Tag: connections

inspiration, life, Personal, self care

The ‘brooding wings’ of Loneliness

Clementine Fraser

lonely woman“Loneliness will sit over our roofs with brooding wings” – Bram Stoker.

 

I was feeling down the other day. When that happens I often have no problem chatting to friends about why, but this time I felt the tight protective feeling that means BIG EMOTIONS are being felt, squashed, and I’m not sure I want to face them. I didn’t even really know why I was feeling so down (ok, I was sick, busy, stressed – probably enough reasons) but when I was talking to a friend and saying ‘I’m fine, no really” it suddenly came out. “I just feel really lonely”. Continue reading “The ‘brooding wings’ of Loneliness” →

inspiration, life

What does it mean to live an authentic life?

Clementine Fraser

 

How to live an authentic life? How to be true to yourself? Kids know. They are their authentic selves without thought. So what happens to change us in that?

 

The authentic life, according to my long distant memory of Second Year Philosophy at Uni and Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time, is when you no longer define yourself by das man, but by your authentic, true self. What Heidegger called ‘Being-in-the-World’. He described this as a shift from a preference for distraction and inauthenticity, passivity, conformity, to a passionate embrace of Existenz, of a drive to one’s true possibilities. I have always taken from this that to define yourself by what you do, what your job is, by how you fit into a conforming society, is inauthentic. To be authentic, you have to be able to define yourself truly, and to live with enthusiastic possibility. Continue reading “What does it mean to live an authentic life?” →

history

A Dinner Party of Historical Heroes

Clementine Fraser

What if you invited Elizabeth I and Martin Luther King Jr. to dinner, and they didn’t get along? I was thinking about this after one of those ‘who would you invite to dinner if you could have anyone you wanted?’ things. My first instinct for those is always to invite my favourite movie stars – but what if they just talked to each other and laughed at in-jokes all night? No fun. And have you seen the great Late Night with Seth Meyers clip where Jon Snow from Game of Thrones is a very awkward dinner guest? (if you haven’t it’s hilarious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BabsgCQhpu4) Even fictional characters can’t guarantee you a good time.

 

I started thinking about how I could make this work. I decided to have two dinners (after all, my imagination-my rules right?). Dinner one – historical heroes. Dinner two – fiction favourites.  Ten people on each list. Each person has to be someone I’d want to have a conversation with, and the goal is to arrange a dinner party where everyone would have fun and get along, but also stand out as someone unique with something different to offer. Easy, right?

 

I’m going to start in this blog with my Guest list for Historical Heroes Continue reading “A Dinner Party of Historical Heroes” →