An introvert abroad - day 3

Day 3.

Yesterday I thought that I wouldn't write something every day. I thought I should wait until something spectacular happens (whatever that means).

Then I asked myself why I was sharing it here: why not just write for the sake of it, squirrel it away for later? I read a friend's Facebook post about social media being bananas for the monkey mind and thought: hmm, maybe I'm just banana-hunting. After finishing this paragraph I wanted to delete it.

Then today happened and I couldn't help noting down more moments, more thoughts. Too many to cram into one post here, although I have to tell you about Sheila.

On the intercity train I sat next to an elderly English woman. Her stories and commentary were so fascinating that introverted little me didn't mind that she filled the better part of 2 hours with her chatter.

She's been in New Zealand since 1964. Her husband died on holiday in Norfolk Island less than 10 years later. He had to be buried there, because she couldn't afford the then $28 000 to hire a plane to bring him home.

Sheila hates the way people say her name in Australia, and reminds them that hers has a capital S. Together we wondered why it became a colloquial term for a woman. Sheila thinks Australia is amazing but can't stand the heat and the deadly critters.

Sheila thought it was better that I'm single rather than settling for an unhappy marriage, like one of her granddaughters just had. She followed it up by telling me I still had time to find someone nice, in just the right grandmotherly-but-worldy-wise tone that didn't make me bristle.

Sheila owns a bach overlooking the beach where Captain Cook landed. And as we spoke, she was on her way to ticking off a few items on her bucket list.

Meeting Sheila led me to a wish that I had understood the significance of family histories before my grandmother died. I've catalogued the painful parts, the bruises passed down the generations. But what about the delights? What about the miracles that are threaded through into the life I call mine?

Like one story my mother tells occasionally: how my great grandmother survived a train bombing in the war because she went to check the post office for a much-awaited letter. There was no logic to it, as she'd already been earlier that day. If she hadn't though, I wouldn't exist.

I wonder if this is what people mean when they say they travel to find themselves. Everything here eventually leads me back to myself.

The power in a name

I feel like a river. For years silt has been settling into place on the riverbed, archiving the history of the river, leaving the water more and more clear. But now the silt has been trampled, stirred up, the water clouded again. It will settle again, probably quicker than before. There's enough clarity in the water flowing downstream to ensure that.  But the silt will never settle in quite the same way again.

I'm stirred up by many things. One is that I've just completed 4 days of training in Circle of Security, an attachment-based parenting program. I can't yet capture or articulate everything that it has woken and shifted in me.

One of the pieces of information that stood out was a study on brain imaging. Some researchers put people in an MRI machine and administered a mild electrical shock. The MRI scan showed activity in the amygdala, the 'primitive' part of the brain that deals with fear.

Another group of people were put through the same procedure. But first they were told that when they felt the shock, they should say the word 'afraid' or otherwise express what they felt.

The scans of the second group showed that naming their fear lowered activity in the amygdala. The pre-frontal cortex, the 'thinking' part of the brain was also activated.

So naming your feelings reduces their effect on you, literally. It reminds me of the long-standing notion in mythology that knowing the true name of a thing or of your enemy gives you power over it, or at least removes its power over you. Just look at the tale of Rumpelstiltskin.

This is probably why the 'talking therapies' have such traction in Western cultures. It's one of the beliefs that led me to doing work with people. Helping them name their histories, their hauntings.

I wonder if we've always known the things that science is discovering about humans. We're just finding new ways to talk about them. Does it help to give new names to the things we already know, or are we still searching for their true names?

Life in a mechanical age

I saw this quote while wandering the NSW Art Gallery this weekend. It was written in 1927 but it could be about now.

Our time is just electronic and wireless rather than mechanical. It surrounds us and influences much. It affects our sleep, relationships, thoughts and health.

I see commuters with their heads bowed over screens, those ubiquitous white wires trailing from their ears. Sometimes I am one of them.

Regina Spektor sings "you're using your headphones to drown out your mind" and I know it to be utterly true.

It's like the Matrix. We're all jacked in, more connected than ever. And more lonely than ever. I wonder why I was born to feel it all.