One day, not so long ago, but long enough that it could be once upon a time, my eldest boy said to me, ‘Mum, why do you have to take everything so serious?’
We were standing outside a shop in Marina Mall, and I had left the shop without the pair of sandshoes I needed to replace the others which had just about worn through the sole. There were too many shoes and I couldn’t choose and instead of crying, I swore at the mister.
Eldest boy was right. I was taking things too serious. Every time I went to a shop, I was thinking of airmiles and packaging in a land with no recycling and of money we didn’t have, and, because I had just finished sorting out three houses and only one of them mine, I was feeling the weight of things.
It was hard for me to see the funny side and I loaded every decision with significance.
When life is going well, when you haven’t quite grown up, you don’t realise, but there’s a lot of decisions in a day. It starts with whether or not to get out of bed and just keeps going from there.
Once you start thinking about every decision, well, it means you’re paying a lot of attention to the consequences of every decision, which means you’re constantly running through scenarios and that means you live every day several times over.
Which would be fine, except that you only ever get enough sleep to live your day through once.
Life is not exactly smooth right now, but it’s nice to realise that I don’t feel that way right now.