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!

On Nouveau Peasantry & Elitist Simplicity!

September 13, 2014 By Kanchan Char 28 Comments

Wood, simple living, rustic, new peasant

Peasant blouses, boho skirts and handmade, vegetable-dyed leather that one meets in every single catalogue and website is a trend I warm toward! (Largely because the look covers a multitude of sins, and apart from a very fortunate handful, makes everyone look ridiculously shapeless. It also fosters belief that a large segment of the world couldn’t-care-less about what they put on! Yes, my naiveté is charming, indeed!) 🙂

Conversing about this and the incomprehensible prices of ‘heirloom grains’ with my in-the-know, whole-foods loving friends, I recently got called an aspiring ‘New Peasant’ and was pointed to the Harper’s Bazaar quiz to check if I really had ‘the symptoms’! (Well, I do live in Dorset and buy way more Goats cheese than anyone above a size 0 legimitately should! ;P) But, all jokes aside, I have to admit that there is a latent, softly-emerging “Nouveau Peasant” that’s come to the fore as my nesting instincts have been test driven these past few months! (If you are a first time visitor, can I gently point in you in this direction for a catch up?!)

Like endless culturally and geographically displaced 30 + year olds, the appeal of a more meaningful existence removed from the abject capitalism of the 80’s and 90’s appeals to me. The idea of a quieter, more pro-active life filled with pursuits deemed “authentic”, “real” and “meaningful” holds a certain inescapable charm. Possibly echoing an entire generation that I’m part of, I’ve felt like a hamster on the wheel and toyed with the idea of a country home with the smells of freshly baking bread, rain kissed gardens and the pleasures of home-made chutneys/ jams devoured gratefully with a few friends that matter etc. etc…and if that makes me a new peasant, I’d gladly don the title! (After all, who wouldn’t want a slice of this careless perfection, often captured in scores of lifestyle mags with cool muted photos on matte film, untouched by the taint of reality?!)

The only fly in the ointment here is that the closer I look at these suburban aspirations available in a profusion of “Indie” channels, the more obvious the elitism of this ‘simplicity’ is! Often, carefully concealed in these frugal, made-from-scratch lifestyles of homesteading dreams and rustic hand-thrown salads is a subtext of discrimination and division. One can’t but see through the rhetoric of the ‘jam-jar revolution’ to know that it’s as much about the haves and have-nots as is a full-fledged designer dinner put together by high-profile planners and caterers. Aspiring to this new-peasant, fern-rich-simplicity is sadly a very middle-class ethos!

The more I think about this, the more I conclude that we’re drawn to the lure of a life of unmitigated good times for a reason; after all, no other generation stood the chance of seeing the advancements ours has, or felt more entitled to a better life! Our constant search for contentment is seen even in the mere reminiscence of a well baked croissant or a freshly brewed pot of your drink of choice! The story of our lives seems to have moved to the fine print and the magic lies solely in the details. The bigger picture is just too daunting to contemplate.

Life only seems to make sense when broken down into it’s rudimentary form of human connections. With this I agree….

What I find fault with is the story of people/collectives who project the lives you wish you could live, the cool elitism of their ‘artisan’ simplicity causing distinctions and exclusions in their thumbing their noses at anything mainstream. (Tut-tut anyone who uses regular plates or supermarket cutlery to photograph their authentic offerings!) A contradiction unambiguously jarring to the very premise of home-making and fellowshipping; connectedness and community! The fundamental backbone of a human collective, as it were!

Interesting that this profusion of baking , the “real” food and the “real” living and all our “cultivated” and “curated” beauty occurs quite conspicuously among those fairly well placed on the social ladder (quite unlike generations that precceeded us with their dreams of capitalism and a resultant land of ‘milk and honey’). Is it all evidence that we yearn for a better world and seek to create a microcosm of it in our own lives, despite the fact that we are not quite the ‘struggling’?!

Living as we do in a world that stamps out honest, wholesome principles of relationships ie: intimacy and connectedness and plays into the ample hands of fabricated creativity-the answer barely lies in a ‘choreography’ of meaningfulness. Recognising that living simple shouldn’t cost so much, connecting with loved ones shouldn’t need a £1000 camera and every social media at the ready, is probably a good place to start!

And please, for the love of life, let’s bring potato chips and cheese puffs back to the party –the people serving Quinoa on Nori mostly look miserable for a reason! ;P

If you liked this, you might also like:

Retro-Chic and the Cult of Neo-Sobriety!

and

Unfinished Business!

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!