- iaindryden1
A burning need.
I have become a lazy toad. It now takes effort to lift a finger and cook, clean or any of the multiple things which go in to running a household and which I did without thinking six months ago. I haven’t even driven the car in all this time. All these things… and more, are left to my wife, poor thing. The other day I mentioned this to her best friend and for the first time my long suffering wife admitted that it has been relentless looking after a couch potato.
I’ve changed from a man who believed every task should be shared to one who sits back and is spoon-fed. I’ve said it here before - it only takes three months to change the way you think, hence behave. Consolidate this over a further month and you’ve fixed a new routine. That’s me now - a parasite.
Now that I’ve a little more energy, aware that I must re-enact the above truth, I’m up against a newly laid habit to sit back and enjoy being looked after. This isn't me! I have never liked being molly-coddled. When we were first married my independent partner did an instant shift - programmed to see it as the ‘wife’s’ moral and social duty to do all the house stuff, she tried to look after me. Disliking it, I spent the first months nudging her out the way until it turned the other way and she let me do it all, but then she was working far harder than me during the day, so I saw that as fair.
The trouble now is that as soon as I do something my battery goes flat. Walking 300m down the easy slope to the church and back is enough right now puffs me out. To build me up we are doing lots of little visits, easy ones to lovely gardens where I can stroll and sit. But it’s not easy. Meeting an old friend in a pub garden for lunch two days ago completely wore me out. Afterwards I had arranged to present my books to a publisher and I was so exhausted that I couldn’t easily let flow my thoughts. It was embarrassing. My wife took over. Thankfully the work spoke for itself and they accepted the three books. However, it’ll be three years before they can do anything for me because their stable of work is highly respected and gains prizes and international attention. I wobbled from their premises and collapsed as my wife drove us home.
Part of the new mind I inhabit likes this enforced laziness. But there’s my old character which tries to regain equality in work-load, however, I find my way blocked by this new mindset. I have told myself, must change. Slowly is the way. We can all change the way we are and it takes mental effort. It has to be planned. This has been the basis of my last two books and it is why the charity MIND has endorsed my work.
I’m hoping to muster sufficient energy in the next month to research and write an already planned third book in the series which will encourage people to change their lives in a way that helps slow down Climate Change. But I’m afraid it might already be too late. Look at the fires raging across usually cool Canada of all places - 50C up there in the land of the cold north! This phenomena is part of the shift which is making Greenland’s ice shield melt. Yesterday, checking Google Earth as I try to complete my memoir, I discovered that glaciers I once climbed have shrunk dramatically. All of this is a sign of real danger. Danger for us. Danger for all of nature.
But we can change our behaviour. We have to hurry or the game will shortly be lost.