100 Days of Wonder – #45
I think one of the things that is hard to explain is the calmness you can find at Disney World. This picture is from the sunrise over Bay Lake – the lake at the back of the Contemporary Resort. It was taken on 9th January 2023 at just before 7am. Of course Disney World is busy and I am sometimes amazed at how I cope with it. I am not great in big crowds generally. I don’t really like people. But I think Disney World taught me that you can create your now bubble in 2 ways. First you can really just create your own narrative and story and live that – it means it can feel like the only two people in the world are Kath and I doing our own thing even when there are literally thousands of others around us. Disney helps with that hugely because every interaction with a cast member makes you feel like you are the most important person in that moment. The second way is to soak up and find joy, wonder and stillness in those calm moments and places. On our last trip for me that was definitely encapsulated by the walk from our room in the Garden Wing of the Contemporary to the main Tower. At sunrise there was barely anyone else around but even during the day it was calm and quiet. A walk to get coffee became a mindset walk, a headspace stroll and time to breathe deeply and quieten any noisy unhelpful brain activity. Finding the same sort of bubbles is really powerful in our overly busy and noise lives – stay in your story and leave everyone else in theirs and soak up the stillness when you can.
100 Days of Wonder – #34
So after the Halloween interlude, let’s get back to Disney and wonder and joy. It’s my work anniversary today. A year ago I joined my current employer. As you have noticed by now, I don’t need an excuse to reflect, nor do I need an excuse to scroll through Disney photos. I hadn’t picked a photo for today so I scrolled to see if something caught my eye. For some reason this one did. The bit of the Magic Kingdom in the picture doesn’t exist anymore. The photo is from 2006. Looking at it, it seems to me that Piglet is almost certainly about to fall out of the tree. Either that or he has an outrageously strong core. What you don’t know is that the next photo in the series shows Kath standing underneath this very fake tree with her arms ready to catch Piglet. So many times over the last 10 years (probable since forever really) I have just had to let myself fall, sometimes jump, and trust that the universe, often in the form of Kath, would be there to catch me. Sometimes what initially felt like falling was actually gently floating the the ground to bounce back in a different direction, sometimes it wasn’t falling at all but soaring higher than I could ever imagine and sometimes it was falling and landing hard and breaking in millions of tiny metaphorical pieces that needed careful putting back together. But what I have learned from that is to no longer be scared for Piglet or for myself. Falling is all part of our rollercoaster lives and you never know where you might land – maybe it’s somewhere where you’ll want to bounce up and get out quickly or maybe it’s in a ‘great big beautiful tomorrow’. So let’s stop asking ‘but what if I fall’ and instead ask ‘but what if I fly’?
100 Days of Wonder – #32
Every story needs a villain. Does it though? Couldn’t we write our stories without someone having to be the villain? Is it just easier to write yourself as the good guy if there is a bad guy to contrast with? I’ve been thinking about this because recently I have had lots of conversations about the the state of Higher Education in England and the impact it is having on academics. Inevitably conversations turn to toxic workplaces and the villains of our stories. And of course I like to think I am one of the good guys, I like to think that I have used the privilege and power I have as a force for good, to champion and lift others, to help change the world and make it just a little bit brighter. I also like to think that I, like the Disney heroes have fought my battles and come through. But I also know that I am the villain in the stories others might tell. A shift of perspective and suddenly I am all the things that have been said about me. I have been thinking about this since I first mentioned this in a post 10 days ago or so. The Hero/Villain dichotomy just doesn’t work. Our lives and who we are are far too complex for that but we like to simplify things and the thing is, if we can point to a villain in our story then we must be the hero. If there is a bad guy then we must be a good guy and if there is evil then we are the good that triumphs. But I’m not any of those things. I’m not a hero or a good guy and I am not some abstract good that defeats some abstract evil. I am, like all of us, deeply flawed and complex. I do think we struggle to write our stories without a villain because defining who we are is so much easier with reference to something else. The Scarlet Witch in Marvel says ‘I don’t need you to tell me who I am’ but actually we do need to other characters in our stories to be able to define who we are or are not. Binaries, dichotomies, black and white… it’s all easy and it’s a way of telling ourselves that we’re ok. I do still struggle to see how some of the people in my story are anything other than villains. I find it hard to see how to rewrite those stories in a way that doesn’t position me on one side and them on the other and then conceptualises one side as good and the other as evil. But that’s never going to be helpful because while it may be true that there were sides, the rest is less clear and depends on whether you ask them or me. And maybe my overly reflective nature doesn’t help here. I tend to look back and overthink and dwell on the past and that lends itself to rewriting our stories. But, as one of Disney/Marvel’s heroes and villains said ‘Don’t Look Back. The Past Is Exactly Where It Belongs‘ (The Scarlet Witch). That might be the key. Look forward in your story and treat every new character with kindness. If we all do that maybe none of the rest really matters. But while we figure out how to do that, there is always a Disney Villains parade where you can see the line up of all the bad guys we love to hate.
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