So, our business meeting this morning was a bit different to how it has been the last few days! The sun was shining and the wind was warm even at 8.30am. The hedgerows seemed to have bloomed overnight and the verges were full of Borage, dead Nettle, Red Campion and Stitchwort. Diggers was eyeing up the long blades of grass. We were also very pleased to see the Highland Cattle back in their field. It had been several weeks that they had been absent and I was beginning to worry that they may have become field to fork!
As we walked Diggers sniffed, ‘Well, this is much better’.
‘Better than what?’ I asked
‘Better weather than that stormy, rainy and cold weather we’ve had this week’. He paused to snap at a Bee which had settled on a clump of Borage (one day Diggers will learn the hard way, snapping at Bees).
‘Yes’, I said, as I went to say hello to the three horses in the next field along.
‘It’s a bit like the week you’ve had’, Diggers went on ‘That’s been a bit turbulent, everything that could go wrong has gone wrong’. (Thanks for reminding me Diggers). It was true, it has been a challenging week from all angles ( I won’t bore you with the details) but it has certainly been a week I would rather forget about than dwell on from both a business and personal perspective. Diggers, like a dog with a bone, did not let the subject drop…. ‘I mean, you’ve certainly had the odds stacked against you and as the week has gone on it seems to have got worse rather than better . How come you don’t just explode, or retreat somewhere and have a breakdown! I know I would! (But remember, Jack Russells are notoriously highly strung..)
We had stopped by the sheep field and it looked like storm clouds were gathering. It was like Diggers had read my mind as he quickly looked up to me and said, ‘Looks like your bad luck is about to continue again as I noticed you’ve come out without a coat or umbrella’. He shook his head as he riffled through the ditch (probably looking for that old cheese sandwich again).
‘Well, It’s like this Diggers’, I said looking out across the field to the sheep. ‘Take those sheep for instance. They are content to know that they have grass available to eat and that is their main concern at the moment. If the grass supply runs out they don’t worry about it, they simply move on to another area of the field where the grass is plentiful again. They are also not worried about the colour of the sky, concerning themselves with what will happen if there is a downpour. They carry on with the job-in-hand. If the rain should fall they have thick fleeces with an oily outer coating and the rain will just run off. You see a sheep is pretty stoic, pretty solid, it just doesn’t overthink things. It doesn’t consider things or over analyse situations it just ploughs on. Should something happen,it makes a bit of an adjustment and then just carries on as it always has. We could all do with being a bit more like the sheep Diggers. However we try not to, we are always going to have bad days, weeks… even longer. Times when things just don’t go right and as we deal with one issue another one comes along to add to the burden and before we know it we are fire fighting from one bad thing to another. It snowballs and we feel stressed and that then makes us feel negative, which then brings us down even further. I’m sure the sheep have the odd bad day, but rather than fight it, become outraged at the injustice of it or disappointed by being let down, or frustrated by the lack of ownership, I imagine they just move on’.
I mentioned to Diggers a quote by the famous Swiss Psychologist, Carl Jung…..
‘What you resist persists’ - Carl Jung
‘Sometimes Diggers you just have to let it all go and move on’. I looked down, but Diggers had moved on right to the far end of the lane. I thought I spied the corner of a cheese sandwich hanging out of his mouth! The meeting was over.
Maybe the sheep have got it right after all ………..
