Strolling around a Cemetery. How you do. Well, how I do, occasionally. You know, when the mood takes me and I feel like I need to take a walk in wind and rain swept Essex. Off I trot, who knows where my steps will take me. Searching for a breath of fresh air, looking for solace, spending time in nature is a form of therapy. A strengthening of spiritual will. Well, I felt a need for spiritual strength this week. A new commitment loomed. The commitment of heading back into the world of work. Being in a set place, at a set time. A whole new ball game for me.
I have made my son do it. So why shouldn't I do it? He has been to school, every day, pretty much, for the last seven years into the same building, and before that junior school and infant school. During that time I have worked part-time. In various places, Estate Agents, mainly. Not a job where any two days are the same. No constriction of staying within the same four walls, a fairly mobile job. My own other part-time role, selling Avon, involves being mobile, selling to who I want, when I want. The benefits of being self-employed allows a freedom which many employees can only dream of. Obviously, there are downsides to not really knowing when the next pay day will arrive. If it will arrive. But on the whole, being an Avon Representative, alongside learning and being a part-time Student, has allowed me as much or as little time as I have wanted to surrender.
The very idea that I have got a job (which is great) brings new stresses of being in a set place, at a set time, being answerable to people who I know nothing about. Well, it is this that brought me to the Cemetery, being as close as I can get to nature. Feeling the rain against my skin, remembering that life is only temporary and looking at the gravestones of all those people who have gone before. I always read the gravestones, and I am always struck by how many people are called similar names. The names that run in my family. Names like Thomas and Frederick, William, Mary, the graveyard is full of gravestones with these sorts of names on them.
I wander through the gravestones, enjoying the statues of Angels and absorbing the atmosphere, really bringing to life for me the families that have been left behind, the energy and effort that has gone in to arranging the wording on these headstones, the organisation of all the funerals, the burials, the family get togethers and the rituals to mark each person's passing. There is a lot of grief associated with every graveyard. I know that some names are so common that you are bound to come across them in your everyday world. Of course. As the non-believers say 'it is just a coincidence'. But, for me, it doesn't feel like a coincidence.
When the man knocks at my door every three weeks, bringing me a delivery of Avon, and he signs the form to say he has taken receipt of my returns, it doesn't feel like a coincidence that he signs his name 'Tom'. So, when I began work for my new employers, the co-operative food store and I was sitting in the induction, it was no surprise to me that someone didn't show up. There was an empty chair. It also didn't feel like a coincidence to me when the woman running the induction course explained that someone else was meant to be joining us, but he was now going to be attending on a different day. His name? 'Tom'. Naturally, of course it was. For me, a little bit of comfort that I am being prompted by spirit to take these steps into work. Even if it is not my first choice of job, or no matter how I may feel about committing myself for the next twenty one years, it is something that I have to do. So I have.
According to people who believe we rustle up the Universe to do our bidding, they would argue that because I notice these coincidences, I am creating them to happen. When you consider all the things that have to happen for a woman running an induction course to even choose to tell the rest of the group the name of the missing person, really, in itself quite an unusual thing to do, to mention the name of the person who isn't there. But this is what happened. I am pretty sure that no amount of conjuring up, wishful thinking, or co-creating could have brought that experience to me. I am pretty sure these events/coincidences happen as a signpost for us, when we are paying attention, that we are on the right path.
Being in the right place at the right time.
Lots of love and light to everyone who needs it.
Tamasin x
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