I think its important to care about people. It means a lot to me. Empathy is important too. Trying to understand where people come from. Sometimes people are hard to get, they don’t make sense. But I still think you have to care.
Compassion is key to that, seeing the problems people are suffering and trying to get to the bottom of why it’s happening. Not blaming them for how their lives are turning out.
I know I cannot aways help people. It’s so hard to explain what I mean. But if you put yourself in their shoes at least there is a chance you can understand their motivations.
I hate rhetoric that describes people in a bad way and that creates a feeling of us and them. It is just a way to divide and conquer. In the modern world there seems to be such a blame culture, where compassionate thoughts could make things better for everyone?
I know I’m an idealist and most readers will find my thoughts wishy washy and weak. But it’s ingrained into me. I make no apologies for it.
I think I’ve always cared about people. My mom used to say I had a soft heart. I like films that you would class as weepies, ones that bought a tear to your eyes. I’d sit on the sofa with my mom and have a good cry.
So I’m motivated to try and support people. I wonder if that is just a perpetuation of a female role model ? It certainly was pushed when we had our careers guidance. It was suggested I went into nursing, I which didn’t set well. Why not a doctor? Anyway by then my motivation had changed. I wanted to be an artist, and for forty years I’ve pursued that role. Not to be famous. Not to make money, but to create art (and care about people).
Gratitude is something I’m trying to find every day. Three little things that I can write even if it’s been a bad day? Things like being stuck in traffic but someone let me out at a junction. I went to an art meeting today and people appreciated what I was saying, and I’ve trained my cat to jump up on my knee when I whistle him so he can have a love. That’s the little light in the dark tunnel. A spark that makes me feel a bit better. I’ll take that. X
Once I had a drawing (this took thirty minutes), I played with different filters to create different effects. This was using the negative filter on my phone. I have so many sketches and sketch books that I think I ought to store together. I also have thousands of photos on my phone. It’s a way of keeping memories and meaning. But sometimes the photos you really want are the ones you never remembered to tske…
This is a photo I digitally played with a few months ago. It sums up how I feel at the moment. I do not want to feel like this, honestly.
It’s hard to be positive at the moment, but I am trying. I am still writing three gratitudes a day and they are helping. If you try and think of three small things that give you a little boost each day it seems to lift your spirits slightly. So I’m on day fifty of them. It’s not a solution to the blues, but it does seem to help me.
Today I had a bad time, a bad hour. I started crying then shouting in anger. I have a song running through my head, the words ‘crying over you’, a sad piece of music. I looked it up it was ‘crying’ by Don McLean…
Cried a lot as I listened to the song, it’s not about death, but the chorus gets to me. It releases a lot of emotions. It’s a couple of hours later and I feel a little better.