Waiting.

Something that I find extremely frustrating is mastering the art of patience.

They say 'patience is a virtue' but I want to be there yesterday. Not tomorrow. We live in a society where a take-away pizza will get to your door before the police, you can have a hot meal on your plate in 5 minutes with the aid of a microwave. Where it's easier to contact people with the aid of social networking sites such as facebook (still not on it for lent and feel completely out of touch with the world!), mobile phones with apps like BBM or ping than it is to you know, actually meet in person. I've realised how hard it is to remain anonymous in such a society. I'm not actually sure I like it. Hmmm...

The first part of this post has been saved in drafts for a while and I remembered it today when I was in a seminar earlier on. It was a seminar on a director/theatre 'composer' called Robert Wilson. I won't bore you with all the biographical information about his life and works and blah blah blah (although, as a drama student, I generally found it all very interesting) He liked to create very long productions, concentrating mostly on the idea of theatricality, not a representation of anything, but of creativity. His works were choreographed precisely, and would often include pauses. Long pauses. One of his plays in particular starts with a half an hour freeze frame of a woman with her two children. Motionless. She then pours them a glass of milk and stabs them. Interesting to say the least. In an interview with him that we watched in the lecture, he was of the opinion that these long pauses were there for audiences to reflect. This caused some controversy amongst some people in my seminar group. In particular, one member of the group argued that she didn't like to be told when to reflect, and preferred the theatre to be a place where she could escape. In some ways I think she was probably right, but her reasoning was 'I don't want to sit there and think about how crap my life is.' In no place did he say 'I'm going to torture you by making you sit and think about your terrible, terrible life.' But that got me thinking (oh dear)

Life is busy. Often too busy to reflect on stuff. I know how difficult I find it to stay in silence in one place for too long without having something to do to busy myself, by finding some music to listen to, something to watch on youtube or occasionally doing some uni work! Every little thing makes us really busy, and I'm guessing Wilson wanted to create a space where people could just; be, thinking about life, pondering things that they wouldn't usually in everyday life.
How often are our lives sooo consumed with business that we forget what it's like to...be?
Are we actually a little bit scared of being alone somewhere with just our thoughts for company?

I called this post 'Waiting.', and before I went off in an entirely different direction I was talking about patience. Often all we are concerned about is living in the now, consumerism, what's 'in style' what's 'the latest gossip' our latest love interest. Thinking about the 'not yet' goes as far as panicking about our personal future, about what kind of career we will have, getting a foot on the property ladder etc. etc. etc. Don't get me wrong, by blogging this, in NOO way am I saying it's wrong to be thinking of all these things, I just think mastering patience is important when it comes to the future, because before we know it, we're sitting in a rocking chair in a nursing home looking back on our lives wondering what the hell we were worrying about.

It's all going to be just fine. Life will throw some rubbish at us occasionally, but you should never let it stop you achieving all you can :)

Lent..

Tomorrow is 'Pancake day', which not only means eating an excessive amount of fried batter filled with gorgeousness such as nutella (a fave in our kitchen at uni),but it also marks the start of Lent. 40 days before Easter, symbolising the time that Jesus was fasting in the wilderness. Lots of people like to give up stuff at this time, and I've only ever really taken it seriously a few times. A couple of years ago, I managed to give up facebook, but this was before many people were on it, so there really wasn't much point..the year after that, I gave up meat, but I guess that was more of an attention seeking thing from the parents, as my mum did most of the cooking so that meant she'd have to do something special for me. It didn't work out like this, as I had to do all of my own cooking, bad times.
This year, I'm definitely going to give up facebook again. I'm going on a facebook fast. That way it sounds super holy (?) I know that it will be a challenge (probably more of a challenge than giving up chocolate!) it's an addiction. No one cares about my updates or what I've done with my day, or how many words of an assignment that I'm clearly NOT doing whilst refreshing my homepage every 5 seconds, or what random stuff i've found to photograph on my phone. But somehow, when I write an update, I think maybe someone will need to know this vital piece of information. They don't.

A friend of mine said that she was also going to give it up for lent, except for on Sundays, because it's the day of rest... I argued that Jesus didn't check into the local travel inn, kick off his sandals and order a room service buffet cart, just because it was a Sunday. If Jesus had facebook and updated his status, I'm sure they'd be a bit more interesting such as 'Jesus Christ; Today, I raised a man from the dead, healed a blind man, walked on water and preached on top of a mount. Man, I'm beat' 10million likes. Much better than the standard 'I am angry at the world and I want you all to know that I am angry with the world and make you angry too.. grrrrrrrrr' Yep.
So. I'm giving it up for a while, maybe I'll go on it on Sunday 10th April, that dreaded day I turn 20 *eek*...but apart from that, no.



Beth x

tired.

It has definitely been a tiring week/couple of weeks.

I find it strange how when you're tired, time seems to go so much slower, or everything seems like sooo much effort. All you can think about is the next time your head is going to hit the pillow and you can close your eyes and drift off. And when you finally get into your bed, snuggled under the duvet, eyelids heavy, breathing slows, you start having those 'am I awake, or am I asleep?' kind of dreams...you slowly start to drift off and *BANG*, *CRASH*, laughter, running down the corridor... -sigh- never mind, this is student life...where you soon discover that sleep is for the weak anyway..