How many times have you texted - “Wot u doin?” to a friend or loved one. I do because I constantly wonder how people are spending their precious moments and what's driving their inner engines day by day. I find myself standing on tiptoe like a nosey neighbour, wondering what it’s like to be ‘THEM'; what’s it like to inhabit ’THEIR' world (I might even be writing about you tender reader).
I guess we’re all pretty curious about each others worlds. We’re all so very different and yet sharing similar internal territory.
Who are we when all the nonsense of easy words, marshmallow-ego, domesticity and bravado and basic bullocks is weighed in the balance and found wanting? What then? ....what will we see in ourselves and other?
....I ask it of myself...big time!
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| The postcard that stands in our kitchen - a reminder of what courage might feel like |
This past week Trevor has been reading me LATE FRAGMENTS by KATE GROSS - Everything I want to tell you about this Magnificent Life
(we talked about Kate in our last Blog and her fight against Cancer)
As I write Kate’s name, a sudden swell of sorrow washes over me and I have to stop typing. Her amazing book is written with such heartbreakingly, down-2-earth honesty. Not a frill in sight, not written for the Booker Prize shortlist or for any notoriety, but for her darling 5 year old twin boys.
She writes,”...it is too easy, as an adult , to let life rush past with its business of succeeding, working, consuming, rearing. All of that can be joyful and fulfilling, I grant you. But it is so so easy in the rush of life to neglect you inner world. I know mine was dead for many years, squeezed between work and achieving ‘stuff’ and my darling little ones - it’s a choice I made, and gladly.
But one of the unexpected blessings of illness is that it has given me time to tend my mind again. And how I have enjoyed this, how much pleasure and solace it has provided even when things have been at their bleakest. I can see my own hinterland and that means I can see others people’s too.
Conversations have become more than merely transactional exchanges (“How are you” & “What you doing?”). I talk about the things that really matter. My voice - quiet for too long - roars. Even as one little room becomes my everywhere. I roam the wide plains of my mind. When I finally stop reading, I will be read to, departing this world as I arrived in it, with the sounds of stories echoing in my ears” (p76)
These words humble me to my DNA. Not just because of the way Kate grittily shares her tragic journey to death, or the way she strips bare the truth about preparing for the ultimate portal of separation from those she adores.
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| My reminder to LAUGH amongst the mundane of life |
But for me it’s the way she calls, from the pages of her book, to us all to WAKE UP and get focused on what really matters in life. She’s not on a mission to get us to leave our nets and run off to Africa (a place dear to her heart), but simply to decide on what matters in life.... then to do it with all our might and mane; find our roar and announce it from the roof tops. Roar with a ferocity that paints a vapour trail of meaning and worth...and do it with joy.
‘There is only one way to defeat the sorrow and sadness of life - with laughter and rejoicing. Bring out your good dishes, put on your good clothes, no sense hoarding them....bring them all out and enjoy them’ - Rohinton Mistry, Family Matters (on the back cover of her book)
Kate Gross completed the final bit of her journey on Christmas Day 2014. She has left this world and her darling little boys and husband Billy.
And I salute this courageous woman with all my heart.
Rest in Peace Kate and may your painful journey inspire us and millions like us who read your book, to live bigger lives with all the roaring we can muster, now and always....
- JB
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| Happy New Year x |
