Filed under: Parents, Relationships, Single life | Tags: award, blog, compatible, complaint, grandfather, house, hugh laurie, misery, sugar
I’m alone. For the first time in weeks, it seems. My Grandfather is returning to his native Dublin tomorrow, which means my stint as best friend/carer has come to an end. I’m sad to see him go, but thrilled to know that the next few days are mine, and mine alone.
We’re incredibly compatible for an 81 year old man and his 24 year old granddaughter. We have similar tastes in literature, a common disinterest in TV, a shared love of travel and an emphatic hatred of Bono. He would be a wonderful companion if it wasn’t for his negativity. Maybe he’s entitled to a degree of cynicism after eight decades of life on earth, but there’s only so much criticism I can bear listening to on any given day.
Today, lunch was too big. Portion sizes, everywhere in Ireland, are too large. He finished his meal regardless. The tea was cold, after adding milk to it and leaving it sitting on the table for twenty minutes. Lukewarm. This was mentioned a few times throughout the day, until he had a hot cup of tea in my house to satisfy his craving. We had coffee in a nearby hotel with my parents. His hot chocolate was too frothy, and too chocolaty. He ate three lumps of brown sugar (the snazzy ones, crystallised and attached to a little stick to be melted into coffee at your convenience) and two slices of cake, then complained that he was over-full.
He made a remark a few years ago that has stayed with me since. He believes that some people are lucky enough to be constitutionally happy, and others aren’t. Happiness, to him, seems unobtainable, alien. I admit to a few years of feeling the same way, and I wish I knew what changed. As far as I can see now, happiness is a choice. You can let yourself see the beauty of the world around you, or you can ignore it and hold onto the misery you’re bound to experience.
How do you teach an elderly man that the world is bursting with goodness?
In other happy-making news, the lovely SSG has listed me as deserving of this:
The Rules:
1. Post the award on your blog.
2. Pass the award on to five more other bloggers.
3. Post these rules for your recipients.
The nicest thing about an award like this? That lovely sense of community. The realisation that there are other people out there who spend as much time as I do, sitting on their couches with their laptops on their knees, sharing their thoughts with the world and commenting on mine. Thank you, SSG.
I read a lot of blogs. When I find a blog I love, I’ll happily spend hours reading backwards through the posts, clicking every link available. I’m nosy like that. Here are the five I love the most:
22 Words – because this man gets to the point with 22 words or less. He loses me a little with the God stuff, but I’m okay with that.
The Northern Belle – for her honest coverage of her relationship, her wardrobe and her cellulite.
A Free Man- completely loses me with the sport bits, but that can be fogiven due to his otherwise humourous and insightful commentary of everyday things like parents and angry birds.
I have two guilty pleasures at the moment – blogs I read for the sake of keeping in touch with my wild side, which has been keeping its head down lately. These are Sequins and Glitter and Y Tu Hermano Tambien. You know you want to.
Time to rustle up some food and get stuck into House. Quality time with Hugh Laurie before the weekend ends!
Misery. It’s been on my mind.
We all know someone who loves to wallow in their own sadness, whose home is like a cave of despair, whose only joy in life is the gossip generated by their melodrama. Who loves being sick, and has a special sick voice that’s taken out once a month and accompanied by some sick clothes and paraded around the house like an homage to illness and gloom. Who is constantly struggling with some huge difficulty of a completely unsolveable nature.
And we all know someone who is the total opposite – who reports good news regardless of what they’re dealing with, who sees every problem as a challenge, every failure as a motivation to succeed. Who is a joy to be around, who brings smiles to the faces of others, who loves life with every cheerful atom of their being.
The thing is, there’s no difference between a sad person’s life and a happy one’s. The only difference is their attitude. There’s no difference between a ‘good’ day and a ‘bad’ one – it’s just a matter of how you look at it. Embrace the day. Live the moment. Carpe diem, and all that jazz.
To put it simply… if you love the world, it will love you back.
