September 2019 – Aspirational Adventures

Projected Expectations

I run my own business – room rental and writing workshops. One of the suggestions for your business, if you’ve ever watched Dragons Den, is to projected your future income.

path-of-least-resistance — what is this river’s projected expectation? 🙂

So every so often I do that. But then what I do, as well as projecting it, is I spend it in my head. So I decide that due to what happened last month I will have x number of days with both my rooms/one of my rooms being rented, x number of people attending one/both of my workshops. And then I work out what to do with it all.

I had two prospective lodgers planning to come for this winter. So I – worried about where I would put some of my regulars if they choose to book (note they haven’t yet), and also I planned what I would do with this money. Well … one has changed her mind and has decided to stay where she is, the other has not got back to confirm or not. Well I went into meltdown worrying about how I would manage without this money. Without this money I have not yet got!!! Hummm!!

But again, as Brexit looms larger and larger (maybe!), I notice more and more projected expectations being banded about. I am sure they are done with more information than me expecting who is going to rent my rooms/attend my workshops but still there is that “who knows what will happen” factor that our media is reluctant to put in. Yes these are projected but they are not for definite what will happen.

The figures the media are projecting are the opposite to what I project. I projected income, the media is only telling us doom. Whereas I live in optimism, until someone cancels, the media are living in pessimism.

But here is my hope – just as I get it wrong with my income and so get a bit panicky, I hope that the soothsayers who are being published in our media will also get it wrong and things will be better than they say.

(NB – there are people predicting that it will not all be doom and gloom but it seems our Julian_of_Norwich papers, etc, do not want to let us know that. I heard someone say they were optimistic of our future. You don’t get that in the papers!!!)

And also, as I have discovered with my little business, and with my life that even when things look bad we make it through and as Julian of Norwich said

‘It was necessary that there should be sin (rubbish stuff happening); but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.’

I was listening to some comments on Women’s Hour on Radio 4 yesterday about Brexit. What I noticed was that people seemed to see being about to go to and fro in Europe as a right. EG – it is my right that my elderly parents should be able to live in Greece and then womens hour be able to fly back to UK for treatment as and when they like; it is my right that I can live in France when I want to retire and still get my pension from UK and be able to vote even though I have not been in the country for 17 years; it is my right that as a European I should be able to live in England for as long as I like and not have to worry about visas, etc; and so it seemed to go on.

I think we often get confused and for get that things are for a period of time. Have you ever tried getting in to the USA? A very different story. But people don’t see it as a right to be able to come and go into the USA as they please, even though it until two hundred or so years ago it was part of Britain. It is seen as a privilege to be able to live and work there, as it is in many other countries.

I am not saying whether I am a leave or remain person but what I am saying is that for the last forty years or so I have had the privilege of coming and going into Europe to live, work, holiday as I have wanted with no hassle. Once in Europe, for a long time now, the currency has been the same so I will not starve if I cross borders after the banks have closed. [Yes one time I nearly starved in Belgium because we got stuck there, between France and Holland on a weekend!!] I see this as a privilege.

I wonder if we saw the last few years of being part of Europe as a privilege for a season whether we could enter the debate with a different heart? If I see something as my right I get upset if it is taken away. If I see something as a privilege to enjoy for a period of time then even if I am sad when it goes I have not held it so tightly.

On reading Dan Held Evan’s quote after his wife Rachel died suddenly at 37 it read as if, even though his grieve was huge, he still held his time with her as a privilege he had enjoy and as a right that should never be taken from him. There is a lovely man in our church who was married to his wife for just over 59 years before she died of cancer who, even though his grief is open and he often cried in church, says he still looks at the time they had together as a privilege to cherish.

I believe we cherish privileges but cling to rights.