wintering - katherine may
In the depths of our winters, we are all wolfish: we want in the archaic sense of the word, as if we are lacking something and need to absorb it in order to be whole again. These wants are often astonishingly inaccurate: drugs and alcohol that poison instead of reintegrate; relationships with people who do not make us feel safe or loved; objects
... See moreGhosts may be a part of the terror of Hallow-een, but our love of ghost stories betrays a far more fragile desire: that we do not fade so easily from this life. We spend a lot of time talking about leaving a legacy in this world, grand or small, financial or rep-utational, so that we won't be forgotten. But ghost stories show us a different
... See moreIn twenty-first-century Britain, we've linked singing with talent, and we've got that fundamentally wrong. The right to sing is an absolute, regardless of how it sounds to the outside world. We sing because we must. We sing because it fills our lungs with nourishing air, and lets our heart soar with the notes we let out. We sing because it allows
... See moreI had no idea how much these quiet pleasures had retreated from my life while I was rushing around, and now I'm inviting them back in: still, rhythmic work with the hands, the kind of light concentration that allows you to dream, and the sense of a kindness done in the process. I make gingerbread men with Bert and find myself taking excessive care
... See moreSome people thrive on a little sleep deprivation, but I do not. I now know that I can achieve far more after nine hours than I can in the spare time afforded by a short night. Sleeping is my sanity, my luxury, my addiction. …
And winter sleeps are the best. I like my duvet thick and my bedroom cold, so that I have a chill to snuggle against. Unlike
... See moreI'm beginning to think that unhappiness is one of the simple things in life: a pure, basic emotion to be respected, if not savoured. I would never dream of suggesting that we should wallow in misery, or shrink from doing everything we can to alleviate it; but I do think it's instructive. After all, unhappiness has a function: it tells us that
... See more‘We like to imagine that it's possible for life to be one eternal summer, and that we have uniquely failed to achieve that for ourselves, We dream of an equatorial habitat, forever close to the sun; an endless, unvarying high season. But life's not like that. Emotionally, we're prone to stifling summers and low, dark winters, to sudden drops in
... See moreHalloween is no longer a time for remembrance, but it still reveals our need to enter liminal spaces: those moments when we're standing on the breach of fear and delight, and those times when we wish that the veil between the living and the dead would lift for a while. But most of all, it hints at the winter to come, opening the door to the dark
... See moreI didn't feel that the two should be in conflict - achieving your potential, and not being completely miserable. Happiness is the greatest skill we'll ever learn; it is not a part of ourselves that should be hived off into a dark corner, the shameful territory of the wilfully naive.
Happiness is our potential, the product of a mind that's allowed to
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