Wednesday 21 May 2014

From the garden...

It is 9.30pm and I am sat in the garden, the sun is setting, and I just finished eating after spending the day simultaneously working on my assignment, dealing with research emails, and planning some work for one of my students on the biological causes of aggression. There is something about this time of year that feels somewhat final, so I am taking every opportunity I can to find moments of calm.

Yesterday was a day out of the norm - end of year assessments. Tuesdays are probably the most predictable day of the week - the most consistent part of my life. The day is usually spent in lectures and groups at Uni learning the tricks of our trade, learning more about what it means to be human, how our brains function, how we develop ways of living in this world that seem perfectly ordinary but are not ordinary at all.. Whilst knowing that 'ordinary' is nothing more than a fictional idea we have created in order to attempt to understand the inconceivable; in order to understand the chaos of the world. To be 'ordinary' is probably the most abnormal idea of them all. The more we know, the more baffling life really is. The more we know, the more we see that there is an infinite amount to learn; it goes on and on. There are no absolutes, no definitive answers, no end to the possibilities. No wonder we usually take a trip down the road for a glass of pinot grigio over lunch, and we return home utterly exhausted at the end of the day. But we keep coming back.

Yesterday was different though - yesterday we had assessments all day and it was also my beautiful sister's sixteenth birthday. It was the perfect opportunity to come together with my family and embrace how wonderfully dysfunctional we all are, yet we fit together and it works. We laugh and we eat and drink wine, and celebrate the fact that we have this beautiful human being as a sister. Happy birthday Brys...


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