Thankful Tuesday

Do you remember the times when friends or neighbours would call on you with a parcel of nutritious food when you or other members of your family were unwell? Well… these times are not over. A friend of mine with her two-year-old has just turned up on my doorstep with some warm and homemade lunch knowing that I’ve been coughing and sneezing for the last few days. Experiencing kindness feels wonderful. It’s uplifting. It’s inspiring.

When things like that happen, all of a sudden, you see that there are other ones that you can be grateful for. So I thought I will take an example from Katie at Life With The Crew who is running a series of Thankful Tuesdays and I’ll share with you my highlights. I am grateful for:

– my friend who made me feel that I’m looked after
– all homemade remedies for coughs and colds, including the foul ginger, garlic, milk and honey drink;
– a quiet afternoon without a headache (but with a cup of coffee and a novel);
– music that’s always able to cheer up the chores;
– my son’s early morning dance and giggles that disarm even the most tired of parents;
– clothes that just need some ironing and not replacement;
– my hard-working husband whose dedication to work and his family permits our growth;
– life led with passion;
– and for all of you who take the time to read this. Thank you!

What are you grateful for today?

Pop over to Life With The Crew to be inspired!

What can make us stronger?

‘Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life.’ ~Golda Meir

“Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life.” These words live with me ever since I’ve come across them. I believe in character development. I wish we were talking and thinking more about it. I wish our daily conversations included discussions on ways in which we could become better people, on developing better habits or character traits than on making money or losing kilograms. I know that for many, and for me at times too, these are legitimate concerns, but I don’t think they should be our main focus and drive in life.

A year after giving birth to my son I got ill. Pregnancy and early caring really weakened my body and immune system. Fortunately, modern medicine knows, at least partially, how to deal with cases like mine and set me on the right course. Nonetheless, this for me was a wake up call and a good time to take a new direction in life. I’ve been asking myself serious questions. What are the things that I would like to leave after myself to the world? What would I like to change? Have I been really making the most out of what’s good about me? Have I been caring enough for the people who are next to me?

One of my convictions that strengthened at that time was that I don’t want to leave too much rubbish after myself. I am embarrassed at how passive I was for years about protecting the Earth and its resources, how carefree and careless I was too. When it comes to the environment, it’s not enough to know things, it’s not enough to be aware of them… it’s the active resisting, recycling and repairing that matters, our determination to avoid packaging and to compost our leftovers, our efforts to remember about taking our own bags when shopping and make do with less. Determined action, deliberate choices.

Another change that I wanted to implement was to become more of a soldier on the ground rather than a remote captain of good ideas. I would like to become a person who can bring about positive results to my immediate environment, my family, my home, my neighbourhood, my communities. There is a saying “No man would appear unpleasant to others when he looks after his family.” We cannot save the world, we cannot control it either but we do have that piece of this world that belongs more or less to us and it is that piece that we should protect and nurture, work with and cultivate. The families, teams, communities that we’re in should grow with us. It is our responsibility to contribute to that growth and only natural to allow others to contribute to our development. There are different ways in which we can show support. Sometimes it’s by donations, other times by giving our time, by sharing time, food, memories, joy and suffering. Above all we should take equality seriously, we must make sure that we do not discriminate against people who have not been as fortunate as us or who have more than we do.

We cannot laugh at the issues surrounding social inequalities, we cannot shrug them off. We cannot make a massive fuss when we do not get a discount, compensation or any other sort of financial privilege and forget to support people who have less. We cannot refuse to pay decent money for work that others do for us, either personally or even in business. The equality and fairness is often understood in such selfish terms that it’s all too easy to lose the true understanding of those concepts. Everyone deserves a good life, and we must make sure that we are not robbing people of their rights to such a life by paying them little. We all want to provide a good life to our children. We all want to go on holidays.

One of the key ingredients of a strong family is ‘mutual care’. It’s looking after each others’ quality of life, things as simple as sleep and food, and as complex as misfortune and vulnerability, work-life balance and sense of achievement. We must be strong. We must be active and willing to extend ourselves… in order to create the kinds of selves that will be happy to live with all our lives. Mutual care is the base of all relationships… the one with the world, the one with our partners, the one with other family members, and the one with our communities. It cannot be different if it’s supposed to work and produce results.

What can make us stronger?

‘Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life.’ ~Golda Meir

Success and community

“It takes twenty years to be an overnight success.” Eddie Cantor, performer

I keep on reminding myself of this quote every time I start a new project. It’s never easy to create something valuable and lasting. It’s never easy to create something that will be well-received, stretching and useful at the same time. Last week I started a new project in our community aimed at Polish children. I wanted the children and parents to meet, sing, read poems and do some craft together. Sounds simple, but it’s not. Children are more unpredictable than I thought and my own child is too. I was able to foresee that he might not want to participate in some activities and that he will try to taste most things, but what I didn’t predict was that he will be regularly running out of the room to press the exit button for wheelchair users to open the main door of the centre. So, as you can imagine, this combined with the efforts to advertise, plan and execute the event didn’t make the job very easy.

Nonetheless, I have made a commitment to create something for the local community and so I will press on (just like my toddler with the door button).

I have chosen a community centre in my neighbourhood rather than a Polish church or a Polish club for the event because I do like when communities venture beyond their comfort zones and when they engage with different places. I think it’s very important not to confine ourselves. It’s liberating. I also believe that once the small children will feel comfortable with coming to the centre to do the Polish activities, they will become happier at attending other activities too (those that are aimed at all children).

What’s more, I have chosen my area because there is nothing more heart-warming than living in a socially accessible neighbourhood. It makes a big difference to our daily sense of contentment. It makes us perceive the world in brighter colours too and reduces anxieties about the people who live a street away from us. Someone told me the other day that they don’t like walking down their street because they don’t know the people who occupy the houses there. Is this fear not something that we should try to counter? Don’t you think that it’s true that we perceive streets to be nicer and friendlier if we know at least one person who lives on those streets? Neighbourhood activities make sense, don’t they? Even if the only thing that they do is to reduce our fear of walking to the bus stop.

Anyhow, I hope I will rise to the challenge of entertaining toddlers and that it will take me less than twenty years…

Any ideas of how I can do it?

Neighbourhood – an anonymous group of strangers?

A while ago I really started to suffer from being anonymous. I’ve been living in the area where I live now for a few years and the fact that I don’t know even the names of people who live on my street has started really getting me down. When you give birth to a child, you realise the importance of a community, anonymity is depressing – you want to know people and you want the people to know your child so that they can also keep an eye on his safety. But equally you want to look after other children too, as if the sheer fact of you becoming a parent made you a parent to other children too.

Are you not tired of not knowing your neighbours? Are you not tired of being impersonal? Are you not tired of shallow and occasional nods and greetings? I am. It’s certainly not the way I want to live my life. It’s certainly not how I want to bring my child up – within an anonymous group of strangers

Often.. I feel that we’re failing as social human beings. Look at our homes – they are like hotel rooms perched in the same corridor and we just see the other residents when they lock or unlock their doors or sweep their front doormat (that ironically often have ‘Welcome!’ written on it). We cannot treat our neighbours as if we or they were here only for a night. We live here – 52 weeks a year! In this borough, in this street, next to each other! We must do something to get to know each other better. To engage in a community at our doorstep.

I believe that one of the reasons why so many people complain about multicultural society is precisely because we do not spend time with our neighbours. We do not have or make occasions to meet them. What do we do, for example, to find out information? We search the Internet… What if we run out of milk, salt or sugar? We drive to that 24 hour supermarket. In the past it would be neighbours, friends or family at whose doors we would knock without hesitation… We would visit them or call them, they would instruct us, teach us, help us… Now these are the faceless, impersonal tools that we choose or are compelled to choose. Another lost or reduced opportunity in making a human connection with those who are in our proximity, with those who live nearby.

And our children? Why do we keep them indoors? Why do we place them in front of screens all the time? It really doesn’t take that much time to visit the nearest playground. Even 15 minutes a day on a slide can make a new friend to your son or daughter. Take your children out, venture to your local children or community centres, go to the local park, use the playground. They are there for us to be used. They are there for us to visit.

It’s possible to create a community. We just need to meet and talk. We need to create opportunities for conversation and for spending time together. It’s the only condition. There is a limit to the extent to which we can develop on our own… we need groups of people to overcome our limitations, we need each other to realise those limitations, to become truly human we need each other. Call me idealistic, but I really would like to change my neighbourhood and improve myself with it.

In the middle of the week friends visited our house, we ate together, our children played together, we laughed and talked. Usually the middle of the week can feel quite heavy and daunting, that evening was uplifting, it made us feel loved and connected. It made us belong.

I like to get that feeling from walking down my street… that pleasant feeling of belonging and being part of something bigger than myself. Wouldn’t you?

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