Sunday Thoughts
Loss of control
Snowy pigeons, Mosque, Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan by Helen Schreider via Omar é Azul
A year ago I started my ‘Other People’s Ritual’ project. Its origins had a personal background, that at a very young age I was racially attacked and probably would have lost my life had it not been stopped by the person whose home outside this attack was happening. To say that this event changed my life would be an understatement. I got a second lease on life but it also was the sowing seed for my anxiety and PTSD which undercover for years until I was attacked again, now as an adult. It opened up old wounds, it made my mind chaotic but it also made me work towards living a full life.
Life is coincidental and synchronicity is on every corner, I have been reading Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I am No Longer Talking to White People About Race. I do not need a book to tell me that I live in a racist society but she does bring the evidence together about post-colonial Britain and its attitude to otherness in a beautiful yet educational manner. I see it everyday living in a predominantly white town that voted overwhelmingly to leave the European Union in the 2016 referendum. Although everyone I speak to says otherwise, the evidence from polls and research studies points towards immigration and persevering Britishness to be the main reason for the leave votes. So in my daily interactions with the people I work with, the patients I treat, the staff at supermarkets and cafes I frequent, I’m left wondering, who here sees my presence as unwanted and I relive the feelings associated with that attack over and over again. Feeling a nervous wreck majority of the time, ready to be triggered but also determined to succeed by making the most of my opportunities as well as creating my own.
There are however times when this thirst towards living every moment to the fullest becomes a mental plague, one where I agonise over not being productive enough. This weekend has been one of those, where the day isn’t long enough for my to-do list when I go to bed on Saturday night not rested but stressed that I didn’t complete my submission for a project but also chaste myself over not spending the weekend resting. Then after my run this morning I come home to learn that someone close passed away (from Covid-19) and there is this overwhelming feeling of numbness but also this feeling of loss. Loss of control over the situation. Loss of opportunity for this person’s life. I’m overcome with an emotion I do not know a name for and it overpowers my feelings of this lack of accomplishment. I guess it puts life in perspective.
Here is this week’s culture list:
Reading
Why I am No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Renni Eddo-Lodge | Standart Magazine
Listening
Test Kitchen by no-reply podcast | Priyanka Chopra Jonas on the Feel Better Live More podcast | Finishing What You Started on podcast | Sentimental Garbage podcast
Watching
Sex and the City- season one | Princess and the Frog on Disney Plus
Eating
Aloo Channa Chaat | Chicken and Artichoke Stew | Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Cookies | Homemade Sourdough Pizza
“Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it. ”