Serial Discontent

It is too hot.

I know this because I have just returned from the Boulangerie, where everyone was queueing calmly, in the one-time weirdness of being in complete agreement. They were of one mind, chat-jacking each other's stories of "le chaleur" and when in the name of God's holy doughnuts, it will end.

Today, the mercury will nudge 39 degrees Celsius - or 102.2 on the Farenheit scale - if you happen to live in a country that has put a man on the moon. Silly that we still use these two non-complimentary scales - Celcius for science - fair enough. But Farenheit? Maybe only to determine if we need a light jacket or a flamethrower.

I do not doubt that it is, technically, too hot. My skepticism is awakened only because I doubt our collective sincerity. Because I remember distinctly being in this very same queue in March, when the Ugg boot was on the other foot. It was too grey, too cold and too damn wet. You couldn't buy a hot day in March.

But before you throw this book from a second floor window, this is not really an essay about the weather. The weather is simply the most convenient available proof of something much larger, because it changes dramatically enough, and envelops us totally enough, that we can almost watch ourselves forget - in real time.

This is getting to be a familiar pattern that is borderline everywhere. Where our opinions are divided on most things - immigration, politics, films and fur coats - we find much in common on the shelf of general discontent. We perhaps just notice it less.

The bistrot on the corner that felt so new and cozy, becomes, several steak frites later, impossibly samey and dull. The trip to Turkey we planned so carefully we could almost taste it becomes, the destination from hell to which we would never return. The long-awaited house guests we wish we could now just quietly murder. We moan about a lot of things and we are getting very good at it.

Vanessa and I moved to this particular and charming corner of rural France, partly in pursuit of quiet. But let me tell you, there are days - I will admit under gentle pressure - when the quiet itself could become a complaint. Last Sunday, so little happened, I half suspected there had been an over-night apocalypse and Vanessa and I were the only survivors, because the killer virus simply had no idea where we were.

In premature summary, it seems we (the people) are serial complainers – not necessarily because we are inherently miserable folk, but because our wailing and moaning sometimes feels less connected to the actual object of complaint than we should be. We default to being a kind of Mayday-squawking, human aeroplane that is looking for somewhere to land.

Remove the weather and our laments will refer to the neighbours. Remove the neighbours and we will gripe at the traffic, blame the price of butter or sentence the cat to a night outside.

The human mind has a remarkable ability to relocate dissatisfaction at precisely the moment our general circumstances no longer need improving. Simply put, we love looking for things to crtique. My Mother-in-law is a black belt in this.

Whatever we acquire, quickly becomes the dusty, mid-century furniture of our lives, while whatever is still in the shop window, remains beautifully illuminated beneath its own little spotlight.

Clever psychologists, made to make us feel better, have quite the amiable term for this. They call it hedonic adaptation - our very human tendency to return to a baseline level of general satisfaction (or perhaps dis-satisfaction) the moment the thrill of a thing wears off. Sunny day or flurry of snow, our joy will quickly fade to grey before we can say "Jack Robinson".

This is probably useful if you think about it. If every improvement in human circumstances had left our ancestors sat around like the Cheshire Cat - in a state of permanent delight - we would probably still be sitting outside our caves, saying "Hey Lucy... how great is this fire thing".

Dissatisfaction, though largely an unenviable state, does tend to move things forward.

The trouble is, that this ancient and apparently useful piece of mental machinery seems to have escaped from the workshop and is now operating unsupervised.

We have become serial editors of predictable reality. The present moment arrives on our desk and, before we've properly read it, out comes the red pencil.

Too hot. Too expensive. Not enough. Too late. Shouldn't have happened. Should have happened by now. Tell her she's a...

Life hands in its homework and we just can't bear to return it without the necessary corrections.

Peter Crone. I like him. We should be freinds. He does significant and simple-but-so-effective work on the architecture of the human mind. I have found his compassionate but fuss-intolerant approach very interesting over the years, in the way one finds a decent tailor useful. Crone is not afraid to join the most challenging aspects of our personal journeys, but all roads lead to Crone returning often to a deceptively simple idea: the majority of our suffering begins with our inate resistance to what is.

Look closely and we seem to practise this resistance like a tennis serve in a full-length mirror. We either don't want what we have, or we don't have what we want. Two sides of the same coin - and the problem? Not the coin itself, but the currency. The key to spending it, is to be OK with both.

To accept that we can be OK with not wanting the relationship that we have with our eldest daughter, whilst also being accepting of the fact that the relationship we do have, is not the one we want.

Big ask? Come and have a lie down...

Because the question I am going to ask is this:

What would happen if we stopped requiring reality to be different before allowing ourselves to be okay?

It's a dry cake to slice, is this... I think we could choose to begin by agreeing that acceptance is NOT approval. Which is dandy, becasue if they were one and the same, it would be akin to me giving up on the idea that my relationship could be better with said daughter. If I accept my bully of a Mother-in-law, am I condoning her manipulative behaviours?

I think we can perhaps also choose to agree that acceptance simply means ceasing to argue with the fact that this is just where things currently are.

Acceptance just doesnt look good in certain colours. It looks too passive in yellow. Or beige. It sounds like accepting something means approving it, or surrendering to it. To invite it in for tea and end up having it occupy the guest room.

However... and here is my thinly veiled pivot. I don't actually believe that acceptance is asking for anything of the sort. It asks not that we like, enjoy or condone whatever is happening. It doesn't prevent us from attempting to try and dramatically change things, or to leave them completely alone - or any stop on the bus between these two points.

Acceptance simply asks us to acknowledge that, for just this moment in time - this is what is happening.

I mean, it sounds so bleedin' obvious - when you consider how much of our lives we spend battling with water that is already well under the bridge. "She shouldn't have done that..." "He should have understood"... "I should have got the job"...

There is no touching sense of optimism here, not for me, anyway. I do not beleive that if I object stroingly enough, reality may somehow reconsider. I have said it before. The great DJ in the Universe, does not take requests. The relationship is currently just what it is.

Anyway, it's still hot.

The mercurial thermometer shows 36 degrees and has no interest in my preferences.

The only person I have to negotiate with, is me.

On Platform 13, wholeness isn’t found - it’s remembered. Because loss is loss, worthiness is universal, and no one is alone. We are all in this together.