Egg on my Face

 I’m not telling you anything when I say life is a series of battles we have with ourselves, interrupted by the battles we have with other people. Sometimes these battles with other folk can seriously interfere with the important stuff of life. Ok, let’s be honest,  modern existence is so pressured and crowded that we hardly have any time to reflect on anything let alone ourselves .

If I had the definitive answer to life I would either be talking to you from a yacht moored off Goa or living in a cave somewhere in the mountains of a hot region: actually, I’m doing neither.However. one thing I do know is  loving someone empowers them and doubting the same person eats at their confidence. This begins with ourself. How many times do we see someone doing a job which we can clearly see is well below their abilities. We are puzzled but the answer in that we see something in them that they don’t see themselves. Believing in ourselves is one of our primary goals, but few achieve it.

The lucky ones are those whose parents or support network believe in them without question. For the rest of us, we are left picking up the pieces from a fractured childhood or living off the scraps of appreciation we find within our flawed circumstances. I always think, that in some ways life is like the march of refugees. Amnesia means that we can’t quite remember what we are fleeing from and lack of vision clouds our destination. In this muddled and imperfect progress we look to each other to make the journey more bearable, or even rewarding.

 Few will doubt this, but being the imperfect beings that we are, we fail to act on it in our everyday life. It seems easier to write someone off than spend your precious energy looking for the special and unique within in them. In truth, however, if we don’t make some difference to their sense of life then they will affect ours. All the short-term answers have some truth. “I’ve done my best”, “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sows ear” etc  but the finale truth is the less light we shine on the world the darker it will be. In dealing with my problems, I try to approach them with dignity and an awareness of others. I am not always succesful

Talking of dignity, my partner read some health magazine this morning and , as a result, is sitting in the bath listening to her favourite music and covered in various life changing potions. I was rash enough to go in and ask if she had everything she needed. Smiling at me, she said she had egg on her face.! ( apparently some cleaning thing made with egg, sugar and honey). Anyway, she said she thought I needed some. I struggled desperately to avoid my fate but, sure enough. I really am sitting here with egg on my face. Now what kind of metaphor can that suggest

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