Mugshot

While my anticipatory wait for my trophy mug – the one defining me as ‘Well Adjusted Woman of the Year’ in a gold banner below a gimpy picture of a toothy grinned me – continues, I have had plenty of time to ponder on the specifications of the person in the picture. As with everything that I write – it will in all probability come out as a contradictory babble of words – but I will stick with it, and maybe this will make sense one day when I look back at it. Then again, it could be another tragic case of 80’s fashion syndrome … where time, place and contextual reasoning counts as no reasoning at all.

It is easy to invent the physical picture of your ‘happy’ self in your head. Most of my life, the picture of a content and adjusted me that I dreamt up was actually just me having reached a certain goal weight or a certain control over food (adding in a few wrinkles, some sag and my ever changing hair colour for realistic adaptability.) Only from age and of course my incredible wisdom (!), did I come around to the fact that instead I had personified the age old proverb that no fat on Berty makes for cold and miserable person. Indeed, Buddha looked like a very chirpy fellow; the Fat Controller always had a smile to share with Thomas – even if it was a little suspect; and those colourful Teletubby creatures wouldn’t stop smiling even if you smashed their fingers in one by one with a hammer. Whilst I am sure it can be anticipated that these profound words are leading to a cliché about how weight does not determine happiness, but it is what is underneath that matters – I will resist but tacitly agree to the fact.

It is difficult to form a mental image of feelings and emotions we want to feel, and personality traits we aspire to have in the future as we cannot put a visual image to it. However, it is vital that we do all think of these things, as no amount of gazing at a picture of a thin you with a Ferrari will help you to become the person you want to be, unless that person is actually just a thin you with a Ferrari … in which case, fair enough.

Whilst I have realised that I have still not managed to write down any of the attributes I wish to see in myself in the future, I do have a few in mind, and I am a lot closer to figuring them all out since embarking on this journey of bed blogging, babbling, deliberating, meditating, whining, smoking and coffee drinking (from interim ‘World’s Best Dad’ mugs and the like).