In time

Well, well, well. Take it as you will. Today I would like to express gratitude today for my illness, strange as that may seem. For the opportunity it has given me to get to know myself better and to love myself more, and for understanding better why others don't and minding so much less. And for opportunities to love them more, even if it's a challenge at times. I'm grateful for the time it has given me knowing that I have less time. For the time to think and learn and understand. My thought for the day has been 'think outside the box'...take any of those words to mean anything you care to as well! I've been applying it to the task I've set myself which is 'to do the right thing' and therein lie many minefields of interpretation as well! Take being 'helpful' for example...

Sometimes when people ask for our help it's more about them wanting to us to know they have asked than actually needing our assistance. Sometimes when we offer help it is more about us wanting to know that we have offered, and for them to know we have, than actually about assistance. Sometimes when people don't ask we don't know if we should offer and when they can't ask we don't know if they might have done if they could...I've been trying to separate thinking I'm doing the right thing from actually doing it so it doesn't get caught up with pride or self congratulation... And I realise I'm getting far too philosophical and metaphysical for a few of you so I'll shut up now.

There are lots of people mutually known on here for whom warm and compassionate thoughts are very much in order just now but today I'm thinking about Andrew, the man who died on the terrace just before Christmas. Whether it was an accident or murder or he just came to the end of his life he lay alone for some time at the foot of a communal stairway a few doors away from where I'm sitting now. He was a 'local character' with all those implications, but either no one knew he was there or people knew and no one helped him. They have been having trouble finding any next of kin. He was 62 and seemed only to have drinking companions, and I think that is immeasurably sad. There will always be people who we find less easy to like, let alone feel love and respect for, and it's easy for us dealing with a terminal diagnosis to forget there are other ways that life can end that we also would not choose.

OK. Enough of the sermon. Later, to counteract all this being good, I asked the Beat and J J Cale to take me dancing. They're getting on a bit now and I'm more in the flushes of middle age than the first flush of youth so we limited it to one track a piece with a sit down in between to adjust my stays and fan myself under the potted palms. I'm grateful for old dudes who make me feel still young! I've said it before but there are those who dance the vertical equivalent of lying back and thinking of England. I am not one of those...and I give thanks that I'm not a nun, ha ha!