THIS YEAR HAS BEEN A really hectic one for me. Amongst other things, I’ve already performed Grandma duties in Qatar, and attended a funeral in Brisbane. But, then, last week it just stopped … and I found I couldn’t slow down.
I paced my office and my house thinking there must be something else I should be doing. I suddenly felt unproductive and useless.
When I eventually sat down to catch up on some reading, I stumbled on an article I’d cut out of the paper months ago. A writer named Adam Phillips had written a book called ‘Going Sane’ in which he suggested that people often feel a kind of despair about the pointlessness of their lives. He called it a “generalized phobia or an anxiety about so-called ordinary things.” He supports his theory by saying that “part of the problem is unrealistic expectations about relationships, about happiness and about hope. We are not educated to love reality.”
It got me thinking, I must admit. I realised that I’d forgotten how to sit and meditate on the things that are important – instead of things that are pressing. I guess I’d lost the ability to feed my soul, and it was crying out in hunger.
Adam Phillips summed it up like this: “Rather than be constantly told what we want and be pressurized to go after it, I think we would benefit greatly from spells of vaguely restless boredom in which desire can crystallise.”
Mmm. If you don’t mind, I might just go and put my feet up …
