Whatever may happen in your life, the past is not a place you have to live in. Build yourself an inner fortress of calm, move right in, and carry on.
My parents left me a litany of letters and words to live by. As a teenager, I used to complain, but as an adult, I am ever more grateful. Here’s why.
There’s a note my mother shoved under my bedroom door one night. I should probably frame it. It lives tucked between two birthday cards, stashed in a file in my office. Every so often, I take it out, smooth out the creases, and read it.
“Knocks of all kinds come at you, from unexpected angles and unexpected people and places, at any time of your life,” it reads. “Make of yourself an inner fortress, which nothing and nobody can penetrate. Do this by whatever means you find useful…resolve that nobody and nothing can penetrate your inner calmness.”
I was raised in a loud family, where most evenings were spent attempting to fix the world’s problems and most days were used to do some good in the world. Building an inner fortress for myself, when the world seemed too loud and frightening, was difficult.
It’s something I feel I’ve achieved since turning 30, but the bricks and turrets for that fortress started constructing themselves when I went through some surprising life changes in my mid-20s. In the midst of nearly everyone questioning me (and others) on that particular move into single parenthood, I knew I could do it, even when I did not think I could.
As an adult, in my little triangle of a family, I am the one who stresses out over seemingly miniscule matters. Ask my fiancé, and he’ll tell you that I am famed for losing my mind over the What Ifs of a day. These form part of the moat that is located around my fortress.
That’s the one my mother told me to build, and it’s housed my ability to keep trying, even when I feel like it’s toppling over. It’s an element of self-respect, and understanding that life’s attitude towards you starts there. That’s something my dad taught me.
As a kid, I was prone to tantrums (my siblings could tell you many stories of my “thunder lip”) and later on, teenage angst-bouts. I actively cut myself off from my dad on an emotional level as a teenager and, in hindsight, I feel like a fool.
I do know that he forgave me in the way that all dads do, but I knew it particularly one evening when I came home to him, as he waited up for me. I’d been foisted into a situation I didn’t like, which saw me having to move back home after having moved out to, you know, “be an adult”. I was determined to be miserable about it, and in turn, determined to make my parents utterly miserable too.
But, one evening, at 2am, after bursting into tears as my dad made me tea, he pleaded with me to stop being so stubborn over change. I’d pointedly refused to move out of home again, because I did not want to try adulthood all over again: it had disappointed me.
In his calm yet firm manner, he reminded me that I’d built my own castle of misery, making my mom’s life difficult as I returned to live at home. He said: “You can choose to be miserable and visit that castle, but you don’t have to live there.”
The thought of committing myself to any sort of change or transformation felt laced with the possibility of yet another disappointment and, at 22, I didn’t want to take that chance again. Yes, I was really this cynical – I was no Taylor Swift.
Fast-forward a year, and thanks to a little careful nudging from my parents, I’d found a wonderful flat, an incredible flat mate and had settled into a great job.
As I sat on the balcony, looking out over the city I call home, not knowing that in a few years I’d bring a baby daughter home to that same flat, I realised that sometimes, within every disappointment, there lies a new beginning. You just have to find it and, hopefully, someone will make you tea at 2am to help you begin.
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