I recently got this article in my inbox. I've had thoughts like these before, and have even drastically changed me life, my speech, behavior, everything based on the concept that my family of origin was cruel and abusive, so I had to change me thinking patterns into something kinder and more compassionate. This ideology in this article follows along the same vein. I was so pleased to see it in my inbox, and be validated.
Outside the sun is breaking through a heavy cloud. A few drops of rain are still falling. There was hail earlier, a loud rattling on the window, and before that the lightest of rain was being whipped into strange shapes by the wind.
The rain is coming down harder now, hundreds of tear shaped drops. The old orange bricks of the terraced houses are becoming dark with wetness and the world is becoming grey again as another slab of dark cloud moves across the sun.
In Watching the English, Kate Fox says that we talk about the weather to ease our social dysfunction, in the same way we would rather talk to a stranger's dog, than with the stranger themselves. If you are English there are special rules for talking about the weather. You are supposed to complain, and there is a hierarchy of which weather is worst that seems to hold true no matter who you speak to. Cold and bright is at the good end of the scale. Warm and wet is better than wet and cold, and so on.
In this way we go about greeting people by complaining about the rain. When the weather clears up it doesn't take too many days of sunshine before we complain about that as well.
I'm sure, if you think hard enough, you can identify some of the codes of your own culture. (Often they become national stereotypes. It's a cliche to say that the English always complain about the weather. But most of us do actually complain about the weather).
The rain has passed now and I can hear the song of a blackbird, the cooing of a wood pigeon, and distant traffic.
Human beings are full of this social programming. We pick these hidden rules up from each other. We pick some up from our parents, then we throw those away (until we go visit our parents) and follow codes we've picked up from our peers instead. Most of the time we don't even notice that we are following a set of norms... So I complain about the weather a lot? It's just who I am.
I read the Guardian. Did I really choose to do so, or do I just want to be the sort of person who reads the Guardian...
I do believe in free will, as it happens. But I also believe that we are deeply conditioned, and that this social programming runs deep in all of us. Do you remember how important it was to wear the same designer clothes that everyone else had when you were at school? (Or not too, if you belonged to a different tribe.)
Is the weather really that miserable? Actually I quite like to listen to the rain, or the hail. I like that it changes so much. That the sky and the garden look so different each time I look up from my PC.
Writing about the natural world helps me to realise this. It helps me to find things to praise when other people are complaining. It helps me to see when I am just behaving in a mechanised way, when I am following various social instructions. It helps me to see through those instructions and to really love the cloudy grey sky.
Stop being a robot - learn to love grey skies and rain
from the Writing Our Way Home newsletter: http://writingourwayhome.ning.com/
Outside the sun is breaking through a heavy cloud. A few drops of rain are still falling. There was hail earlier, a loud rattling on the window, and before that the lightest of rain was being whipped into strange shapes by the wind.
The rain is coming down harder now, hundreds of tear shaped drops. The old orange bricks of the terraced houses are becoming dark with wetness and the world is becoming grey again as another slab of dark cloud moves across the sun.
In Watching the English, Kate Fox says that we talk about the weather to ease our social dysfunction, in the same way we would rather talk to a stranger's dog, than with the stranger themselves. If you are English there are special rules for talking about the weather. You are supposed to complain, and there is a hierarchy of which weather is worst that seems to hold true no matter who you speak to. Cold and bright is at the good end of the scale. Warm and wet is better than wet and cold, and so on.
In this way we go about greeting people by complaining about the rain. When the weather clears up it doesn't take too many days of sunshine before we complain about that as well.
I'm sure, if you think hard enough, you can identify some of the codes of your own culture. (Often they become national stereotypes. It's a cliche to say that the English always complain about the weather. But most of us do actually complain about the weather).
The rain has passed now and I can hear the song of a blackbird, the cooing of a wood pigeon, and distant traffic.
Human beings are full of this social programming. We pick these hidden rules up from each other. We pick some up from our parents, then we throw those away (until we go visit our parents) and follow codes we've picked up from our peers instead. Most of the time we don't even notice that we are following a set of norms... So I complain about the weather a lot? It's just who I am.
I read the Guardian. Did I really choose to do so, or do I just want to be the sort of person who reads the Guardian...
I do believe in free will, as it happens. But I also believe that we are deeply conditioned, and that this social programming runs deep in all of us. Do you remember how important it was to wear the same designer clothes that everyone else had when you were at school? (Or not too, if you belonged to a different tribe.)
Is the weather really that miserable? Actually I quite like to listen to the rain, or the hail. I like that it changes so much. That the sky and the garden look so different each time I look up from my PC.
Writing about the natural world helps me to realise this. It helps me to find things to praise when other people are complaining. It helps me to see when I am just behaving in a mechanised way, when I am following various social instructions. It helps me to see through those instructions and to really love the cloudy grey sky.
