An early blossom of Winter Jasmine - I need to just look at it and enjoy, and not be thinking either back or forward to what winter might hold.







An email arrived today - you know the sort - telling about someone's exhibition. It was the title of the exhibition that fascinated me (I also loved the work when I visited it here)

Without Memory,Without Expectation

What a concept! It links in hugely with my ongoing bipolar struggle. I have long identified 'expectations and disappointments' as one of the main triggers of the lowered feelings that doctors diagnose as depression.

I also know that the Recovery program I follow says: "If we didn't have expectations, we wouldn't have disappointments."  Like a lot of Recovery wisdoms, this is 'simple, but not easy'. Try it some time - not thinking ahead to what you want to happen, or fear might happen. Talk about being like a little child in the pram - though even there, I think the little child has some expectations, and is therefore capable of disappointment.

Now can you see why Aisling's exhibition title is such a challenge for me - like the child, I base my 'expectations' on memories of what I have already experienced - memories that I rely on as accurate information. But now I think of it, I also know how 'inaccurate' my memories actually are - the gaps in what I recall, the interpretations I made at the time of the original event, I recall as if they were facts rather than opinions.

But what I am reading into the phrase Without Memory, without Expectation is that MEMORY, or rather the management of memory, seems to be key.

And so the new challenge is how to look at my collection of stuff with new eyes (with all the memories attached, and the emotions connected to those memories) and how to manage the memories so that they are part of, but not the controlling part of my experience of the material.

Some task!