Gratitude

A number of attitudes lead to happiness.  Gratitude or the act of counting one's blessings, is one of them.  Some others include 'being aware of possibilities,' 'giving to others', 'being connected', 'pursuing dreams and goals'. 

Most recently I have felt distinctly unhappy; depressed even.   I've had a few disappointments and setbacks  in the past couple of weeks and I could argue that these have caused my current state of mood malaise.  But they haven't really.  What's really caused my mood of late is my sense of complacency and my (high) expectations for myself and reality.  It is never a good idea to impose high expectations on circumstances, situations or people because after all, circumstances and people are what they are and will be what they'll be.  It is easy to let one's expectations exceed reality and this mismatch - where one's expectations are higher than the actual experience or reality - can only lead to disappointment, frustration and even unhappiness. 

When all is said and done, I seem to have lost my mojo because I have forgotten to be grateful.  I have become complacent. As anyone knows, complacency is a very unreflective stance which can lead to a sense of boredom or a lack of what I call "life drive".  

In conversation with my hubby yesterday, I started to reflect on the when my current malaise kicked in.  We realised that I started to lose my mojo a few months ago when my application to become an Aussie citizen was approved.  The sense of relief and joy I initially felt when my permanent residence status was upgraded to "citizen" was gradually replaced with what "empty nest syndrome" must feel like in some way.  Now, I don't have kids - young or grown-up - so I don't have first-hand experienced of emty-nest syndrome but I think the parallels might be there.  For starters, I started to dream of living in Australia around 1996 when I was doing my Masters degree in Clinical Psychology.  I believed that this qualification would be my ticket out of the Africa I had been borne into and loved deeply but could no longer imagine growing old in.  The determination, passion, angst and grind of 10 years of study was going to be my ticket out of chaos and violence. 

And so it was, but not before I patiently bided my time over many more years and bounced back after several set-backs on my uncertain path of immigration. But finally I got to raise my goal from its initial stage of conception through all the transition phases up to its adult status of attaining an Australian identity.  That done, where to now?  What's left? Where does my next major life goal lie?  I don't have the answers.  Is it to start preparing myself for retirement and the associated goals of securing long-term financial security?  This is something I simply cannot begin to contemplate yet.  It certainly does not feel like something to look forward to, let alone something I can embrace with the passion and determination that I spent on pursuing my previous life goals.

So for now, I have realised that the best hope I have of regaining my mojo in the short-term is to focus on gratitude. My goal for now is to count my blessings everyday starting with today.  I am going to reflect on my blessings and write them down. I am going to count three blessings every day (in no order of importance) so that I can really savour them mindfully as if sucking on three small squares of my favourite chocolate. I am going to let them roll around my head, explore them, let them melt inside me and I am going to be slow to swallow them.

Blessing One:

I am grateful for my home.  It's a space in which I get to do some of my favourite things - cooking, writing, playing games, sleeping, playing with my cat, sitting quietly with a cup of tea, cuddling up to my husband.

Blessing Two:

I am grateful that today I get to spend a carefree afternoon with a friend at the movies.

Blessing Three:

I am grateful that I have some warm clothes to put on because it's a cold day outside.  There are so many people in this world with neither warm clothes or warm shelter and I don't even want to imagine what that must be like.

Dementia Dread

One of my greatest fears is getting dementia.  Now this might seem like a weird thing to start blogging about, not to mention, fear, at the awfully 'tender age of 48', but on the scale of things I am scared of, getting dementia is right up there.  When I mentioned this concern to someone, they very reasonably pointed out to me that if I became demented it wouldn't be so terrible for me.  "There are much worse things to get," she said.  "I mean, if  one has Alzheimers or something, one lacks self-awareness so surely one isn't pained by the daft, humiliating or downright dangerous things one is doing."  Granted.  Point taken.  And I admit that caring for a loved one with dementia most certainly has to be more challenging and emotionally painful than it is for the loved one whose brain is dissolving.  Which is why I made it clear to my husband from get-go that should he be fated with this goddamm awful disease, I would most definitely be packing him off to a home.  Which is why I made sure that "in sickness and in health" was not part of my marriage vows.  Okay, I know, this sounds completely harsh and unloving, but at least I am honest.  He thinks I am joking, I'm sure.  I THINK I'm serious.

But getting back to this fear of mine.  The thing is, it's a fear which means it's illogical and irrational.  I don't even know where it comes from.  It's not as if any close family members have acquired dementia in old age. But I do know when it crept up on me: it was sometime in this fourth decade of my life.  Its tentacles started to stretch into and take hold of my thinking when I started becoming more forgetful.  Raising my concerns casually with a neuropsychologist colleague, I was reassured that since I still know how to do my job, my memory difficulties are entirely normal.  Mmm...I'm not so sure.  I mean, once upon a time, I think I almost had a photographic memory.  I could read a list of 20 words in a foreign language and be able to recall most of them after first glance.  I could remember phone numbers without ever writing them down.  Names and faces were a cynch too. I wouldn't have to read my client files before a consultation because I'd remember all the details of our previous conversations.  No notes needed really.

Fast forward to the "forgetful forties", and time and again, I started to forget where I parked my car.  This wasn't such a problem when I lived in South Africa and had (un)trusty car guards to call on which I repeatedly did.  Each time I'd be convinced that my car had been stolen because I'd "know for sure" where I'd parked it.  But after relying my number plate on walkie-talkie devices to one another, a car guard would inevitably find it.  And what do you know?  It would be in a spot where I HADN'T parked it!  Go figure. Some spiteful person must have had a duplicate set of keys and moved it!  Relieved, I'd thrust a tip into the man's hand, mumble my embarrassed thanks without making eye contact and hasten away.  Humiliation time and again. 

The case of the lost car still happens to me of course but I have trained myself to be far more mindful of its parking location.  In Australia, I don't have the luxury of crying wolf to helpful car guards.  So my strategy now is to repeat to myself certain details pertaining to the location of my parked car.  It's not enough for me to make a simple mental note.  No, I have to repeat the mental notes over a few times to fix them into place.

Sure, I can still do my job.  However, I now have to read the client's file before each session to remind myself of the conversations that have been taking place, the treatment plan and the strategies and interventions I have been using.  This is painstaking.  Even with more long-term clients, I need a refresher before every session.  Once I left a client file in my filing cabinet at home and the client came in for a session.  Oh boy!  Panic set inside my guts and all I could do was "fake it until I made it".  Fortunately, that time I did "make it" because the client came back for more appointments.  Next time, I - and the poor client - might not be so lucky if the tentacles of forgetfulness continue to take a stranglehold.

Some other "demented" things I have done in this decade:

• reversing my car down the side of a stationery vehicle and looking up to see my bumper in the road and wondering how in the hell it got there.  My music was playing loudly so I hadn't heard the crash and hadn't felt a thing as the wing mirrors and bumper went flying into space.
• driving on the wrong side of the road in the middle of the day.  This was a serious case of "brain fog".  I was completely sober.  Yes, COMPLETELY.  I only realised I was driving on the wrong side of the road when I looked up and saw the horrified look on the face of an oncoming driver.
• Arriving at the supermarket and having not a single recollection of what I needed to buy.  I am ashamed to say I have done this several times.
• On occasion, I have mastered the art of speaking "word salad".  That is, I have heard myself utter sentences that make no sense at all because the words are all jumbled.  More than once I have heard myself use a nonsense word.  Not a slang word or a word that I've made up on purpose with the intent of being creative.  No, a spontaneously uttered nonsense word that NO ONE has ever heard before.

I have done many other very weird, demented-like things over the past few years but fortunately my memory is so poor that I have forgotten them!  Yes, perhaps memory loss does have its benefits. 

Signing off for now but making a note to self elsewhere about what I might blog about next!