TV, SUICIDE AND SUFFRAGETTES

Arsenal just needed one more goal.  I know its only a game but it was so close and if ever there was a  match they lost it was that one.   They lost beating the smallest principality in the world two love, or two nil.  Tom was fuming and so was I. It wasn't so close. They didn't win.  You think with all their money they could have afforded a better side, each player earning bank account number salaries.   Too many near misses, almost there -  but it doesn't matter how well they played, they lost.   In yoga I talked about not competing with yourself, or judging yourself, or others; just having compassion and acceptance for yourself, which I'm sure is the exact same thing Wenger is saying to his team right now - not.

Then a programme on suicide which was very well produced.  And I suppose is the antithesis of having acceptance and compassion for yourself.    How do you start or begin to touch upon a subject which is riddled with guilt, denial, anger, betrayal, in fact every word that wasn't mentioned in the programme.  Shock was mentioned.  No one seemed to realise that there was a good chance that someone who was depressed would consider suicide.   Selfish it may be but when the black dog looms I am told it is all pervading and even in my psychology, which is barely skimming the surface of such matters, when there are so many things real or imagined - and the imagined becomes real - pushing you over the edge, relationships or lack of them, finance or lack of it, dreams or lack of them - its an option.    The woman talking and interviewing talked about the importance of talking, but perhaps the importance of listening and observing to alleviate the 'shock' should also be qualities we should nurture.   And the talking we tend to do as a culture is about stuff that so does not matter - like the weather, or I suppose Arsenal losing to Monaco.

And lastly, the last in the series on the suffragette movement. I didn't see the first two but will have a look on iplayer. I interviewed Barbara Castle, when a documentary was produced in 1994 on the anniversary and she had written her autobiography. She put in it to me 'never let it be a man's world,; having told me I shouldn't toughen up like other journalists and be sensitive and strong and basically feminine without being a pushover.    I'm not anti male, in fact I really like and have deeply loved some of them, but the programme concluded that considering what those suffragettes endured we have achieved very little - as a gender, politically, in industry, financially and we don't help our own. And that men still have their old boy network and block women at every turn.    I have, in general, not found that.   I think its' more to do with the person than the gender.  Yes, there's a type who will always condescend and patronise and block and politic but they do so to both genders and its their stuff and insecurity.  I have always gone my own way, and viewed system and authority as smoothing some one else's path and palm, although not necessarily mine.  

I taught yoga again today and was told by some people who came they thought I was the best teacher they'd ever had, which is a wonderful thing to say, isn't it?   And I went up to kiss my son good night.   Which was the best bit of the day.