Wellbeing notes: The world from our neighbours’ windows
01/06/2025 at 10:36 am | Posted in Wellbeing notes | Leave a commentTags: community, empathy, life skills, neighbours, perspectives, view from my window
There’s an old stone house on a hill that I can see from my back window. Today, that distant building is bathing in sunlight. It looks rather idyllic over there, surrounded as it is by rolling pastures.
I’ve always supposed that the residents of that old stone house must look over to us, perched on our own hillside, in much the same way that we view them. But recently I discovered this wasn’t the case at all. We took a detour from a local pub, and came across the old stone house. For the first time I was able to look across from it, towards our street. However there were too many trees surrounding the homes there to glimpse a single brick or stone.
What people see depends very much on their perspective, of course. But it’s so easy to forget that fact, until you metaphorically step into another’s shoes. Even people who live next door to each other can perceive life very differently.
Somewhere, deep in our tribal minds, we might on occasion decide that people who don’t see things exactly as we do, are not ‘our’ people. We may even blame them unfairly for a host of ills. But the truth is, people are people wherever you go. We all share the same human hopes and fears. Therefore, being understanding of another’s perspective, however near or far away they may be, has to be one of the most valuable life skills of all.
Wellbeing notes: The importance of saying thank you
01/03/2025 at 9:49 am | Posted in Wellbeing notes | 2 CommentsTags: appreciation, community, gratitude, helping, kindness, thankfulness, volunteering
A few days ago I was invited to dinner at Trowbridge County Hall, as a ‘thank you’ for some voluntary work that I’ve been doing.There, I met an interesting man called Brian who, for the past decade, has been bringing library books to housebound residents. When I talked to him, I realised that what he did wasn’t really about books, or not entirely. It was about the conversations he brought to isolated individuals. He was a lovely person: good at listening; non-judgemental. And he fully understood that his volunteering didn’t just benefit others, it made him happy too. At the event he was given a well-deserved award.
I came away afterwards with three impressions. First, that volunteering matters. When we offer our time, goodwill and energy, warm and wonderful things happen around us. Not least, volunteers can and do foster mental wellbeing in the individuals they help. Second, that every volunteer deserves a ‘thank you’. There’s nothing quite like someone recognising the effort that you are making. And third, making those ‘thank you’s public from time to time can inspire and encourage a host of other people to do their bit for the local community.
This is why I let the wild bees go
10/06/2019 at 8:01 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | 2 CommentsTags: bees, community, disabilty, inspiration, lessons from nature, nature
The honey bees buzzed into the garden like a striped, determined blizzard, and settled in a wild cherry tree where they became a solid mass that moved constantly yet kept its shape. The way they seethed and settled seemed alarming to this bee-ignorant person. I called a local beekeeper, who said he would turn up the next morning and capture the swarm. In the meantime, cautiously, I studied them. And began to see patterns in their movement.
Firstly, they were reassuringly peaceful, cocooning and protecting their all-important queen. Then there were individual bees, scouts, who constantly buzzed off to search for a new nesting site in the nearby woods, and returned to communicate their findings to the swarm.
For hours, on and off, I watched them. They were mesmerising. Gradually I began to see the swarm’s point of view. I liked the way so many bees could act as one community. As chance would have it, my own home was about to become a community. Within the week, our disabled son, Tim, would return from college to live a semi-independent life with us. He would bring a team of carers with him. I was looking forward to Tim’s return very much. However, I felt trepidation about the team that would nearly always be with him.
While I watched and waited, the bees quietly buzzed their message, that it’s okay to be part of a community, in which everyone has their role to play. During those hours, my attitude shifted. I began to accept my family’s new phase. Our home shimmered and changed shape around me, becoming its new, more public self.
The next day, I phoned the beekeeper and asked him to come a couple of hours later than planned. I had to go out but also, secretly, I hoped our visiting bees might have the chance to live a wild, free life. And sure enough, in that time the bees lifted and vanished into the woodland. They were gone within seconds. I understood that they had found their own home. And I wasn’t sorry that I let them go.
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Suzanne Askham 