I was so inspired by all the responses to yesterday’s post about us being multifaceted. ‘ I am large, I contain multitudes’ wrote Walt Whitman and he wasn’t just talking about himself. I wanted to continue with this theme of ‘and’. ‘And’ is my favourite word. This love affair began around a decade ago when I wrote an ampersand as the symbol for the universe (see below). This tiny, seemingly innocuous connecting symbol is what allows us to grow, to be multifaceted, to evolve and change and not become calcified or to stagnate. It is also what creates the universe. This is a photo of my grandson Arthur, all he sees in this world is infinite potential – all the things he can do. Then our culture will give him rules and roles that slowly hem him in (thankfully Arthur’s parents are suitably anarchic and weird and so he won’t be conforming any time soon). When we decided to live in a van I felt huge guilt about not being ‘the grandma at the bottom of the road’ ready for babysitting duties, dropping by every day. It took a couple of years for me to realise that, although I’m not that grandma, I bring a completely different dimension to Arthur’s life, and those insights and travel stories, this new way of experiencing and being in the world, is equally as valid as the more traditional role. No one else has ever lived through these times so as much as it’s important to learn from the past, it’s also up to us to consciously create our own roles, to carve new places out in the world for ourselves instead of following ‘accepted wisdoms’. Self-acceptance is key to everything of course, and I think that perhaps that will be the most important thing I can teach my daughter and grandson.
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