DIARY - With you there to help me...
Date: 2010-01-14 15:36:01
Author: Pat Kent
Well the first few weeks of 2010 in the UK appear to have been a precursor for the new dark ages. snow, snow and more snow. Empty supermarkets were shown on TV, but I have to admit to not seeing anything as bad as shown by the scare-mongering news teams. I could bleat on about the crap snow clearing by our Council's and TfL, but what's the point.
At least it filled the gap after a realtively major disaster-free Christmas, giving the newshounds their human tragedy stories. But now they've got their bigger story, earthquakes, bombings.....seems they've forgotten the old people stuck without food in snowbound Surrey now.
It has been quiet though, no mad panic's, fewer 'phone calls, more relaxing and generally more .....serene...
Last year someone said to me "I hope your life is more serene than mine is".
Unfortunately. I never got to follow up on it properly, but is anyone's life more serene than anyone else's?
I'm the sort of person who plagues themselves with thoughts and so thinking about it over the last year as I did, I realised that I didn't think I knew what serenity truly was. I think i must have missed out on it when it was being doled out back in the mid-fifties. However, I like to think that there are things in my life which I could do to please myself, drawing and painting are a couple, listening to music, something I do all to infrequently these days, is another.
I am lucky in some respects, I don't have to look after aging parents or play fetcher or carrier to children, but on the other side of the coin, maybe they are two of the things that might bring some degree of serenity if you don't have them in your life but that's looking at things in a different way to the normal notion of serenity being just peace and quiet.
Spirituality is another word that means so many different things to many different people, I would never have regarded myself as a spiritual person in anyway, until a friend explained that to him it was more about community and caring than God and religion. The more he explained it, the more I saw his point of view and understood how he saw me as a "spiritual" person. [Not that I fully subscribe to this notion]
So, to the person, who set my mind thinking a year or so ago about serenity, take some solace from the notion that your serenity might be there, you just need to recognise what your own personal serenity might be; it might be right under your nose, having the kids, still having your parents, no matter how ill they may be, a good family and a future may be all the constituents of a good serene life. If that's not it, then don't sit back and regret, go out and find the things you need to do to make it serene, serenity won't come and find you, sometimes, you need to put a little effort in, and sometimes, simply exploring the possibilities available may be the way to do it.
Phew....I think I've been watching too many episodes of Frasier this week.....
On a completely different note, I'm thinking of self-publishing a small book of sketches and drawings via Blurb.
I find it difficult to judge my own work and so I'd like to hear from you good people out there as to what you think I should include. e-mail me if you like, but I have also set up a trial discussion forum linked to the site where you can comment or get in touch and have some dialogue across the board and with it's users.
I don't expect it will attract many people, but a few have asked if I could do it and so I'm trialing it via pro-boards for a few months. It's free, but you will have to register to join; I hope a few of you do join, it'll be good to chat in the right environment. The forum can be found at:
http://pkart.proboards.com/index.cgi
All the best
Pat K
© Pat Kent 2010 – All rights reserved. Pat Kent exercises his right to be identified as the author 2010