Creating our own reality.

A provocative blog from Chillside has my juices running... and, goodness, it's the end of the day too!

We have always agreed that we have very different experience of male-female relationships. I've expanded and expounded in an earlier entry here on my opinions, but the challenge set today is too great to let slip by. I have never had to work for my living in quite the same way Chilside had to, but nevertheless I have had experiences of being on my own and in need of support.

When the children and I left their father behind (21 years ago now) they were small and I was often knocked out by asthma and bronchitis. We came to live near a 'spiritual' community for various reasons, none of them good ones because I didn't really want to be here but I did want to be in Scotland. I 'knew' I wouldn't get any support from the community partly because I had already had some experience of its attitudes toward people who are really in need of help ('It is inappropriate for these people to be here at this time; they are not what the community needs at this time; they don't have any money or skill or strengths...) and partly, I freely admit, because of my own pre-conceived ideas about life and the way it would treat me. I especially didn't want or expect help from the women and I proved myself so right in that attitude. The women were very happy to talk theory about sisterhood and exhort me to 'find my own power' but when it came to helping with my children, forget it. I had made my bed and must lie on it. Or, in New Age jargon, I had chosen my Path. Help, when I was so desperate I did have to reach out, came through the men. Chivalry is the word I used in a post to Chillside and chivalry is the word I choose here. The men were kind. Chivalrous. They moved mountains for me. They even managed to persuade some of the women to help me.

I'm convinced that our attitudes dictate the way we experience our world. Our behaviour toward others is directly responsible for their attitude toward us. I liked men better than women, I received kindness from men and unkindness, disapproval, criticism and lectures from women.

This is what 'creating our own reality' means. I have a friend who hates the idea of being an incomer to Scotland although he patently is as, just as I am. I don't mind in the least being an incomer. We all are in one way or another. I don't belong anywhere. My father was Welsh; my mother from Cambridgeshire, I was born in Essex. I never felt like an Essex girl! We were considered incomers in the litle village we moved to when I was four. Being an incomer is normal to me. I relish the feeling of not belonging. and I experience only warmth from the Scots. Even when the butcher's wife tried to provoke me by mourning the 'incomers' taking over the High Street her gall irritated me but the accusation only amused me. She's the only person who has been in any way negative about the shop. Other peple have other experiences.

On much the same tack, I had an encounter yesterday that woke me up a bit. I met an extremely positive friend who I hadn't seen for a while when I went shopping in Tesco. She asked me how I was doing and I said I found the weather heavy and the fact I had to cook for people that afternoon irksome and so on. She was kindly about it but when I asked her how she was she said she was 'brilliant. ' I felt a surge of energy, noticed that she looked brilliant and remembered that she always says she's doing well - because she is! There's nothing specially better about her life than mine but her attitude is so much better. I felt very silly indeed. I succumb far too often to ths whingey subpersonality of mine (not so sub sadly!!)

Or to put it in a less self-flagellating way, I get too bogged down in the detail.... which I'm doing again now and will shut up....