{Insightful Sunday} Perspective.

Whilst in Rome, I had a conversation with a friend about money, that really made me think a lot about the difference between knowing your truths & living them.  Over the past few months, I feel as though I've had a lot of conflicts with people & perhaps myself, over money.  Let's face it, it's always a touchy subject, especially between friends & family.  I think the fact that everyone takes such a different stance on how they view money & equally how they spend it, that conflicts just naturally occur.

Discussing the matter with the Swede, before I left for Rome, he said "it's called currency for a reason." Something that stuck with me, because he was right, it is & it should naturally flow in & out.  I mean, if we think back a few centuries, to when life was a little simpler & we were exchanging chickens for chairs, or gold for armour, the introduction of an actual currency was still only intended as another bartering tool.  Yet, why in this day & age are we so afraid to exchange our chickens?  Instead storing them up, like we're facing the apocalypse.

Are we so afraid that if we spend what we have, we won't ever have more.  That something bad might occur & we'll end up destitute.  As a western civilisation, our concept of poverty is if we don't have the best car, or the latest Playstation game, our wardrobe isn't 'on trend' enough, our TV is too small, or we can't eat out every week.  Yet, putting things into perspective, isn't real poverty when you don't have shelter, you can't afford to feed yourself or your family & your children are dying because you can't access proper medical care?

We're rich in so much, yet so poor in appreciation & perhaps perspective.  Unable to grasp that the worst case scenario is still pretty good, in comparison with someone else's actual reality.  Admittedly, even I myself have been guilty of being impatient & greedy, in my lack of overall perspective.  Flicking through the pages of Vogue, or skimming through my Instagram newsfeed, finding myself sucked in & feeling forlorn & sorry for myself that I don't have everything I want.  Yet when I look around & see that I actually have so much, I realise I'm taking things for granted.

I have wonderful friends who love & support me.  I have a roof over my head & somewhere to sleep every night, again, thanks solely to friendship.  I am able to afford to feed myself, to do yoga every day & the freedom to follow my dreams & travel.  I even had the great fortune of inheriting a bicycle, which means I can get around town easily & for free.  In truth, all my needs are met.  Okay, I don't currently have the security of a fixed income.  I don't have a place of my own.  I don't even have a bed, but honestly, in truth, what does that even matter.  When I realise what I do have, I realise how fortunate I am & this makes me very thankful.

Sometimes, even with a fixed income, I find that some people struggle with their heap.  Yet, I think, if we hold onto money, if we fear letting it go, constantly striving to earn more, only to fear spending it, then really, we're misunderstanding its true intention.  It's a circulatory system after all.  You earn, you spend, you earn some more & round goes the economy.  If you hold onto it, what good is it to you, other than the numbers increasing on your statement.  Buy what you need, love what you have, don't be afraid to treat yourself.  Enjoy it, or don't waste your precious time & effort struggling to earn it.  At the end of he day, what are you afraid of?  What's the worst case scenario?

Of course, it can be hard to accept letting money go, when you don't necessarily have the guarantee of it coming back in, but sometimes you just have to have a little faith.  Do I feel a wave of anxiety sometimes, when I have to shell out for something?  Damn straight.  Now & then I have a little internal meltdown, panicking about the what ifs, then I take a moment to really think about my worst case scenario & honestly, it's not that ugly.  So I pay out, I buy the organic groceries, I feed myself, I let go & trust, because ultimately, I know my truths & I'm starting to make sure I live them.

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{Lately on Instagram}

Man does time fly these days!  It was only Monday that I said goodbye to everyone in Rome & flew back home to Berlin.  The past six days have been filled with daily cycles to & from yoga class in the summer heat, nibbling on yummy chocolate delights at Markthallen Nuen, finally treating myself to a manicure, after a year of grubby nails, making delicious homemade roasted veg soup with the Swede, exploring our Wedding neighbourhood & finding a stunning rose garden just round the corner!

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Let live & let go.

Getting back to Berlin has been most cleansing.  Not least because I have returned to yoga, cycling & clean eating, as well as sticking to my T-total ways, but also because, I've made peace with myself, in terms of the relationships I have with others.  Namely, men.

After writing my second resolution a few weeks ago, about recognising my ghosts, as if by universal attraction, I found myself immediately afterwards, dealing with exactly that; my relationship ghosts.  Beard was suddenly offering to come visit me in Berlin for my birthday & the Rabbi was being his usual mystical elusive self, both sending me into a frenzy of anxiety & elation, all at the same time.

Just as I was about to be entirely seduced into this destructive behaviour of absorption, I snapped out of the haze, took a step out of the situation, looked at it from another angle & realised, the issue isn't them, or their behaviour towards me, it's my tolerating it that's the problem.  That's when I realised, this was the real ghost & it was this that needed the vanquishing.

In the same sense of recognising that what we seek in others, is really what we need to fulfil within ourselves, equally so, the issues that arise in our relationships with others, are merely representations of our own issues.  We unwittingly project onto others, that which we struggle with ourselves.  So it was time for me to stop questioning their behaviour & take a look at my own.

What was it that I was struggling with, that I felt the need to cast upon them.  Validation would most likely be one thing.  Recognising my own lack of self-worth at times.  Perhaps their lack of commitment.  Yet, I already know what I want, so in essence, why am I not committing to that & instead, expending so much energy & effort into things I know won't satiate me long term.

Communication.  Am I clearly communicating my thoughts & feelings with others.  Maybe not.  Honesty.  Maybe I'm the one not being honest enough with myself about things.  Cracking down on the real issues, made me almost feel stupid that I allowed myself to get so constricted by these seemingly toxic relationships, but equally it completely freed me of them.

Of course some things in life are worth fighting for, but others, well, let's just say, we live it, then we let it go & right now, I'm all for letting go.  Ultimately, the right people come into your life at the right time.  Some stay for a brief interlude & others for the long haul.  Regardless of the duration, you always teach each other something along the way.  I'd like to think, I've finally learnt something & I truly feel as though I'm not haunted anymore.

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

— Rumi

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