Know Yourself

 

Friendship and fellowship are as vital as the air we breathe; folk are not designed to exist in complete isolation.  That the craving to connect and belong is a soul-deep yearning, is amply demonstrated by the popularity of  facilitators ranging from dating agencies, advertisements and venues to Facebook, Friends Reunited and Twitter, via fora (forums), interest groups, clubs and societies.  Still, friendship and fellowship are multi-faceted commodities.

 

How empowering to engage in an emotionally healthy relationship, rich in interest, trust and vitality.  How wonderful and yet, how rare.

 

Thoughtfulness, selflessness and kindness are not as common as petals, nor so easily acquired or developed.  Still, they are at the heart of successful interaction.  Know yourself and prepare yourself.  Develop your character through honest endeavour – it’s never too late to practise ethics – and be the inner life that you would like to meet.  When your inner healthiness attracts others, be careful.  The world is full of leeches and a healthy person can only service a few!  Instead, learn to recognise other healthy characters and proceed with caution.

 

Remember, all that glisters is not gold, and networking is neither fellowship nor friendship.

 

Invest your time, talent and effort wisely and well; then, enjoy the fruits of your labour.  But, don’t sit back and neglect your achievement.  Relationships are living, breathing, unique entities requiring maintenance.  Review and reflect regularly.  Check for signs of growth, health and vitality.  Crucially, know when fellowship and friendship are dead and dying.  Know, accept, bury, grieve – and move on.  Know, grow and go.

O Christmas Tree!

Having spent the last week being trained for my new job – and loving it – I walked into town to pay my weekly visit to the greengrocer.  Basket in hand, I set forth in hot pursuit of coriander leaves, butternut squashes and boiled sweets.  En-route, I was leafleted by an acquaintance distributing invitations to the official “switching on” of the Christmas tree lights.  An event to be followed by a live nativity complete with animals, a four day old baby, mince pies and hot drinks!

Thus propelled into the festive spirit, we went in search of the unillumined topiary.  Oh dear, oh dear!  If there is a sadder tree propped crookedly for all to witness its pathetic inadequacy, I would hate to see it.  Our poor tree is – well, average.  Its height, shape and colour are all average (at best) and its only remarkable feature is its wonkiness and accompanying crib scene “kindly donated by the Knights of St. Columba”.  (If you’ve never heard of them, join the club; we hadn’t either.  But, like everything else, they can be googled.)

This evening, festive spirit firmly in place, we shall watch the miracle of fairy lights transforming our mediocre specimen into a tree “fit for purpose”, before dashing to mince pies, live animals and a newborn baby.  Happy days!

 

True Worship

I went to London, this week, to be interviewed by a social worker on behalf of friends desiring to adopt a child.  Such a long way to travel and a rare opportunity to meet friends afterwards, we conspired to rendezvous at Westfield Stratford, study the Olympic Park in progress and share a meal before wending our weary ways home.  What an eye opener.

The tube, always one of the least attractive aspects of London and that day home to a suicide at Embankment, has further disintegrated into a heaving and entombing mass of sweaty, seething, censorious humanity.  Ears afflicted by tinny tones, shallow conversation and neighing guffaws (trust me that was just the businessmen), I alighted into a bottle neck of eager worshippers tortuously snaking down steps and through doors to the temple to materialism which is Westfield.

Propelled through doors, a mere panic attack away from the station entrance, Westfield is the essential experience for the 21st century.  Thousands of bodies bejewelled, bedecked and often prancing on six inch killer heels and platformed soles, writhed, seethed and simpered their way around the modern day tower of Babel.  Every class, colour, creed and nationality appeared to be represented.  Literally thousands of bodies being whisked up and down elevators, in and out of units, queuing for LSD styled thrills in artificially darkened retail outlets.  This truly is The Age of Aquarius.  Fondling coats and jackets priced at hundreds of pounds a piece whilst validating and venerating the creators, true worshippers were satiated.

Across a bridge spanning railway tracks (literally and obviously on the wrong side of the tracks) lies Stratford Broadway; the old, dishevelled, fast-becoming-redundant shopping centre – reeling in the shadow of its larger, glossier, endlessly more decadent successor – which has faithfully served its impoverished community for more than twenty years.  Surrounded by struggling, dingy and depressing independent shops whose exteriors – and interiors – are rundown, familiar, once-essential aspects of the traditional environment of East London, Stratford Broadway (where shawls cost a pound and coats, eight), appears to hear its own death knell and eulogy.

No juxtapositioning could better sum up the cause of UK rioting and dissatisfaction.  Yet the faithful pilgrims, consumed by their passion, fail to notice the plague already rooted in their midst as they blithely worship at a shrine in which not one single shop is life sustaining or prolonging.

I invite you, I encourage you – visit Westfield Stratford.  Don’t just take my word for it; stand and watch – go to hell yourself.