Balance

Live in the uncertainties my dear.
Invent little moments inside those maybes and grow there.
Akif Kichloo

Early in January, on what was then a normal day, driving to walk the dog in an open space, free to speak to whomever I chose and able to concentrate long enough to listen to a podcast, I picked up an extraordinary email offering me the opportunity to apply to attend a European cultural conference.  The chance of my being chosen as one of the delegates was slim but, for me, the fact that I had been considered worthy of applying was huge.

When, at the end of February, I learned that my application had been unsuccessful I was naturally disappointed but listening to the writer Olivia Laing being interviewed about a relationship breakup, I realised that when she talked of the promise of that relationship being something that was going to lift her into a different kind of life, this was exactly how I felt about the conference.  I had dared to dream of being catapulted straight from where I was into something new and exciting, the fact that it was cosmopolitan was an added bonus.  Without it, I pictured myself at the bottom of a long flight of stairs, the only way out being a slow steady climb upwards.  Except that in the couple of weeks that followed things started to gather pace, and I had a growing sense of excitement that things were starting to come together, albeit in a slightly more everyday way than my sudden arrival on the European scene.  And then the rug got pulled from under my (and everybody else's feet), my art submissions filed on someone's 'to look at later' pile -  much as my reaction to this got buried under a mountain of emotions stirred up by two weeks in lockdown.

I once read a book that suggested that your physical ailments are manifestations of your mental state. I can remember very little of it except that, for example, a sore throat meant that you'd got something you needed to say to someone, and for whilst I have no interest in getting into any debate over whether or not there is any truth in it (I can already hear my sister saying 'no there is not!') I was not surprised to find that my body's reaction to my anxiety, panic, paranoia and information overload regarding everything coronavirus was a return of my vertigo.

For the blissfully uninitiated this is not a fear of heights, has nothing to do with my literally trying to scale any mountains and is instead a problem in my inner ear which in response to an, as yet, undetermined stimulus makes my eyes flicker and sends my head onto a roller-coaster ride which has me unable to stand whilst I battle some self perceived G Force until I vomit.

As I said, I don't know what provokes it, but when I'm already feeling out of kilter finding some balance in my life, and fast, seems like a good place to start.

Two miles into a recovery run the following day and The Special AKA's Free Nelson Mandela serves up just the kick in the backside that I'm looking for.  Twenty-six years, and I'm struggling after two weeks? I console myself with the thought that even the great man himself might not have been quite so wise and pragmatic after a fortnight.  I run on and decide to cut myself some slack, it's perfectly natural that I got myself into a tail spin but now it's time to stop ruminating about things outwith my control and trying to assimilate everyone else's response to what has happened.  We might all be 'in it together' but I need to react in my own way.

For me, this means taking a step back, finding some quiet to assess what this actually means to me and working out my own survival plan .  I have every faith, as was beginning to happen pre-lockdown,  that the opportunities will present themselves once more - but unless I clear the chaos in my head I won't be in a position to spot the maybes...

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.  As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Nelson Mandela