A Glass Half-Empty ‘and’ a Glass Half-Full!

November 13, 2014 By Kanchan Char 35 Comments

glass half empty, glass half full, happiness, positivity, lifestyle,

So, I’ve been missing in action for a bit and if I ask myself where I’ve been or what I’ve been upto — it’s a regular sort of reply in my head! I’ve been here and there, doing this and that, some nice things, some relatively unglamorous. But when you move and people from your ‘past life’ ask you how things are, I’ve recently realised that it’s very difficult to answer honestly. Like, dead honestly! The truth really is a glass half-full just about as it’s half-empty and maybe all the ‘count-your-blessing’-type conversations we’ve ever had, have originated from this very predicament; the need to see the half-full in the half-empty.

How am I? Let’s see…I love where I am geographically, Dorset’s pretty (a bit of an understatement–but I don’t want to appear delusional)! The people are kinder than anywhere I’ve been and we’ve been made to feel very at-home both in the community and at school. We really couldn’t have asked for much more! I live in a house that I’ve chosen, designed and decorated just the way I’d planned for years and I love it- I feel like I’m home every single time I come in and at 37, that’s comforting and I get to share it all with the people I love the most in the whole world! (There you go, that’s the depth of my zen-seeking mind! ;P)

As blissful and ‘ near perfect’ as the above scenario seems and I swear that it’s the whole and complete truth, there is also the feeling of the glass half-empty….the sense of being a square peg in a round hole that is this world! As I write this, I hear the churning and guzzling of the dishwasher, I have a cup of weak tea in front of me laced with what seems to have become a quiet kitchen obsession-vanilla paste and honey. I hope that it will stop the whirring in my mind and the incessant list-making I’ve taken to since we moved and especially this week as my husband leaves to Chicago soon for a bit and I’m holding fort alone. I look out into the darkness of night that’s playing out to the soundtrack of bush crickets and and am aware of the children asleep upstairs – one in the guest room because she’s in one of those moods that’s about every parent’s nightmare, leaving me with a lingering feeling of having been a bad mother and caused tears at bedtime. Of essentially being the antithesis of every motherhood commercial and parenting advice guide! I know I will remember tonight – sound memory and emotion are inextricably intertwined and great moments of introspection often happen while faced with the me I love, but also mourn! Life, in the best of circumstances, is hard and emotional resolutions lie at the heart of even the most commonplace circumstances.

A part of me questions why can’t we accept the glass half-empty conundrum, why do we need to quell it so…why are we always after that piece of cake, that online purchase, that absolute bone-marrow motivated ‘need’ to get over that slump of staring reality/disappointment/disillusionment squarely in the face? Like allowing ourselves to consider life disrobed from all it’s tinsel is in someway accepting the worst defeat, or potentially spiralling down into an abyss of no return. We aren’t perfect poeple and we clearly don’t inhabit a perfect world, so why should we be expected to exist in an unrealistic happy-bubble?

Oftentimes, I feel that so much of our self improvement is impeded by this incessant pursuit of happy-ness. We’ve created social ecosystems to cater to this need of lives awash with our curated bliss, and perhaps that is part of the truth, but definitely far from any absolute! Aren’t the biggest changes borne out of reaching rock-bottoms? of being thrust against the wall and finding the way back? Hasn’t ‘necessity’ always been the mother of invention? Where does personal growth, re-evalution and honest re-assessments have a chance without the ability to see the possibility of something better? Think relationships, think finance — the two most volatile aspects of life as we know it! The glass half empty is sometimes a leveller- a realist’s perspective, it’s a chance to acknowledge that real problem solving is hardly something that swathes itself in mindless positivity and hedonism. So much of our modern maladies stems from the fact that our generation lacks the grit that our forebearers had and I, being no social expert, see the hand of complacent pleasure seeking in it!

I’m all for positive thinking and acknowledge firsthand the power of the mind! (I think my Instagram feed is testimony to my being very easily pleased), but of late, I find myself uneasy at being perceived ungrateful despite all that I’m blessed with, for feeling that gnaw of human emptiness, an existential angst or imperfection, call it what you may. The same feeling of the glass half empty in the face of unequivocal success, when celebrities holding their awards in hand, say it hasn’t hit them yet, and it probably never will! That lovely state of just being at peace or accepting that there are no limitless highs is what I call reality, and it’s very welcome in my life!

If you’ve liked reading this, I’d also recommend : Retro-Chic and the Cult of Neo-Sobriety and On Nouveau Peasantry & Elitist Simplicity!

The Opportunities of Change…

August 12, 2014 By Kanchan Char 25 Comments

change, rhythms of life, relocating, meaning, accepting change

It always throws me off when people I meet after years say to me that I haven’t changed a bit. “Really?”, I ask disbelievingly as my hand instinctively rises to touch the newly forming lines around my 37 year-old-eyes! In my mind, I assume I’m virtually unrecongnizable from the person I was when I knew them. Surely, you can’t have an unaltered personality when you’ve moved around as often as I’ve done and had a whole new geographical and emotional landscape every few years! To live amongst different people who expect different things from you (I’m not implying that I’ve had to become what people expect of me, heaven knows that might make life a lot easier though if I could :P) but, some can handle you with all your potency, and some you’ve got to make a bit of an effort with. You go with the flow, and as unobtrusively as water that cuts through rock, you find you’ve forged a whole new identity for yourself.

I’ve always viewed change as a good thing “theoretically”, albeit my first meetings with it are often met with much kicking and screaming – but it’s nothing I’ve resisted extendedly! Change is inevitable, change is the essence of a universe which is in motion; and to try to impose stillness on life is an act of abject futility 🙂 I realise that, despite a degree of being change-averse that if not for change, there wouldn’t be women’s rights, or freedom of expression, an end to apartheid or the hope of things ever getting better than the current, rather abyssmal state of affairs we find our world in!

I’ve already entered the vortex of the next change-cycle in my life. We move to Dorset, a beautiful place near the sea…a place that gets the most sunshine in all of England 🙂 I’ve been there for 4 hours-that’s it, and looked at homes our real estate agent had lined up for us. I know nothing about it apart from what an arbitrary page on the internet has to say! My children seem less than enthusiastic about a new school (again), and as I try to sound excited and brimming with hope about new friends, the seaside…I feel that at 7.5 and 6, they can see through me a bit and sense the guarded apprehension within! My youngest recently asked me if I’ll make new friends too, after all, I don’t go to school and I work from home. I assure her I will…I’ve always done! 🙂 Some of my strongest friendships have been the result of us moving around.

I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling that I’ve become a creature of habit-I have my routines that play out everyday in similar, unaltered rhythms. The children leave for school, I clear up the post-breakfast disarray. I play some music and make myself a coffee the way I like it. I reply to emails, I look into work that I need to get cracking on. I break for lunch. I go out or cook, I meet someone…I’m back for the children – homework, extra-curriculars, dinner, bath, stories, sleep. Time with the husband, a movie maybe! 🙂

Summer holidays have a way to disrupt all routine, and apart from finding constant activity/amusement for the girls, this time around, there are calls to be made, furniture to be bought; and a decison to be made about which of the 15 different mattresses that promise an uninterrupted, Utopian sleep experience is right for you! (The overkill of choice –fodder for a whole different post!)

Oddly, I recall from my very ecclectic reading sources that universally, people who are termed ‘happy’ and ‘lucky’ are those who have a great need to break or a least challenge the status quo! (In my opinion, if you’ve managed to reach somewhere that has a Latin term defining it, don’t mess with it-stay right there! ;P ) I look at such people with unabashed reverence – even more so those who’ve managed to reach the other extreme of the bell-curve, the backpackers, homesteaders and forest foragers who live off the land (the real ones, not the ones in Hipster mags who ‘forage’ on the weekends dressed in hemp and bamboo and then return promptly to their investment banking desks adorned with hyacinths and cactii!) There do exist those who feel that by rolling their dice on life continually, they increase the chances of hitting the jackpot! Moral of the story – change is good, change is positive and to deny life it’s metamorphosis is to potentially deny it it’s hope!

So I’ll take life up on it’s ‘circumstance’ for me and go forward to build that home that I’ve dreamt of – my colour scheme, my design palette! I’ll learn new maps and find new spaces as a new accent filters its chords into my vocabulary. I’ll be the new mum at the school gate, watch my children in new uniforms at school and at ballet and know for them that this time, it’s here to stay! Mountains alter, oceans grow and shrink and the universe softly stretches on…nature’s time runs parallel to ours. And through our own individual tangos – life’s embraces and improvisations, we all still remain connected; unchanged at our core – one big ball of irretrievably tangled yarn! x

♫ Sewn – The Feeling ♫

You might find resonances of what I’ve been saying in some of my recent posts : “A Walk in the Clouds!” – Austria, Liechtenstein and Switzerland! and Retro-Chic and the Cult of Neo-Sobriety!

“Life is Good!” – A Mini Boden Story!

June 23, 2014 By Kanchan Char 32 Comments

Mini Boden. childrens clothing, video review, British clothing

One of the first few ‘British things’ I fell in love with was Boden clothing, and Mini Boden in particular! I have closely spaced children who are only 15 months apart and have diametrically opposite tastes.. they’re as different as peas and yams! As I mentioned in Nature, Nurture and Apples falling from Trees – one is capable of zingy flamboyance, the other opts for a more muted palette!
Since my girls were little, I’ve turned to Mini Boden for their clothes so when I had the opportunity to review a few of their clothes, I thought I’d go the extra mile with it! We decided to make a small movie of our time spent in the South Norfolk woods…storytelling, poppy gathering, dandelion blowing and a lot of cake-eating.. (that really is what good times are made of!) (Please do watch it – it’s our first movie here on the blog and so that teeny bit extra special :))

The Intrepid Misaventurer featuring Mini Boden from Kanchan Char on Vimeo.

Mini Boden has always stood the test of time for me.. the quality is *great* (and in the one odd occasion where something goes wrong – Boden operate a no quibble returns policy – provided the fault has little to do with “having been mauled by pets, drawn on by nephews or worn while decorating”. It’s like a little insurance policy!;P

Do I hear ” At those prices, you need one?” Admittedly, Boden does cost more than a few highstreet brands (though I’ve been surprised at some labels recently that surpass Mini Boden in price but pale in comparison on design and quality).

For us, Mini Boden is a thrifty option – here is where I get lynched and mobbed, but hear me out! I buy clothes that are to be used by two children simultaneously, they see a lot of wash and still look as good as new for a looong time – I say this after years of buying Boden! I find that Mini Boden styles can be bought in a bigger size than your child needs and are still very wearable because of adjustable features, making sure you get maximum use of the item. Clever things like adjustable waists, slightly longer sleeves than what you get elsewhere (that means tees can be worn longer) and dresses that are A-Line in style tend to go on looking good even after your child’s grown out of the size bracket on the label. Nifty things like footless tights – again a Mini Boden staple, takes care of those transitional season days we have almost every other day in beautiful Britain! ;P And after all that jazz, stick it on eBay and get a very sweet sum back (I speak the truth, go test it…). This effectively makes your purchase (if at all), a couple of quid more than a super market buy.

I’ll let the gorgeous prints and design speak for themselves…or you can go over and have a browse at *Boden* and see for yourself. They’re offering a nice 30% discount at the moment and if you’re a new customer, you get a little gift (say you’re new in the space provided for delivery options at checkout).

Happy Shopping! 😉

*Disclaimer : This is a sponsored post. All opinions (very honest, btw), stories and ramblings are authentically mine! :)*

A big thanks to the wonderful Daniel Simm, my partner in crime for collaborating with me on this! 🙂