Locked In and Out...

...A handy marker of personal maturity is that of being able to recognise behaviours in one's self that signal the onset of potentially damaging (to self and/or others) emotional meltdowns.

Taking oneself off to the garden shed in order to set the finest of cutting edges to the axe can indeed be a useful early warning sign of homicidal feelings. Or contrariwise, pondering just the length of hosepiping required to connect from the car exhaust through the rear window would equally indicate suicidal urges brewing.

Fear not though good people. We are in the Wolds not The Shining. I merely cite these as egregious examples to make the point. There are though more subtle clues - straws stirring in the wind to indicate the onset of a storm - that one learns through life to recognise and respond to.

In my own case I have discovered through experience that having difficulty with locks is a sure and certain sign of stress levels approaching crisis point. A car key - one of those auto-devices - is pointed at the front door to make it open. The backdoor to the house - ever open - is tried to be locked by the office key. Doors left securely locked are found to have been open all the time, and open doors are not. Keys also go missing: horsebox keys that are always kept on the second shelf down from one's collection of commentaries on the works of St. Augustine in the library are retrieved from behind the spice rack in the kitchen. Coats that have not been worn for six months are found to contain keys that were last used yesterday. And so forth.

As each and every one of the above incidents have occurred this past seven days and nights, I am firmly of the opinion that the Divine is sending a clear message that must be heeded. Rest and recreation would be the common prescription in the circumstances, but sadly one has not time for the one or inclination for the other. An alternative sport would be to consider if there is any significant psychological truth seeking to reveal itself in the particular difficulty encountered. Were these dreams events then the territory is wide open for Freudian interpretations of the childhood trauma of having been excluded from one's parents' sex life (and thank goodness one was!) or Jungian concern for locked-in emotions one dare not encounter (far more plausible and humane).

But being true life incidents one is puzzled that the manifestation of stress occurs in this and only in this way. It is not as if books also go missing, or telephone calls go unanswered, or other examples of mildly forgetful, deviant behaviour. The rest of the working, waking world appears to function as it should. If one wants gravy one doesn't make custard and so forth.

It seems to be something between selective dyspraxia and localised poltergeist activity - internal and external. Not even sure if one must first discover what the 'it' is as a thing in itself before seeking the meaning of the it, or whether a revelation of the meaning will inform the matter of the substance.

A meditative pause has thrown up this tentative notion: as a clergyman [or indeed as one's own Bro. Charles the management consultant] one essentially has to be 'open all hours' to all and any who come seeking advice, consolation or forgiveness [Bro. Charles's territory] or else to demand an instant response to the latest strategic initiative from the centre [my own role in relationship to diktats from Bish Tom and his crew].

One's spirit is perhaps rebelling against - or indeed even buckling under - this constant strain of instant availability to the demands of others. One yearns for a moment or two to lock them out, or alternatively one desperately wishes to escape to a place they cannot enter.

That is it. QED and so forth. If so, then perhaps time to change all the locks. Which island was it Gauguin ran away to in order to paint? Bet there were no locks on Tahiti in his day.