Kate Ashley-Norman – is a long-time resident, entrepreneur, mum, and owner of The Didim Hypnotherapy Clinic
SUMMER holidays can be notoriously long, or whizz by in a flash, depending on what angle you are looking at. As a kid, I can remember the six weeks of summer holidays stretching out in all its bliss of freedom – long bicycle rides, building the tree house, penny sweets from the (long since closed down) village shop.
Here in Turkey, those summer holidays are three long months – three long months of having four kids at home, and wanting them to do more than just loll about on the iPad (and of course bicker over whose turn it is!).
Entertaining them without spending the equivalent of the UK budget deficit is nigh on impossible. Bringing them back to the UK to have a bit of culture was probably not the cheapest option. Having been away for so long I am having to relearn what the best options are in shepherding four children and a willing pair of hands (my mother) around interesting holiday experiences which will hopefully be memorable for the children in the long run (though I do sometimes wonder why I bother). Three months is an incredibly long stretch for the kids. For us mothers, it’s even longer!
Yet when I see my children growing up so quickly – my eldest son is already half way to being officially an adult – time takes on a completely different perspective. That moment when I instinctively bought a pregnancy test kit and saw the positive line seems like yesterday – literally!
This is the time that you want to slow right back down to a snail’s pace, so you can relish every second of their childhood for as long as possible.
I read a really interesting take on time perspective the other day from a mathematician. When I look at the next year of my life, it feels like such a short time. I know it will pass quickly, and I should make the most of every moment. When my nine year old son looks at the next year, it feels like a lifetime. For me though, the fractional representation is much smaller.
As a 45 year old, that year now represents 1/45th of my life. For my son, it is just 1/9th. As such the perception of time for me is much smaller. My grandmother will be 100 next spring – can you imagine how short a year seems when it only represents 1/100th of your life.
Perspective is crucial to maintaining a calm manner in the event of even the most trying circumstances. And I don’t mean the kind of unhelpful (sometimes puerile) perspective that is preached at us (‘think of all the dying children in Africa!’).
Rather the everyday kind of perspective that enables you to see your own situation with clarity and understanding. Without perspective, you are unable to have any sense of objectivity. Your thinking is cluttered, distorted.
You feel completely powerless in your ability to gain any kind of control over whatever situation you are facing. I can only imagine the dark, swirling thoughts that must have been going round and round in Robin Williams’ mind to have carried out that final dramatic act of taking his own life.
Google ‘The Stockdale Paradox’. Jim Stockdale was a US naval pilot who was shot down and taken as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, where he was routinely tortured and beaten. He came out pretty much psychologically intact.
I use Jim Stockdale as an example of maintaining perspective in the face of great adversity – not living life with blind optimism, but rather ‘having the discipline to confront the most brutal parts of your current reality’ – or what I call perspective.
Those with the blind optimism ultimately could not cope with the brutal facts of their current reality –their hope of and faith in being out in time for Christmas meant that they did not effectively face up to the harsh treatment and endless months of imprisonment and torture.
They could not dig deep enough to withstand the reality. As Stockdale said – ‘they died of a broken heart’.
Overcoming any adversity in life is about confronting sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes downright dangerous, realities, and having the internal strength to bring yourself out the other end with hope and positivity. Ultimately out the other end, psychologically stronger.