The challenge of having generous thoughts

Having ended my previous entry with a generous spirit, I have been meaning to post for while, to own up to the fact that I was not always able to follow through on my generous intention.This has taught me a couple of things.

First, and practically, blogging may work best when it is contemporaneous rather than reflective. This may be the value of the medium: the ability to capture emotions as they happen, in relatively small sized bites. So things that I thought were interesting at the time look less so at this distance. Of course, it could be simply be that distance brings perspective and the thoughts were not all that interesting in the first place. Nevertheless, I will try to be more contemporary with future entries. If they turn out to be drivel, I can always delete them.

The second thing that I learned was that keeping ungenerous thoughts at bay is easier in theory than in practice. This is something that troubles me. It doesn’t trouble me in that it keeps me awake at night but I am a bit frustrated by it. I am not very proud of the fact that I can be quick to criticise and judge people.

Most of the time, I restrain myself from saying something ungenerous. Most of the time. But now and again, I hear the words just after they have left my lips, regretting it instantly. So, since the blog is devoted to my nascent spirituality, a big question for me here is: how do I stop thinking ungenerous thoughts? Because I would like to. Honest!

But before you go getting, the wrong idea, the visit from emissaries was fine and, for the most part, enjoyable. It was just that, at times, I wished there was a volume control. I think I behaved generously – most of the time.

Actually, we ended up with even more house guests, to add to the emissaries. My uncle died after a long illness and my cousin came down from Scotland for his funeral. We put up her eleven year old son or a few days, while my cousin sorted things out. She then, I am delighted to say, came to stay for a few days after the funeral. It was great to see her, despite the sad circumstances. She is a very special person and I love her dearly. She and her son only overlapped with our emissaries for a few days but then my Mum came to stay for the weekend, overlapping with my cousin and her son.

Then, on the Monday, everyone was gone. Everyone except Doris, of course - my wonderful much-loved and adored free spirit. How did I ever manage to get her to marry me? I am so very lucky.