Tag Archives: The Inkling

19/06/2011

Don’t Waste This Moment (advice from The Spark)

I am unhappy because no matter how hard I work I can’t have the life I want. My husband and I both have good jobs but struggle to pay our mortgage, bills and school fees and barely scrape together enough for our annual holidays. Everyone else we went to school and uni with seems to be doing better than us. I am ashamed of our out of date furniture and our kitchen, which hasn’t been renovated for nearly 15 years! My husband feels inadequate when our friends buy investment properties and better stuff than us and now because of our feelings of inadequacy the spark has gone from our relationship. What can I do?

If there is one thing that Human Beings are particularly good at it is complicating things. HB’s are so good at focusing on their discontent and attending to their addictions that the majority of them, generally, have no idea or interest in recognising anything more than that.

This is easy for me to say, I know, I’m just a spark. My primary purpose is to observe and inspire. It’s not tangibly possible for me, nor would I care to get caught up in all the nitty gritty of everyday physical living. Lucky for me. But even if I did have a physical body to care for and maintain and emotional attachments to other physical beings or sensations, I don’t see the need for all the compulsive fussing and rushing around that humans put themselves through. You really do resemble a swarm of hungry ants, racing around in circles without any kind of collective consciousness to hold it all together. Is it really that much of an effort to stay alive?

Believe me lady, from where I am your worries could be whipped away in the breath of a passing thought. Truly, you carry so much imaginary weight needlessly. You have more than enough food, warmth and shelter to sustain your family’s needs (and those of three other families). Not to mention all the additional space, padding and armour that you surround yourself with. What’s it all for?! If right now you lost all your material possessions and the only things you were left with were your health, love from your family and the charity of friends to keep you and your family warm, sheltered and fed, would you be any less of a person? Would you feel any less alive than you do now? Would it really matter?

You don’t need to spend a cent more on time saving devices, pampering activities or expensive luxury holidays to get a break from your hassles and reignite the spark in your relationship. Nor do you need to give up what you are doing or go without. In fact you don’t need to physically change a thing in your present situation before you can enjoy your life. All you need to do is to value what you do have already and give yourself permission to enjoy those things.

Nothing is really more important than the way you are feeling right now. Discover what you have in this moment that makes you feel good and savour those things. Let go of anything that is worrying you unnecessarily in this moment and appreciate all the things that add beauty, fascination, inspiration, love and comedy to your life. Stop looking for happiness and recognition in the future and smile with what you are right now. Don’t waste this moment, it’s all you will ever have.

The Spark

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Leave a comment | tags: help, how to be happy with that you've got, spark, The Inkling | posted in Advice

19/05/2011

The Inklings: Chapter 1

By Anna

It was raining just heavily enough to make an umbrella necessary. “Oh great!” complained Syafika, who was already struggling to keep her handbag from slipping off her shoulder while attempting to carry a cake horizontally – after all the effort she had put into making the cake look nice Syafika really didn’t want to get to work to find the cake stuck by the icing to one side of the container. Syafika went back inside to get an umbrella and when she came outside again she had the cake container balanced between her body and right hand, her handbag on her left shoulder and the umbrella in her left hand. After another few minutes and some nasty language she managed to put the umbrella up and then when she finally attempted to walk down the front steps she almost fell because the cake container obstructed her view of where she was putting her feet.

When Syafika had finished making the cake she’d been so proud. It was the best looking cake she’d ever made. But now her pride in the cake had been replaced by feelings of inadequacy as she struggled to cope with her load. Why couldn’t she look elegant and in control like other people, wondered Syafika. Then she started to hope that the cake was good enough. “You never know what the middle is like until you cut it” she worried. Syafika took a deep breath and thought that as long as she didn’t drop the cake on the way to work, it would probably all be worth it.

Syafika took a risky shortcut through the park, despite seeing the potential for slips in the mud. She wasn’t alone. The dirt path through the park was crammed with people. They were mostly people walking to work but there was also a woman taking two dogs for a walk.

“Watch it!” thought Syafika as her cake was bumped by a suited man with his umbrella so far down over his head that he couldn’t see in front of him.

Then, one of the dogs stopped at the side of the path and did a pooh. The woman walking them saw this but did nothing. This annoyed Syafika because she knew what it was like to tread in dog pooh. Apart from the trauma of having to get close to dog pooh while cleaning it off her shoe (and the inevitable mental picture of billions of germs squirming around), Syafika would spend the rest of day assuming that any expressions of distaste she saw were meant for her because she stank. Syafika didn’t say anything to the lady walking the dogs though. She never did in situations like these. She usually just let her annoyance bubble away inside her until she was distracted by something else.

This time the distraction was a skinny, grotty man who had been running past. He ducked into the crowd, picked up the dog pooh and rubbed it into the hair of the dog walking lady while shouting “I’m watching you”. Then he ran off through the rain.

The dog walker stopped. Her face was crimson with anger and embarrassment. She didn’t know what to do. When nobody offered her any sympathy (most people pretended not to notice what had happened and the others stared but kept walking) she began to cry. It would make Syafika feel guilty later, but at the time she thought the whole thing was pretty funny and had to repress a smirk.

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