Finding the joy in growing old

In the 1990s I often wondered whether I would live to see the 2000s and after that I wondered if I would live to be 70 and then still wondered if I would reach 80. So here I am aged 80 and life has changed. I do not believe though that life stops when you get older and there is nothing to do except watch the TV and snooze the day away. My mind is still active although my body is letting me down a lot recently. But I still try to get out in nature however painful it is to walk. I can see a wheelchair on the horizon but that might make it easier if I choose the right one. But I can still cloud watch, bird and butterfly watch though my window. I can still stand outside and breathe in the morning air and feel the stillness as dawn breaks. I can watch sunsets and sunrises and watch the moon through its phases.

I can still write, craft and draw but playing the piano is harder as there are not enough sockets so I can plug it in. (It is a digital piano). I am trying to record meditations via my computer but there is a lot of traffic noise so I will have to think about ways of getting rid of background noise. There is so much still to do.

I was lying in bed earlier thinking about the mountains. I have always loved the mountains and being amongst them. No longer able to walk them I can use my memories to give me joy and look at videos of them. Joy can be found in the simplest things like watching the spider spin its web and watching clouds change shape as they move along. Last week I saw one that looked like an angel and as it moved across the sky it became a large bird possibly an eagle.

Pain is part of my everyday life. I take painkillers in moderation. Pain tells you something is wrong so I listen to my body and decide what I need to do. If you are busy doing something you enjoy then you don’t notice the pain in the same way. What I do miss since my house move are deep discussions with others. Maybe I should start a social media group to discuss healing and the meaning of life etc.

But life is generally good and there is joy at least once a day and I have gratitude for that and for still being here able to enjoy the natural world around me even if mainly seen through a window. I try to get through the ‘feeling down’ times as best I can knowing that something better is ahead but that life can be difficult some times. Meditation and music help me with this. I have a deep love of music of all kinds and find that listening to music helps me tremendously.

So getting older can be a good thing as you find new ways to enjoy your life, it is not the end of your world.

Dealing with social distancing and isolation

The first few days of social distancing were hard. I know that the world is going to change and I was very emotional about it all. But now I see that the world is changing. Many people are becoming more helpful and thoughtful towards others although there are those who are only thinking about themselves. But on the whole this is a good thing as people learn to put others first and make sure they are kept healthy and safe.

But what can you do with this time alone keeping a distance from partners and friends?There is so much you can do as well as writing, crafting and reflecting you can deepen your connection with the natural world. You don’t have to be outside to do this even if you live in a high rise flat with no balcony or garden space. Just look through your window at the sky. Notice the clouds, what colour are they, how are they moving, do they form shapes, etc?

I have spent a lot of time looking out through the window at my garden. I have managed to get out there too and do a bit of weeding and tidying up but I have sat and watched the birds, chasing each other and feeding from the feeders and bird table. They give me so much joy. Then on Monday I saw a brimstone butterfly, the first one this year. The small spring flowers are blooming and adding colour to the earth and the shrubs are showing tiny green leaves. Cherry blossom is out too. Nature continues on its way ignoring what the humans are doing and the chaos that abounds. The streets are quiet so you can hear the birds and feel that silence within you and within the earth around you. Stop and listen!

I not only watch the birds and flowers, I talk to them as well. They don’t answer me back but I get that feeling of connection with them. I love to stand by the door and look at the sky and watch the clouds and the birds.

Another thing I do is listen to music and play my piano. I love the music of Einaudi which is simple but in its own way, quite emotional as it moves up and down the scale. I find music speaks to my soul and replenishes it just as the natural world does. There are other composers who take me out of myself and into another world with their music. Find the right ones for you. Music is healing.

I also use tarot and oracle cards. I have been reading them now for over 30 years and read intuitively. Yesterday I asked for two cards, one each from different packs to see what message they gave for the next few days. Diana Cooper’s Dragon oracle cards gave me the Fire and Water dragon with the message – prepare for change and to move forward quickly. Expect the unexpected but have fun!. The Keepers of Light oracle cards by Kyle Gray gave me The Myriam with the message choose to forgive in order to heal. See the light in all and remember that love has no boundaries. I don’t think any further words are needed. Stay safe and positive and make the best of this time. Treat it like a retreat.

Before the Internet

A few weeks ago I was looking for something in my filing cabinet and came across a dissertation I had written in 1964. I had written this while at college training to be a teacher and studying music. The pages were yellowing and brown around the edges. The typing was raggedy and inconsistent in colour. The music examples were fading as they had been hand written in blue ink. The work had been typed on a manual typewriter where you hit a lever to move to the next line. The pages were 8 inches wide and ten inches long not A4 as we use now.

Several thoughts came to my mind. How on earth did I manage this on a manual typewriter, 20,000 words or more and all the music examples? It must have taken me days to write. Then there was another thought, how did I find out all the information? There were no computers or search engines. The library and bookshops were my sources for the biographical information and descriptions of the music. I also used music scores as well. Listening to the music was done on a record player, the vinyl records playing at 33 rpm.

I decided to retype this and get it published via lulu, the company I use for my books so I had a much better copy of the work I had done. This was easier said than done however. I am managing the typing bit although there are lots of foreign names in it and strange characters that other languages use. A Google search helped me to solve that problem. So what about the music examples? I have music notation software but some of these examples were so complicated and would have to be printed and then scanned in order to place them in the document that I decided that handwriting them after all was the best policy. I still have to scan them but I find it quicker to handwrite them than to do them in the music notation programme.

While retyping, I am also learning. I have forgotten just how much I knew about these specific composers and their music which are the topic of the dissertation. It makes me realise just how much we learn at times during our lives and just how much we can forget as well. Do our memories only hold a certain amount of information so that when it is full like the memory on the computer, we have to erase some to make room for more? Some food for thought there! So this is an interesting experience. Not only am I relearning old stuff I am learning new stuff as well. Below is a scan of one of the original music quotes. The music is by Vaughan Williams.

Bardic skills?

During my work with the druid order I never thought of myself as a bard. I always thought I was more aligned with the Ovate work, healing modalities, working with trees and plants. But looking back at what I have done and still do in my life I am beginning to think about my bardic skills.

I have always been a musician, I learned to play the piano at the age of seven and still play seventy years later. In the early years of my teaching career I composed the music for songs for children and remember being interviewed on the local radio while the children sang.

Since I was at school I have always sketched or painted and still do. But what is new over the last 20 years is the fact that I now also write. I have written several books, some of poetry and some about druidry while others are about local and family history.

Looking back at some of the poetry I wrote about twenty years ago I see that much of it also carries a message. Around the year 1999 and also in 2000 I set some of the poetry to music and made a CD. I have been looking at that recently and seeing that I can do better now where the music is concerned so I am busy re-arranging the songs so they have a piano accompaniment. I am also looking at setting other poems to music.

To me these are definitely bardic skills even though I never thought of them that way before. So here is a poem taken from one of my books and a photo taken early this morning.

The hope of Spring

Watching the new spring leaves unfurl
Gives me hope in a chaotic world;
New growth springs from the dark
Of the winter and makes its mark.

Signs of growth are everywhere,
The birds and trees all doing their share.
So in this dark material world
Is there light ready to be unfurled?

Can we look inside our hearts today
To find a better more spiritual way?
To live without such ugly greed
And only have what we truly need.

We do not need large houses and cars;
We do not need to travel to Mars;
Some clothes and food and a rainproof roof
Are really, truly, quite enough.

So watch the new spring growth today
And think about a spiritual way
To live your life with love and care
And cherish all, if you dare!

One thing after another

Why does everything happen at the same time? Or as is happening now, it is one thing after another. Little minor health things and other little things to do with everyday living are building up one after the other. It seems that there is never a gap between each thing that happens and they just follow one another before you have fully recovered from the first one.  And somehow I have to fit in the everyday chores of living, cleaning, washing and cooking, etc. But this is a sign of our chaotic world I suppose. Even the weather is chaotic and not normal for the time of the year.

So how do we cope with this kind of thing? Going with the flow was always something I advocated but now even the flow is turbulent so I am not sure I want to just go with it. What I decided to do in the end was to sit back for a few moments and think of ways of calming or taking my mind off what was going on. Music is good for me and I love to listen to it all day. I have my favourite music as well, some of which can be very inspiring but is not necessarily the right kind of music to calm me down.

Again I like to read but some fiction can be relaxing while other fiction can be just the opposite and have you wondering what is going to happen next in the story. I have started painting again which I do find relaxing and takes my mind off other things too but inspiring music is good for this. I love the soaring music of Rachmaninov but I also love the soul searching music of Shostakovich as well. But neither of these are really calming although they do make me feel better.

Just sitting by the window and looking out on the garden is calming. I can watch the birds and butterflies which are still around and relax for a while. The simplest way to relax or calm down is to do some breathing exercises, taking deep breaths to slow everything down. You only need a couple of minutes and you can feel much calmer then.

I wonder how long this chaos will continue. Everything I read about it states that all will be well in the end and that all the hidden corruption and badness in the world will come to the surface to be healed and then we will learn to be who we are meant to be, compassionate, respectful, loving towards each other and helping each other to live a joyful and peaceful life. I hope I’m still around when this happens!

Wake up calls

Wake up calls are important and I am not writing about those wake up calls to get you out of bed on the morning. Wake up calls often happen when you become ill or are involved in something traumatic but they can happen at any time. These wake up calls are the ones where you stop and take a look at your current way of living and decide to change it for the better. Many people come to a spiritual path through a wake up call. My own wake up call came when I had an out of body experience while undergoing surgery many years ago. It changed the way I looked at my life and how I did things.

Some wake up calls occur during illness such as cancer which can be life changing in many ways. Some occur during an accident of some kind and these can often be even more life changing. We hear on the news of injuries that are life changing due to accident and terror attacks. So our lives can change in physical ways but often the wake up call is about changing our approach to life and our thoughts about how we live our daily life.

Meditation, mindfulness, crystals and Reiki are a large part of the way I live. Although I spend a lot of time researching family and local history I find that without the other things I have mentioned above, then the research would not be the same either. It never ceases to amaze me how the atmosphere in a room can change through music or the chimes of bells or a singing bowl. These all enhance my life and enable me to live more peacefully and in more harmony with myself and those around me. All these came from my wake up call and my life changed in many ways and continues to change as I meet each challenge on my life’s journey.

Have you had wake up calls? How did they change your way of life? Did your diet change or your perception of things? Did you find a spiritual path to follow? Do you find being in nature helps you?

I will end with a brief note about my short walk the other morning. It was very frosty and as I walked down this path I saw the sun melting the frost and the resulting mist rising into the sky making the surrounding landscape look very mystical. A wonderful experience.

 

What drives us?

What drives us? What is it and does it change over the years. I have been thinking about this quite a lot recently. In my early years I loved music and learned to play the piano reaching diploma standard by the time I was sixteen. It was music and the love of it that drove me then. But a love of art also joined in, painting, drawing and just being outside doing this too. When my children were of school age I was working, going to art classes and studying part-time for a degree in science mainly geology. Then the love of the landscape took over together with the music and art. It was good to know how the landscapes I loved so much had formed and this drove me onwards to find out more.

Throughout my working life music had played an important part as well as painting and being outside in nature. But when I got the opportunity to retire, did these things change? I now had time to do other things but music and art were still there as a driving force but then I began to write.The writing has taken over from the painting but the music is still a part of my life even if I can not play the piano so much nowadays. But I can’t seem to stop writing. I research for historical writing and watch nature for my creative writing but everything I have done is a form of creativity.

So what do I call that urge to create, that urge that drives me on? I have no idea what to call it but it comes from deep down in my soul. Creating is a way of life, I need to do it and am compelled to do it. Some would say Spirit is driving me on? What would you call it? What drives you on each day and forward into the future? Has it changed over the years? Could you survive without this urge to do things? Even now as my physical body is failing me my brain is active and I keep writing as in this blog. Why do I do this I ask myself. I could sit back and relax and do nothing but that is not my way. I need to be active and if I can’t get outside in nature like I did when I was younger, than at least I can write and take photos. I think I would wither away without this in my life.

Joy

Last week I wrote about Trentham and how much joy it gave me to walk around the estate. This week while out there a woman came by and said ‘What joy in nature there is here’. We smiled at each other in recognition of our similar thoughts and she moved on.

But then I started to think about other things that bring me joy. I am creative, I write, paint, make music and do various crafts. Creating things is a large part of my life. This week I have been creating music and photo slideshows. I learned how to do this earlier in the year but had forgotten some of the technicalities involved so another learning curve began. After some frustrating moments I did this and the following day a friend suggested I load the video to YouTube and so I learned how to do this as well. But just looking and listening to this video brings back the memories of that time in Trentham and so it brings me joy. The actual work involved also brings me joy. Here is a link to this;

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKVlwntDEP0

But there are many other things that bring me joy like playing the piano and composing my own little pieces of music. So this is my ‘hobby’ at the moment and although I use the computer for this as well it is very satisfying to learn something new each day. The learning itself brings me joy.

My photo this week is from a series taken last year but when I look at this photo I see so much beauty that I feel joy too.

So what brings you joy?

 

Retreating into the dark or not?

This week I have felt that I need to retreat and replenish my soul from the events of the world around me. But then I think that the time is not right for this as there is a lot of work to do to help others find their way in these troubled times. It is not just the wars that cause us problems but our ever changing weather. There seem to be more extremes of weather here in the UK and this was forecast when climate change was discussed some time ago. Yet we are never prepared for this. I think about my bungalow which was built about 30 or so years ago and won an award for the design of the complex of which it is a part. But no-one thought about the strong winds which blow around the houses and chase plant pots and wheelie bins away because there is no safe place to store them. But that is nothing compared to the floods up north. Yet we still build houses by rivers and streams and high bridges which cannot stand up to the wind.

So do I retreat for a while and ignore the outside world? I have tried over the last couple of days to find that quiet time for contemplation but was disturbed by the howling of the wind and loud bangs as things outside were blown around. Maybe now is not the time for this kind of work, contemplating our world in peace. Maybe some music will help. I have been listening to my favourite composer Shostakovich recently. His music tells of the pain and sorrow that is current in our world yet was current in his world too. As I have often thought and said, times do not change, history repeats itself continuously and we do not seem to learn from this. Maybe my time for a retreat is not yet here.

 

Sunday ramblings and music

I was not sure what to write about this week so I will be rambling a bit. It has been a quiet week in many ways with the weather changing every day. I have been looking for more signs of spring and there are quite a few now. Yet some mornings everywhere is white with frost and it is very icy underfoot. When going out on my mobility scooter I have to take care not to skid and tip it over!

My joy this week has been the purchase of a digital piano. I have played the piano since I was seven years old and there has always been music in my life. But I moved a while back to somewhere with no space for a piano and it had to go. Now I am living somewhere different with a little bit more space so I can have another piano. Music soothes my soul and I find it hard to live without it. My fingers are a bit stiff but practice will help with that so some piano playing every day. I also feel it will help with depression too. I feel so different as well so it must be good for me.

Are you a music lover? Do you play an instrument? How does it make you feel?