The cruel month

Yesterday i heard that actually people kill themselves in spring more than any other time of the year. It seems strange that this may happen, as the light returns. The theory which was put forward was because people have more energy and if they are depressed anyway, this energy gathers more pace and therefore they are more likely to top themselves with all that extra energy.

TS Eliot wrote in The Wasteland,

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

This is probably why people end up feeling depressed in April. At least it is the most accurate description i have ever heard of why people are sad when spring is on the way. I always think of this quote when i see lilacs, which incidentally are my favourite flowers.

In winter you can hide away, in spring, strength and courage is required to once more take up the hoe and hoe away. This is where working the land is so satisfying. Where gardening is great. Where doing something for someone else makes life worthwhile. I would strongly suggest that if anyone is feeling miserable that they do something for someone else and they would feel much better. Clean the house. Go for a walk. Be grateful for something. I don't really get depressed. I do get fed up sometimes… but by and large depression is not native to the sanguine. And anyway we can never stay miserable for very long to be depressed. We will kill ourselves in other ways. But not depression.

Yesterday it was a lovely warm spring evening and i did not have the boys. So after taking some late lunch i decided i would return to the school. I ended up making little branch arrangements with eggs on them. I just thought, i know i teach here and all, but really, i love the festivals. I love the way we celebrate the coming of the new year, and i love the way children embrace the present so completely.

And let me help make it a bit magical for them.

I have been thinking a lot about education, of course. I have seen how children are so different from each other. How WE are so different from each other. Children can and do learn, but for those who take longer, they need time. They need space. They need enjoyment and joy. For the children i have encountered, i have not met a single so-called lazy child. Or indeed stupid child. Children ALL try their best. They really do. I am constantly heartbroken at how hard they try their very very best. We are all born with astonishing gifts. And when they are trying their best and being told that they are still failures because of some stupid standard which we have set, it is a recipe for the crushing of the human spirit. Why would we do that to them? We can challenge them in other ways, real ways. Ways which are nourishing, ways which are real.

It is so unfair. I have often thought that IF i ever did return to Singapore i would not subject my sons to tests. They can do what they want that their own pace. Results are not the be all and end of existence.

I've also been reading a lot about the obsession with Christ the man. This in part is the befuddlement with this search for the Holy Grail. How come the Holy Grail? Why not the Holy Platter? Or the Holy Spoon or the Holy Fork? Why the Grail, which does not mean cup actually, it means stone. They Holy Stone we are really looking for? In Parsifal it is a platter which is borne aloft. For me it is this yearning desire to confirm, in some physical artefact that we are spiritual beings. What of course is ironic, is that it is so prosaic. Look into the mirror, look at each other. The evidence is staring us in the face. We ARE spiritual beings. The VERY physical nature of us is spiritual. There is no contradiction between the two. The secular is the sacred and the sacred is the secular. Astrophysicists and cosmologists KNOW this. If this is true then, it has quite serious implications about how we live our lives. In which case, looking for some mythical object is far more convenient distraction.

Well i need to start making some curry. I tried making some last night but could not bring myself to do it as i instead watched Honest Trailers, this new youtube i have discovered. It is very funny and satirises the trailer genre as a piece of dishonest marketing.

It was perfect Friday night nonsensicalism.

So, now curry. And some rice. I love cooking for the festivals. To share what we have with everyone else. When i think back to last year and how difficult things were i wonder why the hell did i put myself through that? I don't know if that will ever happen to me again. I think it won't - not because i won't be subject to the vagaries of life, but because i am a different person.

And i LIKE being different of course. Perhaps in some weird way i chose what had happened to myself. In fact, i think i did. There was no other way really. It had to happen. April, the cruellest month? Not if it brings the lilacs i think.