The most ridiculous No Parking sign I've ever seen was in the middle of the desert in Kuwait. It appeared just after the war in Iraq in 2003 and was a bigger, more incongruous invasion in itself than the convoys of armoured vehicles rolling up through Basra. (It was also quite possibly more effective, but as Tony Blair is now a follower of this blog and Cherie is a hot-shot lawyer I won't go any further) Now, Kuwait is one big desert with one big city and one big highway strung out like a dusty washing line pegged with pylons and jingly trucks and the odd camel tethered off it. It runs like a single dusty scar from Iraq in the North to Saudi in the South and you know you're approaching the Iraqi border only as soon as two giant skeletons of destroyed satellite dishes loom eerily into view.(I could swear they swung round to follow me everytime I passed). Anyway, the point is that there was nothing apart from sand - grey sand, yellow sand, orange sand, sandy sand- for miles and miles. But in the military's makeshift Camp Fox, there must have been an over-zealous Sergeant Major and some rear-echelon-post-war boredom setting in and there it was one day: the No Parking sign. There wasn't even a road let alone a kerb or a yellow line, and with a convoy of 15 tonne lorries behind me steaming out of Iraq laden with returning ammunition, the sign was only going to raise an eyebrow under a helmet before it got firmly flattened under a back wheel. Of course, being a military camp, it wasn't long before someone with a sense of humour and solid set of balls replaced it with one saying 'Don't Feed The Ducks'. Quite.
The point I'm making is that signs should be clear, unambiguous and relevant. If not, then they will be misunderstood, misinterpreted or even mocked. There will be frustration, confusion and unexpected consequences spiralling their way out of control through a knock-on of lives. If I'm not allowed to find a parking space in the desert then I'm going to look for a duck to feed instead. Human nature. We know that yet we never see it coming. Duck.
I really struggled with mixed signals. Often because I didn't realise that they were mixed. Take the 'No Parking. Pick Up and Set Down only' restriction flaunted outside hospitals, airports and places where you really, really need to stop. So I can't park but I can stop? Mum says categorically no; Dad says oh go on then..... Yes? No? Can I? Can't I? Where are my boundaries so I can make my choices?
(Thinking about it, 'No Parking. Pick Up and Set Down Only' might have been a better metaphor for my calamitous love life....have often wondered whether I've been completely oblivious to the fact that I've got a post-it note with words to that effect slapped on my forehead...)
For me, close relationships would often say one thing but do another; work would feel like it was stabbing me in the back, climbing over my dead body and then lying about it afterwards; chancing no-hopers employed a psychopathy of passive-aggressive confusion techniques to wangle a second date; even my dog would walk past the door and then piss on the carpet. No one was being straight with me. There was no clear message, no clear cues, no safe ground. Just a row of pesky ducks that shouldn't even be there trying to paddle on shifting sand.
The problem was that by the time my subconscious had been for a stroll, had a think and come back to the room having smugly worked out what was actually going on in the face of a mixed message, the three amigos, Control, Delete and Run would be sat in the front room. If I couldn't work out what was going on then I was going to decide what was going on. Control was in the house. If Control couldn't work out what was going on then Delete would take over- pushing threatening people, feelings and emotions right out of my phonebook, out of my mind and out of my life. If that failed, then Run would clean up.
But Run was tired. Run had instigated no less than 6 job changes and 7 house moves in 7 years. Run was done. There had to be a better, more stable way of not recognising and not over-reacting to receiving mixed messages, to knowing that my subconscious was alerting me to something that my conscious mind hadn't yet processed.
In the end it was simple. Mindful. I needed to acknowledge how I was feeling; send a clear message to my brain thanking it for signalling that feeling; and then knowing that the emotion would pass, make the choice to leave the confusion in its own secure space, and return to the present moment. Park the confusion, without stopping there myself. Pick it up, set it down, leave the duck in the desert.
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