Wednesday 23 March 2011

Killing time.

There's a lovely few minutes after lunch when no-one expects you to be productive, creative or remotely witty. Sadly, this is a perfect moment to compose a blog post featuring a notable absence of all three of those elements. So here we are. I have to go off to work in about an hour; it's a beautiful day and not one Finger, large or small, seems to want to go out. What a waste of good sunshine, particularly as it's up around 20°C...

The projects are mounting up, again: Wagner in Bayreuth, Strauss in Santiago, two recitals in Toulouse and one in Austria this July. This is all in addition to the day job, so there'll be a fair bit of travel these next few months. I don't know if anyone else thinks the same way, but I just feel life gets better the older you get. OK, I'm lucky to still be slim and have no grey in my full head of hair but enjoyment of life really is, for people living within normal circumstances, a choice. You choose whether or not you wish to be happy. Friends of ours have everything going for them: jobs and a life/work balance any sane entity would kill for, yet happiness passes them by. I've a few theories, but they'll stay between me and the person in question.

The moment you choose happiness over any other mindset, you start to influence other peoples' moods. It's hard to resist upbeat colleagues or friends (providing they don't overdo it) and it's remarkable how quickly others will allow themselves to be pulled up as opposed to dragged down, which is the usual direction for any coffee machine conversation between humans with something in common. Optimism and joy tend to be extremely personal and subjective, yet negativity will always unite. Listen to ANY conversation you hear in the street; chances are, at least 80% of them will be between malcontents. The comfort such conversations provide is illusory; the warm feeling of support will only remain if it is fuelled with more negativity. As soon as you start getting positive, you can stop counting on the ear of that particular listener, and that in itself should be motivation enough to search for the sun.

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