It seems that these days I do not have conformity in my life.
I have never had a real 9 – 5 job. Well I nearly did when I first started work at the tender age of 18 at the National Coal Board‘s (NCB) Computer Power site in Cannock in the Midlands of the UK (what is the UK? click). Here we worked twelve hour shifts, eight in the morning till eight at night, and visa versa, keeping what was then the largest computer site in Europe working, after which we wanted to go home.
My work giving training courses around the world, means that it is not every day that I have a course, in fact I would say that nearly 50% of my time is not presenting or training. The other 50% is taken-up by research, reading, seeing clients on a 1-2-1 basis, and clients may wish to see me anytime of the day.
As I said, I give training courses all over the world, traveling to different time zones. My body clock has now seemed to have acclimatised to these ever changing time zones. It seems that I do not sleep in the same bed for more than a week. I do not eat at the same table, or eat the same type of food from one day to the next, and my breakfast is never the same.
It is the bed that I miss conformity and similarity the most. It is the one time when you go to bed that you need to switch off, relax, sleep, and allow the plasticity of the brain, the learning, moving short term memory to long term memory to take place.
There are beds that are hard as if sleeping on a hard concrete floor, there are beds that envelope you like into the arms of your lover, there are beds that are lumpy and the lumps seem to attack one part of the body all night, there are beds that sag in the middle and you continually roll into the dip, there are beds that are so big, that you feel lost and need a map to find your way around, and there are beds that are too small that you are frightened that you may fall out of them in the middle of the night.
I have slept, or tried to, in all of them.
But the pillow you place your head on that causes me the most discomfort.
Some pillows are too high so it feels as if someone is trying to break it off, some are too thin that it seems your head is sinking into the bowels of the earth and will drop off. They cause the neck to stretch and ache all night and give what we say in English “a crick in the neck” or stiff neck. Where in hotels the pillow is not thick enough, I may use folded towels, anything, under the pillow to raise the height.
There are odd shaped pillows. Once I was sleeping on a heart shaped pillow, oh how I miss that one.
There are pillow with feathers which mould into the shape of your head, fine if you do not turn-over on a regular basis. There are pillows with fibre within, which when new are fine, but with wear and tear, the fibres tend to move to the outer edges leaving a valley in the middle with no support. No matter how you push and shove the fibre, it will not go back into the middle.
There are foam pillows that support well, until the foam begins to breakdown, gets lumpy, so that you can feel the lumps reshaping the side of your face.
Life is full of discomfort.
Try this little exercise.
Clasp your hands together, interlocking your fingers.
Which thumb is on top? Is it your right hands’ thumb or your left hand?
/images/71606-62901/Thumbs1.JPG” width=282 border=0>Pull your hands apart, and then thread them together, re-clasp your hands moving one hand up, so that the other thumb is on top, and the fingers are interlaced differently.
It does not feel good, does it?
Now keep interlacing your hands together so that your fingers change position and you get the other thumb on top, and keep doing it for a minute, then stop.
Now check your feeling towards having your hands in the correct position or wrong position.
Not much difference?
Sometimes we need to go outside our comfort zone, way, way outside perhaps where we feel real discomfort.
It is when we do that, we learn to appreciate what we have, and to tolerate those little things that used to upset us.