That's your super-quick Christmas shopping success coming back to haunt you then, Mart!

What goes around comes around?

I've just been rewatching the 3rd part of Jonathan Miller's Brief History of Disbelief which was on BBC4 3 years (?) ago. As someone who has no religious belief (although I call myself an agnostic for purely philosophical reasons), I found myself in tears towards the end of the programme. After that I certainly don't feel as if I can meet life's (and death's) challenges. I knew I should have watched Batman instead

Actually I take all that back.   I remember now seeing all the atrocities perpetrated by believers through the ages on anyone who didn't agree.  Sorry Andy - I was just thinking of rhetoric really in my previous post.

May be our mental state is so different when we are getting close to the end that things seems different and not so depressing.

There are many people who had near death experience. It is interesting to look back at one's life. I have learnt so much about myself and the world. Beside when I was younger I had so many problems, so many worries, disappointments.  I am so grateful for being able to go through with it. I don't know how I got through really.

When my father was about 93, and not ill or disabled at all but naturally finding life rather harder, we once talked about what it felt like to know he would probably die in the next few years. He said, "It would be a relief". He was always a most philosophical man, who hardly ever complained about anything, but he felt that life could only get more difficult and he might have to give up his independence. He died the next year, just died, still without being ill. Going round the supermarket one day, dead the next. Death is not always the worst option. There was absolutely nothing to be sad about. He was a lucky man.

This post in no way ranks up there as a huge challenge or a major upset, and I am surprised to find myself here as a genuine poster (rather than a wellwisher), but I think it's home is here all the same.

Yesterday I had an all day rehearsal, and just couldn't 'get into' playing.  Normally, even if I'm a bit out of practice, something will just click after an hour or so.  But not yesterday - just 7 hours of feeling mediocre.  I don't want to be mediocre.  And I left the rehearsal wondering why I played the violin.

That then led to me wondering, on the train home, why I did anything.  I love gardening, but I'm not great at it and couldn't earn a living doing it.  Same goes for cooking.  And probably the same for writing - although that's a bit different.  I feel I could be really good at it, but I need to give myself the time to practise writing.  And that discipline is something I struggle with - which got me a bit glum.  I regretted wasting my life so far.

And then, when I put my head on my pillow, my mind decided to remind me of all the embarrassing moments of my life.  All the times I cringe to remember.  All the things that make me hate myself.  Right from the time when aged 7 on holiday in France I got overexcited about the waiter asking my Dad if he wanted Heineken or Stella because I liked the idea of a beer that reached the parts others didn't and received a disdainful look as he chose Stella, to the way I treated girlfriends at college, to things I said about a violinist on a music course (who I greatly envied) to her admirers which were irrelevant but hurtful, to the times I've insulted people unintentionally by careless use of words or jokes, to .... well there's lots more...

I don't feel I got control of myself until late in life - at least until about 5 years ago.  And I still catch myself making mistakes and grimacing about them.  So, for my brain to drag them up again meant I was awake all night.

So I've had a thoroughly miserable 36 hours or so.  I'm OK-ish now, and will just get on with things - including violin, gardening, cookery, writing, and the day job.  I just do want to say "Sorry" though.  Many of the people I need to say sorry to have gone now - either no longer with us, or I'm no longer in contact with them.  But if I have ever upset anyone here (whether as a poster, if we have met in a different life, or imagined), I'm sorry to you guys too.

One thing that would help me is knowing whether or not I am alone.  Does anyone else get crippled by guilt?  Even by the smallest things from your past?  Has anyone learned how to let go if there's no one to apologise to?

Thanks

Tommo

Nope, Tommo, you are not alone. That business of all the stupidities, embarrassments, small unkindnesses, failures to help when you could have, misunderstandings, acts of selfishness... all parading past one by one to be re-experienced and re-regretted is very, very familiar. You've described it perfectly.

And nope, I'm afraid I haven't found any way of stopping the endless parade. It's Richard III Act 5 Scene 5 most nights.

Chaps, thank you

Three of you in such a short space of time does help me realise that being consumed by guilt (maybe crippled is a bit far, Ollie, you're right) is thankfully not something confined to me.  Which does really help to share the burden.  (And I promise I won't feel guilty about being glad other people have the problem too.   I actually feel OK about discovering I have shared experiences with others, even if I wouldn't wish them on anyone.)


I'll try to bear this in mind, although my little demon is saying that in my case it just means all the people I meet are nicer than I am.  In case it doesn't work, thanks for the manly slap and beer.

Best wishes all

Tommo