Listening to the news that tomatoes, cucumbers, and lettuce will be in short supply for the foreseeable future, I regret my hubris in giving up chocolate, biscuits, AND cake for Lent when I could have given up salad and taken some pressure off the food chain.
I wanted to show solidarity with my daughter who, whenever we have discussed self-imposed denial in the past, has demurred. In contrast, this year she rocked between social media use restriction and cutting out fizzy drinks finally opting for the latter.
She suggested I give up cheese but I know my limits better than that and so chose the easier route of everything sweet which started to feel immediately harder as I handed over the remaining homemade millionaire’s shortbread and allowed her to clear out the bag of sherbert fruits in my car.
Eating a sardonic apple I notice a worrying trickle of unsubscribers from this publication and wonder if I’m suddenly doing something wrong, have run out of ideas, or whether my audience is preferring to read about inventive ways to cook root vegetables as the “Great Salad Famine” bites.
I conclude that having changed the name of my newsletter and therefore the way it appears in your email programme some of you perhaps think you are being spammed not realising it’s me.
I start to berate myself for choosing such a preposterous and pretentious title and consider changing it back to my name but then wonder why I’m so desperate to be read by people who don’t get past the title line of their email and clearly don’t get any benefit from all of this anyway.
Like the cucumbers and tomatoes, the millionaire’s shortbread and sherbert fruits, I’m experiencing “reactance”. The limits placed on my ability to exert freedom that, until recently, was available to me are causing discomfort and I want to regain control for no reason other than not having it.
When it’s sweets and salad, or even readers of a blog, it’s not of great importance, but we experience this phenomenon in all aspects of life some of which can be quite destructive.
Perhaps you’ve been through a relationship break-up that you felt sure wouldn’t worry you only to find that you suddenly appreciated everything you’d once had as soon as it was gone.
Maybe you have been for a job or tried to secure some work that you were over eager to land which, paradoxically, made you a less attractive choice and saw you overlooked for someone less desperate making you more desperate than you were before.
Understanding why you want something, knowing your worth whilst trying to achieve it and finding the clarity to recognise the true impact of not having it often leads to better results.
Take, for example, my daughter’s application to do some tutoring.
Attending the interview she quickly learns that everyone else in the group is either already a teacher in primary or secondary school, has experience in tutoring, or is in the midst of a PhD. She hasn’t even begun her masters.
“My presentation was cringe-worthy. They made me go first and I just kept repeating the same things over and over,” she tells me while I think about how she would never have even put herself up for such an opportunity a year or so ago.
“It was so bad I just relaxed after that cos I knew they wouldn’t want me .”
This week she got an email from the tutoring company offering her a contract and some comprehensive training which will look good on her CV even if she never tutors anyone. She thought it must be an administrative error.
While we’re marvelling at her unexpected success the new neighbours come to the door with a big box of chocolates to apologise for all the noise they’ve been making during their renovations.
Everyone else paws over the impressive selection that I’m not allowed to eat while I think about how if they’d really cared about us they’d have brought some lettuce and tomatoes.
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