The Fish Rots from the Head

Ending is better than mending.

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World.

Busy dismantling our warehouse and preparing for a new year working in more flexible arrangements. 

Is such a release to be moving on, with fresh vision and a completely new outlook for the year ahead.  Packing boxes and making all the trips to the recycling center.  There is a bit of grieving and letting go, knowing we are moving on but the general feeling is positive.

Our friends came around on Friday and we shared a fire in the backyard - nothing beats a crackling fire,  sitting on a log, talking.  Friends had wine and cigarettes, but there was never a compulsion or a feeling of awkwardness that I wasn't drinking.  Not from me, but I definitely did recall times where this couple had felt in unfamiliar territory with me drinking ginger beer - like when their wine glasses actually ran empty and I was not constantly refilling it for them.

Meeting friends and not drinking is something that just comes so much more naturally now, we all sort of know I don't drink and it is just what happens.  Like if I was gluten intolerant or diabetic I guess - there is the certain 'otherness' about not drinking that can throw people who only remember you as a drinker at first. 

Like the old ideas that people who don't drink are less fun, or less open to risk taking, or simply dull.  That is simply not true - it is quite clear that at  "three quarter time" of the drinking session, everyone else tends to get sloppy, less able to clearly share what they are thinking and just plain sleepy - whilst sober me is pinging away on fresh air and just enjoying the moment.

The Huxley snatch at the beginning of the post is about moving on, how sometimes, dead things should be left to rot.  There is no point digging up a rotting corpse and poking a stick up it's butt - then to smile and nod and pretend it's not a flyblown, fetid tangle of gristle. 

Just leave it in the ground to do it's thing with the worms and all that.  That is my relationship with certain family members, and I'm OK with that.  All is forgiven and the cycle just has to take it's course.  I have stopped poking the stick and waving fly spray and pretending.

From here, it's all about keeping the gratitude and being ever mindful that the fish rots from the head.

So let's all keep caring for what goes on in our heads.  Every thought, every feeling turned into action, has an impact.  So keep a measure of restraint and discipline with what you think, and breathe before you speak.