Quiet Day

After all the busy preparations and excitement of the Festive Season, it feels so good to sit quietly and just be still for a while.

A simple bowl of cereal for breakfast provided a welcome antidote to the excesses of consumption of the last few day. Home made vegetable soup with wholemeal bread for lunch and a simple organic chicken roasted with onions, parsnips and carrots seved with a fresh salad for dinner will go a long way to settling a system unused to such richness. We had been invited out to dinner tonight but the thought of eating another bite which was anything other than home cooked and utterly plain was just too much for us, so we rearranged for next Saturday. Thanks be for understanding friends.

Speaking of friends, a true friend is someone who allows you to be exactly who you are, without feeling the need to "fix" or "improve" you. As a therapist and a coach, I see the destructive downside of that need to alter others. Too many people wander into relationships of all kinds with the primary thought of "what a lovely person, if only..." They then make it their mission to bring about that "if only" whether the object of their affection wishes it or not. At least in my profession, I wait here politely until I am asked to interfere or was that intervene?

The way I look at it is that either you love them as they are, accept them for all their foibles and deficits, or just leave them the hell alone! That does not mean that you have to stand by and allow self-destructive or even plain aggravating behaviour without clearly expressing your concerns, or be completely supportive of their own desire to change. (NB. THEIR desire, not YOUR desire) However if that was the way it was from the beginning, then tough luck; you bought it having read the big print warnings that rose up to bite your nose, so why should you feel aggrieved when those character flaws devoured you whole, burped politely and wondered why you were giving them chronic indigestion with your complaining?

So in the interests of peace amongst all beings, take the enormous beam out of your own eye before you try to extract the tiny mote from your significant other's. (For those not familiar with archaic biblical language, it translates as remove that huge tree trunk from your eye before you even think of helping another with their tiny little speck of dust) Clarity of vision requires taking a good look at our own little and no so little personal quirks and behavioural deficits before we have a go at sorting those of others we profess to care about.. Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone.

What, not takers?

Thought not.

So there.

Quirkily and inperfectly yours,

Maria