A wonky window
Willow Blooms #20 Transformation requires a gentle touch
This week my house is in a state of disarray. Both my car and my caravan have gone in to be serviced, so the items usually stored in them are temporarily in the house. There’s a lot of stuff in my caravan, and usually it wouldn’t pose too much of an problem, but my possessions are already dislocated and crammed in unusual spaces due to recent building work. It’s surprising how messy things can become when there is suddenly no storage system, a lack of space, and you have to complete an assault course to get to the drawers. I have a megafloordrobe and have learned to step over things and refer to it as décor!
I’ve written before about the connection between the state of my living space and my headspace, and have certainly experienced the challenge of having so much stuff out of place. I thought it was as bad as it could get, but I came home in the week to a scene that looked as if I’d been burgled. The bathroom window was wide open, with things smashed on the floor, as if someone had clambered up and pushed their way in. I bravely went from room to room to see if an intruder was lurking anywhere, glad to find there wasn’t.
Having spent most of my life in service of the social expectation to have a tidy house, it’s strangely liberating to (temporarily) live this way. I’m smiling as I write, feeling the burdensome weight of expectation dropping off me! The added benefit of the situation is that any opportunistic thief would probably take one look at the chaos, sigh, realising it was going to be more effort than it was worth finding anything of value to take, and head next door. Sorry neighbours!
Burglary fear allayed, I went to deal with the mess. My forensic analysis of the situation was that the window had not been shut fully, and the wind had swept it open, taking everything on the windowsill with it. In falling, the plant pot had smashed onto the glass jar of bath salts, scattering soil and salt all over the newly oiled floorboards. It was not a big deal, but a good sweep down and tidy up was required.
My bigger concern was the window, which I noticed was hanging off its bottom left corner, looking sorry for itself. It reminded me of a folding Rubik’s game I had and loved in the 80s or 90s. The challenge with this was to twist the squares from one shape into another, with the pictures of the circles interlocking like Olympic rings (In case you’ve never heard of this, here’s a Wikipedia page with pictures and an explanation of the game and the way to complete it- If anyone has one lurking in the bottom of a drawer, please do send it to me!!).
There was a fine line between the perfect pressure of the twists and turns to complete it, and total collapse or permanent misalignment. There are of course now lots of YouTube videos with instructions of how to restring these things, but back in the day, once one of these things fell apart you were on your own!
Looking at the wonky window, I hoped its nature was robust and recoverable, and that there were YouTube videos to help with this too, whilst gently pushing it back into place for the time being.
Video showing simple and advanced methods of completing the Rubik’s magic with lots of warning about breaking it!
Transforming
It’s funny how our brains can unexpectedly bring things up from our past. Those lesser used neuronal pathways and memories are fired up by something that happens in the present, conjuring an image or a sense of something into our minds. The Rubik’s game is not something I’ve thought about for years, yet the image came to me with such clarity, coloured by the joy that I’d felt when I played with it as a child. I had no recollection of what it was called. Those kind of memories are often more evasive and often do not come on demand! Where would we be without internet search engines and persistence in creatively generating word combinations?
As I thought about this childhood game, I considered how it transforms. It’s far from a perfect analogy, but it’s a bit like the human potential for transformation. When you take the Rubik’s Magic out of the box you know it has potential to be something else, and take up the challenge of changing it. Humans tend to become more reflective as we reach the middle years, recognising that life is rushing by. Jungian theory views mid-life as a significant transition point, where we increasingly ask the big questions of our purpose and life’s meaning. This can sometimes lead us to make to big changes, rearranging ourselves into a different kind of life that might not look quite the same afterwards. We’re each blessed with the capability of change (albeit with different degrees of power to make our own choices and put them into effect), and the process of twisting and changing is not always easy. It requires patience and persistence, and a gentle touch.
When I started writing earlier this week, I was in the midst of the Rubik’s twists. I was also trying to write a presentation, plan two creative writing sessions, and clarify my thoughts about this article, all with the noisy anticipation of a big life change. I had a sense that something wonderful could come out of all of these tasks, but they were all muddling into each other. I tried to tackle them one by one, starting with the one with the most immediate, fixed deadline, a presentation on my experience of a women’s entrepreneurial group.
We’d each been invited to consider what we’d gained from the group and where the projects we’d been working on might go next. This is hard when the Rubik’s Magic game you hold, might be about to transform the world you know beyond recognition. I had some great ideas ready to be moulded into a form, but they moved about too much to be pinned down! In the end I put my laptop away and took up the simpler task of painting my bedroom ceiling.
I use a paint pad to decorate, as I like the coverage it provides and the sensitivity in response to my the varying pressure and movements of my hand. The downside is that the paint has a tendency to drip from the bottom edge when there’s too much on it, running down my arm or onto my head and the floor. It demands focussed attention in the cutting in, whilst also allowing it to flow with long strokes down the wall, almost like a dance. After a period of painting the step counter on my watch reported that my paint pad arm had gone quite a distance and my body told me it had done more than enough. I returned to the task of writing the presentation with a much clearer head, reporting something along the lines of-
‘This is where I was. This where I am, and this is what I’ve gained from these experiences. Where I go next, I don’t yet know.’
It was refreshing not to have to know the next steps. Instead, on my final slide I put a photo of the women with whom I’d shared the journey, and the final part of Mary Oliver’s poem Wild Geese. These things convey some of the pieces that make up me, and the values that I will be taking with me, whichever way opens up for me next.
Often in business, our careers, and personal relationships we can focus so hard on where we want to get to and the goals that we have set for the future that we can stop noticing the numinous in our day to day lives. My entrepreneurial journey alongside the other women has been as transformational as the content, the process as important as the destination. There has been an invitation to step off the well-trodden path of people pleasing, and we’ve done so by supporting each other in our strengths, our fears, our challenges and sometimes self-made barriers. We witnessed our courage and willingness to be vulnerable, and celebrated these and all the small things that make us wonderful.
After finishing my presentation, some unexpected connections were made, and new paths opened up without effort. By putting our flags in the ground, being true to ourself, and standing still, we feel the path that calls loudest to us, and consider what support we might need. As for Mary Oliver’s geese ‘heading home’, it might be harsh, and unknown, but by God, isn’t it also exciting!
Heading home
In the last few days there has been an exciting buzz of helicopters overhead as the crowds and musicians have gathered together on the land at Worthy Farm. The rich and / or famous will soon be flying high above the lines of cars and buses as they make their way home from the fun tonight. Glamourous though it might seem, we cannot all take the helicopter route through life. The environment is likely very glad of it (I saw a Facebook comment asking what the carbon footprint of Glastonbury Festival was, and wonder if anyone is keeping tally of all these helicopter trips), but so too, are our souls. Surely we’d rather fly like wild geese, forging our own route and really feeling the wind beneath our wings?
I’ve just finished Katherine May’s book Enchantment, seeking awe and wonder and living deeply, as an antidote to what she calls our ‘anxious age’. It speaks powerfully of many things I have been feeling and wanting for myself. She acknowledges the impact of the prolonged state of uncertainty during the pandemic, and the need to reintegrate parts of ourselves and traditional ways of being that have been lost over time. Transformation comes from reigniting our sense of wonderment, so that we can recover the sensitive, curious, tender, precious parts of ourselves that have long been in hiding. It’s all there, she seems to be saying, but maybe needs more of Rubik’s twisting type of magic.
We have such short lives. Each day we get to choose how to use the moments that we have. We honour life when we honour the deepest aspects of ourselves, of nature, and of others. In the coming week I get to cast my vote in the election of our political representatives. I get to play a part in conferring power in the highest levels of our nation, hoping that it goes to those who align most closely with values I consider important. Hoping that they stay true to their best promises.
Hopes and fears occupy space before action and it is easy to dwell on the fears, but there is also much potential for excitement and wonderment. I can only ever cast my vote in life, not knowing the outcome. If I get tangled in the process of transformation, there’s always a YouTube clip to help me figure it out, a poem to guide and comfort me with its wisdom, and hopefully a tribe of others ready and willing to help.
Keep announcing your place in the family of things.
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