Hugh Jackman is the Answer

So I ran off to the woods again to straighten out my head and feel my heart and just try to see which way was up (it’s amazing how often I end up here... here, here the place and here, here the emotional/mental/spiritual place). The first time I was here this year I did a lot of quiet meditation and felt very much like I was a little seed, waiting for the right moment to sprout. It’s also something that seeds do - they get dropped in the ground and, before they start to grow, they need to adjust, move around, so that they can grow up (and not awkwardly down deeper into the earth - although that’s exactly what the roots do). So in a way that’s what I’ve been doing - spinning around in my hole trying to figure out which bits of me need to grow up and which bits need to grow down and anchor me to the earth. 

So what’s it got to do with Hugh Jackman? Well I had a dream last night - not like that - stop it! Anyway I’ve been thinking about him (don’t we all), (again - stop it!) and he is what they call in the business of show a triple threat... he can act, dance and sing. (I also think about that chap who hosts “Pointless” because he acts, sings and hosts game shows - but I don’t dream about him.) Anyway in figuring out what I do and how I’m doing it I think there are actually three things that are really important to me, things that I can shine at - writing, dancing and speaking. In Hugh’s case (is it just me that wants to keep calling him Huge after that skit he did on The Late Late Show?) these are all types of performing, for me these are all types of teaching. What I mean is, as a dancer I don’t think I’ll be heading to the London stage, but I can offer a lot in gyms and to people who actually want to be able to follow what I do and do it themselves. Likewise with writing, it’s not about being fancy (okay, sometimes it gets a bit fancy) but about writing in a way that people can understand and follow.

So why is it so important for me to figure it out? Because sometimes I need the peace of heading into one space and letting go of the other. It’s a bit like work life balance - sometimes going into work gives me the peace of knowing this is exactly where I’m meant to be and what I’m meant to be doing, other times the peace comes in being 100% with family, or friends, or just lying in a bath tub relaxing (and the woods, of course). 

There is peace in knowing that we need to breathe in, breathe out and sometimes hold the breath - no one state is better than the other, but we really have to alternate or we can get stuck and hurt ourselves.

The difficulty comes in those moments of discomfort, the moments of knowing we are no longer in the right place, that we have spent too long at work, or too long with family, or too long just dealing with a crisis in one area that now the rest of the house has gone to pieces. Like waking up having stopped breathing in and out and we have to get back on it. It can be uncomfortable and painful and, in our stress we often want to run back to the very state we need to escape from... with the kids, back at work... because we’re so used to it that it feels “safe”.

So I guess then we need to think of Hugh Jackman... what haven’t we done that we do? What do we love and what makes us feel alive that we’ve put on hold or hidden away or hidden away from? What used to light us up but we ignore? Like Marie Kondo’s Spark Joy it’s opening up the cupboards and finding the pieces of ourselves that we put away for a moment, (when we took off our best outfits and put on the dirty old gear to deal with that bathroom crisis) and get shiny again. An image of the three girls in “Friends” pops into my head when they all put on their wedding dresses just to hang out in the apartment. 

Go on, go put on your fanciest frock and see how it feels.

Bhutan National Dress

We all have to do so many things in this modern world, master so many skills, even Hugh Jackman has to go do other things in order to act (I don’t fancy his high protein diet when he does Wolverine) but I guess it’s understanding that what we do is not how we do it. For me teaching Zumba involves so much prep, cycling to class, all the technical stuff, paying my dues (literal cash money dues), doing taxes and accounts, paying the rent... but it also means I get to go to trainings and hang out in weird places in the world and find Zumba Love all around me. So it’s okay if some days I get urgh about the accounts, or get a puncture and get hung up, it’s okay if these things are grim and can’t be avoided, as long as I am still feeling the joy of what I love to do. And I can recognise when I’ve done enough of one thing and go put on an entirely different frock.

Pearl Howie is the writer of “free Feeling Real Emotions Everyday”, now available as a photographic paperback and eBook, a text only book and as an audiobook.  The 8 other titles in this series are available as paperbacks and eBooks and coming soon as audiobooks. 

Follow Pearl on Amazon to see when her next audiobook "Japan Is Very Wonderful" is available on Audible. https://www.amazon.com/Pearl-Howie/e/B007HJFBH4