This week is mental health week.
So I thought I would beat one of my favourite drums.
It is well recognised that one of the symptoms of depression and being 'stuck' is the inability to look forward, to dwell ceaselessly on the past and its perceived injustices and unfairness.
Quite obviously the past is beyond change but some people cannot let go. In my LifeLine days we would get the same people ringing up daily, wanting to tell and retell the same story, over and over.
It got them nowhere.
I have a theory that modern life is working against helping people look forward.
When I was a boy, we would look forward to the arrival of cherries, strawberries, sweet corn, apricots, tomatoes and asparagus. They were markers of seasons. We would pig out on them and thoroughly enjoy them before the season ended.
Have you noticed that your supermarkets now sell nearly all fruit and vegetables all year round? Force grown in glasshouses in Queensland or flown in from California, Israel or South
East Asia, these fruits and vegetables have robbed us of a lot of our pleasure of anticipation.
Its like being given your birthday presents early and then having nothing to make your birthday special.
....
Is it just me, or are you looking wistfully at the past?
ReplyDeleteI am thinking that you are making this too difficult. I am thinking that the solution to your riddle is to be only buying the fruits and the vegetables that are being in season and then you can be looking forward to when they are being in season. Surely this is being the easy solution to your situation, is this not so?
ReplyDeleteI've oft wondered of tropical food, and wondered of their effects on foreign bodies.
ReplyDeleteAt one time I thought it to be a sort of strange fruit...perhaps even the reason for some folks' propensity towards obesity.
I have since realized that some are obese with nothing more than the greasy hamburgers of their local butchershops while some are skinny as rails though inhaling foods from all over the world.
My theory shot down, I would love fresh figs and dates (California, from the backyard of a friend) and cranberries from BALA (fresh from the reservoir wetlands there) and even the tomatoes from the sandy grounds of Jackson Run Creek, where yet another friend grows them as well as bell peppers, zinnias (those for looks...not eats) and even spices (basil and sage) from an ex-sister-in-law's garden.
Fresh is good.
Fresh is new.
Not something grown so long ago, the date forgotten,
I was making the same observation only a few days ago Lee. Sadly I find that not only do we lose the savour of anticipation, but also the savour of the foods themselves. And that of course is due not only to familiarity, but also to the forced standards imposed upon growers of many products by the supeermarkets,so that taste is sacrificed for regularity of shape, size and colour.
ReplyDeleteSo of course we look back. Oh! the taste of Victoria plums picked straight off the trees. We had greengages too - do you ever see those these days? - and a local gooseberry cross known as a Worcesterberry. But I digress ....
I know a woman from my school days who still carries grudges from those long-ago days. She is exceedingly unhappy. Still wanting answers to her 'whys' and seeking revenge.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, she will never change.
I feel a little stuck just now. It's probably down to the baked vacherin I had for lunch, washed down with a couple of glasses of wonderful Australian shiraz.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Bill. Pass some of tyhat shiraz and I'll open a nice pinot...
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dang...you'de think anon would at least write in a recognizable language...
ReplyDeleteGerman, French, Italian, or even Cyrillic.
I see than "anon's" last effort simply repeats the same phrase over and over. Junk, I guess.
ReplyDeleteYours is a good point, Lee. We have everything, all the time, so it's "birthday" every day - no anticipation, no stimulus. Stuff is carted around the world so that it is available at all seasons - usual environmental remarks apply!
I was once director of a Samaritans branch (your "Lifeline") over here and can vouch for those repeat calls which went over the same old baggage, endlessly. One often longed (in a "caring" way, you understand)to insert a firework in the caller's fundament!
my...what a temper.
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