Perfect 5- Minute Moments

Christmas is over and  the new year is not yet here.
We are back, once again in those nameless inbetween-days recovering from over indulgence.
Those of us who don't have to go back to work yet are meant to be recovering from the excesses of Xmas and filling our days with nothing but relaxation.
And yet....there is a vague sense of edginess, a feeling that we are waiting for something that hasn't happened yet..
For a new year? A new beginning? A return to work? A return to all things familiar and  slightly boring?
Time pressures have disappeared, replaced, instead, by the pressures of filling time. 
There is no reason to get up in the morning.
No reason to eat breakfast before lunch.
No particular reason to do anything at any particular time.
We are free to do nothing at all.
And all this freedom and resting takes a lot of getting used to.
We have all the time in the world to spend with the people we've been longing to spend  all the time in the world with.
And suddenly all the time in the world can seem like a big,beckoning space.
With as long as we want to talk about everything we have meant to talk about all year,we  find that we have suddenly run out of words.
We are used to making conversation in short, urgent bursts.
We live in a world of sound-bites, rushed conversations and 60 second news.
In a world of acronyms and text speak.
Sitting, listening to our teenage children and their teenage cousins huddled together on the sofa  on Christmas Day, I found myself wondering if they had actually started to speak a different language.
Theirs is a world  shaped by social media sentences and individual letters instead of words.
Sometimes it feels as though  conversation is a dying art
Grudgingly all the cousins, 4 boys and 3 girls, had agreed to participate in the dramatised court-case involving stolen jewels and dubious characters that their grandad had written especially for them.  
But under pretend cross -examination they answered mostly with monosyllables and  giggles and the odd 'LOL." or "TY."
Try as he might, their once-upon-a-lawyer grandad, could not really get them to enter into the spirit of his little drama.
The ad-libbed performance, supposed take up most of the afternoon, lasted only half an hour before the teenagers made their escape.
" I sent them the outline a week ago," complained their grandad, ' they were meant to read it and create their characters.  They've had lots of time."
"Perhaps they've had too much time," I suggested. " Perhaps it would have worked better if you had given them the outline 10 minutes before it started and told them they had 5 minutes to create their characters."
" How can you create a character in 5 minutes,"sighed their grandad, folding away his Christmas masterpiece.
But the truth is, 5 minutes is all that it takes.
5 minutes is all that it takes for the world to change completely.
5 minutes is all that  it takes for planes to fly into buildings, for bombs to explode, for river banks to burst or for freak waves to wash away an entire island.
5 minutes is all that it takes for crazy people to do crazy things.
So 5 minutes is definitely enough time for lively teenagers to create make-believe characters.
Our lives are a chain of sometimes-intense, sometimes-meaningless  5 minute intervals linked  together by hopes and dreams and the occasional bar of chocolate.

Christmas day faded into Christmas night.
The teenagers  turned the music up and danced their way into boxing day., chattering happily in their mostly incomprehensible language about mostly incomprehensible things.

And as we " oldies," sat and watched, we couldn't help smiling.
Smiling at the happiness they found just by being together.
Smiling at the fun they were having.
Smiling at the memories they were creating.

Because what I've realised as I'm writing this, is that it's not the speed at which we live our lives that matters, but the depth and strength of the memories we create. 
And one day, when all-the-time-in-the-world weighs heavily upon our shoulders, it's remembering all the 5 minutes filled with love and life and laughter that will keep us going.

So here's to 2016 being a year full of perfect 5-minute-moments...and lots and lots of chocolate.

The Popularity Illusion

And so, Summer is almost over.  
We have holidayed, travelled and festivaled. 
We have forgotten that there is such a thing as work or school .
Forgotten that there are unpleasant tasks to do and unlikely deadlines to meet.

We have indulged in all things pleasurable and absolved ourselves of as many responsibilities as possible.

Despite the rain ( it is England after all! ) we have managed to have a good time.

But if you are a teenager, there is one thing you can be sure about: however good a time you've had, the "populars" have had a better one.

You will know this from the thousands of photos they have released into the virtual ether.

You will know this from the thousands of photos they have released into the virtual ether.

There is not a moment they have enjoyed that hasn't been photoed and shared with anyone who's interested and many who aren't.  

If there is no photo or snapchat story, how can they prove how popular they really are?

Without a visual record, how can they show the world what a hectic social life they lead, just how in demand they are?

Photos at parties, on holidays, at home or at friends' houses. 

Photos in front of a mirror looking handsome or beautiful,fully-dressed, half-dressed, almost completely undressed.. photos in the garden, in the park, on the pavement, in a cafe, doing something, doing nothing with ALL their friends, ALL the time.

The most important thing is that they can show the world just how beautiful and fantastic and popular they are.
And so they take a photo to prove they are physically there although I can't help wondering where they are emotionally as they view the world through their telephone lens.

Can't help wondering if they actually know how to enjoy the now.

If your "present" is constantly viewed through the lens of a camera, are you really living it?

And if you are under so much pressure to show the world what a good time you are having, are you really having a good time at all?

Life becomes not so much experiencing and enjoying as proving and evidencing.

And where's the life in that?

Where's the letting go and embracing the moment because it's simply yours and perfect ?Where's the time to forget and dream?
Where are you in all of this perfectly popular life?

At the beginning of the summer holidays, way back when summer still lay before us full of promise and the possibility of unrainy days, my  7 year old niece and 10 year old nephew came to stay.

" Do you have a boy friend?" my niece asked our 17 year old daughter, Mia.

" No,' replied Mia.

For a moment my niece stared into space, wrinkling her nose, then turning back to Mia, she asked:

" Oh...does that mean you're not popular then?"

Mia (17) and her cousin Neela (7)

At  7 years old, my niece already believes in the absolute importance of being "popular." 

It was a theme both she and my nephew returned to throughout their stay.

Worried for their cousins that they might not be popular enough, worried that if they are not, then happiness, love and all that is important in life will elude them forever.
When did it started, this confusion between being " popular," and being "happy"?
Because they are definitely not the same thing.
And when did being one of the " beautiful, trend-following, characterless, never-daring-to-be-different" people become more important than standing out in the crowd,being true to yourself and following your dreams?
When did being clever and thoughtful, compassionate and kind, stop being qualities worth valuing?
Because what the popular crowd rarely seem to do, is care about each other.
There is no room for " caring."
That wouldn't leave enough time for stealing each other's partners, or having a better, more wild time than everyone else.
There's no point in being "popular" unless you are constantly trying to be the-most-popular.
Life becomes a  constantly, exhausting competition to show the world how amazing your life is.
If you are a girl, you must never appear cleverer than a boy, never show that you care and never admit if you have stayed at home and studied or read a book.
If you are a boy you must never commit to anything more than 5 minutes in the future, never show too much enthusiasm and never admit you actually like someone or leave home without hair gel in you pocket.
The most important thing is to have FUN all the time.
There is no room for introversion, for sitting at home doing nothing, for chillin' and just being.
Where's the selfie op in that?

I'd be lying if I said there wasn't the cool versus " square and boring" divide when I was a teenager.
Lying if i pretended there wasn't an invisible dividing our sixth form common room (and yes, I was on the square and boring side).
Lying to say I didn't feel triumphant when, at one of our parties, the doorbell rang and standing on the doorstep were some of the "cool and trendy" crowd begging to come in.
I would also be lying if I said I didn't make them grovel for a while before saying yes.
But I did say yes... and maybe that was part of the difference between us and them.
But even with the divide, everything was less exhausting then.
There were no mobile phones, no Facebook or Snapchat.
When we went home we could close the door and for a while we could just be. 
We could spend all evening in our pyjamas doing nothing and the next day... no one would know.
Our lives were not the 24 hour, voyeuristic social networking fest that being a teenager is today.
And for that I am eternally grateful.
Because all this pressure to be popular or all this anxiety about not being popular enough, takes its toll.
Something is rotten in the heart of our socially networked adolescent world when, according to an article in The Guardian last week: 

Almost half of British girls aged 17 to 21 have needed help with their mental health........

According to mental health charity YoungMinds, between 2001 and 2011 there was a 77% increase in hospital admissions of women under 25 due to self-harm.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2015/aug/24/there-is-an-urgent-need-to-update-adult-thinking-to-catch-up-with-the-reality-of-teenagers-lives

So when my strong-willed, vivacious 7 year old niece worried about whether or not her teenage cousin was popular or not, I wanted to grab her by the hand and run away with her.
I wanted to take her to the beach and let her feel the sand between her toes.
I wanted to sit with her and watch the sun setting over the ocean.

East Wittering sunset

I wanted to tell her that this was enough, a perfect moment shared by only her and me.

A secret that the rest of the world knew nothing of.
I wanted to tell her stories of princesses who were only truly beautiful when no one was looking because only then could they really be themselves.
" Being popular is an illusion," I wanted to say, " it's transitory and when it's over you will be left feeling empty, uncertain and lonely, unsure of who you are or what you want or how to dream. Live in the moment, enjoy what you have."
But my niece is full of the wisdom and confidence that only a 7 years old can have.
And I know how old-fashioned and irrelevant my words would seem.
She would try to listen but already her mind would be wondering and flicking her long, dark curls behind her shoulder, giving her most winning smile she would point at my phone and say:
" Auntie Becky, can I take a selfie?"