Joy, Happiness & Contentment

Of these three I find it really difficult to decide which I experience. I'm not sure that I have truly experienced joy at all. I think that the closest I have come is travelling with my husband & walking in wonderful landscapes. What is joy? Supposedly it is great pleasure & happiness. A deep, internal sense of well being & contentment, independent of external circumstances, which lasts longer than fleeting happiness. It is rooted in an authentic life aligned with one's values, meaningful connections, and a profound inner sense of purpose or fulfillment, even in the face of suffering. 

That's a lot to ask of life. The obvious response to the question "when did you experience real joy", is the birth of a child or ones wedding day. For me, for very different reasons neither were joyous. 

Then there is happiness - a state of mind characterized by positive emotions, a sense of purpose, and a feeling of fulfillment, deep pleasure. Well, yes. I have felt those things. It has usually been relatively fleetingly though. I always mistrust people who seem to be overly happy with their life. In my experience life is a bumpy road, full of surprises & challenges. You have to grab happiness when it happens, because you always have to deal with sorrow & heartache too. I don't think that it is possible, in this world, to feel happy all the time. 

So that leaves me with contentment - being satisfied with ones life & circumstances. A sense of inner peace with what you have without constantly wanting more. A lasting feeling of fulfillment that is distinct from fleeting happiness, an appreciation for the present and a sense of completeness. I can live with that & be immensely grateful for it.

 

The main point of life, as I see it, is to try to do no harm. We all have an ego, a sense of our self esteem & self importance. Self esteem is important, we need to value ourseves. Self importance can be the route to all sorts of problems. Maybe if we thought of ourselves as a grain of sand we would get some perspective of our real importance & be more content with what we have.   

Who's In Charge?

I have long thought that if there were a more representative balance of the sexes in governments around the world, we might avoid much of the catastrophic power, testosterone, territorial & personal aggrandisment, decision making we have to tolerate. Worse, the repercussions of poor decision making, that seem to lead more and more to aggression & war. 

Women’s voices are simply not heard in the same way as men's. Women are told that they are too too assertive or organised. The word "too" is actually putting them down. We all have an "Inner Critic" voice, but I think it is louder in women. We tell ourselves that we are "too" something. We try try to adjust / adapt to other peoples expectations because we have “overstepped” them. Our other voice, the "Compassionate Friend" is silenced, because we want to be accepted as equal. Women can be too ready to accept other peoples opinion of them. Including other women, who aren't necessarily supportive. 

Women are, to a great extent, silenced by Capitalism & the Patriarchy. Many feminist & socialist analyses argue that capitalism exploits womens labour & devalues their care work. It creates a system that reinforces patriarchal norms & inequality. Capitalism relies on social constructs like gender to divide workers and generate profits, often pushing women into low-wage jobs while assigning them the unpaid burden of domestic and care work. Furthermore, the system's focus on profit can undermine social safety nets and access to essential services, leaving vulnerable women even more exposed and with fewer avenues to speak out against exploitation. Patriarchal societies often limit women's opportunities and decision-making power, resulting in gender-based discrimination and inequality. This can lead to feelings of worthlessness, low self-esteem, and anxiety.

This can make women “less than” in the pecking order. Assertiveness is not tolerated, it's called aggression or an emotional reaction. The result is under representation of women in decision making. The hierarchy determines that men are in charge & set the rules. 

 

Women are more consensual, they actually listen & are prepared to change & give way. The question is, do we give way too much? I'm beginning to wonder whether it is possible to set group rules, which are determined by members, with no one as titular leader. 

 

The big difficulty is that once a leader is in control & has power, they are very unwilling to loose that. I do believe that organisations need limited terms of office. They need fresh blood, with different experience & new ideas, in order to change, as our world changes. Without that they become bogged down in a morass & are impossible to move or change for the better. 

 

Women have different experience & skills. We silence their voice to the detriment of everyone.

 

 

 

Duplicity & Cheating.

Human relationships are endlessly fascinating. We all have so many different motivations & ways of behaving. I sometimes wonder how well we understand ourselves & our own behaviour. But introspection is possibly not common to all. Many people simply react, emotionally, or just in their own best interest, regardless of the impact on others. If that were not true we wouldn't have wars. In order to be prepared to fight you have to be able to "other" the people you fight with. You can't see them as human beings.

Similarly in disagreements. If you can't accept that the person you disagree with has a right to their opinion, or possibly even a valid point, then you are arrogantly "othering" them. 

Duplicity is deceitful behaviour, speech or thoughts. Saying or doing one thing to one person & something different to another. It is "contradictory doubleness" of intent. In simple terms it is being "two faced". Cheating is deceptive actions to gain an unfair advantage. In relationships it is infidelity, not necessarily sexual, emotional too.

The older I get, the more I believe that we need to be more open & honest in our dealings with eachother. It seems to me that people are becoming more & more dogmatic about their beliefs & end up in "bunkers", often religious ones. Religion generally has a lot to answer for. But more & more, our behaviour & beliefs are being determined by the press, the media & social media. They are the new "religions".

  

How did we get to this point? I think that it started in 1979 when Thatcher came to power in the UK & Reagan followed in America in 1981. Thatcher was Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990. She presided over a social revolution in which nationally owned industries were privatised and the welfare state was drastically reduced in size. She famously said "they (people) are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families".

To my mind, that gave rise to the instant gratification, self centred, outlook we see so prevalent today. People are social animals. We need to find a way of working together for the good of all. There needs to be fairness & real justice, not the sham democracy we accept today. Everyone for themselves, if not checked, will lead to the complete breakdown of society as I have known it.   

Is Britain Working?

I seem to spend a lot of my time firefighting. Not literally of course. But I have an ongoing list of things that have gone wrong. There are three main issues - Firstly that tradespeople  / manufacturers don't do the job properly in the first place. Secondly getting something done about that in a timely fashion takes huge commitment & wastes a lot of the customers time. Thirdly communication is really bad. When there is good customer service, & it does happen, I am truly grateful & surprised. 

But it really should not be like that. Why isn't good customer service the norm?

I have an issue currently with my car. It had a major service & MOT at a Nissan dealership & quite a lot of expensive work was done in order to pass. I've had Nissan cars for years & always had them serviced at the same dealership. Afterwards there were a couple of intermittant faults, the brakes squeal & there is an odd noise when reversing. The car is going in tomorrow to have the rear suspension done - at quite a high cost again. In order for the service people to check out the intermittant noises they want to charge me well over a hundred pounds on top. I think that is unreasonable given the circumstances, but they won't budge. It used to be the case that I had an informal chat with the service engineer & there was no diagnostic charge when the car was in for something else.

I had solar panels installed by Octopus earlier this year costing thousands. The Enphase gateway went wrong relatively soon afterwards. There was nothing wrong with my wifi & the App procedure didn't work. Eventually they admitted it was their fault & it was rectified remotely. Weeks ago it went wrong again. Same problem. I went on a forum & got advice that was well beyond my skill set. So I referred it to Octopus & got a ticket. Nothing has been done & I keep having to chase. It is ridiculous.

I re-did my LPA's recently. My solicitor forgot to put one document in when she sent it off to the OPG. We notified them & they agreed she could send it separately. Several telephone conversations chasing this, with different people, which we ensured were logged on the system, I got a letter saying my LPA's couldn't be registered because of missing documents. Despite the fact that the OPG had acknowledged receiving the document. I still haven't had my new documents back months after they were sent in. 

To my mind these are major failings. I could go on. They simply shouldn't happen. 

So I ask myself why? Is it the systems the companies have in place? Is it that they don't employ enough staff of the right calibre & experience? Is it that their personnel training isn't good enough? Is it that they are cutting costs? Is it that they simply don't care? 

I don't know. I suspect all of the above are true. 

The main issue, as I see it, is that Britain isn't working. When I say that I mean it isn't functioning adequately. Until we put this right we won't increase productivity, we won't achieve growth, we won't be a country in which people want to invest.

It isn't my micro problems that matter. It's the disfunctional country we now live in that will affect everybody. We all need to do something about this. 

  

Fitting In & People Pleasing

Most people want to belong. To a family or a friendship group or at work. It's normal. Most of us want people to like us. We want to be able to work co-operatively. We need to be able to express our opinion, but also we need to listen to the views of others. Sometimes we need to accept that we disagree, without trying to force our opinion on them. Occasionally we also need to stand firm if we feel that an opinion is wrong. Everyone has a right to their view - We personally just don't have to accept it. 

It's a delicate balance because it's important to retain a sense of self. To some extent most of us adapt our behaviour to the situations we are in & to the people we are with. Adaptive behaviour is fine until it becomes maladaptive. 

Humans are unique & varied. It isn't possible to agree with everyone. It isn't possible to enjoy the company of everyone. What really matters is how we deal with disagreement or conflict. Both are normal in human relationships & we do need to accept that. What we shouldn't do is accept someone who is trying to manipulate us or force their views on us. We can see that so clearly in the international situation today. But we need to be able to recognise it in our personal relationships too. 

I think most people have several personas. Different aspects of our personality that we bring out for different occasions. Trying to fit in, not rock the boat. Actually that's a useful tool to avoid conflict. We are social animals living in various communities. It wouldn't work if we were all egotistical & dominant. That causes conflict & even aggression.

But no one should abase themselves or alter their core values in order to be people pleasers. Submissive dogs roll over on their back to dominant ones. People are intelligent, thinking entities who use education, experience & information to think. 

We need to be true to ourselves. Sometimes there is a cost to that which we have to accept.  

 

Post Lunch Fatigue

Just as night follows day I struggle to stay awake after eating lunch. I usually sit for a bit & maybe play mahjong or solitaire on my tablet, or read a book. Even if I'm doing something on my computer, my eyelids drag themselves down & I do start to drift off.

My calvanistic upbringing decrees that my days should be productive, so sleeping isn't an option. I have to get up & do something. Things need to be crossed off my "to do" list.

However, I've been talking to someone who told me about "post lunch fatigue" - post any meal actually. But it is more of a thing at lunchtime for me. The scientific name is postprandial somnolence. Apparently it's caused by high-carbohydrate meals that cause a rapid blood sugar and insulin spike, or by high-fat meals that are harder to digest and divert blood flow from the brain. Blood flow to the digestive tract is increased.

We know so much more now about how our body works & how complex a system it is. High-carb meals lead to a surge in insulin, which can cause a subsequent drop in blood sugar, resulting in a feeling of energy loss. Eating triggers the release of serotonin, a hormone that promotes sleep. More blood being directed to the digestive system to process food, can lead to reduced blood flow to the brain, so we are drowsy.

Apparently the solution is;-

• Eating smaller, lighter, balanced meals
• Being hydrated 
• Light exercise to re-energise the body & increase concentration
• Mindful eating

Who knew?

I thought it was simply an ageing thing & I fight it. I don't want to waste the time I have left alive by sleeping, except at night time. On the other hand my nights are very disturbed & I wake a lot & don't get prolonged restful sleep. 

So I'm now thinking I should look at time differently. Just follow my circadian rhythm. I should listen to my master clock in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) of the brain. 

 

I don't think my body likes the current routines my brain has created.