Category: Relationships

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For better or for worse

On By aconstanttlearnerIn Acceptance, Anxiety, Authenticity, Challenges, adversity, Character, courage, Criticism, Dignity, EGO, Fear, Freedom, friendship, Herd mentality, Human nature, Intuition, Loneliness, Mental Health, Relationships, Self love, self-fulfillment, Social Media, Solitude, Stoicism, Strength, Thoughts, wisdom4 Comments

There is one remarkable thing about grief and losing someone who was a pillar in your life. It is a sobering reminder of how cruel and unforgiving time is. So much energy and effort invested during a life span in things and people which are inconsequential to our development or well-being. Why do we do it? Why is peer pressure such that we succumb to it at the expense of our own freedom? The death of a loved one, specially if you lose two people who are most dear to you at once, is a pivotal moment of reckoning: no more bullshit, no more pretence, people pleasing or wrestling with yourself to match other people’s expectations of who you should be. It is incredibly liberating but also ruthlessly punishing in that a process of shedding skins begins until there are no superfluous layers left. For the very first time, everyone gets to see the real you. It does not matter whether they love or despise what they see. They will hate you anyway simply for having the audacity to go against the grain, to break all convention and to think of your own needs first. It is through that exposure that we become vulnerable to the attacks of the world, ostracised for having the nerve to live according to the integrity and honesty of one and one only.

I am tired. I am so tired of trying so hard to not rub people the wrong way; tired of fitting in in an environment that is foreign, adverse, and harmful to me and my own needs. I am tired of complying so that I do not grate on those who live by what society regards as polite, courteous, admirable, acceptable behaviour. The tribal syndrome that obsesses over belonging and meeting the criteria to be accepted into the herd, following a certain code, certain patterns and attitudes, certain beliefs, acceptance or rejection, praise or judgement, the never-ending gossip or mocking of others which help us validate our own perceived superiority. This invisible societal collective force becomes the monster that rules over us and suppresses the individual for the sake of the entity, the herd, the gang, the tribe, whatever you want to call it; the group we humans desperately try to belong to so that we can feel loved and accepted, we can feel valid, successful and powerful.

Surely, the biggest life achievement in the world we currently live in has to be succeeding in disregarding misinformation and the mighty oppressive force within cancel culture, beating to your own drum and striving to develop that discernment that is so essential to navigate the murky waters of social media, politics, the news and even religion. Irrespective of what you may think about the bible, there is no denying there are buckets of wisdom within it. One of my very favorites and a mantra that dwells in my brain often is: Bad company corrupts good morals/character. I am often looked at like I am some sort of rare and weird animal species because I am extremely vigilant, guarded, and selective when it comes to whom I let into my circle of trust and friendship. And as with anything or anyone human beings fear and do not understand, they tend to malign it and try and persuade others to give it a wide berth. It can be lonely at times and incredibly challenging to the point where your core is shaken and broken as you doubt your own self. Do not succumb to that pressure. Better to be alone than in bad company.

I’d be very interested to hear other people’s views on this, so if you are reading this post, you are very welcome to leave me a comment. I don’t have all the answers, far from it, but I am fully aware of what is good for me and what is not. Loneliness I can cope with. I actually feed and grow from times when I am alone. I crave it all the time. I need it as much as I need water or food. What I cannot live with and can easily kill us one day at a time is going against our gut instinct, our principles, our nature. We all struggle with coping with too many voices in our head, but it is vital to listen to that small voice that is telling us to swim against the current. If it is challenging, unpopular and often lonely, nine times out of ten, it will be worth it and it will be right.

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IF LEAVES COULD TALK!

On By aconstanttlearnerIn Ageing, Death, Grief, Healing, Human nature, humanity, introspection, life, Light, Loss, Nature, Old Age, Philosophy, purpose, Relationships, Spirit, Spirituality, The Supernatural, UniverseLeave a comment

It is a deliciously vibrant autumnal day in the Southeast of England. Today, I choose to feed my energy, my zest for life from the fresh blood like coloured leaves of my acer tree on the front drive. The rose-tinted tones of my deciduous shrubs fill me with melancholy and the inescapable gut-wrenching reminder that this too shall pass because nothing lasts, not ever.

And yet, as I begin to lose myself in a labyrinth of unending dead ends and twisted paths leading nowhere, there stands proud in front of my window the mighty oak with its blazing-fire leaves as eyes; eyes that dig right into my soul letting me know that no matter how brief our imprint on this earth is, what we say matters, what we do matters, what we do not do matters, how we listen or whether we listen so, so matters. There is permanence in our ephemeral existence because our existence has a cause and an effect. It irreparably initiates a chain of events that will affect generations to come, whether blood-related or not. Make no mistake, a simple word of advice, a caution, a reprimand, an ‘I hear you’ can alter the course of events in a person’s life and on an on will every other person that comes into contact with them be affected directly or indirectly by that one word, gesture, acknowledgement, rejection, hate or love.

My mind cannot comprehend that it is almost two years since my parents both passed away within two days of each other. Two years. I have realised a lot of things in that time. The power that we hold to better or destroy another person’s life does not die with us. It lives on. We are spiritually connected by invisible sturdy threads to those we related to whilst living. Even in their passing that thread is maintained. It is a thread that can become weaker, but when you least expect it or when you most need it, you feel it tagging at you; letting you know there is a presence at the other side of it. Whether that presence is a welcome or unwanted presence in your life, depends on whether your bond to that person was one of reciprocal love or one of hate; one of humility or pride, one of compassion, empathy, and forgiveness or one of judgement and condemnation.

Even the dead brown leaves on the ground have a vital story to tell in their impermanence. Indeed, they feed the soil that will give birth and growth to new trees. Is it any wonder we are inextricably connected to nature, that our spirit craves its presence in our lives like our bodies crave the enveloping comfort of a roaring fire on a chilly winter’s night? The story of our life is impregnated in each leaf. And just as the leaves go on to feed life whilst dead, so do those whom we loved or despised and are no longer with us.

One word can change the course of history. Indeed, it has so many times. My word to you today is: SYNTONIZE.

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Back to the drawing board

On By aconstanttlearnerIn Acceptance, Character, Confinement, consumerism, courage, Exercise, Fitness, Freedom, Fulfilment, Grief, Healing, honesty, humanity, introspection, Life's Choices, Mental Health, Narcissism, Relationships, self fulfilment, self-discovery, Selfishness, Sex, Social Media, twitter, Uncategorized, Vanity, wisdom5 Comments

It is a miserable Saturday afternoon here in the Southeast of England. It is very wet and dull. Just writing the word miserable fills me with shame. How often we complain about the insignificant things that are hugely significant? We complain about the rhythms of nature that balance out the delicate equation that the environment is. We moan about the rain when rain is the answer to so many people’s desperate prayers. We complain about the sun’s scorching heat when others’ whole livelihoods are solely dependent upon such treasure. So many of us have it all, but blinded by so much stuff and privilege, we fail to see what is missing in our life.

Well, I am turning my sense of entitlement and shallowness on its head. It is thanks to such dire weather that I find myself writing once again after months of an absolute inability to put pen to paper. Whilst I am still grieving my parent’s loss, I am beginning to come through the other side of that tunnel a little bit freer, wiser, and a lot fitter.

There have been two major shifts in my life since my parents passed away. I have started going to the gym and I no longer have any social media accounts or live my life through other people’s social media. I know, you must be thinking: ‘Big deal’. Trust me, it is huge!

Not only had I never set foot in a gym before; I detested gym culture and had zero time for those who bragged, or so I thought, about their exploits at the gym. As far as I was concerned, gyms were stages where statuesque, divinely toned individuals strutted their stuff and got their daily fix of adoration and admiration by like-bodied individuals. I perceived gyms as prisons of the self, as hell holes where egos gorged on further aggrandisement and self-veneration; gutters where altruism, empathy, compassion were thrusted out and vanity, selfishness and narcissism were pumped up; traps where the weak were drawn to in order to be judged disdainfully by the far superior breeds. Everything about gyms shouted addiction, misplaced pride, discrimination, judgement.

During the last two years I have gradually introduced exercise in my life. A like-minded individual I met through twitter encouraged me to do the ‘Couch to 5k’ challenge. It is an online app which guides you step by step to run five miles at the end of a few weeks’ training. This is for absolute beginners, which I was. It was really gruelling work but eventually after having a few breaks and having to re-start the challenge a few times, I persevered and completed it. I went from having my heart in my mouth after just one minute of running, to actually running for half an hour on a fairly steady breath. I went from counting the seconds in every minute wishing for it to be over to being in the zone and embracing the freedom, the release, the joy that results from body and mind being at one with each other.

As with any exercise and specially seeing as I had started at 52, I did suffer an injury and eventually I had to stop running and look for a lower impact exercise routine which gave me the same cardio value but did not destroy my body one impactful stride at a time. I moved onto the cross trainer. That became my new religion. Three times a week I went into my garden shed and did a workout on my cross trainer. I gradually increased the length and the intensity of such workouts. After my parents passed, I simply could not find the motivation to do anything that involved any considerable effort. They were no longer around and so my mojo and my raison d’etre ebbed away with them, so this shift to having the drive to regularly commit to an exercise regime was monumental.

Call it Providence or the stars aligning in my favour, but around that time my daughter had just joined a gym and had been on at me to come along and see for myself how incredibly uplifting and energising her sessions were. My daughter is my guardian angel as I am hers. We get each other. We have each other’s backs. We trust each other completely. Not many people one can say that about in life. Certainly not me. During my workouts on the cross trainer, I often posted pictures of my body on twitter as a witness of my progress and the fitness challenges conquered. Those pictures got a lot of attention and compliments. Sometimes, attention came from the wrong sort who were just out to get their kicks and feed their sexual desires. There were even some devious individuals who went as far as complimenting me about my blog, my writing in order to get close to me; to make sexual advances at me. It beggars belief but that is what social media has turned a lot of people into. It is a free for all. No accountability; no rules; no transparency; no moral compass. What happens behind the screen stays behind the screen. Only, it does not! Social media has become one of the most dangerous tools which when falling on the wrong hands can pulverise a life with one single click of the mouse.

All that attention on social media, most of it unsavoury, made me realise that actually feeling good on the inside more often than not goes hand in hand with looking and feeling good on the outside, at least feeling and looking good according to your own standards. One fine morning I finally decided to go along to the gym with my 25-year-old daughter. We did a SH’BAM class which in hindsight I realise was an incredibly bold move on my part having never even set foot in a gym. I absolutely loved it and decided there and then, I would become a regular member at that gym. A year later I attend classes 3 to 4 days a week and some days I do two classes back-to-back. I have done most things now: Body Attack, Les Mills Grit Strength, Total Body Workout, Free Style Aerobics, Body Jam, Pilates, Body Balance, Body Pump, etc.

Nurturing my mental health through exercise is really working for me right now and has helped me immensely to pull through the grieving process. However, like any other practice or habit that makes us feel so good, fitness can easily become an addiction that prevents us from nurturing other important parts of ourselves like our emotional and spiritual wellbeing. Often, we assume that one goes hand in hand with the other but that is not necessarily so. My current fitness regime takes a lot of time from me and whilst that time is very well invested, I am neglecting other things that make be balanced and happy, my writing for example. I want my fitness regime to propel me to a more well-rounded, more positive me and not to become a shelter that prevents me from actually living. A little bit of chaos, breaking the rules and opening yourself up to the unexpected will always trump a life of perfect order, monotony and letting precious days pass you by.

As for quitting all social media, that is one of the best decisions I have ever made. Creating an environment where we have all normalised ‘making love or war’ with people whom we know nothing about and who know nothing about us is one of the most stupid things the human race has ever produced. All that time and energy wasted on futile attempts to convince ourselves and others that we matter. It is often believed that the next generation is able to correct the mistakes of the previous one and to bring about measures to prevent those same mistakes being made. Social media is not one of them. We have reinvented the wheel, but this wheel is simply not fit for purpose and is in fact destroying our ability to relate to and communicate with other human beings, as we sit alone blinded and in judgement behind screens that act as mirrors reflecting back what we want or need to see or hear.

It has been a while since I last wrote and I am aware that because of it many of my regulars may have given up on me in terms of checking my blog. If you happen to still be here, I would be grateful for any comments that can start a conversation or simply give me feedback. I am grateful for any and all comments. There are also a handful of people I met through social media and through this blog who I’d like to hear from as I miss those specific interactions. Again, if you are there, do drop me a line or two.

Be well, be kind, look after yourself and above all be present, live in the moment.

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Bring me back to life – Part 1

On By aconstanttlearnerIn Ageing, Betrayal, Challenges, adversity, Character, Conscience, courage, Criticism, Death, Disappointment, Empathy, Grief, Hate, Healing, honesty, Human nature, introspection, Judgement', Karma, life, Loneliness, Loss, Love, Old Age, Pain, parenthood, pride, Relationships, Sibling rivalry15 Comments

My regular readers must be wondering why I have taken so long to write again. The answer is unbearably painful in its simplicity and permanence: I lost both my parents over four months ago. My mum died on Christmas Day and my father less than 48 hours after. My father was eighty-seven and had various illnesses but was doing OK. He deteriorated rapidly on the last two weeks before his death. I am so grateful his frailest state was short-lived and that he only had to spend one week in a nursing home. I am even more grateful that he did not endure those achingly lonely moments without my mother for very long. In the foggy midst of his Alzheimer’s, we were blessed with endearing moments of lucidity, like the time when three of my four siblings had moved him to the nursing home and the next day, looking out of the window in his forebodingly spare and lifeless room, he said to my husband and I: ‘This is not such a bad place to live, is it?’. Even in his most vulnerable moment, he was father first and foremost, ensuring our pain was lessened by his make-believe reassurance. It was a sobering and humbling moment; one I will never forget. My father led by example until his last breath. He was far from perfect, but he never demanded or expected anything from us he had not practised himself first. He has set the bar really high for us, in life and in death. His unwavering sense of duty, responsibility, and leadership to his family lives now within me and I hope I can be to my kids half the inspirational figure he has been to me.

Entrenched on my memory like a knife to the heart is also that agonising moment when my siblings took him to the nursing home whilst I remained at home with my mum in readiness for her life-threatening surgery the next day to remove a malignant tumour in her liver. My siblings were so incredibly overwhelmed by the unbearable task at hand that in their haste to make my father’s transition from his home to the nursing home, they neglected to allow my mum to say goodbye to my dad. My heart teared further apart when I looked in my mother’s eyes and saw the unforgiving sadness as she realised that she might never see her lifetime companion of over 65 years again. As it turned out, the surgery was in vain; the tumour was inoperable and two days after surgery she developed a perforated intestine which killed her. She was 80 years old. Three months before her death my mum began experiencing excruciating pain on her right-hand side, below her rib cage. Initially, after countless tests, the doctors told her that she had an infection in her gall bladder, but it gradually emerged that that was only the beginning of the end. Three days before her death, we all had hope that she would recover, and she would live on to tell the tale. Three days before her death, her and I laughed together, joked together, hoped together.

It all happened so fast, and it did not help matters that those three of my four siblings turned against me towards the very end like hyenas hunting as a merciless pack. They deeply resented me for living abroad and in their words ‘having abandoned my family’, which was all the more devastating to hear bearing in mind my husband and I took my parents with us on holidays all over the world around 17 times, which none of those three siblings ever did, not even once. Asides that, I am aware that it is primarily during those times when my family and I visited my hometown in Spain that the whole family gathered together for lunch or an outing. As far as I am aware, my parents never got taken out by those three siblings all that much outside of those times when we were visiting. I will never recover from witnessing and suffering first-hand the monster within that can surface in people when they are undergoing immense pressure or pain. I became the punch bag for all three, specially one of them and the verbal and written punches did not stop coming until I was breathless, almost lifeless on the floor. The pain of losing the love, trust, and belief in my integrity of my three siblings was far greater at the time than the pain of losing both my parents unexpectedly in the space of 48 hours. That gives an idea of the intensity and shock, the hatred I was exposed to by those who should have been the most supportive at such a time, in such tragic circumstances. Even today, almost five months later, I cannot comprehend how love can turn into such hate in such a short space of time. The only explanation my mind entertains is that it was never love to begin with, and that realisation pierces me all the more, even today, probably forever.

I spent 9 days with both my parents prior to my mum’s surgery. I would be with them from 8:30 am til 11:00 pm. I would then go to a nearby hotel to get some rest and fuel up the tank to be at my best for the next day. No point in staying each night with them, I figured, and be exhausted from the beginning of the day ending up having them look after me. It made absolute sense to me and yet that is one of the issues my siblings took up with me, even though every time they had stayed the night, they whined about how that position was unsustainable and how we needed to get extra paid help to look after my parents during the nights. What was not sustainable or acceptable for them to keep doing, soon became their choice of punishment for me for my intermittent absence of 32 years. They looked for any excuse to criticise me, bully me and badmouth me to my mother who was already dying. The viciousness of their insults grew all the more aggressive and unforgivable the day I finally left to go back to the UK. To this day, I am still devastated that three of my siblings with whom I have always had a great relationship; whom I loved unconditionally could throw me to the gallows at the first hurdle, no trial, no innocent til proven guilty; just pure hatred and pain projected onto me as if I was the cause of my parents’ illness and tragic end.

Living in a different country to that I grew up in til the age of twenty, has always been incredibly challenging for me, because I have no family here in the UK other than my husband and kids. I come from a large family in Spain, and so the last 33 years I have missed so many incredibly happy times back home, some sad, not many. The truth is, however, I have a full life in the UK; a life that makes me happy; I have a family, a business, a home. I know my parents wanted me to be happy, fulfilled, and at peace. I know they never resented me for not being there. If anything, I am convinced they have always been so incredibly proud that I was courageous enough to travel at a youthful age and brave enough to give up everything and everyone I knew to move to another country for love. Throughout those 33 years, I have tried to see them as much as I could; I have tried to keep the balance right between raising a family to the best of my ability thousands of miles away; nurturing a marriage which has been very challenging at times and helping make a business successful, but also keeping in touch with all my family back in Spain. It is a very delicate balance but, in my heart, I know with certainty and confidence that my parents would have wished for me to put my own family first, specially since I had four other siblings who lived so close to them. It is a much more complex issue than what I recount here but for the sake of brevity, I will leave it at that. I could write a book on this sorrow episode of my life and who knows, when the time is right, maybe I will.

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When our hearts become impenetrable

On By aconstanttlearnerIn Acceptance, Anxiety, Betrayal, Challenges, adversity, Character, Compassion, Corona Virus, Covid 19, Deception, dehumanization, Depression, Dignity, Disappointment, EGO, Empathy, Fear, friendship, Healing, Herd mentality, honesty, Human nature, humanity, humility, Integrity, introspection, Intuition, life, Loneliness, Loss, Love, Mental Health, Mob Mentality, Morals, Narcissism, Negativity, Pain, Philosophy, pride, purpose, Relationships, Selfishness, Social Media, Tribalism, twitter18 Comments

The last few weeks have been nothing short of a psychological study for me on twitter. I did not set out to do one, but psychology found me, swept me up in this whirlwind of human need, and I simply could not just watch it all happen and ignore it.

Throughout this whole process, I have screamed, I have ached and cried inconsolably. I have laughed, felt overjoyed, been loved and rejected all at once within the same day. I have despaired and felt waves of stormy anger and frustration engulf me whole. I have been reminded by well-intended friends that social media is a tricky and ferocious animal to handle; that none of it is real and nothing is what it seems, and yet, this advice came at the hands of those who breathe in social media the moment they wake up and do not stop to exhale its poisonous, dubious air until their head hits that pillow. Any advice is rendered ineffective if those giving it conduct themselves in a way that disproves their own wisdom. Of course Social Media is real; a parallel reality it may be, but a reality nevertheless. Its deceitful, pantomime-like and bordering on sinister dark corners, often remind me of a Venetian Carnival where people hide behind the most alluring and exquisite of masks to reinvent themselves and step beyond the boundaries of what they would never contemplate doing or saying in real life. The mask however does not alter the person behind it, not really. It may appear so for a while, but eventually one can truly see the gaze behind the glamour and the glitter; the cracks seeping out past traumas, deep hurts and weakening fears that though deeply hidden, betray our newly found identity & automatically exclude us from the romanticism and Utopian mirage of the Masquerade Ball.

There is much that remains a mystery to me about human behaviour, but I have been able to draw some conclusions from my interaction with a number of people on twitter. Most of all, I have been able to find truth as we often do, by simply stepping away and like a fly on a wall, watch it all unfold; letting individuals show their true character and betray their own perceived integrity when they thought no one was really paying any attention.

I have learnt that at an age when we have all the gadgets and the gizmos, when we can be on the other side of the world on the same day and social media dominates and dictates the lives of so very many, never has our need to feel included and loved been greater. There is an impossibly achy loneliness abounding in the secret chambers of the virtual world. Society, even pre-Covid, has been bleeding out and failing to live up to its definition, because the social element has been abducted from right under our feet and a poor substitute has made islands of each and everyone of us trying to find ourselves and each other. The most alarming element of this phenomenon is the fact that most of us have loving families around us and a network of friends or support of one kind or another and yet, we are the lost faces in a multitudinous crowd crying out for acknowledgement, begging to be heard and understood. There is a desperate need to matter at a time when circumstances have made us finally acknowledge that in the scale of things, between the now and the beyond, we truly matter very, very little, and so we gasp desperately trying to hold on to some sort of significance. The more we realise we are but a grain of sand on the beach, the more egotistical and self-centered we become; the more we veer towards mob mentality instead of accepting each person on their own merit and essence. And of course, the power of social media is boundless and so trends that dominate on the virtual world, irremediably feed into our daily lives, our homes, and ultimately our surroundings. Before we know it, we are turning our society into the most inhospitable place there ever was; an Eden made into a hell, and it is all of our own making.

I have also learnt that at a time when we have more resources than ever; when we are potentially more powerful than ever; we are the weakest beings we have ever been. We lack backbone and deeply rooted convictions. We would rather be a Judas than a Peter; we need to be all things to all people in order to find worth, instead of remembering that it is our uniqueness and not our tribal ancestry that defines us and sets us aside to pursue our own purpose; to make that small difference that no one else can make. We have become cowards that hide behind the group instead of standing on our own two feet when we see injustice, lies and witch-hunts. Our morality and creed blow whichever way the wind takes them. We are chameleons that change colour depending on who is watching. We take a side in an argument with our words but then our actions discredit the very point we have just made. We are in essence regressing to a herd mentality where the blind is leading the blind; where leadership stems from popularity as opposed to integrity tested in the furnace of adversity and going it alone.

I have learnt, and this is the one that has broken me the most, that there are individuals who are indeed beyond rescue. I had two uncles who committed suicide, but I have always believed that what led them to such an unthinkable tragic end was probably a lack of a supportive network or adverse circumstances. Well, I have encountered on twitter individuals who by their own admission are rotten apples, messed up and broken; they hurt others because they simply do not know how to be any other way; they carry deep scars from the past and open wounds that are beyond healing. They look up to people who are no longer around, and they live their lives through their eyes instead of their own. I have learnt that no matter how much light you see still shining within that person; no matter how clear you see the path that they need to follow, nothing will change until they make a decision themselves to break loose from their ghosts and their demons. I have learnt that being rejected by such individuals is not a reflection of my inability to be loved or accepted by them but rather their dismal failure to love, accept and forgive themselves.

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When sex is no longer sexy

On By aconstanttlearnerIn Attraction, Chemistry, consumerism, dehumanization, Dignity, EGO, Freedom, humanity, humility, Instinct, Kindred Spirits, Love, Morals, Relationships, Sex, Sexuality, Sexy, Soul Mates, Spirituality, Vanity18 Comments

I would sure like to have a crystal ball that gives me insight into people’s brains, into our dreams, my dreams. Wouldn’t it save us tons of money on doctors, therapists, and meds if we could understand earlier on in the journey who we are and what makes us tick?

What is it with recurrent dreams? What is the point of rehearsing in our head a chapter of our lives that will forever remain inconclusive no matter how many endings we dream to that old story? It is not like we can change its outcome by our subconscious playing out different scenarios on different nights. And yet, the brain regurgitates that same chain of events over and over. To what end? There has to be a point to so much time of our lives consumed by an alternate reality where things pan out differently to what actually took place; where we are offered a glimmer of hope that those chapters of our lives we resent, do not define us, because there is still a chance to act differently, to explore new choices.

My most recurrent dream is one where I enter into a sexually charged relationship with an ex-boyfriend with whom I never even held hands or kissed. We were extremely attracted to each other. That is what brought us together in the first place. The chemistry was tangible, but we were a couple of very shy and inexperienced youngsters, not ready to handle what would have unfolded, had we let our passions run free. Unfortunately, we lived in different cities during the winter, and so our only form of contact was the occasional meet up and frequent letters, which did not help matters. Eventually, our determination to make it work dimmed and what initially was countless promising sparks between us grew into dynamite threatening to explode with every exchange. Frustrated and heartbroken I broke it off in the end, because I could not bear him flirting with other girls in front of me in an attempt to ignite my desire so I would be the one to take that first step. He went on to meet another older more experienced woman who clearly initiated him into the wonders of sex within a loving committed relationship. Indeed, he married her and lived happily ever after or so I hear. I am not saying sex cannot be fantastic outside a relationship. I am just saying personally, I reach worthier heights when the connection is both spiritual and physical, when the souls as well as the bodies are harmoniously intertwined. Sex for the sake of sex is as exciting to me as drinking water when I am thirsty, frankly. We met up many years later and though we were both married with kids by then, one brief but intense interlocking of our eyes is all it took for me to know he wondered as much as I did what if we had both behaved differently. I deeply believe in spiritual connection and I am no clairvoyant, but I am pretty certain I appear in his dreams as often as he in mine.

That was back in the 80s when sex was still a ‘sacred thing’ a special ritual that happened between people who felt an inexplicable bond, an unstoppable urge to fuse into one; to be one and the same, if only for a few exceptional moments. These days, sex is all around us, is forced upon us; trading in sex has even become a widely accepted profession for so many. It is no longer a case of I resort to prostitution because I cannot make ends meet any other way, because I cannot sustain myself and those dependent on me any other way. Sex sells and it is easy to shop for it and make considerable money from it pretty effortlessly and quickly. Unfortunately though, it is not just pushed on to those who want to consume it or buy it, but forced on us wherever we look, wherever we are. This is particularly apparent in the entertainment industry and social media. It is not longer a question of personal choice but of forcefulness, of manipulating the herd into certain behavioural patterns and morals or lack of; normalizing even amongst our youngest what should be something special and wonderful in its uniqueness.

I missed the ‘sanctity’ that used to go hand in hand with the process of meeting someone and falling in love, or maybe just discovering each other emotionally, intellectually, and physically. Now it is all so void of any romance, any mystery, any longevity, in essence of any meaning. We trade partners like we change socks and values like trust, respect, humility, gentleness, kindness, honesty have all become dinosaurs too frightened to rear their heads in a world moving so fast, consuming it all so fast, even each other, that one wonders what humanity will do next to satisfy its ravenous appetite for indulgence and self satisfaction.

Is there anything sacred any more?