Gossip

Great minds discuss ideas.
Average minds discuss events.
Small minds discuss people.
— Henry Thomas Buckle

What a wonderful word. Gossip. It almost sounds like what it does: like the sipping up and drinking in of others lives.

Sadly, gossiping is exactly this. Gossip is about the private lives of others, exchanged when they are not present and more often than not it is hearsay. In other words, gossip can often be information that has not yet been validated and so may not contain any truth.

A busybody is a gossip who spreads others secrets generally to people who have no business knowing such secrets. In this way, gossip can be seen as another form of violence; another form of passive aggression. The reason I say this is that it is often spread by someone who disapproves of someone in some way and rather than express their discontent directly to a person (about not having their expectations met) they will talk behind their back.

Gossip is often shared with disapproval and, hence, the intent of making the gossiper(s) ‘look good’ at the expense of another. The private information is tainted with moralistic judgements on the part of the gossiper(s) with a sense of righteousness in making someone else ‘wrong’ and ‘bad’.

Shame, embarrassment, anger, bitterness, pain, and betrayal are often the outcomes of idle gossip. Gossip is another way of ‘blaming’, ‘rationalising’, and ‘explaining’ one’s behaviour so that the gossiper can be seen to be ‘right’ and ‘good’.

When we act with authenticity and integrity we do not participate in idle gossip, we don’t spread rumours, we mind our own business.

In the workplace, gossip, like a virus, can spread and infect the work environment in such a way as to break down communication and co-operation so that the work unit becomes ineffective or the group forces one or more people out of the work unit. The tale-bearers can effectively isolate individual workers through maliciousness causing untold harm in the form of stress and depression. This impact is a hidden cost to harmony and productivity in many workplaces. It is destroys confidence and trust. It lowers morale, and creates anxiety. It can be defamatory and can lead to illness and death.

And yet, the refusal of just one person in a workplace, to take part in such tittle-tattling, can change the dynamics and culture of a whole workplace. I remember feeling the shame of taking part in misrepresenting another staff member at one of my workplaces. I still, to this day, remember and feel the grief experienced by this person and how humbled I felt when she continued to trust me after she burst into tears when I confessed my part in this collusion and gave her my assurance that I would not participate in this any further. I was also unaware of the stress I was holding onto through my lack of integrity. It was a huge relief to both of us to ‘clear the air’. I discovered that the energy I spent on holding onto such moralistic judgements was better spent in supporting and building up a collegiate approach to our work together.

Words once spoken can never be recalled.
— Wentworth Dillon

My Happiness — My Responsibility

I was the eldest of a family of 8 children. My parents married soon after turning 20. When I look back now at what I knew when I was 20 and what I now know, I can only admire them for the task they undertook to raise a family. They chose to have children with little education, hardly any experience of what it meant to be parents (my father was orphaned at the age of 14), and hardly two pennies to rub together. Although, despite this, later in life having discovered the value of living sustainably, I was delighted to find out that my first bed as a baby was a wooden fruit box. However, one of the consequences of a large family and being the eldest child and female, it fell to myself, and my sister who was born less than a year after me, to share the family responsibilities.

It took me years to appreciate the gift of this responsibility and to understand my great love of reading and writing. As children, my parents lived in country communities in Australia and, like many others, after enduring the hardships at the height of the Great Depression in 1932 they had little access to education, training, and worldly goods. Even though I knew things like my mother having owned only the 2 or 3 dresses she had made for herself throughout my early years and my father holding down 2 or 3 jobs at a time to keep us fed, sheltered, and clothed — I had no real appreciation of the sacrifices they had made on our behalf and resented being a girl and having to “do” things and be responsible for household chores and taking care of the younger children. It was a time when the boys were going to be the breadwinners in the family and so it was seen as important for them to be educated and have a trade. However, the girls were only going to get married so what was the point of an education. As early as 9 years of age, I distinctly remember my father admonishing me for reading because “Haven’t you got something to do, put that book down?” —not that we had many books at the time—there was a battered old copy of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, a copy of Forever Amber which we were repeatedly warned not to touch, and a copy of May Gibbs, The Gumnut Fairies which eventually fell apart. These books were kept in a closed cupboard: there was no bookshelf.

Understandably, I grew up driven to “do” things and felt guilty sitting down to read or write or think. But as soon as I discovered the school library I couldn’t keep away from the books and the new world I discovered in them. I finally escaped home at the age of 16, still not valuing what I had learned from such a large family and still resenting being a “girl”. I can still remember walking down Swanston Street on my way to enrol in my first year of a Photography course at RMIT. The air was stifling hot and heavily polluted by the leaded petrol of many cars but I was “free”, and jubilantly walking anonymously among the crowds, finally allowed to be just myself, responsible for myself, liberated from all of the projections and expectations of who my small country community thought I should be, and consequently of who I was.

I soon discovered that this freedom had come at a cost, but one I had placed upon myself. I spent many years blaming other people in my life or complaining about the way my life was unfolding before I realized I was responsible for the way I lived. It was my choice as to what I “did”, what I “thought”, and in the end, what I “became”. My real freedom arrived when I finally realized that I was responsible for my happiness. It was who I chose to be that governed how I felt, and it had little to do with what other people thought about me or how they treated me. I didn’t have to be “good” and “nice” to be accepted by others. They were responsible for their actions as I was responsible for mine. Although I lived life with curiosity and a great deal of joy, it wasn’t until I took responsibility for my thoughts and acted with integrity and authenticity that I experienced a greater sense of happiness, contentment, and confidence in my newfound freedom. If I felt sad, it was ok, it was because I chose to feel this natural feeling, not because someone else was making me feel sad. No person can “make” another person feel either sad or happy, it is us who chooses to feel that way in response to another’s actions. It is we who choose to feel the feeling, whatever that feeling may be. Just because life doesn’t work out the way we expect it to or just because someone doesn’t give us what we expect to get, it doesn’t mean that such life experiences or such people’s actions are the reason for our happiness or unhappiness. It is always us; ourselves who are responsible for who we are being. I have found a great deal of happiness in being responsible for my happiness.

The Gift of Being

For most of us, there comes a time when we realise that we have at least one gift to give to the world.

Often, quite apart from what we are doing in this world, the most important question of all is, what are we here for? We are here for a reason. Although, ostensibly, it appears that we are here for ourselves, it’s important to think about the possibility of being here for others.

We make a living by what we get.
We make a life by what we give. — Winston Churchill

I had written this blog before I began reading Love’s Journey by Michael Gurian. Gurian begins his book about the seasons and stages of a relationship with a delightful story about being asked, when he was a child, the following question by an elderly neighbour “Why are you alive, Michael?” He finally discovered as an adult, that his mission in life, like all of us, was to find and give joy.

It is at this point that we lean forward in our conversation with ourselves, become focussed and particularly engaged. Because, perhaps for the first time, we think that “Hey, this might be possible. I might just be worthwhile, I have something to give that is important. I am worthwhile because I can give”.

It removes us from being self-focussed to being able to consider others in a real way, not just to take them for granted: and then there appears a possibility that life has just become more expansive because we have abundance to share, something to give that will make us feel great through joy in the giving, make us feel important, in fact make us feel important before we even give it, just being affected by the fact that it has all of a sudden become possible to give.

This possibility creates a future, creates some excitement, creates meaning for all of the suffering that we may have been going through, or creates a small bridge from the past to the present by making possible a future. It is like the feeling of gratitude, but it is the feeling of gratitude of others before it has happened but not one that has to be earned as such, but rather out of generosity in the sheer joy of being able to give, that the giving in itself is the reward. This opens up a field wherein we can cultivate this gift, cultivate ourselves, we already begin to sow the seeds in the fertile ground that may have seemed like so much manure, but is in fact the perfect place to grow the gift.

This is common knowledge, everything we conventionally understand about the joy of giving applies at this moment but it has to do with being a gift without being something separate but it has to do with us being ourselves and our skills which we can offer outside of ourselves, to the world.

Much could be said of a philosophical nature in order to fully understand the nature of this enjoyment, of this sense of reward through giving. It’s covered by all of the attempts of philosophers to explain true altruism. But in this instance, the philosopher Daniel Dennett has hit upon the most accessible and, I think, accurate account of altruism in his book Freedom Evolves. For Dennett, altruism is a form of selfishness which he calls “Benselfishness”. It’s a form of selfishness in which the subject understands itself is expanded and its needs are identified as the needs of a larger group such as a family, a circle of friends, a network, a community. Dennett coined this term in honour of Benjamin Franklin’s far-sighted concept of co-operation and hence comment to John Hancock at the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776; “We must indeed all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately”.

So, give a little thought about the doing of what you are doing because you are going to give something precious to someone other than yourself. And this is something only you can give because of the combination of both who you are and what knowledge and particular skills and gifts you have in yourself. It may be the joy in and of giving love, in just being yourself, in sharing or co-operation. Whatever it is, look at what is behind the giving:

“Joy!” he cried. “The search for joy! Everyone misses that. Everyone thinks ‘love’ and goodness’ are the keys. They’re the door. Joy is the key that opens the door. If you don’t love with joy in your heart, your love is false. It’s that simple … Do you know what joy is? ... one day you’ll wake up to it. Just remember… to find joy in your life. Will you do that?” — Mr Harrison from Love’s Journey.

Passive Aggression

Let's not forget the damage that we can suffer daily, through acts of passive violence. In other words, from those people who have been so damaged by their life’s experiences that they strike out at others: both intentionally and unintentionally, in one of the most violent and savage ways possible.

We think we can get away with being passively violent, and yet it eats away at all of us who communicate in this way. The target is always the other person. However, the unintended victim is us: we become the sad one, the angry one, the stressed one, the depressed one, the bitter one, and in the end, the unhealthy one.

Passive violence may not seem harmful compared to direct physical violence. However, it is exactly this kind of 'silent violence' that harms our psyche. It is practised within families, at work, within our intimate relationships, and in many other contacts during our everyday lives.

Often, communication takes place in a hurry — today usually via quick texts. This doesn’t allow us the time to consider how what we say may be perceived or interpreted and tends to reduce what is being communicated to a simplified version of what we mean to say. The result being that we think we are saying something positive and affirming whereas in fact, more often than not, we are saying the opposite: we are frequently communicating exactly what we are feeling. By this I mean that we allow our moralistic judgements to creep into the communication and make someone bad or wrong because we didn’t get what we expected from the relationship or the exchange. In other words we didn’t accept or agree with how they were treating us.

I thought I was a reasonable communicator, however, I discovered that I too was the perpetrator of such violence. In one of my intimate relationships I discovered, on many occasions, that my friend had an incredibly sensitive and accurate covert expression detector. To this day, I am most grateful for this skill of his and his ability to be direct with me.

All of us know deep down inside us, when someone is making such judgements, no matter in what language these good-bad/right-wrong judgements are couched. It doesn’t really make any difference whether the violence is intentional or not: it is perceived as strongly, regardless of motive. We rely on the receiver to bring it to our attention in an attempt to address the pain it causes them. However, often the object of our passive-aggressive communication is powerless to respond in such a way that resolves our aggrievement. There are two basic reasons for such powerlessness. Either way, this silent violence is the very thing that kills the human spirit. The most common cause of powerlessness involves competence — or lack of it: usually a lack of skill to know how to express the hurt or upset caused by a passive-aggressive communication.

The second cause of powerlessness is the environment in which such communication takes place: this is determined by the capacity of the person to respond and is influenced by the dominance or authority of the relationship. For example, in the workplace, it happens when we deliberately prevent someone from being able to do their job, when we don’t communicate honestly and with integrity, and, in fact, when we choose not to communicate in words at all.

Stanley Milgram, in his research experiments with electric shock introduced the “agentic” state. This is the state where people go beyond their own moral values to harm someone via obedience to a higher authority. The person still has a choice. But, Milgram says, 'relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority'. And once they choose the agentic role it is almost impossible to go back. Why? Because that choice would call their morals into question! The subjects were always asked whether was there anything the man could have said to stop them administering the shocks — and they say, 'No, I don’t think so'.

Passive aggression results in us, as the receiver, feeling varying degrees of discomfort, creating confusion and upset, making us feel ill at ease, hurt or even humiliated, angry, and 'stopped'. When a person receives a barrage of this at home, at work, or both, they can become demoralised. A demoralised person can choose to 'get back at you' with similar passive aggressive behaviour or even straight-out anger, perhaps sadly leading to physical violence. It happens when people say, in jest, what they really want to say, or to use the opposite of what they really mean to say. This makes it difficult for the other person to respond without questioning the meaning of what is being said. Generally, though, our bodies act and react more honestly. If we know what to look for, we can see what is really being said. We are puppets with awareness and perception. Could our awareness be the first step in our liberation from this powerlessness? Our feelings though, particularly anger, are often instigators for change. Anger can give us a reason to express how we are feeling and then to do something about it, should we so choose. We need to learn how to do something about what has happened to us.

It is often an inability to know how to communicate successfully with a passive-aggressive communicator, that makes people close down a relationship, separate from their families, or leave a job. More often than not in such cases, this is the intended outcome of the passive-aggressive actor. However, equally there are times when the passive-aggressive communicator is seeking co-operation or asking for assistance or help, sometimes desperately. However, all they get back is the opposite because their way of being, their words, their actions, create a barrier as they hit out at someone else with incompetent words and actions.

Many of us become frustrated by this way-of-being. It can be extremely difficult to get at what is really going on, and sometimes we simply don’t have time to deal with this sort of aggression — so we ignore it, walk away from it rather than respond. We are reacting: but sometimes very differently from what is often expected. A passive aggressive person is frequently asking for us to care about them or even love and accept them, but all they end up with is anger, suspicion and holding back, or at the very least, being ignored.

We don’t normally equate the actions of a person who goes out of their way to prevent us from getting things done to be acts of aggression. But this is exactly what they are. If an employee has to get a job done, but the employer hasn’t the courage to tell them to leave but rather constantly puts blocks in their way to force them to leave out of frustration, this is an act of aggression.

So what is the secret to breaking through this kind of communication? Someone, I’m not sure who, suggested using a technique named 'calling the process'. In other words, it is an authentic questioning of the passive-aggressive comment or response. This technique allows you to confront such a communicator without using moralistic judgements and language which generally only result in further conflict with the perpetrator of passive-aggressive communication.

Maintaining Healthy Loving Relationships

Some people get this right from the start! However, it has taken me many years to even think to ask the question about what makes an intimate relationship work. Although I expected to maintain the longevity of a healthy, loving relationship, I put little thought into what that might involve. However, Dr John Gottman, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Washington, began looking at this in 1986. Basically, he discovered that when the qualities of affection, kindness, generosity, humour, appreciation, and respect exist in a relationship they allow people to overcome most conflicts and prevent feelings of loneliness and isolation. Likewise, Gottman’s research revealed that when contempt, criticism, hostility, defensiveness, and stonewalling exist between two people, we can be sure that such a relationship won’t last.

For me, one of the most important factors I value and hence find essential in a relationship is integrity. Integrity is an interesting word and, like many words, has different meanings for different people. Integrity can hold affection, kindness, generosity, humour, appreciation, and respect.

WHAT IS INTEGRITY?

For me, integrity is a concept whereby there is a workable degree of consistency. This includes the consistency of actions, beliefs, values, principles, and expectations. In terms of a relationship, it is these factors that help to create the possibility of two people establishing a successful partnership.

From another perspective, looking through the eyes of ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or accuracy of one’s actions. In applying such internal consistency to our thinking and actions we create a virtue that is highly regarded because it gives us a measure against which we can determine honesty and consistency of character. We can have integrity to the extent that we act according to those values, beliefs, and principles we claim to hold. Our values, beliefs, and principles evolve over time, so naturally we will adapt and integrate our thinking and behaviour to maintain consistency with these values, beliefs, and principles. We can interact and uphold our integrity when we can resolve inconsistencies such that we are able to account for our discrepancies and incongruities.

THE IMPORTANCE OF AUTHENTICITY

For me integrity is paired with authenticity. An authentic person is one who is being real. One who is being genuine and legitimate. It means that I can be credible reliable and trustworthy but at the same time, remain true to my own personality, spirit or character. In other words, I am being faithful to myself and in being authentic I can still behave in a kind and loving way without being false and untrustworthy.

Needless to say, I highly value integrity and authenticity in my partner and friends because for me, healthy, loving relationships cannot be sustained without integrity and authenticity.

The Gift of Pain

Pain and love — the whole of life, in short — Italo Svevo

Pain is a highly unpleasant physical sensation caused by an illness or injury or hurt to the body. Equally, it is a mental or emotional experience of distress resulting in grief, despair, sadness, or heartache. Acute pain resolves quickly. Chronic pain generally lasts a long time. (Interestingly, the word pain comes from the Latin word, poena, meaning punishment or penalty.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. — Buddhist proverb

Suffering is a process where we experience pain, distress, or hardship that varies from mild to unbearable and can be short or long-term. We feel this in relation to attachment to someone or something but also in an inability to grasp that impermanence is the natural state of being and so these things cannot be possessed for eternity.

I have learned now that while those who speak about one’s miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more. — C S Lewis

Habit is something we think or do almost involuntarily or without thinking. It is a pattern of behaving that we repeat, generally with great regularity. We acquire this way of thinking or behaving through practice or exposure to specific events. Habits can be changed but, can be difficult to give up or overcome unless we understand why we think and do what we do: and, practise thinking and doing something different; and practise enough times to transform our way of thinking or doing something.

When We Know

We can always have a go at diminishing the level of emotional pain in our lives when we have the knowledge and skills to take responsibility for ourselves. When we do this, we are empowered to learn as much as we can about what contributes to our own wellbeing, while at the same time taking into account the wellbeing of others. We are capable of making this happen through an understanding of how we make choices and decide upon the important things in our lives. Choosing to identify, own, and express our feelings, as well as learning what needs are important to the significant others in our lives as well as ourselves (and how to go about fulfilling our own needs) is crucial to our wellbeing. Likewise, in determining and owning our values and principles for living, along with choosing to make life-serving judgements as opposed to moralistic judgements. Crucial to our wellbeing, is our parent's or carer’s nurturing love blended with the ability to give us competent direction, enabling us to live with authenticity. Such an environment creates a strong foundation upon which a child can grow into a self-actualised adult. Sometimes, however, to recognise the benefits of a nurturing environment, it requires a great deal of suffering and pain. Pain is the window through which we can see what happens as a result of the failings of either our parents or ourselves. Taking on the challenge of that pain is when we learn what to do about it. As it is with a house of love, a house of pain indubitably shapes who we become.

Time heals all wounds, unless you pick at them.  — Shaun Alexander

Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining

The beautiful thing about emotional pain is that it lets you know you are alive; it goes down deep into your heart and scours the very depths of your emotions, digging out all those hidden feelings. And when those feelings surface and we come up to breathe again, we are gradually able to better appreciate the possibilities of life when we learn how to let go of the pain. Likewise, if you can hold onto something painful and accept it by letting it sit inside you like the grit in an oyster shell, it eventually grows into a magnificent pearl to be plucked and admired. Sometimes that’s the price we have to pay for the ability to become intimate with pleasure. It can feel very liberating.

And if you can’t find your smile,
I have one you can borrow. — Ernest Hemingway in his poem, The thing about pain

The philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, was of the opinion that our suffering has the advantage of producing positive gains for us and therefore, is actually something we should revere and embrace whole-heartedly. Pain is one of the coins of our emotional economy. Along with pleasure, it gives us the currency to construct our morals: in the sense of balancing our need for pleasure without significantly reducing the pleasure of others. These morals then form the basis of our personal ethics that give us the power to invest in and realise the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people — should we choose to do so.

Pain nourishes courage. You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you. — Mary Tyler Moore.

We can always have a go at improving our lives when we have the knowledge and skills to take responsibility for ourselves.

As it is with a house of love, a house of pain undoubtedly shapes who we become.

The Gift of Sharing

Sharing requires practice as well as the experience of what it feels like to be on the receiving end of someone else’s sharing. Sharing is a skill most of us learn during childhood and from this we learn about fairness, compassion, and empathy: all essential skills to assist us to live successfully with others in our community. Choosing to share, however, is not always about cooperation but simply choosing to live from the perspective of abundance and joy rather than of scarcity and a sense of entitlement. It comes from that feeling of having enough: enough love; enough food; enough security; enough stuff; enough freedom; such that we can tap into our altruistic selves and give for the pleasure of giving.

Sharing is enhanced when it is shared. In other words, when two or more people come together; who all have enough or simply enjoy the act of sharing, what they share is exponentially shared with others, so grows the gift of sharing.

And to this end, many a recipe is handed down through the ages and shared or adapted and shared with the blessing of those who have already benefited from the sharing. Here is something my partner Michael has shared innumerable times, he never goes anywhere empty handed. These delicious crackers have been enjoyed by many. I hope you too will enjoy this gift.

SEEDED CRACKERS

Ingredients

60g sunflower seeds
20g hemp seeds
45g flax seeds
40g sesame seeds
2tblsp chia seeds
1 tsp Celtic salt
65g buckwheat flour
65g besan flour
100 ml water
50 ml olive oil

Method

• Preheat oven to 180 degrees
• Place all the seeds, salt, and flour in a bowl and combine.
• Add the water and oil and mix to form a dough.
• Divide the dough in half and roll each piece between 2 sheets of non-stick paper to 3mm thick, i.e. as thin as it will go then remove the top sheet of paper.
• Score the dough with a large knife to mark bite-sized pieces.
• Slide onto a baking tray.
• Bake for 15 mins or until golden and crisp.
• Allow to cool on wire racks and break into the bite-size pieces to serve. They burn easily so check before the 15 mins is up!
• Variations: substitute butter/ghee/coconut oil for olive oil.

Love

Love is one of our most fundamental needs. It is the lifeblood of our uplifting emotions. When we feel love, we feel alive. When we feel starved of it, we close up and effectively die, or kill others, or at least make life miserable — and not just for ourselves. For those of us who get lucky, it can go so far as feeling like the culmination or purpose of life: many times over, if we understand it well.

It is love that makes us feel that all is well with our world, that we are truly not alone, that we are secure, cared for, safe, and cherished by a family member, friend, colleague, (or God for some people) or a partner who can appreciate and participate in our space with both the laughter and the tears. It is when at least one person can make us feel at home, free to be vulnerable, and create fond memories to share.  When we have someone around who believes in us, trusts us, is there for us — then we flourish: we can grow, learn, create possibilities, experience success, and look forward to and create a future.

We have heard it many times before: there is no point sitting on a fortune in a mansion empty of love. We can have all the things money can buy, all the education, power, and status make possible, but it all becomes meaningless without love. A healthy relationship both with ourselves and with at least one other are two of the top intentions we aspire to, to lead a happy and fulfilled life.

For once, you believed in yourself. you believed you were beautiful and
so did the rest of the world. ― Sarah Dessen, Keeping the Moon

Love is a many faceted gem that we value, seek, and sometimes find. Its allure is manifested in books, films, art, music, dance, literature, drama — all the expressions of human life. Love is required for our wellbeing. It matters because it is the glue of relationships that makes other relationships possible.

Sadly, when we don’t understand love, it can be a very painful experience. We often put so many obstacles in the way of love and have so many unrealistic perceptions pertaining to love that love cannot satisfy. This is when love becomes a painful experience. I’m thinking here of the expectations we put on love: that it will solve everything, every loss in our lives. “If I only had love (substitute happiness) then…”

Whilst love is indeed very powerful and can help us to overcome many adversities, and dull many a pain, it has its limitations — but they are born from our own limitations — our inability to understand what love is and how to give it a life. Like any other substance or experience that feeds the brain with rewards, we get addicted to love. And sometimes we just want to wallow in self-pity when it doesn’t turn out how we expect it to. However we may experience it, love can be a very emphatic, effective, though painful teacher.

Friendship

Friendships are our emotional nutrition. And like the food we eat, the company we keep can well nourish us or not. As Ed Sheeran says in his song, Save Myself, “…human beings are destined to radiate or drain.” When we are able to be ourselves and interact with authenticity and integrity, with a dash of caring, a pinch of love, a sprinkling of curiosity, and a cup of humour, we can be those who radiate.

Friendship comes with a responsibility. This responsibility is about sharing and caring. And its not necessarily about being there all the time, but it is about being there at the right time, about being available, about being vulnerable, about acceptance and sharing some of the things in life we each value.

I live in a small community where the proximity to one another allows our friendship networks to share many things. For instance, unbeknown to a friend the other day, my health had been significantly compromised. However, he brought me great joy by presenting me with a beautiful pumpkin he'd grown in his garden (see photo below) — almost in the shape of a treble clef — along with pumpkin soup for our lunch together.  I thought it would make a change to include a recipe for this week’s blog. As always, however, I can never stick to a recipe. Here is his recipe, probably a little bit adapted by me. It is the soup we shared, and very much enjoyed, for our lunch. I hope you like it as much as I did.

Pumpkin and coconut soup

ROAST:

1 kilo of pumpkin, diced
1 sweet potato, cut in pieces
1 carrot,  cut in pieces

Then:
BROWN one leek/onion/shallots sliced finely in 1 T ghee with ¼ t of minced fresh ginger or turmeric
ADD pinch of curry powder, pinch of celtic salt, and pinch of chilli flakes
STIR IN 2 T of coconut milk and 700 ml of chicken stock
ADD the roasted pumpkin, sweet potato, and carrot
SIMMER for 20 minutes.
BLEND and serve with thick kefir/yoghurt/sour cream and fresh coriander

Compassionate Empathic Conversations

Compassion is not religious business, it is human business,
 it is not luxury, it is essential for our own peace and
 mental stability, it is essential for human survival. — Dalai Lama

Words, just like seeds, will flourish when given the best environment in which to grow. Likewise, a seed sown in poor soil may not grow at all. Conversations are much the same. If we truly want to be heard, then it works best if we create a listening in the other person to hear what we have to say. If we speak with moralistic judgement they may not hear what we are really trying to say. If we speak without compassion and empathy, then sometimes they may not hear us at all. Likewise, if we listen with moralistic judgements; if we listen without compassion and empathy then we may not hear the message that is being communicated. We require the filter of compassion and empathy in our listening to enable us to adequately interpret what is being said. Safely communicating our feelings and needs is part of the bigger process of acceptance, where we prepare the listener for the conversation we wish to have.

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice
in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us. — Nietzsche

Feelings

Just because you’ve got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn’t mean we all have . . . 
— an angry Hermione tells her friend Ron in a heated Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix moment.

We can sense or discriminate feelings from small, unrelated pieces of information. This awareness enables us to distinguish threat to our safety that may not be directly inferred from what we perceive of our environment through our vision, hearing, smell, or tactile senses, but rather through what seems, at times, to be a “sixth” sense.

. . . there is now clear scientific experimental evidence that the facial expressions for anger, fear, sadness, enjoyment, and disgust are identical whether an Eskimo or an Italian is being studied. Facial expressions that register other emotions such as surprise, contempt, shame/guilt are probably also pan-cultural, meaning that these, too, are emotions with inborn genetic mechanisms for their expression. And there probably are more genetically-based emotions to discover. Candace B. Pert Molecules of Emotion p.132

The experts also distinguish among emotion, mood, and temperament, with emotion being the most transient and clearly identifiable in terms of what causes it; with mood lasting for hours or days and being less easily traced; and with temperament being genetically based, so that we’re generally stuck with it (give or take certain modifications) for a lifetime. p.132 Candace B. Pert

Emotions are instinctive or intuitive reactions to our environment. As such, they are our consciousness of ourselves in our environment. New research says there are only four emotions: happy sad, afraid/surprised, and angry/disgusted.

Feelings are the expressions of emotions. They tend to be learned over time, through experience.

Reduce Conflict: Increase Wellbeing

There is a river of dissatisfaction at the confluence of feelings and needs. And this river flows when those feelings are not coming from a knowing of the unmet needs to which they are related. When we are unable to articulate and distinguish our feelings and needs we can find ourselves in situations of conflict, anger, aggression, and violence: including that often un-articulated violence—which occurs through not speaking directly about a problem or not taking action to resolve a breach of our emotions directly with the person concerned — passive/aggressive violence. Clearly, being able to correctly express our feelings and meet our needs can contribute significantly to our sense of wellbeing.

Being able to say what we feel and need is part of a bigger picture: that of trust and safety. When we trust someone, we feel safer to be vulnerable, to show our true, inner selves. By this, I mean the vulnerability that wishes to be expressed through disclosure of our feelings and the articulation of our needs without the fear of condemnation or retribution that comes with moralistic judgements. In other words, safe from being made to feel wrong or bad, and consequently safe from expecting some reprimand or punishment. This sense of safety is also to do with being genuine and acting with authenticity and integrity. It is the sense that we are speaking with someone whom we feel is ‘real’, who is really present, listening to us, and being honest with us in what they say and do. Knowing and naming our feelings and needs contributes to our wellbeing. We feel safer to disclose our feelings and needs to a person whom we feel is being genuine.