Geneva

The unexpected surprise of an early morning

Standard

“Morning is wonderful. It’s only drawback is that is comes at such an inconvenient time of day.” – Glen Cook, Sweet Silver Blues

Generally I’m not a morning person and I usually like to start my weekends in a lazy fashion, with a bit of a lie-in and then lounging around over a leisurely breakfast watching some sort of trashy tv (and since Netflix is now available in Switzerland a whole new world of trashy options has been opened up for me – hellooo Gossip Girl!).

But this Sunday I had to come into work for an important meeting, which takes place every six months and always involves at least one day’s work over the weekend. This involves not only getting up earlier than I would usually do on a weekend but actually getting up earlier than I would usually do if I were going to work, which for a non-morning person comes as a bit of a shock.

So last Sunday morning my alarm went off far too early and I bumbled around the flat with bleary-eyes, trying to find my toothbrush (charging in the kitchen) and keys (eventually located in another work bag) so that I could actually get out of the flat, without having to climb out the window, with reasonably fresh breath.

Finally, I was ready to leave, but still in plenty of time despite the minor setbacks, as I got up extra extra early (for me). It’s an important meeting and I didn’t really want to leave anything to chance so I factored in time for the toothbrush tracking, key-locating and about 10 other potential mini-mishaps.

Venturing out of the flat I released my bike from it’s cave* to ride to work in the early morning light.

Riding my bike to work is one of my favourite moments of every working day. There is something incredibly liberating about riding a bike, especially when it comes with the added bonus of the smug awareness that it’ll get me to work faster than the bus.

Actually let me just amend that. There is something incredibly liberating about riding a bike in a bike-friendly city like Geneva, which has on the whole been a positive experience (aside from one minor, albeit expensive, brush in with the law for running a red light see ‘Daring to dare but don’t dare to run a red light’). Cycling in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, was liberating but more in the sense of an almost-liberating-myself-from-the-land-of-the-living, dicing-with-death, experience navigating a treacherous path amongst trucks, jeeps and tuk-tuks loaded up with people and produce, who may or may not have been driving on their designated side of the road, if on the road at all. 

But riding to work on a Sunday morning in Geneva, with barely a whisper of traffic, was an entirely pleasurable experience. Whizzing through the almost deserted streets felt kind of magical. There is something rather wonderful in knowing that you are awake and active when most people aren’t. And being up and about, on my way to an important meeting, hours earlier than I would probably even have woken up under more typical Sunday circumstances, felt like something to be proud of in itself. It was an unexpectedly enchanting way to start the day.

When I was studying for my law diploma in London, exams would happen once every three months on a Saturday morning and every time I would experience this same strange sensation. The heart pumping from the adrenaline needed to accomplish an upcoming event (then the exams, Sunday pulling off the meeting without a hitch), added to the buzz of being almost alone in a normally busy town (and not just for the opportunity it afforded to pretend a zombie apocalypse is underway) topped off with the somewhat conceited self-satisfaction of knowing that by the time I’d normally be ready to face the world, I’ll already have achieved something.

I’d like to say that I’ll repeat the experience voluntarily by setting my alarm for 6am on Saturday to go for an early morning run and revive the mystical circumstances. But…But…But I don’t think you can force these things… and I wouldn’t want to disturb the cats…and I would probably do myself some sort of an injury setting off at that time. And any number of other excuses to explain the fact I just don’t want to.

Magical morning experience over mooching about until noon? I’ll take the mooching thanks. I already admitted I wasn’t a morning person.

* I really love that in Geneva cellars/garage/general storage-holes are referred to as caves.

Unstuck in time

Standard
This week I have been trying to plan a number of international calls for my boss. I have a useful device on my computer where I can easily compare the times of our office with those he regularly connects with around the world. So usually this is pretty straight forward, except that I have been trying to coordinate calls that will happen after the clocks have changed in Geneva. In some countries clocks don’t change at all and in others they don’t change when ours do. And for some reason trying to figure this out makes my brain bleed.
I can check a hundred times that in a particular week Geneva will be an additional hour ahead of New York but when I look at the time scroller I can’t compute the adding on of that extra hour and have to start again. It’s like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face and I can’t get it to slow down enough for me to figure it out.
P1000461The concept of time is a strange thing and I’m not 100% sure that I believe in it as I am supposed to. A month or two back we read Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘Slaughterhouse-Five’ for book club. The book is told in a non linear fashion and centres around the character of Billy Pilgrim who becomes ‘unstuck in time’.
I read the book and listened to the club debate whether it should be classified as science fiction, whether Billy should be considered to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or whether the unsticking in time is simply an old man reminiscing. Being the somewhat simple person that I am I read it and just accepted the time travel as a perfectly normal aspect of the narrative.
To be honest it kind of made sense. I think I know that time moves in a regimented, chronological, one-minute-follows-another-minute sort of way, but that’s not how we experience it. So I wonder if the concept of time that I think I know is just one version of the reality of this?
I’ve been experiencing déjà vu quite a lot recently, that sense of half-remembered names and faces that I’ve already encountered some time ago. I looked online and found a lot of simple(ish) scientific explanations for déjà vu. But what if the explanation is even simpler, a moment or experience feels familiar because you actually have seen or experienced it before at another time?
Perhaps time is much more like a wheel within a wheel than the straight line we think, and every so often whilst spinning around one wheel we might get teeny glimpses of something that’s on another wheel we aren’t supposed to be circling yet? Like the fleeting moment of identifying a face in the crowd when on a ride at a fairground before the image is snatched away.
When they first turned on the large hadron collider at CERN, which I visited last weekend, there were fears that it would create a black hole and destroy life as we know it. The scientists involved said that was ridiculous and wouldn’t happen but when asked what would be the outcome of their work they didn’t, and still really don’t, know what the effects might be. Nerds (myself included) across the world are mostly keeping our fingers crossed for the coolest possible scientific outcome, that is to say time travel.
LHCbI like time travel stories and the fiancé and I have just decided to start watching all the rebooted Doctor Who (from 2005) from episode one, series one. I love the show but it always leaves me with a lot of questions.
Like how is anything ever a surprise for the Doctor? For example when he meets a potential new companion, how does he not instantly recognize them from future memories? When he’s in a sticky situation why can he never remember how to get out of it? And also, why are his companions always pretty young women? My constant questions become words that jangle in my head and are probably evidence of my tendency to over-think things rather than just go with the flow but the whole concept of time travel is just a circle in a spiral that keeps on spinning!
The idea of being able to visit different ages and different periods in history is definitely appealing. I’m pretty sure I’d make an excellent Tudor and would obviously love to see if hover cars ever do become the reality futuristic films promise.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERABut if you had the ability to time travel would you be able to avoid the temptation to visit your own history? If you could change the things you are not proud of or glimpse into the future to see what happens, would you? And if you could time travel and could make the odd adjustment here and there would this change who you are? If you knew your future would you experience your life differently?
And if time isn’t altered so easily and isn’t so much a line as a circle would we, like Billy Pilgrim, live our lives on a constant loop, that never really ends or begins but rather lurches from one key moment to another? Would life become a trap, a nightmarish existence of endlessly reliving every moment?
Would I at least be able to figure out what time zones Geneva and connecting cities are in, relying on future successes, or would I have to experience the pain of figuring this out for an eternity?

10 reasons not to be afraid of feminism

Standard

“I call myself a feminist. Isn’t that what you call someone who fights for women’s rights?” – The Dalai Lama

“We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back” – Malala Yousafzai

Feminism seems to be something that sparks a lot of heated debate although I’m not really sure why as essentially it’s just about equality between men and women and I think that’s hard to argue against. But to help clarify things I thought I’d present ten reasons why people don’t need to be afraid of feminism.

1. Not all words ending in -ism are bad

Yes ‘Nazism’, ‘Stalinism’ and ‘terrorism’ are definitely some bad -isms but this doesn’t make all words ending in -ism are inherently evil. If you do google-search for words ending in ‘ism’ you will probably find more rubbish examples than good ones, but without ‘ism’ we couldn’t have ‘heroism’ or ‘idealism’. Heroism (art by B. Potts)

2. Feminism remains necessary as people are still treated differently because of their gender

Even just looking at things from a Western perspective although women may have equality in theory it doesn’t always amount to equality in practice. I could go on about female representation in public spheres like the government, legislature and judiciary but that would probably add another thousand words to this post so I’ll just invite you to check out Laura Bates’s everyday sexism project to get an idea of why feminism is still required in the so-called developed world. Every woman I’ve spoken to about this has at least one story of when they have been made to feel uncomfortable by a man in a way that wouldn’t have happened had they not been a woman.

Some men, and definitely not all, because most men I know wouldn’t dream of behaving in this way, but some men think it’s alright to objectify women, to grab their bottoms, to shout obscenities at them from moving vehicles, to comment on their tits and genuinely treat them as objects for their amusement. I suspect that some of the men that do this would actually be quite shocked by how much this sort of thing can really get under a person’s skin and make us feel uncomfortable. So a comment on our booty might be meant kindly but please forgive us if we react badly, from our experiences of this sort of thing happening quite frequently we are likely to be more sensitive about these things and, perhaps not wholly surprisingly, we will take personal comments well… personally.

This kind of unwanted attention is more likely to happen to women but yes this does also happen to men. Behaviour that intimidates, harasses or upsets anyone in this way, whatever gender they are, isn’t acceptable.

3. Feminism isn’t about hating-men

Being a feminist doesn’t mean you hate men. It’s not like racism (another bad -ism) where you want to assert the superiority of one kind of person over another, so being a feminist doesn’t mean you believe in female superiority and eagerly await the subjugation of all men to the complete domination of women.

Alright some people who call themselves feminists might want that but they have sort of missed the point and shouldn’t be considered representative of all feminists. Feminism is actually about wanting gender equality for both men and women.

Men hating (art by B Potts)

4. Feminism doesn’t mean all men are rapists

Feminism often focuses on rape because this is a problem, it happens far too frequently, often goes unreported or isn’t always taken as seriously as it should be. Feminists highlight the dangers of rape because it’s a terrible thing no-one should have to experience, it doesn’t mean feminists think every man is a rapist.

A bit of a tangent about the nail varnish thing…

There was a bit of fuss recently after some chaps invented a nail polish that changed colour when dipped in a drink that had been spiked. At first everyone thought this was great because helping people not be raped is surely a good thing. Then there was a bit of a backlash from some of the angry feminists types who tend to put people off the whole thing, who were getting up in the grill of the inventors faces and saying things like ‘how dare you assume rape is just women’ and ‘why should the onus be on women not to get raped, why not figure out how to stop people thinking rape is okay’.

I would like to respond to these two points. Firstly why assume men wouldn’t wear nail varnish and even if they don’t want to that doesn’t stop this being useful. If you discovered a cure for cancer that could only help ginger-haired people but couldn’t cure cancer for everyone it’d be pretty dastardly to say to ginger-haired people sorry you can’t have this until we’ve figured out a fix for everyone.

To the second argument it’s not like the inventors were saying ‘hey it’s okay to rape anyone who doesn’t use our nail varnish’ it’s simply that they thought they could do something to address a serious problem which sadly exists in the actual world we live in as opposed to the utopia we’d all like where rape doesn’t happen. Saying the inventors of rape-deterrent nail varnish are saying it’s up to women not to get raped is like saying I should be able to leave my bike unlocked in Geneva outside without anyone taking it. Yes I should be able to leave my bike unlocked because stealing my bike would be wrong. However as some people would steal my bike whether or not I think it’s wrong I’m grateful someone invented bike locks.

5. Admitting a need for feminism doesn’t mean pretending there are no other problems in the world

Sexism happens. It’s not the only awful thing that happens in the world. However the existence of other terrible things doesn’t mean sexism doesn’t exist and that it isn’t a problem that shouldn’t be addressed. It’s not a competition, it’s just about trying to improve the world in whatever way we can.

Feminism is about addressing discrepancies between genders and achieving real gender equality will help some people. It won’t solve poverty, famine and disease. But we aren’t ranking these things. Otherwise we would all have to agree on the one most single awful thing in the world and say we can’t even consider other issues until this was resolved. It would be like saying the police shouldn’t investigate kidnap cases until all murder cases have been solved.

Sadly there are many bad things in the world, happily there are lots of good people that want to work in different ways to try and make things better.

6. Feminism doesn’t mean women can never wash, shave, put on nice clothes or make-up

Feminism means women are free to make a choice about whether they wash, choose to shave, what clothes they wear or whether they want to apply make-up, and that no-one should feel they have to do these things just for the benefit of someone else. Although, actually, all genders should try and wash occasionally, for the benefit of your fellow humans who otherwise have to smell you.

Just last night I was painting my nails whilst reading a book on women’s human rights. This doesn’t make me less of a woman or a rubbish feminist because first of all, it’s not an either/or situation and second of all, I believe it’s up to me to be a ‘woman’ in whatever way I choose. Sometimes that involves painting my nails, sometimes it involves bumming around in jogging bottoms all day. It’s my call.

Not washing (art by B Potts)

7. Feminism isn’t about denying bad things happen to men

Feminism is about levelling the current power imbalance between genders. It tends to focus on women because on the whole the power imbalance is against women. However it doesn’t mean denying that issues which more often affect women than men, also affect men and can be perpetrated by women.

For example there are serious issues about disbelief of male victims of rape or domestic abuse by people who don’t believe this could happen. This isn’t something to laugh off, it’s a serious issue and changing attitudes towards these victims is all part of feminism.

Someone suggested that feminism should be renamed equalism so as not to irritate people so much. I see their point in that feminism is really an issue of equality it’s just that if we don’t give it a gendered terminology then it wouldn’t necessarily be clear as to what feminism is about.

I’m a humanist in that I believe everyone should be treated equally regardless of gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, religion or any other category you want to throw in there. I’m also a feminist because feminism is addressing one of these areas of discrimination and if I say feminist then we all, more or less, know what I’m talking about.

8. Feminism doesn’t turn all women into victims

Feminism isn’t about the victimisation of women, it’s not about saying women can’t do anything for themselves and that they will always be oppressed by men. It’s about acknowledging there is a problem, raising awareness of the problem in the hope that it might affect change and ultimately working together towards a world where we can say feminism isn’t necessary any more. Feminism can actually be quite empowering by helping people of all genders to realise they shouldn’t have to put up with gender biased behaviour that demoralises and demeans them.

9. You don’t have to be a woman to be a feminist

As Emma Watson put it in her recent speech on feminism for the UN “Men – I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender equality is your issue too.” There are already a lot of pretty cool men who would identify themselves as feminists, including: Patrick Stewart, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ryan Gosling, Prince Harry and the Dalai Lama. 

As a lot of problems of the sort reported on everyday sexism stem from the way men treat women then actually we need more men to step up and make it clear that they think treating women as anything other than human beings is not okay. The more men there are acknowledging the need for gender equality the less feminism can be accused of being a vehicle for angry women to rant about pointless issues (which isn’t really what it’s about at all).

Equalism (art by B. Potts)

10. Feminists can take a joke

Some people think feminists can’t take a joke but that’s simply not true, provided your joke is funny. If your joke is highly sexualised about me and makes me and others in the vicinity uncomfortable, then it’s not really a joke. Jokes about rape are also never going to be funny, there’s a reason why people groan when such jokes are told and that’s because they are awful. Those telling them are going more for shock factor than comedic value and if that’s the best they’ve got in their comedic arsenal then maybe leave the joke telling to actually funny people or look up some new material online.

And one for luck…

11. You can still open a door for a woman without being anti-feminist

There’s no reason for common courtesy to go out of the window just because women want equality with men. No feminist is going to get mad because a man opens a door for her, just don’t get upset if a woman also wants to open a door for a man. You can still be nice to someone without trampling all over them and there’s no need to make this a gender thing. Surely it’s nice if you hold the door open for whoever is behind you or struggling with an armful of books or whatever, regardless of gender.

Opening door (art by B Potts)

The virtual unreality?

Standard

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” Albert Einstein.

A friend referred me to an article about a woman who spent three months convincing her friends and family that she was backpacking around Asia, when in fact she never actually left her apartment. She said that “My goal was to prove how common and easy it is to distort reality. I did this to show people that we filter and manipulate what we show on social media.”

What’s interesting about the story is not so much the deception of it all but the lack of shock that she could actually pull something like that off. How she did it seems pretty straightforward, why is perhaps another matter.

We all choose to present ourselves in a certain way and make umpteen decisions on how we do this on a daily basis without even thinking about it. For example, we choose what clothes we want to wear when we meet certain people, we retell an event a bit more vividly than we actually remember it or we engage in certain conversations to make a better connection with others. It’s not that we are necessarily misrepresenting ourselves so much as presenting one version of the reality that is us to an audience.

In the same way we might answer ‘I’m fine’ to the question ‘how are you?’ or smile for a photograph we know is being taken even when having a truly awful day. At these times we are more consciously presenting a slightly less genuine version of ourselves. So the idea that we twist the perception of the reality we present to others isn’t new. What is new is how much easier it is to do this on a much larger scale with the multitude of social media options available to us.

If you only took everyone at face value of their facebook pages you’d be led to believe that everyone is constantly experiencing a wealth of fantastic things from amazing parties to random items in supermarkets to adorable pet moments to amazing adventures.

What you don’t always get is that contrary to the smiling party pictures the happy-go-lucky attendee pictured were wishing she’d stayed at home to catch up on the latest Doctor Who. That the fascinatingly shaped carrot amongst the vegetables was the amusing perk of a long and tiring day and an hour trudging around the shops looking, and unable to find, the right kind of flour. That two seconds after the lovely cat photo was posted the owner then spent 40 minutes chasing said cat round the house to get it to give up the half dead mouse it had just brought in. That the amazing adventure mentioned is contrary to all those less than amazing non-adventures, that haven’t been shared as status posts, sat at home in front of the tv.

Not that I meant to say every happy image presented is a lie and secretly we all lead very miserable lives with no real joy to be found anywhere, my point is more that the moments we choose to share have been selected by us to present a certain impression. Not necessarily a happy impression, there’s many a ‘worst day ever’ tweet, but a somewhat distorted image of our reality.

Although most of us don’t go as far as faking an epic adventure abroad over a period of several months. Or do they…? Perhaps I never left London at all and am just hiding out in my Greenwich flat taking pictures of cows pretending they are special Swiss cows and photoshopping myself into pictures with mountains in the background hoping no-one has the geographical ability to identify the mountains pictured as Himalayas rather than Swiss Alps?

Swiss cows or just cows?

Swiss cows or just cows?

If we all know that social media is to be taken with a pinch of salt then it doesn’t really matter if we want to use it as an opportunity to present the kind of person we want everyone to think we are. If we accept that online updates are more qualified than absolute then there’s no real risk provided we make the time to scratch beneath the surface for those we really want to know. The problem is when we get lazy and become content with clicking a like button here and retweeting there without making a real effort to engage with those we care about.

I was talking to my other half the other night about the perils of social media. My argument was that as technology gets ever cleverer and makes our lives easier by doing so much for us including human interaction it may start taking away the humanity from us; in that the easier it becomes to communicate online the harder it is to do so off-line. He was proving my point somewhat, by flicking through various web pages on his tablet whilst trying to dispute this, but argued that social media and online communications were our reality now.

He gave several examples of real friendships he’d forged and maintained in the virtual universe that he was unlikely to have made otherwise, He also pointed out that when living away from many friends and family it’s pretty great that you can still feel connected to them and know what’s going on in people’s lives without having to always try and find time for a lengthy phone call. He also mentioned that without the wonders of modern day technology my blog wouldn’t exist.

I grudgingly had to admit he may have a point. Certainly, without the cyber-sphere my blog would be nothing more than an unread journal or an annoying round robin novel issued once a year at Christmas. So I guess the way we communicate and present ourselves online is a reality. Or at least a very persistent illusion.

The Blog Hop

Standard

I have been nominated to participate in a blog hop by WA Woman to World, which entails answering the questions below and then nominating two other blogs to share their responses.

Firstly, thanks Michelle for the nomination. I met Michelle at my very first Geneva International Book Club meeting. The club is a lovely(ish) group of people whose warm welcome to Geneva, where every comment is welcomed and valued if not necessarily agreed with, made me first feel at home in this strange city. And Michelle was one of the first people here in Geneva I really connected with. I was delighted to discover her blog and get to know her better through this medium as well as regular book club meets and to discover what a warm-hearted, funny and inspiring woman she really is. I loved her blog so much that it motivated me to start my own and her words of support were really encouraging.

What are you working on?

That really depends on how you want to define ‘work’. If we are going for the traditional sense in terms of societally-defined gainful employment for which I exchange skills for the money to pay rent and eat, then I am working for an international NGO for the advancement of human rights.

Human rights has been something I’ve been passionate about since we had a talk from a representative of Amnesty International when I was in secondary school. I felt a pull to do something about the global inequality where the rights I take for granted are denied to so many others. This started with my joining a local Amnesty group, later I undertook a Masters Degree in Human Rights, an internship with the Cambodian Centre of Human Rights followed in 2013 and now I’m here in Geneva hoping to put my organizational skills to use for something I care about.

In terms of the broader sense of ‘work’ well, I now have this blog but, my biggest non-work-work is ‘me’. It’s an ongoing project to try and be the best version of myself, not to let myself be held back by fears and to open myself up to new experiences whilst at the same time learn to appreciate the here and now. It’s an ambitious challenge I suspect won’t be finished anytime soon. At the moment, to provide slightly more specific examples, it includes learning French, enjoying a healthier version of me through improved diet and increased exercise, practicing drawing and trying not to be so darn addicted to social media apps on my phone and at work.

How does your work differ from others of its genre?

In terms of the blog writing, I wouldn’t say I have a unique voice or perspective, because I doubt whether there is any such thing as a truly original thought or piece of work. Even if you think you are being radically different from everyone else there are probably loads of other people with exactly the same idea, which may or may not have been put into practice or vocalised yet. Or perhaps I’m just not original enough to accept the concept of originality in others.

I started my blog thinking what I was saying was revolutionary, that no-one would have heard anything of the like before. I was quite astounded by the amount of people who came back to me saying this is exactly how they feel. At first I felt a little put out by that but actually I’ve realised how great this is and now I love the idea that through opening myself up on the blog others may find things they can relate to. Through doing my part to create a little interconnectivity I hope we can all feel a little less alone and a little stronger.

But even if we share the same ideas with others which ideas we have in common, how we voice these, how these affect us and shape our own understandings is unique to all of us. I’m trying to hold onto the thought that I am both nothing more than a snowflake in a blizzard and nothing less than a one of a kind snowflake. It’s a dizzying vertigo effect of trying to balance one’s own sense of self-importance with the realisation of one’s insignificance.*

Perhaps my work is different in not trying to be different and not really trying to be anything more nor anything less than mine? Or perhaps it’s the same as everyone else’s in this respect?

Why do you create what you do?

For some time I’ve thought there is a novel or two inside me but it occurred to me that I wouldn’t become a bestseller anytime soon unless maybe I started writing a bit more frequently. I then met a couple of inspirational bloggers and I thought I’d start my blog as a technical challenge to polish my writing skills. However I completely underestimated the effect that blogging would have on me and this developed into a passion in itself.

I wasn’t sure, and still aren’t, exactly where I wanted to go with the blog and what I wanted to say. But I did know that I wanted to write honestly about who I am and how I understand and interpret the world around me. Through trying to truthfully address my sense of self and then put it out there for others through this blog it’s actually helping me to understand myself better.

The concept of the blog was to spell out my life philosophy and how I’m applying that on a daily basis. Since starting the blog I discovered my philosophy isn’t as concrete as I had imagined and is constantly evolving, so this will continue to be something to work on.

How does your creative process work?

Deadlines are pretty essential to how I operate. I’m very good at wasting time and can spend whole weekends doing nothing more than flitting between television, books or perhaps having a little wander outside. I blame my dad, he is king of the procrastinators and passed that particular talent on to me.

So I imposed a weekly deadline on myself, which I’ve actually managed to stick to reasonably well, and try to avoid the trap of thinking ‘oh well it doesn’t matter this week’. I know that sort of thinking will be a slippery slope for me because if I start to make excuses it gets easier to keep on making excuses and before you know it months will have gone by without a single new post.

Knowing I have the weekly deadline means my inspiration drive is pretty much always whirring away in the background looking for ideas for the next post. Sometimes it’s obvious and I’ll see, experience or feel something that moves me to write and sometimes I have to work a bit harder to try and find anything worth expressing. I’m starting to develop a little store of rainy day blogging ideas to avoid moments of panic about what the heck I’m going to write about next, which has happened a few times.

Book club has also been a useful muse by pointing me towards reading books I wouldn’t have read otherwise, thinking about books in greater depth than I used to and most importantly from getting insights into others on how they have interpreted the same texts I’ve read. We all have the same material but our brains make quite different work of it, proving humans are pretty amazing and providing plenty of food for thought.

My nominees

I have chosen to nominate the blog ‘Lori and the Caravan.’ Lori is a truly inspirational person who is not afraid of a challenge and shares her experiences openly and honestly through her blog. Amongst other things she is a loving mother, a historical geek, a passionate vintage promoter, and, obviously a blogger. I worked with Lori in London and then our lives took us in different directions and we drifted, but I’ve been able to reconnect with her through her blog. You can also check out her shop and start thinking of little people you can buy Lori’s great vintage finds for.

My other nominee is the brilliantly insightful ‘Self-styled life’. This was one of the first blogs I discovered when I started my own blogging adventure and it really resonated with me. Despite the fact Jean and I have never met, live on different continents and have very different lives I have felt a connection with her through her writing. When first starting out it was really encouraging to find a blogger that could entertain and move me (my last blog post was directly inspired by one of hers). Her blog was the first stranger’s blog I dared to comment on and I have really appreciated her warm and thoughtful responses to my random comments. It’s nice to know the internet isn’t such a scary place full of trolls under every article.

*This is starting to sound either a bit profound or super self-indulgent and poncey, sorry if it’s the latter.

The fears we all share

Standard

“the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” Franklin D. Roosevelt 1933

“what you fear most of all is – fear. Very wise,” – Professor Lupin, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K.Rowling

This post is for anyone who has ever tried to face their fears, even if they haven’t always been able to overcome these, and for one particular friend whose constant attempts to combat her aviophobia has been truly inspirational.

We all fear different things, some of us fear snakes (ophidiophobia), some of us fear confined spaces (claustrophobia), and apparently some of us even fear beards (pogonophobia). My biggest fear is wasting my life (deficit-vivophobia?).

Much like Roosevelt and Professor Lupin said what my fear really comes down to is itself. I am afraid fear will stop me from living my life (see The Why), so to stop this paralysing me, when I know I’m scared of things I try to confront them.

For example, I used to be afraid of groups of young people (all that slang and acne is terrifying) so I volunteered for a youth project working with these very same frightening specimens and I actually quite enjoyed it.

I know that fears come in different shapes and sizes and for some they are much more debilitating than for others and I wouldn’t want to belittle that. For those people with genuine deep-seated phobias then facing those fears head on may not necessarily be the best course of action for you. Especially if your fear is of being run over by busy traffic.

Most phobias are things we acquire in life, whether consciously or subconsciously, and the only fears we are born with, that are innate to all human beings is that of loud noises (ligyrophobia) and that of falling (basophobia). Being a brave soul (pronounced ‘moron’ in some dialects) I have tackled both of these fears since my arrival in Geneva.

I took on the fear of falling by willingly agreeing to participate in a rope adventure course in the trees of Annecy (a lovely French town near Geneva) with a group of friends from work. I’m not ashamed to admit I was a little anxious. We all share this same fear of falling and chances of that fear being realised are somewhat increased if we choose to clamber about trees on unstable pieces of wood tied together with bits of string. But I thought about it sensibly and concluded that it would be bad publicity, and therefore not in the park’s interests, for its clientele to fall to their deaths, so I decided to trust in the harness, grips and cables to prevent my plummeting to the earth.

I can honestly say as I performed each task, varying in intensity and requiring an immense amount of concentration wobbling form one bit of wood to another, I utterly failed to enjoy each moment, but what made up for all this anxious manoeuvring was the adrenaline rush that kicked in after I landed on each secure platform in the trees.

Zipline!However it surprised me to discover that the zipline concluding each course was the biggest challenge I was to face throughout the day as I had anticipated this to be the most fun. What I hadn’t thought about was that you have to deliberately let yourself fall from a platform some 30 feet up.

Every fibre of my being was screaming DO NOT DO THIS, THIS IS A BAD IDEA but I thought if we can learn to be afraid of things we can also learn not to be afraid of things. I had my harness and as there wasn’t a pile of bruised and battered bodies on the ground below I decided I could trust in this and overcome the fear.

And actually the zip line was amazing, I really did enjoy the sensation of whizzing through the air suspended from a rope. The fear of falling wasn’t something I permanently overcame but I managed to overcome it enough when I needed to and to be able to enjoy that moment. I think that counts as a success.

The fear of loud noises I challenged by having a go at shooting real guns with live ammunition. I have tried shooting before, when I was in Cambodia, but that was quite a different experience where safety is barely a consideration as you are presented with a restaurant-style menu of guns to choose from at different costs and apparently if you really want to, and have $300 to spare, you can pay to blow up a live cow. I don’t want to kill things but I like shooting, I don’t believe the two have to go together.

In Geneva my shooting experience has been in a safe indoor environment with a trained firearms instructor drilling the importance of safety into me and without even the hint of an option of blowing up farmyard animals.

I like the psychology that’s involved with shooting. Most people when shooting for the first time recall their fear of loud noises that will come from the gun exploding. The result of this is an instinctive reaction to push the gun away from you and to close your eyes at the moment of pulling the trigger. This has the effect of forcing the gun down and results in shots falling below their intended target.

For the record not how you should hold the gun and definitely shouldn't have been allowed to take a photo whilst pointing a real gun at someone!

THE CAMBODIAN SHOOTING EXPERIENCE. For the record not how you should hold the gun and definitely shouldn’t have been allowed to take a photo whilst pointing a real gun at someone!

Part of the instruction is trying to overcome this fear and as the fear of loud noises is innate the best way to go about this is in trying to trick yourself so that your body doesn’t react until it is too late and the shot has already been fired. It is a wholly absorbing pastime as every shot requires an intense amount of concentration as you think about maintaining the correct position, lining up the sights and pulling the trigger very slowly (so the moment of explosion takes you by surprise).

Yes, every time the gun goes off and makes that loud noise it is startling but you learn to overcome this alarm so that you can make each shot and have the satisfaction from seeing yourself improve.

Fear is an involuntary reaction but it is, for the most part, if not exactly curable, at least controllable. We can challenge ourselves to face our fears and sometimes it can actually work out pretty well. If we cannot become fearless we can at least be courageous for as a great man once said:

‘I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid but he who conquers that fear.’ – Nelson Mandela

Unless that fear is spiders (arachnophobia), when I recommend leaving well alone until a bearded man removes it or a cat eats it. Unless you are also afraid of bearded men and cats, in which case maybe just running away as fast as possible is the solution.

The Still Life

Standard

Following on from my little self-discovery last week that I’m not overly great at living in the moment I thought I’d try and open myself up to some tasks that might force me to do just this.

So yesterday I participated in a life-drawing class where attendees take it in turns to pose for one another for 10-15 minutes stints whilst the others sketch them so that the group are provided with models to practice a bit of artwork. (In case you were wondering, no, this wasn’t nude life sketching.)

I used to love doing arty things when I was younger but one year of art A/S level at the age of 17 was enough to put me off it for almost a decade. I had thought that art would be a relaxing, or at least different way of engaging my brain, alternative when picking a-levels. A balance to the History, English Literature and Psychology I was also studying. But it was actually the most stressful of all these subjects as the workload was immense and I felt constrained by my teachers perspectives of what did and did not constitute art, in their narrowing definitions of uninspiring assignments.

Recently, however, I have been picking up the odd pencil, paintbrush and pritt-stick (after all, what’s art without a little cutting and sticking here and there) in attempts to make thoughtful presents for friends. For those unfortunate few with a Pottsy original art piece I can only apologise and hope that what I lack in skill I made up for in effort. And should that piece of art accidentally get lost in a house-move, randomly set-alight by art-hating anarchists who broke in or just be destroyed by the dog, I will understand.

However, having re-found my love of artistic endeavours, if not achievements, I thought perhaps I could attempt to actually improve my abilities. I don’t deny that a lot of artistic aptitude must come naturally to talented artists but it occurs to me that regular practice might help here as it does with so many other things in life, such as learning a language.

The life-drawing class afforded me that opportunity to practice. I wouldn’t have to spend hours pondering what I might draw, only to change my mind seventeen times as each sketch deviated further and further away from the vision I had. I would have to make a number of quick sketches of people. I wouldn’t have the problem of not knowing when to stop or how to start. Much like an exam, I’d simply have to get on with it once the clock started.

The fact we’d be sketching people, something I’d always tried to steer clear of even when I used to love art, added another element to the challenge and I was looking forward to* trying something new and opening myself up to the perceptions of others, both in how they drew me and what they thought of my attempts to draw them.

However, whilst I did want the chance to practice my sketching, what really motivated me to sign up for the event was the trial of having to sit still for 15 minutes with no distractions, when it became my turn to pose for the other students. No talking, no checking the latest facebook updates or emails, no reading a book, no televison, nothing, nada, rien. Just me, myself and I.

A drop in the oceanGranted 15 minutes isn’t actually a very long time but when sat in one position with nothing but my thoughts it seemed infinitely longer. I tried to think of meditational-ly things, thinking of myself as a star, unique but one of a multitude in the universe, or as a drop in the ocean. All the while focusing on a tiny patch of the floor, black and white speckles on the grey linoleum. When the specks started to blur and my eyes started swimming I thought I’d better change my tactic so I resorted to my usual strategy for passing the time in situations which make me slightly uncomfortable, like waiting for the tube on a crowded underground or having a massage. I started counting in French, slowly, to one hundred and then back again.

Before I knew it my time was up and I could move again, but actually although my thoughts, or rather my counting, may not have been the most profound they did root me to the moment and I was quite content, in a semi-trance like state, of just being. It was quite a calming experience.

The actual sketching highlighted the fact I need to practice more, but aside from this was, in a way, as meditative as the posing. Whilst there wasn’t time for profound thoughts about stars and oceans or even the Swiss French for the number 79, because time was so limited and concentration was so demanding, there wasn’t space for any other thoughts either. So the usual internal dialogue about what I’m doing with my life, what’s for dinner, does everyone at work secretly hate me was completely silenced.

Whizzing away on my bicycle at the end of the evening I felt a sense of tranquility that’s been absence of late. I can’t wait to go again.

* By looking forward to I mean in the abstract sense where I liked the idea when I signed up and it was too far on the horizon to actually be happening and then with every minute the actual event got closer the dread gripped tighter and tighter and I desperately willed a last-minute cancellation. I couldn’t just not show up that would be poor Glocals etiquette. (Glocals is a Geneva expat forum which, amongst other things, provides a space for organizing activities, where this particular event was listed. For friendless people new to the city it’s a treasure trove of ways to fill your time.)

The ambition to be human

Standard

“It comes to this,” Tarrou said almost casually; “what interests me is learning how to become a saint.”
…
“Perhaps,” the doctor answered. “But, you know, I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don’t really appeal to me, I imagine. What interests me is being a man.”

“Yes, we’re both after the same thing, but I’m less ambitious.”

– The Plague by Albert Camus

As promised to one brother I am returning this week to a less heavy-going, non-political, more happy-go-lightly post. This will probably disappoint my other brother but hey ho, you can’t keep all of the people happy all of the time.

This week in book club we were discussing Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, which led to a discussion about post traumatic stress disorder and then about why some people care more about certain things than others.

There was general acceptance amongst the group, perhaps more readily by some than others, that to shut oneself off from the traumas of the world is an essential human coping mechanism.

I agree it simply isn’t possible to constantly feel for all the tragedies that are enacted out across the globe at any given time. Right now, current tragedies include the two Malaysian passenger air line disasters: one missing one shot down; the Air Algerian plane crash; the situation in Syria; the fact that there are now estimated to be more refugees than at any other time in history; the situation in Gaza; the rise of Boko Haram and the missing schoolgirls abducted in Nigeria; travesties of democracy in Cambodia; and Isis’s latest announcement that FGM will be mandatory. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

There are simply too many awful things for us to focus on at any one time, even if we wanted to, and so we don’t.(Perhaps this post isn’t quite so happy-go-lucky as I had intended after all – sorry bro.)

One book clubber asked does it take a crisis to make us care? Certainly when a crisis takes place many people are great at demonstrating that they do care. When I was a student I worked at a call centre, which often volunteered to man donation phone lines in response to global disasters or for Comic Relief. I took donations from a wide range of individuals, from all walks of life, many of whom giving sums they couldn’t really afford precisely because they did care about what was happening and wanted to help. So people really are wonderful.

And some people dedicate their lives to making the world a better place for others, providing their time, money or skills for the benefit of others. These people are exceptional. These people are saints.

But it doesn’t make the rest of us bad people because we don’t dwell on these things all the time. Yes, there are many terrible things that happen but there are also many wonderful things that happen too and it is important, at times, to hold onto the horror and the beauty. But being able to enjoy life at the same moment in time that someone elsewhere isn’t enjoying life doesn’t make us the antithesis of saints. It makes us human.

If you are a dedicated fan of my blog (a.k.a. my mother) you will be aware that I called the blog fearofthereaper and started all this as part of an ongoing evaluation of how my life is progressing. More often than not my focus tends to be on positive things I have achieved to become the person I want to be, but it is also important to reflect, from time-to-time, on the things I’m less proud of and on the kind of person I do not want to be.

I do not have the ambition to be a saint, I do have the ambition to be a human. Like so many things in my life, this is something I have the power to realise.

Let me give you a recent example: I had just moved to a new area in Geneva, my French was worse than it is now (which still borders on Yoda-like gibberish) and I was walking to the nearest shopping centre when I walked past an elderly woman who called out to me in French.

Thoughts that ran through my head went something like this: oh no, a human being wants to interact with me and I’m not in the mood, she probably wants something of me that I don’t want to give, she might be selling magazine subscriptions, my language skills are so bad I probably won’t understand anyway, someone else is bound to help, not my responsibility.

And I carried on walking. After about 10 metres I turned to look back, saw no-one else had stopped but walked on a bit further. But then it hit me that I didn’t want to be the kind of person that would just ignore someone calling out to them and so I stopped pretending not to hear and turned around and walked back.

I understood enough French to feel guilty when she thanked me for coming to help her (guilty for not stopping straight away) and to understand what she wanted, which turned out to be directions to a place I didn’t know. So it turned out I couldn’t help her but I did wait until we could find someone who could at least speak to her intelligibly in her language and I did, eventually, try.

I believe all humans are capable of both wonderful and terrible things and the capacity for good and let’s not say evil but instead let’s say less-good is something that resides within all of us all of the time.

How much we are influenced by the good over the less-good depends on a lot of factors: what’s going on in our lives, how we are feeling, how others are treating us and so on. Often we can’t control these factors but we can control how we respond. This I think is what it means to be human, if we take being human as deciding to be the best version of ourselves that we can be.

 

The arrival of the fiancé!

Standard
Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.’ – Lao Tzu.
On Wednesday my fiancé came to Geneva. Not for a visit but to live. This isn’t a post about how my life is all sunshine and roses now that he’s here. Neither is it a post about mourning for the end of my Swiss bachelerotte days. If anything this post is a bit of a shoulder shrug to whatever it is I’m supposed to feel about all this.
I’m afraid I am not of the ‘You’re Nobody til Somebody Loves You’ philosophy (sorry Dean Martin). Nor do I believe that my fiancé completes me or that my life was somehow lacking until I met him. Don’t get me wrong having him to share my life with is great and he complements me in a way that has enriched my life, it just hasn’t made it ‘whole’.
What I love most about him (see I’m not so unsentimental I can’t use that word) is that he endorses the idea that it’s alright being me, because I’m alright as I am actually. I’m not a puzzle missing half the pieces that he gets to transform into the full picture.
And with the fiancé and the cats and the unpacked belongings in the new flat Geneva is starting to feel a bit more normal. But that feeling of normality is strange in itself. I’ve been here for over four months now but up until now it hasn’t really felt like I’ve lived here. I’ve worked, I’ve explored, I’ve tried new things and met new people but it has all felt a bit transitory. Now that he’s arrived the Geneva adventure has taken on more of a realistic tinge and has become that bit more ordinary.
People keep telling me it must be wonderful and so much better now he’s here. And it is but, if I’m honest, it is also going to take a bit of getting used to. I’ve had a fair few visitors since I’ve been here so I’m used to giving people my undivided attention and a glimpse of Geneva living. I’m also used to them going home after a few days. What I’m not used to is the constant presence of someone else sharing my life with me. Or more precisely this is what I’m no longer used to.
Screen Shot 2014-07-04 at 2.22.17 PMMe and the fella have been together for quite some time (seven years and counting). We’ve worked together, got cats together, lived together, been on holidays together, grown together and even managed to get engaged. It’s not like I’m not used to him its just that for the last four months we’ve been living completely separate existences that we’ve talked to each other about but haven’t shared in the same way.
He’s had to deal with all the realities of our upping sticks and moving to Geneva as I left in a bit of a flash and wasn’t able to help much in the wrapping up of our UK life. He had to move back in his with parents, sort the flat out for renters, notify relevant people/companies/etc. about leaving the country and finish up at work. I’ve had to carve out a new life for myself here, find a flat, find my way around, work out how the public transport works!
This rather special human being has enough faith in me to uproot his life entirely to take a chance on Geneva living with me. That’s a truly wonderful thing, it’s also pretty terrifying. It’s one thing taking chances and trying new challenges that just affect me, it’s quite another taking chances and trying new challenges with the responsibility that if it all goes pear-shaped it wont just be me that suffers the consequences.
Over the course of the seven plus years we’ve been together. We haven’t completed one another but have come to know each other well enough that we can both derive strength from the relationship and have courage to face challenges knowing that we’ve got a bit of reliable back-up in our corner.
He’s pretty good at encouraging me and giving me strength at those times when I’ve wanted to give up and go home. Also he has a marvelous ability to helpfully point out that we can’t go home as someone else lives there now.
Ultimately if Geneva turns out to be a massive disaster that will be on my head, although I can trust that he wont rub it in too much, but without him I don’t know if I’d have had the courage to try.

“Boldness has genius, power and magic in it”

Standard
“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always in effectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would otherwise never have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” Johan Wolfgang Van Goethe.
I stumbled across this quote in a book of my brother’s, shortly after breaking up with my then boyfriend, whilst I was in my final year at University. It had a power for me then so I wrote it down. Today I have been unpacking the last of my boxes and in a typical act of Pottsy procrastination, whereby I have been compelled to look at every item in detail rather than simply putting things away, I found the book and found the quote.
A large part of my fear of the reaper philosophy has been fuelled by the realisation that sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith. In the past, when considering a new idea, if I couldn’t see the solution to every obstacle I thought of I used this to justify not even trying. Since I became conscious that my life was really in my hands (read more about this in my first blog post) I knew that I didn’t want to be held back by these fears anymore.
I know from experience that those niggling voices of doubt, telling you you can’t do something, are powerful and can hold you in check at moments when you don’t have the energy or optimism to drown them out. A lot of the best decisions in my life have been made when I have acted quickly to tie myself to the course of action that my heart tells me is the right thing to do.
I had became disillusioned with the role, the limitations imposed upon me, and lack of opportunities available to me in my first full-time job. So I decided to quit without a finalised plan of action. Granted I had the reassuring option that I could always move back to my parents but that wasn’t what I wanted and at the time handing in my notice felt like a scary leap of faith.
Providence acted quickly here and the very evening I resigned I came home to a letter offering me a new job. That job resulted in my meeting some great people, including my fiancé, and a wealth of opportunities and experiences that I am incredibly grateful for.
When I was offered a three month internship in Cambodia, that I had applied for without too much forethought, I committed before I could find excuses not to go. I arranged a period of unpaid leave with work, so I could undertake the role and have a job to come back to, and told so many people that not going would have been embarrassing.
As the date for my departure neared the reality of living so far away, in a culture so different to my own, without any income for three months hit me. I really wanted to back out but felt like I had trapped myself into the decision and there was no turning back. Which was just as well as I had an amazing time and would probably never have forgiven myself if I had pulled out because I let that hesitancy win.
Let’s skip to Geneva. Whilst, there were many great things about my old job I knew that I didn’t want to spend the next fourty-odd years working somewhere and doing something that I just wasn’t that interested in.
I had been searching for human rights jobs in London until one day I forgot to add the ‘London’ to the search criteria and the Geneva job came up. Had a quick chat with the fiancé about it, concluded might as well apply and see what happens. When I was offered an initial interview, thought about it a little more but, without worrying about the implications, decide I might as well plug on regardless. Then a second interview and a job offer followed and it was time to make a decision.
This wasn’t quite a blind leap of faith, there were things to consider like would the fiancé and the cats come? What would the fiancé do? What would we do with the flat? What about friends and family? Could we afford to do this? There were a lot of questions but the gut feeling was that I should go and we’d figure everything else out from there. So I accepted the job and moved to Geneva.
It hasn’t always been easy, I miss friends and family, and financial issues that would have been resolved had we just stayed in London have actually got a lot worse since moving here. Had I really thought in great detail about all this, had I focussed on every issue before committing myself there is a good chance I’d never even have applied. But here I am and, on balance, I’m happy with my decision.
Not moving to Geneva would have been easy but I don’t necessarily want easy, I want a life lived as fully as possible. My Geneva book club (I suspect there will be more on that in the future) led me into the path of Marcus Aurelius recently and I think he sums it up pretty well: “It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” I can cope with financial difficulties, I can’t cope with letting fear of the unknown stop me from living.