When not to submit

When I visited the UK last year with my husband, we bought tickets to see Blenheim Palace. Blenheim Palace is a stunning palace and the gardens are so very beautiful (we walked for hours in the grounds) but most special to me was that it was the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill and in his honour there is a permanent exhibition.

I was able to read the original letters he wrote home to his parents whilst at a horrid boarding school where he was incredibly miserable. There is no mention of his misery; not a single word. Rather, he assures his parents that he is doing his best, trying hard to improve all the time and that he hopes that they are well, comfortable and enjoying life. I felt very touched to think of this little boy’s generosity of spirit.

Of course, we all remember him for his great rallying war speeches, although he was humble about that as well. As far as he was concerned it was the nation that had “the lion heart” whilst he simply had “the luck” to be called upon to give the roar.

Although we are aware of his “black dog” he had a lovely sense of humour, a variety of interests including a great skill for painting and a passionate devotion to his wife, Clementine.

Of all Churchill’s quotes, it is this one that resonates with me:

“One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!”

As a woman with a submissive nature, there is an inclination to let life do with me what it will. I sometimes feel that I don’t have the strength to fight the dogged nature of those people who display narcissistic tendencies. Part of the reason that I live fairly quietly is that I feel so surrounded by people who are chasing more and more money, unperturbed by who they destroy to get at the next pot of gold. I question if these people have any understanding of the essence of life or that when they reach the end of their lives they will have learned anything at all.

Having said that, there have been times when I have refused to run away from danger. I’ve stood my ground, faced danger square in the face and refused to surrender to it. When a psychologist told me when my son was three years old that he would never go to a regular school, I vowed to prove him wrong. Not only did he go to a high achieving school and graduate, but he was Captain of one of the sports and is tackling university wonderfully well in the third year of a course highly suited to his interests and talents.

A dear friend said to me just yesterday, “I hate to feel a victim.” I hate to feel a victim too and I have turned disaster into success by meeting danger “promptly and without flinching”. Many, many women would have walked away from situations that I faced, accepted and turned around.

Although I do have a submissive nature I choose not to submit to those who behave dishonourably, wickedly or underhandedly. I have come out of my lovely ‘submissive bubble’, (where, frankly, I would much rather be) to take a hard look at the callous and devious behaviour of some bad men. I am not sure who said, “There is nothing to fear but fear itself” but the phrase was often quoted to me earlier in life and I draw on it now.

There are too many men who put on a white shirt and tie and go to the office to do heinous things; men who believe that their fortunes that they probably got in a variety of dubious ways, allow them to ride rough shod over people merely for sport.

If we are to be proud of our societies, we must challenge this behaviour and call for ethics in business to be revived. A good place to start would be to make the law available to all, instead of the very wealthy. I fear that greed is taking us over. If we don’t fight against greed and underhand tactics, where will it end? For these reasons, I have no choice but to leave my submissive nature at the front door.

Letting go

Many years ago I was introduced to a rather distant family member. Even then, he seemed old, in the sense that he was from the ‘old world’; from a time when people were civil in all circumstances. He was incredibly gracious; welcoming and kind; immovable, but in a nice way. His standards of behaviour were high at all times, and yet he was always calm and always quiet. I liked him immediately.

Over the years, we shared a good number of meals. He and his wife would sometimes cook us a wonderful roast meal with a fruit sponge for dessert. Do any of you remember the ‘Sunday roast’? He was ‘mine host’ at such events, and he just had to know that you were happy in every way.

“Would you care for another glass of wine, my dear? Or, I could offer you a port? Let me tell you what I have.”

They would come to our little house for a meal sometimes, and when we lived overseas, they even made the trek out to the country to visit us there. In more recent years, we’ve had them here for family celebrations.

He’s old now, very old, and he is not long for this earth. He’s in a nursing home, and if we don’t go and visit him very soon, we will have left our run too late, and that would be a great shame.

J was a prisoner of war in World War 11. He was a pilot and a feisty lad, and he tried to steal a Japanese aeroplane. And, he almost did, but, not quite. They locked him in solitary confinement in an extremely confined space for many months. He kept his marbles by throwing a button into the air and trying to find it. That’s J. Never give up! He didn’t tell me that story. That’s not his style. I heard it third hand from another family member who managed to get it out of him somehow.

When the going gets tough and I need to dig deep to find my courage, I think about J and that button. I think about the way he lived his life, with a deep integrity and honesty and a sense of what is right. I think the world of him and I guess my husband and I made a strong connection over the years, for it was to many family members’ chagrin that he had chosen us to be on the ‘high table’ with him at his special birthday affair, ahead of those closer to him.

His son is unable to see what I see in J. Unfortunately, he sees him as judgemental; that he didn’t care for his choices in life. He sees the standards as rigid and he considers him uncompromising. I think it is a shame. All his life he has possessed noble qualities. He has been honourable and true. He had much to pass on.

Nobody’s perfect. I may well have my rose-coloured glasses on when I see J. After all, I never lived with him. But these old guys, that have lived through wars, and endured horrors and seen it all, they just keep keeping on. They have backbone.

Some days I feel a bit like J in that confined space, when he did whatever he could to endure through to the next day. The hardest thing about life can be, not knowing when a difficulty will end. You can almost touch what you want, but not quite.

I received a little piece of advice this morning via email from someone who knew that I was having a hard time. He wrote,

“I encourage you to take the risk of seeing the joy in your life and letting the rest go.”

J would agree with that. See the joy. Forgive. Let it go.

I entered the D/s arena to learn just that; to learn to let go, to forgive, to embrace the joy in my life.

Learning about yourself, the good and the bad, is not easy, but we, in this ‘space’ as they like to call it, have the courage to go on that path of exploration.
Like J, we are doing our best to live with courage and honour; to ‘let go’. I think that really says something very positive about us all.