by Tom Tomaszewski | Dec 21, 2023 | MONOTONY
MONOTONY / SEEKING
If things seem unending, unchanging, do something differently. This doesn’t have to be the polar opposite (stop instead of start, for instance). Ideally you are looking for a supplement. But failing that, all you are looking for is something legal, which isn’t abusive that makes you feel a little more powerful whether or not anyone else present agrees. If you’re in any doubt ask your three judges.
When you feel powerful some kind of a struggle has taken place. You have overcome something. Power is never possessed, it’s felt in moments and it always plays out like this.
by Tom Tomaszewski | Dec 21, 2023 | HESITATION
HESITATION / PANIC
Some things are hard to decide especially if your life’s been in something of a crisis. Are they fair, right, or abusive? Conjure up a panel of three judges, figures whose wisdom and experience you’d be happy to live by, and imagine them looking down on you as you try to make sense of a situation. What do the looks on their faces say? If you’re happy to live by their rule, and that bit is up to you, take note and act accordingly.
by Tom Tomaszewski | Dec 19, 2023 | HESITATION
HESITATION / PANIC
Control what you can control, which isn’t much, really. Even if you feel you have something under control you’ll soon see how that might go wrong. Staying in control needs a certain way of thinking: you can’t, but up to a point you need to be able to try … and even if you find yourself able to ‘let it go’, as they say, you need to be able to think and do the ‘letting go’ thing without getting stuck in the process.
Feeling in control is being in control. And feeling in control comes from being able to do decide ‘I will do this’ without delay. Not actually doing it, but being able to do it.
What makes life really difficult are those hesitations, confusions and potential changes of mind that stop you from picking up on something quickly enough to act on it. These moments shape your life: ones happening now; those chances of something different emerging.
What can you do? Forget about the past for a moment and look at what affects you in the here and now, which jams the machine, if you like. Which leaves you uncomfortably hovering. Anyone can do this. All you need is a reliable other person who can tell you what they see and feel stops you in your tracks.
If you’re to feel in control you need to be able to act without hesitation. Staying in control is feeling in control.
by Tom Tomaszewski | Dec 15, 2023 | INEXPERIENCE
INEXPERIENCE / FEAR
People take all kinds of supplements: everything from Vitamin D to lavender oil capsules. If you have a fear of something and you know, rationally that there’s something disproportionate about your fear try doing this. First of all, don’t dismiss this fear. Invite it into your thoughts carefully, like you might let someone into your house who’s come to repair something. You wouldn’t leave you purse on the table where they were working unattended, would you? What else might you not do? Let your mind get into ‘safety mode’.
Once you have introduced the thought let another one in that doesn’t feel connected, and which you can do something about. Cook something, for example. Watch something. Anything that really engages you. Don’t let your mind go back to the original one apart from for the odd glance now and then.
After a while see how you feel about that thing you fear. Maybe you’ll fear it less. What other emotions come up after you’ve done this. Notice them. Then get on with another thing. Whatever you do … do SOMETHING. Just make sure it is very low risk indeed.
by Tom Tomaszewski | Dec 13, 2023 | DESOLATION, FRUSTRATION
DESOLATION / LUST
I’m not sure what I mean. I was thinking, if only Pete Shelley and Beyoncé had done something like Shane MacGowan and Kirsty McColl. I love all that stuff. I suppose I’m getting into the selfishness of love. In the first place it’s totally selfish. When I feel and say, ‘I love you’, who’s feeling the love? Me. And then, sometimes, perhaps, the other person feels some love. Saying ‘I love you’ might confirm something, spark something, fire something up.
If you aren’t aware of all this stuff, especially the bit about love being selfish, read on. This piece is about conditional loving (the kind of thing I was doing thinking I’d have loved Pete Shelley and Beyoncé to have done … I don’t imagine they would have loved it, really.).
It’s like this: if I say ‘I love you’ so that I hear the same thing coming back to me, so that I feel loved, maybe I should have kept my mouth shut. If I say and feel ‘I love you’, I hope I pick my moment so that it may be the right moment for you. Cuff it. What love sounds like, actually, isn’t up to me. It’s a multi-person thing.
The other thing: if I do or say something expecting some gratitude I should possibly never have done it. Not always, but usually, doing something and expecting someone to be pleased won’t end well.
Hoping is another matter.
Someone said to me the best thing ever about love: faith, hope, trust, they said. These are the ways love can happen between two people. Loving involves being open to another person and if you feel desolation in your life, or frustration, I suspect you have spent many hours on your own with your love. That’s devastating. What can you do?
Anticipate the selfishness in love and mediate it. That’s all you can do, really. Look for it in your loving and in what you hear from somebody else, and don’t necessarily recoil when you find it. It will be there: it’s a matter of what is also there. The love +.
Love + might dispossess. It may do something that works against the ‘wanting you to be mine’ thing, like what happens in that stupid children’s game, Buckaroo , where something trips and all the baggage flies off. The possessiveness of love can pull or push other people, the ones you say you love, into carrying you and all of the stuff you find too much.
Filter love as you send it and as you receive it. Imagine love like a postcard rather than a letter. ‘Wishing you were here’ rather something in a sealed envelope. It’s always the sealing off that’s the problem. Sealed off people can’t love or be loved. Sealed off love can’t be felt. Sealed off thoughts can’t be loving.
Anybody can see what’s on a postcard, and of course there are times when you can’t show what you feel (or face the consequences) and only a letter or even something more secret will do. But imagine, just imagine, somebody fair-minded, someone who you’ve never seen show contempt, and trust what you feel they might think of your message.
