Love at home and of home

Last week was very busy for our little family of three. Each of us had something special booked in our calendars. My little toddler had a sea event at his nursery to which we were invited. We were making fish, sea stars and other marine creatures out of old CDs, scraps of paper and glitter. It was really nice to get lost in an imaginary world and create part of it too.

On Saturday I had a chance to attend a one day course on portrait photography. I was learning how to create a small studio out of nothing and how to achieve different effects in portrait photography. While not all that I’ve learnt will be applied immediately, some might come in useful later on. One of the tasks that we were asked to do on the course was to go to people on the street and ask them if they would mind if we took photographs of them. I felt terribly awkward at first but then tackled the task. I made eight attempts, approached eight people and to my utter surprise, each and every one agreed! The only thing that I had to do was to ask.

I felt quite upbeat by this event but my enthusiasm for life somewhat dropped when on my way home I realised that there is a kitchen to clean, bags with food shopping to unpack, dinner to cook, piles of clothes to wash. The ends of my smile dropped. I sighed deeply before I entered the house… I walked in and… everything was done. It wasn’t a dream. It was my husband. This wonderful man who knows exactly what I need and when, who knows how to lift me up and how to keep me happy. His act of kindness energized me more than the course (so much so that I quickly washed the floors, uncluttered our desk and organised our son’s spaces). It was unbelievably enlivening and set a great tone to our weekend.

What these experiences taught me was that kindness at home tastes even sweeter than the kindness of strangers and that perhaps when it comes to caring for the house it’s great to break the chore routine every so often (either by doing it for someone or changing our focus to a different task). Variety is one of the key variables in optimal nutrition, maybe the same is true of well-nurtured and committed house-keepers.

Experiencing freedom

It’s terribly difficult (or maybe even impossible) to learn or taste freedom if we stay indoors. Freedom is born through movement and exploration, through distance and a change of focus. Freedom often comes from having the time to be on your own, from having the time and space that doesn’t involve any sort of control, neither us being controlled or us controlling others. Nature is perfect for this. Perhaps it is its total acceptance of us that is so liberating. We can simply run, poke a stick in the sand and chase the butterflies. No internet connection will break, no adverts will try and sell things to us and no message will leave us disturbed for the whole morning. Those things all stay indoors.

I need to keep on reminding myself that it’s the time outside that guarantees the experience of freedom and makes for a healthy and happy family. You too?

Autumn Hunt

Childhood is not childhood without picking up conkers so this is what we’ve been doing today. Are you making the most of this season?

What do we truly want from our lives?

I took a break from writing this blog to fill myself up with good experiences and as I was resting, exploring and nourishing myself and my body I’ve realised how depleting our current lifestyles are – those ways of life that we choose to live in our Western society: choosing walls instead of being outdoors, choosing screens instead of faces, choosing plasticated and pre-prepared food instead of a wholesome self-made dinner, choosing an additional cup of coffee instead of additional two hours of sleep, choosing to race through days instead of experiencing them… The body registers those choices and so no wonder it relentlessly directs us towards other ones through aches, pains, and tiredness – the signals that we should be thankful for as they remove the guilt for wanting to rest, for wanting to go against the mad and pushy current of modern life, for wanting to opt out.

Having a break is a good thing, taking the time to look after ourselves, our health and our family’s health is a good thing. It reminds us what a good life tastes of, how meaningful our interactions and relationships with people are, how our family life should look like, how our spiritual life should be. We begin to recognize again which truth comes from within us and not from adverts or some silly peer pressures. It has got this power to free us from dubious and shallow chatter that we, willingly or not, witness, hear or participate in, from those conversations that take our attention away from what we really love, from what we really believe in, from what we really want to do and what we really want to be like.

I think we really and truly want to be good people. But maybe sometimes we forget that this is the ultimate aim of our existence here, maybe sometimes we are told that there are other things that we should be fighting for and we allow ourselves to be persuaded by this stupid, manipulative and limiting narrative which tries to convince us that no one cares anymore and that the way to go is not to care, which, of course, is a total nonsense. So many people care! So many people give! So many people love! So many people share! So many people give their best out of them! So many people forgive!

I took a break from the fishy narratives and I’ve braced myself with goodness, with wholesome treats of my mum’s thinking and cooking, with refreshing fruit of my dad’s orchard and the calming vastness of the meadows and fields in my Polish village.

It’s been a month of detox for me, detox from false believes that as an individual I cannot make a difference, that I don’t have enough to make a difference, that I don’t have the ability to do it or that the world will go its own way even if I try to go the opposite direction. The world is not a hostile place that mysteriously turns its back on us just because we try, the world responds to our attempts, watches them carefully. It just needs time to be persuaded. The difficulty with doing what you believe in is in that the world, general public or even our friends, are often not persuaded by the process, but by a result. The process takes time and without support it’s difficult to have the endurance, strength and resources to complete the work. There are now so many people that are ‘in that process’ of making the world a better place, of making sure that we live in a cleaner, safer, and more equal planet – we should support them with our time, money or at least a good word. It takes time to create something good, something of value. It’s the process that needs our cheering and patience. The result will speak for itself.

To make the ground firmer

A while ago I travelled to my little village in Poland, to the place where I grew up. Going back to Poland used to mean refreshing my old dreams, things that as a child I promised myself I would do in life; it meant checking up on those aspirations that in my teenage years I drafted for myself, it meant going through some sort of evaluation process that I usually didn’t score that well against or getting a reminder of where I was meant to be going.

The last visit was different. I didn’t hear the voice of my old self – that voice has nothing to say. It was as if I’ve eventually become the person who I always wanted to be or maybe I’ve eventually become happy with who I am and what I am doing. It was as if I’ve pleased my old self and now it’s chapter two… not yet written.

So it’s time for a big move and other life-changing experiences, I thought to myself. It’s natural to crave for them and I do see that many of my close friends are getting ready for those moves so I quite naturally wonder if those changes are also for me. Would I like to move from where I live and from what I am doing here in our little town in the middle of the UK and would I like to start building our family life elsewhere? After a long internal conversation, self-questioning and heart-checking I’ve decided I don’t, at least not now. My heart does not crave for a new-starter-sort-of-change. I think I am passed that step. I am really longing for deeper community, for closer friendships, for stronger engagement in the life of my town and my neighbourhood. I want to be more involved in what’s happening at my son’s nursery and other places that we visit and go to. I think I want laughter and jokes and stories and food eaten and cooked together. I think I want to build bonds and be more present in the life of others. I see many opportunities for my family here. There are many friendly people and many friendly spaces in the Midlands, I just need to learn to drive to them…