Descent into madness and avoiding rabbit holes

Lockdown felt, at times, like a rabbit hole down which one sinks with remorseless ease.  Its progress or regress could be expressed most simply in terms of television viewing habits.  But I feared that under the surface, far more insidious changes are happening. 

“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.”        Khalil Gibran

It started with "Say, yes to the dress" a programme where women young and old come to find their bridal outfit in a plush shop in New York City.  There, they spend small fortunes to find that mystical dress that will transform their wedding into a fantasy story.  In the plush, spoiled environment they prance and complain and demand still more.  After a while one grows tired of their demands and expectations.  You simply become bored with their selfish absorption of how they want to look on the big day.  It is no coincidence that even the most expensive extreme dress is not quite enough and disappointment is often clear on their cosmetically enhanced features. 

Beauty and folly are often companions.                                    French Proverb

So I turned to another type of wedding outfitters.  Nazranaa Diaries offered a much more extreme range of dresses in terms of colour and richness both for brides and bridegrooms.  The vivid colours and range of styles make the ordinary bride wear very humdrum indeed.

An extra component is that the men are regaled in outfits just as over the top as the women.  It is refreshing to see men decide what suits them.

However, it is the young brides who usually dictate the colour and design of both bridal outfits.  Remonstrating with their groom-to-be about the colours of the wedding venue, their chosen colour palette and how the groom's outfit has to fit with her dress.    Her bridesmaids often have strong opinions too and the grooms are commonly paraded in increasingly bizarre clothes that are chosen for them whatever their own wishes.  It suddenly occurs to the viewer that this does not bode well for the future of the marriage.  Just once a groom held firm to his favourite outfit and his bride sulked and threatened him.  Her bridesmaid told him it made him look ridiculous.  He decided he wanted it anyway.  After a hundred episodes of hen picked grooms it was a wonder to behold.  "But it clashes with my dress!" His bride cried real tears to get her way. In the awkward moments that followed of his weeping tear-stained bride,  he fixed her with a steely glare and said: "I want this one!" I wanted to stand and clap in satisfaction.  But there are only so many Asian outfits despite the wider range of colours and shapes and sizes one can watch.  I grew weary of the expense and the shallowness of all it portrayed.

After that, I turned to the series on Big Fat Gipsy Weddings where the wedding dresses are so extreme and over the top that after only a few episodes I wearied of the excesses.  Somehow the outfits remind me of the tackiness and creepiness of Punch and Judy puppets.  I don't know why?

“Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it.”                         Confucius

By this stage, I was sickening of the self-obsessed prancing of brides-to-be in front of mirrors and screams of "Oh how beautiful I look!"  Quite frankly their happiness neither pleased nor entertained but merely bored me.  I needed something more hard-hitting, more emotion-inducing.  I found it in the series Curvy Brides Boutique.  Here very fat brides go to a wedding dress shop in the countryside designed for the larger woman.  Instead of being disappointed at finding one or no dresses to fit them, they are delighted to find an entire shop full of wedding dresses that actually fit them.  Nearly all these fat woman hate their image in the mirror so much that they don't like looking at themselves at all.  Their humility and lack of pride are refreshing.  They come across as so much nicer people.  Modest and self-effacing.  Prepared to laugh at themselves and with the very lowest of expectations regarding their wedding dress.  They just want to find a dress that fits, that will do.  So watching them get perfect makeup and hair then being given a dress that, with corsets, creates a waist was like watching Cinderella being transformed for the ball.  A kindly, fat, lacking in confidence Cinderella that deserved to have her big moment.  The look on their faces when the right dress is found is not triumphant but emotional and tearful.  They look genuinely surprised at their reflection in the mirror and say things like "I cannot believe I look alright in this dress".  As if being hideous was their birthright.  Their happiness makes them beautiful and you suddenly see that too.  All have stories and many touch your heart.  So many have been bullied because of their weight throughout school and they speak of the unkindness of others.  One feels ashamed at the cruelty of humankind and how much damage is inflicted to sweet souls every single day because of how they look.  A large young twenty-four-year-old had donated one kidney to her Mum and had put on a lot of weight since the operation.  Her bravery and act of selflessness which saved her mother's life spoke of the quality of this young lady and suddenly you realised what a lucky man her groom was.  The compassion and kindness of these self-deprecating ladies was the perfect antidote to the self-absorption of those earlier skinny brides.

“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.”              Rumi

Then, I grew tired of this rabbit hole entirely and saught the light.  Watching TV is such a degrading sedentary practice in so many ways.  You spend so much time digesting stuff that is unwholesome searching for more extreme versions of what you have already seen.  Your taste becomes odder and quirkier and jaded.    I call it a descent into madness and I tell the tale as a warning.  Avoid this particular rabbit hole and choose a healthier and more productive path.  WE are what we Do.

My Letter of Attack, Dear Des....

A Letter to Des

You live in Northern Ireland and work the land. Generations of mine have worked this land and while shaping their landscape also carved from their time here characters as generous and as unique as the fields they are surrounded by.  

However, you are an interloper.  One of those parasites who move into a community and by terrorising your neighbours seize property and substance.  Owning nothing you hoodwink the widowed or elderly to give over their land management forms claiming you will do all the work for them.  Substituting your own signature you then proceed to claim this money for a full five years.  When owners of the land protest that you are taking their right, intimidation becomes the order of the day.  Forcing yourself into my relative’s home and holding one against the wall by the throat!  When an elderly neighbour is seen peering across the road into your garden you assault him and accuse him of looking at your wife.  Little realizing with his poor eyesight he can barely see his own fence and his habit of staring is born of this defect.  

From owning no land, you merely rented from others, you successfully took their forms and claimed subsidies in their place.  Years later, while no longer on the land and having illegally removed fences and gates from the property, you continue to claim money on this property you do not own.  This abuse of the single farm payment goes unchecked as years later you can still claim this amount despite not owning the land or even renting it anymore. Planning permits are ignored as you construct on property that is not yours, barns and houses.  Complaints by neighbours to authorities fall on deaf ears.  Bullies thrive in today’s world where confusion and legislation fight in incompetent courts.  Time delays in obtaining justice means such characters have their way and painful resignation is the order of the day.  

When the persistent few actually win against you, your approach is always the same. You pay the first instalment of the money owned and then stop all subsequent payments.  Knowing full well for the innocent, court orders, enforcement, unpleasantness is draining and demeaning.  Even appearing in court to explain how they have been abused, is a humiliation of the soul.  “Look how old, confused, helpless I am, such a rogue can seize my land, wrestle control of my property and here I appear month after month pleading for protection” they seem to convey.  And hence the rogue thrives on his tyranny of others.

You and I met many years ago.  I was visiting an aunt whose fields you rented.  You had allowed the cattle in the fields to gain access to her garden and the bullock happily played across the lawn.  I phoned to tell you that your bullock was loose and could easily get on to the main busy road causing serious injury.  Your resentment was obvious but you acquiesced and moved the animal back to your  fields.  Later, after I’d gone you complained to my aunt about my manner.   I know why you didn’t like me.  We looked at each other and I saw a petty tyrant intimidating all around him.  You didn’t know me, didn’t know who I knew, could not work out how I fitted in to the neighbourhood.  As it happens I know no one of importance, have zero knowledge of farming practices or the area.  But, I did sense something as you raised your stick and beat the bullock on its side to chase it out of the garden.    I recognised a bully and applied the same logic I have long used with them.  Never appease a bully, it only empowers them.  Accommodating them in any way will only add to suffering of the next victim of their tyranny.  

Years ago public opinion in a rural setting would bring its own consequences.  If you abused the elderly farmer, a widow etc the community would quickly let the person know their actions were not to be tolerated.  In such tight knit farming communities your actions would have consequences that quickly let you know lines had been crossed.  Now, such is the rural isolation and pressures facing farmers despair, suicide, economic ruin, family divisions, addiction all have broken down the once united communities.  The reason rural communities were so united was out of necessity.  You helped a neighbour build a shed, cut his field, herd a stock etc because you would one day need their help.  Your destiny was linked to theirs.  But more, generations before you had followed the same path.  It felt the right thing to do.  A moral principle was ingrained like table manners and instilled in future generations.  

When staying in my grandfather’s farm for a week, while he was unwell, I was shocked by how many characters came through the door expecting tea and chat.  The door was expected to be open under all conditions and a warm greeting extended whether I knew them or not.  You learned that this was deemed acceptable behaviour and to do any less was bad manners.  My grandfather helped build his neighbour’s houses and was paid in potatoes not cash and sometimes not paid at all.  That too, was okay because most people survived on the generousity of others and you knew that it would be repaid in friendship and respect if not in money.    We all have memories of those open doors and open hearts.  We were shaped at those hearths and kitchens that smelled of soda bread and roasts in the oven.  When something has been lost we have to look back at an older culture to summon a better way.  Each culture had a bedrock of social interaction that gently corrected and directed behaviour.  Today’s splendid isolation does not serve.  We are essentially communities of people in cities and countries who need each other more than we can possible imagine.  Working together on common goals in service will help remind us of the necessity of community cohesion and what wonders it instills in us and our children and grandchildren.  To proceed in the opposite direction will create unhealthy individuals, divided families, miserable communities and serve selfish materialistic agendas.