Monthly Archives: October 2017

Better Retired (1 Year) – Happy Birthday Mum

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Well where did that year go. Where did my ‘gap year’ go – did it start.

So a year ago I retired from the Police after 38 years – coincidentally it was on my Mum Gloria’s birthday.  She has been gone now for almost 3 years.

Nothing is permanent.c994218c9dd900cc2722235c2ed5bd5a--retirement-sayings-retirement-cards

We live our lives oblivious to the only one true inevitability – death.

On my final day in the Police there were a few things I wish I had done.  I wonder how big that list will be on my last day alive?

What if that day is today?
On my last day in the Police people asked me how I felt – I said relieved.  I felt the weight of responsibility lift from my shoulders.  Now this was a responsibility I had sworn to uphold (it was an oath I took pretty seriously) and I hoped on occasions I went beyond the call of duty.  Often it wasn’t a duty, it was really an honour.
On my last day on this planet (working on the fact that I will live to be 85 – I have 10423 days left) I wonder if I will think that I had spent my time well.  I wonder if each of those days I have left I will spend well.  As the poem goes, I wonder if I would have spent the Top-5-regrets-for-EL-Mag-VFdash between the date of my birth and the date of my death well.

In thinking, have I spent the last year, my first year of retirement, well.  Firstly, I suppose, I have to define well?  Is it doing what I want to make me happy; doing something that is meaningful; doing things for others – is it all of these things.  And if it is any of them, how do I measure it.

So, I am on the last day of the first year of my retirement – let’s pretend that it is not that day, but a day 10423 days into the future.

So, it is the future, 1st May 2046 and it is my last day and that day is today – I have a few hours left what should I do?  Lets go through the list of what I have been doing and decide what will make the final hours bucket list…..

  • Watching TV (especially Survivor!) – NO
  • Reading or Watching the News – NO  (I actually stopped doing that a few years ago…)
  • Shopping – NO  (what do I need in these final hours – what have I ever actually needed?)
  • Visiting Friends – Some are so far away (and I haven’t spoken to them for so long?)
  • Write Thank You and Sorry Letters – NO  (Wow that’s a long list, do I have time left?)
  • Visit the Kids – NO  (They are so busy – and I know you only miss your folks after they are gone…)
  • Arguing over bills, or money, or politics or religion – who would I argue with?  How would me winning any argument change my last day on earth?
  • Spend it with my Wife – I spend everyday with her, I tell her I love her every day, don’t I?
  • Spend it with Me – But, I know me don’t I (wouldn’t that be a waste of time?)

 

The clock is ticking and I don’t know what to do: there just isn’t enough time to finish everything and do all the important things.  I can’t even work out what the important things are!  I just keep thinking about all the things I have done (regrets and triumphs) and all the things I wont get to do.  I am sitting there as the minutes turn into hours and my final day on earth is disappearing and I haven’t achieved anything meaningful all day…..

Unfortunately all the ‘NOWS’ in my life have become yesterdays or unfulfilled dreams of the future.  What the fuck happened to everyone one of those 2,682,374,400 seconds – I just lived…. tick, tick, tick…. they just seemed to disappear in the noise of my life.

Now it is quiet and I have those final minutes, those final seconds…. what am I thinking….

But, as that clock tick’s those final seconds, each one is NOW: in each one I am alive and I get to truely experience it, the miracle of it, the absolute joy of that one moment….

As that last second ticks, I realise that I had 2,682,374,399 of them, that I may have
missed – glad I noticed that last one.

Back to the present – Lucky for me I actually have 900,547,200 left!IMG_4828

So, today, after 31,536,000 seconds of retirement: 89,683,200 seconds since Mum went to a better place; today on Mum’s Birthday, my ‘retirement day’ I am going to notice each one of those seconds.

I am going to be aware of me, of my life and that, in itself, is a miracle, a joy, and is in fact, right now!

Happy Retirement Day Ian – Happy Birthday Mum.  x

 

Better swimming against the undercurrent of discontent….

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Something is not right.

As a matter of fact most of the people I meet feel the same as me, something is just not right.triangle

Most of us feel it most days.  We go to where we are going and see it along the way – we feel it in the people we meet – and mostly feel it, just under the skin.  Like an inch you can’t quite locate.  The pebble in your shoe that seems to move around – you take off your shoe, shake out your sock, put your shoe back on…. and a couple of steps later you feel the little niggle of it again.

What the fuck is it…..

It’s the constant undercurrent of discontent.

Something is just not right with my life.

I seem happy enough – but not quiet the happiest I could imagine.
I seem wealthy enough – but not quiet wealthy enough, to buy everything I want.
I seem to have enough friends – but not the friends that I want to be with all the time.
I seem safe enough – but so many things could go wrong.

I am swimming against the undercurrent of discontent… it is not sweeping me backwards, I seem to be able to hold my ground…. but I don’t seem to be getting to where I want to be.

So, I take a moment.  And realise that although I believe my discontent is now, it is actually in the future.  My discontent is about what I want in the future because I haven’t got it now.     So, I take that moment and stop looking at others, stop looking outside me, I actually stop swimming against the undercurrent and find, to my absolute amazement, I am not swept backwards one inch….

I am happy.
I am wealthy.
I have friends.
I am safe.

From what I wrote yesterday, I took that moment and just stood there.  I stopped living the discontent of where I am now because up until that moment I hadn’t been living there – I’d been living in the future.  The future where I will be happy, and wealthy and safe – really?

Surely, and thankfully, the future is a mystery….

I know I can’t know what the future will be, so why am I living there.  I know what the past was, and know I can’t change it.  The only time machine which can go into the future or the past is in my head.tardis2-1600x720

I have realised that my discontent, the discontent of the people that I see each day, the discontent of the world – is in fact the undercurrent of time travel that we are all living in.

The undercurrent is not water, it is not discontent, it is time – it is the time in our head.

The regrets of the past and the hopes of the future create a flow that ignores where we are right now.

Also in doing so I realise the under current of discontent has defined my happiness, my wealth, my friends and my safety – all are which are illusions of the past and future.

I’ve stopped swimming.  I am neither upstream or downstream – I am just here, now.

….. and the water is fine.

Better at just standing there…..

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I was thinking of an old mentor of mine recently – as I do often, because the older I get the more his wisdom just makes sense and is spattered with old sayings from our childhoods that now we understand why our parents kept saying them…

He would often say when approaching an emergency situation:

“Don’t just do something, stand there.”dontjustdosomething2

Of course our first thought is this sentence is the wrong way around.

He would follow up with, stand there and take it all in, it may only be for a moment, a second, half a second, but during that moment let your grey matter do the work….

So you are standing there as calamity reigns… take this moment to ask yourself a few very important questions:

  1. Am I in any danger.
    If the answer is yes then the first thing is get our of that danger.
  2. It’s probably not as bad as it looks.
    If your not in danger, don’t panic and get yourself into danger.
  3. Who is in charge?
    If it appears nobody, then it may very well be you and you better get on with doing the job.

The interesting part of this great advice is firstly remembering it when the shit is hitting the fan; and secondly getting everybody else to stop running around causing more havoc….

My world has changed a bit over the last couple of years and the dangers I face are just not the same (I miss them a bit?).

However, the urge to run in full steam ahead still exists in most things I do.  Often this is easy as the majority of people are usually oblivious to what is happening and the others are filming it to put on YouTube.

As I come across these ‘dangerous’ circumstances in my life I hear and heed the words ‘don’t just do something stand there’ – they are often followed by ‘take a deep breath’ ‘count to 10’ all good advice from previous generations, all ignore by the next.

But lately, it is not so much danger as ‘problems’ I have to deal with – I suppose depending on how you look at it, there is not much difference, only perhaps the increased chances of death versus an undercooked steak being returned to the kitchen.  In making this leap – and it has been a leap –  in dealing with danger versus dealing with problems, I have begun to realise there are in fact no problems.  Yes, there is often danger, and in situations of danger the problem is dealing with fear.  However in day to day life we just love to describe what is happening as a problem.

I am giving that up.

Things are only problems in our head – the reality is that they are just situations that we have failed to accept and as such want to change them into a problem so that we can fix them to being what we consider normal – or as importantly, what we want it to be.

A few examples I have come across lately:

The problem with ‘cold callers.’  Immediately where hear that accented voice, or the conversation starts with ‘you have been randomly selected…’ etc etc.  We can feel our blood pressure rising and the annoyance at this ‘problem’ interrupting our very busy and important day.  Really?  You can just immediately hang up and get on with your day – about 2 seconds of ‘problem’ and it is stopped.  I personally chat with them as I am retired and I ask them more questions about themselves than their products “How are you today” “Where are you calling from” “Are you married” “What sort of car do you drive” – often they just hang up (problem solved) or occasionally I have an interesting conversation with someone who I was randomly selected to have a chat with.  I never buy anything.

The problem of people disagreeing with me.  This is a particular problem as I am almost aways right – but, often so are they.  So, I just let them disagree with me.  I often and easily agree with them and then just go on thinking what I want anyway.  Is there ever a real chance that someone who is addicted to an idea changing that idea because you disagree with them.  Most times by agreeing with them the conversation is over as mostly they just want to argue anyway and it doesn’t matter what it is about.

The problem of not having enough money to buy shit people on the telly tell me I need.  Forget this problem it just makes you hate your life now. If you buy what they tell you to, they will only bring out something next week that they tell you is better.  Unfortunately this is not really my problem, but an epidemic of thought in our modern world – which quite possibly is the biggest problem we have today – which is being dissatisfied.

This list could go on forever, as most of us, most of the time, consider most of our life, a problem.  The fact is that our life is not a problem, the people in it are not a problem, the things in it are not a problem, the things we do or don’t do are not a problem – even you are not the problem….

I am the problem.6360247751176320011373341910_Imtheproblem Flag wide

YES! I hear some of you saying – he finally has realised it.  And you are right. I have actually realised that I am the problem for even considering that things are problems – and often resisting them, fighting against them and/or, trying to fix them…… that IS the real problem.

Yeah, things don’t always go the way I expect – and that is okay.
Yeah, people don’t always act rationally or well – and that is okay

But, sometimes, most times actually, I don’t have to do anything, I just have to stand there.

I have to just stand there, sometimes physically, most times mentally and emotionally …… and accept it.

It’s funny to watch…. myself.  Hearing that little voice saying, oppose it, fight against it, fix it, yell at it, change it, even the arrogance of the voice saying, I can make it better……  and I don’t, I don’t listen to that little voice……   and, nothing actually happens.

The situation (the problem) actually remains the same – but amazingly when unopposed, un-argued, un-fourght, …….. often, it just fades away, or fixes itself.  It only actually ever needed me, for one reason, and that was to become a problem.

It was a situation – I just stood there – I accepted the situation – it still is a situation – nothing really changed except me.

Now, I can act, or not.2017-10 -13 -

But, in doing so, it is ME doing it – not my arrogance, my ego, my learned or instinctive reactions and behaviours, my emotions, not my need to win, not my need to be a hero or even a victim….

To you the difference may be imperceptible – but to me, it is everything – and nothing – it just is.