story?

When we see a scintillation of starlings circulating in the sky, we wonder how it is that they don't collide.  Humans do tend to collide, not so much physically as emotionally.  We are always bumping into other people's emotional space and we can cause great damage.

When someone does us a kindness early in the day, we feel better able to cope with any irritations that arise; and quite often we can pass on our good vibrations to the next person we meet.   For instance, if someone lets me out at a busy junction and then the opportunity arises for me to let someone else out into the traffic, I am always pleased to return the favour.  It makes me feel better, and the energy goes on repeating itself even though none of us will ever see the end result.

When someone makes us feel better, regardless of our irritation or bad temper, how often do we stop and wonder how much it has cost that person?  Nearly all of us are adversely affected by someone else's irritation, or low vibrations, so when someone is understanding, warm or caring regardless of our ill temper, we would do well to remember how difficult that may have been for them.  They have given us something invaluable which we have probably taken completely for granted.

Our thoughts and actions affect those around us whether we are conscious of it or not.  Do you ever think about the film, 'It’s a Wonderful Life' in the context of your own life?  How different would be the lives of our friends, families, workmates and others if we had never existed?  Would it be worse – or would it be better?  It always makes me realise what an impact I have on others and the responsibility I have towards them.

Beauty and Perfection

More from Alexander McCall Smith:

“Beauty … gave us completeness, peace, a glimpse of the divine.  We wanted beauty; we wanted to take it into ourselves, to possess it, to absorb it, so that it became part of us.”

What is it about beauty that makes us want to become one with it, soaking it up through a form of osmosis?  And why does exceptional beauty almost make us cry? Can make us cry, on occasion.  Leaving aside the tug on the emotional heart-strings of a piece of music or poetry, what is there about beauty that calls to us so?

Is it, as McCall says, because it’s a glimpse of the divine?  I think he’s nearer the truth when he talks about completeness.  If we recognise that we are incomplete, that our persona, outlook, attitudes etc, are less than perfect, then it is logical that we are drawn to something that completes us, supplies the missing bits of our jigsaw puzzle.  That may be why we all aim for the highest in whatever attracts our interest – the top job, the biggest prize, the toughest challenge.  Ambition aside, the lure of perfection draws us on.

Would a theosopher then argue that this desire for perfection, this need to fulfil the highest in ourselves, is in a fact the Godhead calling us home? In which case, maybe the purpose of evolution  is to draw us ineluctably nearer perfection, the divine, call it what you will.

We know that those who have had ‘a glimpse of the divine’ have been irrevocably changed.  If we have a glimpse of perfection or perfect beauty, does it change us?  Possibly, but in a much more transient way.  There may be a connection between divineness and beauty, but they are not the same.  In the world of manifestation, perfection and beauty are an ultimate form of the human experience; unlike divinity which is something completely outside of it.

Yet beauty still calls to us at a deep level.  My feeling is that it is the soul within us, the divine spark, recognising its own kind, that prompts such a strong reaction.  But because we don’t allow our souls to control our daily lives – would that we did! – we undergo no fundamental change.  Or do we?  Now that is even more thought provoking …

From John Masefield:

Beauty, have pity! for the strong have power,
The rich their wealth, the beautiful their grace,
Summer of man its sunlight and its flower.
Spring-time of man, all April in a face.
Only, as in the jostling in the Strand,
Where the mob thrusts, or loiters, or is loud,
The beggar with the saucer in his hand
Asks only a penny from the passing crowd,
So, from this glittering world with all its fashion,
Its fire, and play of men, its stir, its march,
Let me have wisdom, Beauty, wisdom and passion,
Bread to the soul, rain when the summers parch.
Give me but these, and though the darkness close
Even the night will blossom as the rose.

Rugby and Philosophy

Just started reading one of Alexander McCall Smith's latest books, 'The Forgotten Affairs of Youth'.  I find his books quite magical in the way they can weave  esoteric thoughts about life and philosophy into apparently ordinary tales of the everyday. Isabel Dalhousie is my favourite series of his.

I started this book on the day of the Wales v England game and smiled at what he says:
"...rugby, a game that struck her as being one of the few remaining tribal rituals on offer to males in modern societies."

It bemuses me that every aspect of a man's life needs to be invaded by women - women's cricket, women's boxing etc - so that men can't even have Men Only clubs any more.  Yet the female sex expects to keep some preserves to itself, and would be loud in its condemnation of men wanting to join some of the female preserves.  I imagine there would be an outcry if a male nurse or medic wanted to join the team of radiographers who carry out breast screening!