Sunday lunch is the best meal of the week – whether it is a roast in our local London pub or a picnic of leftovers at the farm in Provence. Sunday is the one chance for our family to eat together – it doesn’t happen every Sunday because life isn’t like that anymore, but when it does I am the happiest mother in the world. I am that emotional, sensitive, over-protective (all adjectives that relate to proud could apply here) woman who just adores spending time with her brood and the friends of her brood. They are brilliant company; they are engaging and interesting young adults with places to go and people to meet. Discussions are always lively, very funny, often shocking and most of the time enlightening. I like to imagine that I am up on what’s happening around me, not in a foreign-policy-state-of-the-nation-kind-of-way but in a what’s new and cool kind of way. If I am (they would probably question that) it is only because I am a good listener and fast learner.
Sometimes on Sundays things shift and I am the one doing the talking. I was asked a question by my DD, “Why do I make things so hard for myself”. She has made a career change and has a steep and hard learning curve to climb. This question did not appear miraculously out of the blue, I felt it coming, but even so it stopped me in my tracks. I had no immediate answer, I found no voice to calm her and no wisdom to impart. I needed time to think; the few words she uttered were like land-mines under my feet. I understood her feelings only too well, having asked myself that question many times, yet the answer was not straightforward. I negotiated the moment, bought myself some time and pondered on her question.
“Why do I make things so hard for myself,” translated as, “why can’t I be happy taking the easy way and settling for comfortable? Why do I challenge my self and bring myself to the brink time and time again? Why must I pursue the supposed best?” I told her that it is the quest for change, the personal challenges and hardships that we face that distinguishes us as individuals in our human lives. We drive ourselves because when we achieve our goals the satisfaction is enormous, off the charts. A stationary state is not one to embrace; life is a tumultuous ride with peaks and crests and moments of dead calm in between. Life is about saying, ‘yes’, life is about doing and not equivocating and when we flop, because we do and we will, we learn. Learning can be both the torment and the joy of our days. If we didn’t ‘make things hard for ourselves’ from time to time how static and dull our lives would be; how boring our journey and how short it would seem. Challenge, change and the occasional mistake….I am all for it.
Your thoughts? xv
