2B’s OR NOT 2 B’s THAT IS THE QUESTION

As per usual it seems that lots of students got what they wanted to get to university or move on to A Levels or do their apprenticeship or art course, so all good. One friend’s child got the 2B’s she needed to get on to the course she wanted – hence the title “2B’s or not 2B’s – that is the question” – I’ve always wanted to come up with a joke about that…but I bet I’m not the first.

All around the world, baby adults and their families are getting ready to deal with one of life’s major milestones. A child leaving the nest to embark on the next phase of their life. At the moment it’s tempting to swoop them all up at the “Back To University” department in John Lewis and Ikea and lock them in their bedrooms, but that wouldn’t be right. As parents. we would have done our jobs very well if our children weren’t nervously excited about the idea of leaving home. That said, it doesn’t suit everyone…It was interesting seeing the discussions about whether parents should post their child’s achievements on Facebook for the world to see and gloat…are we behaving more badly than the children now in terms of what we want to share and have failed to consider the feelings of all others in doing so?

For reassurance, anyone out there who is naturally feeling worried and sad about the gaping hole they will leave in the home and the family unit, do not worry too much. They will be back regularly. They have the longest holidays in the world – four months over the summer and then it’s all over. The time goes so bloody fast and before you know it they will be back for good, eating you out of house and home again and looking for jobs. I cannot actually believe my son has already finished university and is now back at home, assuming the position he took up before he left – lying on the sofa watching Friends on a reel as if he’s never been away (although we seem to have lost his room in the process which has been taken over by the youngest member of the family and it’s all gone a bit wrong). My daughter is back off to uni this weekend for her second year, but it doesn’t feel so hard any more and I am much more relaxed about the process (to her annoyance) and to be fair about my son he’s already got some work to do for the next three weeks for the Rugby World Cup and has some leads to follow up so we’re not worried at this stage.

In the meantime, my house is a chaotic mess. At the beginning of the summer, having panicked because I had too many children and not enough bedrooms I decided to have a large shed built at the bottom of the garden to create more space, but forgot about the fact that by this time next week things will have calmed down and I will have one less child. So I’ve decided that maybe I should go and live there. That way I don’t have to worry about all the mess in my house anymore or the noise of the music.

Anyway, I haven’t been feeling very inspired and I’ve been confusing myself by trying to make plans for my future and in doing so all that I have managed to do is get myself all wound up about lots of stuff and what to do about this, that and the other. So how appropriate it is to refer to my Buddhist Offerings Book which for today, quite relevantly says:-

“Most of us have spent our lives caught up in plans, expectations,
ambitions for the future, in regrets, guilt or shame about the past.
To come into the present is to stop the war”.
Jack Kornfield

That seems like quite a good message to work towards for me at the moment. Trying to live in the present is never easy, but we should all try and do it more often. When I think about the present, there really is nothing wrong. My three children are healthy and happy and that should be all that matters (well apart from my daughter thinks she has a chest infection…but she did manage to drag herself out of bed for uni shopping which seemed to consist of lots of Zara clothes and an actual tangible handheld diary which she has filled in and admired with glee as if it’s a creature from another planet, and like when they say in fashion magazines that Aviators or fringes or black is the new black or Converse have come back into (retro) fashion, I’m delighted because I too love tangible diaries and it makes me feel a little less old.

Happy Monday y’all. Enjoy the day and worry not. I got shat on by a pigeon last week at Waterloo Station and I’m quite sure that is good luck. So can’t wait to get on that train back to Waterloo and get to work just to see if it’s going to happen again!

and ps the photo here explains why I’m feeling the need for comfort food so imagine my delight after ordering to runny boiled eggs out with friends yesterday morning when they arrived with little bobble hats on…it’s the small things in life that can make you happy:-

Oh and pps also trying not to worry about the fact that I haven’t blogged for ages. On the upside it seems that the less I blog, the more hits I have – don’t understand that at all – guess readers are delighted to find I have stopped warbling on…