Tinker Tailor Soldier - Why?

I've now mentioned in two other posts that John Le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is making me angry. We're reading it in my book club and my reaction to it has been strong. I can usually read my book club book in enough time to read an additional book between meetings, but this month I am struggling with finishing it.

So why is this interesting, or relevant? And why should you care?

My experience with Tinker Tailor has taught me two things that I thought I'd share: first, that every thing you are upset about now is actually something that has already happened to you, and second, that I am afraid of things that are difficult, which is not a good thing.

Now, one of the 'charming' aspects of Tinker Tailor is that it is a spy novel, and as the reader, you are as much in the dark as the main protagonist, who is recruited to root out a high-level mole of thirty years standing. I have not found being in the dark charming.

It has clearly rustled out some insecurity I'm storing in the depths of my soul (dramatic much?) about not being able to comprehend literature on a high level, unlike some friends of mine who studied literature at university (or college, for the Americans). Despite being an English literature whiz in high school, I was not allowed to study such a subject during my higher education.

Before handing over the tuition money, my Dad specified that I would have to find a career-oriented topic to study that wouldn't leave me jobless and directionless post-graduation. So I ended up studying applied economics and working for the college paper, in order to make myself employable as a financial journalist. I figured such a path was the best chance of making me not just a journalist, but a highly employable one. And it was certainly not a bad strategy. I've had an interesting career – one that gave me a very decent salary in Manhattan at the young age of 22 and then eventually paved the way for me to move overseas.

Dad's strategy got me thinking about how to make myself employable, which was a good thing, but it doesn't mean I'm not still a little sad that I wasn't able to spend my college days reading and analyzing literature and having lively debates with other like-minded people (like in the movies), instead of grinding my way through stats classes and business law. I also know many financial journalists who majored in English, so who's to say I couldn't have had the same path?

When I read a book 16 years after I filled in those college application forms and feel like crying because I don't understand it, could it be that disappointed 18 year-old rising to the surface?

So that's point one.

Second point is that the panic I feel at not being able to understand a complex spy story on first read and letting said 18-year-old take over, is clearly not a good thing when it comes to continuing to develop my skills as a writer (a big chunk of which involves reading).

When things get tough, fearful backing away only limits you. Yes, I know it's just one book, but I try to read all sorts of books -- not just my favorite types. Perfectionists (including me) will often turn back at the first hurdle because they are deathly afraid of failing, and so it's easier not to try.

So faced with my own perfectionism and my discomfort at reading a book which is not entirely clear to me from the get go, I decided that as much as I hated it, learning this lesson was important. When I'm faced with a task that seems tough, I sometimes shy away. But when I actually try, I always learn something. So why can't the process be less traumatic, why can't I be OK with not understanding everything right away? Learning requires a little bit of discomfort, but the rewards in the end are well worth it.

And so I plow ahead with Tinker Tailor. I am no longer actively worrying about understanding everything, but trying to enjoy and absorb. And maybe by the end I'll get it a little more. But more importantly, I'll have increased my tolerance to discomfort and confusion and realized it's not all as bad as it seems.

 Related Posts:

• Good Addictions?
• Life Is Messy
• What Next? Start Small

2

Unhappiness

I've finished reading both books that I brought home with me for vacation, so my Mom gave me another book to read – one which she has really enjoyed. It's The Art of Racing in The Rain by Garth Stein and it has testimonials all over the back cover from authors I respect, so I'm sure it must be pretty good. However, I read the first chapter on a train ride to visit one of my friends and by the time I had finished it, I had to use all my strength to keep from sobbing in public.

I'm not sure if I can handle reading this book. I'm going to try again, but the beginning just reminded me so much of the ending of the movie Marley & Me that I felt it was insurmountable. I watched Marley & Me on a flight once and let's just say that although I'm not the biggest animal person (spoiler alert), by the end of the movie I was in pieces, as if my own dog had died. I turned to Future Hub and told him we were never having a pet and 'I don't know why people put themselves through this sort of thing'.

Why would you subject yourself to an unhappiness you know you will experience?

I suppose what people who give cats and dogs (and other animals) a home believe is that the happiness they will experience over the life of their pet will much outweigh the sadness they know they will eventually face when that pet passes on to the big farm in the sky.

Life is full of unhappiness. So how do we cope?

I think that humans are very capable of handling it. And on some level we know that we must experience sadness with all the good stuff too. I've read numerous times in books and articles that people who consider themselves happy actually don't experience less pain or periods of sadness than others, it's just that they are aware that they get the bad with the good and know they will experience thoughts of sadness, depression even, bouts of anxiety, self-doubt and just that general feeling of itchiness and nothing being right – and that it too will pass.

I am reminded of this all the time. When I'm having a crappy day, just feeling down for no particular reason, I think, I will feel better again. I just have to ride this out, be kind to myself, not try too hard. It helps.

I'm going to make another attempt at reading that book. Mom says it's really great – as long as you can get past the bit in the middle when you get really angry at some character or another. I'll just try to ride it out.

0

Give Me An Inch...

I have now gone to Bikram yoga three times in the last three weeks. And although I'm stiff, I'm mostly sore in the right places (aka the muscles that should be working). My back is holding up fine, my shoulders and neck are doing well, so what's there not to be happy about?

This is where I may need to revisit some ideas about gratitude.

I found myself sitting in the yoga class last week plotting about how I could possibly fit in two yoga classes a week. Hold on a second there, missy. Was it not so long ago that all you wanted was to just be able to go once a week?

The main thing that has really sunk in for me during my years in physiotherapy is that my body is not a machine. I need to treat it well in order for it to actually work properly. And that means moderation of every sort.

With the wedding coming up it is so easy to get sucked into the idea that if only I could do my yoga class twice a week it would be an insurance policy that I look fabulous in my white dress. After all, there will be relatives coming from all parts of the world who haven't seen me in a while and we will be paying someone a good chunk of change to take lots of pictures that we will of course need to display in coffee table books, on the walls, and in Hello magazine (joke).

But I keep reminding myself that I am exercising now not because of some pre-wedding madness, but as part of a long-term struggle to get my body back in working order – and because I want to exercise. I have my body back these days (mostly) and I can finally do the exercise I like to deal with the stress of everyday life and to take care of all those amazing systems we learned about in ninth-grade biology. And I generally feel better about myself and my body when I am exercising, regardless of how I look to the outside world.

Also there's the enjoyment factor. Enjoyment? Gasp.

I don't know if it's being American, with our long history of embracing the puritanical work ethic or if it's just our society's current obsession with perfection as the new 'good'. A New York therapist once told me that her clients were no longer worried about morality or being perceived as 'good' by others. Instead, achieving 'perfection' was the new gold standard.

But what about enjoying life and being in the moment? This is where gratitude comes back in. I wrote a few weeks ago about my take on gratitude, as part of the Self-Discovery, Word by Word series (click here to read about November's word and participate). But gratitude is not just for one blog post.

It's easy to forget how not so long ago I was often shedding tears, feeling sorry for myself about how my body was not working properly and pain that would follow me around everywhere. I am genuinely thankful for being able to go to yoga again, to take my weekly tap dancing class. It's easy to forget about balance.

But I'm not the person I used to be – I am much more sane about what I can handle these days. It's just that every once in a while I get carried away. And who doesn't?

P.S. You can actually mail your wedding photos into Hello magazine. If you've done it, I want to hear about it.

0

Practice What You Preach

Last week I wrote a post about the importance of taking proper care of ourselves (Your Body Is Not A Machine). But I didn't follow my own advice and later paid the price.

It's been a busy few weeks recently. I haven't exactly been sticking to my rules about not going out more than a few times per week. We've been looking at wedding venues and my Mom was also in London for a long weekend.

In the midst of all this, I went in to see Super Physio for my regular bi-monthly review. I'm now at the point in my treatment where we're just fine tuning – building up a little extra strength here and there and doing some preventative work. To make a long story short, none of the work is related to the chronic pain anymore as that's now mostly gone.

Except that she did find something worrying this time. When we moved house two months ago I hurt my back pretty badly. My postural problems have been mostly limited to my neck/shoulder area, but when we moved, I spent hours and hours on my feet, packing and cleaning both the old and new flats. The Monday morning after the move weekend, my back was so stiff that I was having trouble walking without intense pain.

Fortunately I knew what exercises to do for it and I got the pain to subside. However, what I didn't realize at the time was how badly I actually had hurt it. Because I have a very bendy body, the majority of my back was still working pretty well and I just carried on without realizing it.

When I went in to see SP we stretched those pesky muscles right out and she told me to take it easy for a while. I was good about doing the back exercises, but I didn't exactly take it easy. Instead it coincided with working on a very research-heavy project at work that required a lot of computer time, my Mom's visit, wedding venue viewings, some drinks with friends, a talk given by a Hegelian and Marxist philosopher (different, but interesting), a tap dancing rehearsal and recital (yes, I am admitting to being a novice tap dancer), a friend's 40th birthday and a Fourth of July barbeque. There wasn't a night in two weeks when I just came home straight from work and relaxed on the sofa.

So this past Saturday morning I woke up and my muscles were screaming at me. My neck had joined in the yelling match too. We were supposed to go to a birthday party in the afternoon. I sent Future Hub on without me and glumly stayed at home.

I felt like a caged animal. I was miserable with pain and couldn't face going anywhere but at the same time cursing the fact that I had to stay home. I kept thinking I don't have time for this. I wanted to work on this blog, I had things around the house to get done. I wanted to go to yoga. But I was firm; it was time to cut myself off. I split my time between doing small sets of my physio exercises on the floor and then lying on the couch with heat either on my neck or lower back.

Eventually I made myself feel better by watching the last four episodes of Grey's Anatomy Series 5, which I hadn't yet seen – as luck would have it. With the requisite tear-inducing story lines it also helped me release some of those stress hormones (see yesterday's post). And it was a fabulous thing how much better I felt on Sunday. Well enough to do some writing and get on with my life.

0

A Crying Shame

Last week my mother was here visiting and when she left on Wednesday I spent the first 10 minutes of my walk to the train station bawling like a baby. Thank goodness I had the sense to wear big dark sunglasses to work – even though it wasn't exactly sunny.

I'm not sure what to make of this episode – I'm not even sure why I was crying. I was certainly sad she was leaving but at the same time it was a real visceral thing, a pure emotional response to something that I couldn't quite pin down, like a table cloth flapping in a sudden wind gust.

Which brings me to the topic of crying in general. From my own personal experience and talking to people that I know, women seem to do it more than men. Research backs this up. According to a study done in the 1980s by Dr. William Frey at the St. Paul-Ramsey Center at the University of Minneapolis (which was the first study to look at the biological role of emotional tears versus eye irritation tears), women reported crying five times as frequently as men.

His study also showed for the first time that emotional tears had a higher protein content than the eye irritation ones, which began to back up his theory that tears help rid the body of stress-inducing hormones. Around the same time there was a separate study that showed people with stress-related illness (ulcers and colitis) were more likely to view crying as sign of weakness or loss of control.

I'm not sure if more research was completed in this specific area of stress and crying, but I was able to find a more recent article that did report emotional tears contain more manganese, an element that affects temperament, and more prolactin, a hormone that regulates milk production. Sobbing out these substances is thought to relieve tension by balancing the body’s stress levels and eliminating the build up of these chemicals, making the crier feel better. The prolactin element might have something to do with why women cry more than men; women have more prolactin than men – which makes sense as they produce milk. But I couldn't find any further research in this area.

From my own personal experience, crying is a real stress reliever. Often when I cry it's actually because things I'm frustrated with have piled up substantially, and so when my future husband (let's call him the Future Hub) asks me what's wrong, it takes me a while to sort through everything that's knocking around in my brain.

That's why, sometimes when I'm feeling low and just need to let it all out, it's better to turn on an episode of Grey's Anatomy. There's always some requisite tear-jerker moment – you'd have to be made of stone not to cry – and I can let it all out without anyone asking me what's wrong.

0