Whilst walking the dogs this morning I had a sudden glimpse of a time of my life when I did shyness very well!Exceptionally well in fact. Like an expert as I practised so much!
And I tell you this memory because in revisiting this time, I felt again, the powerful revelation that a change of focus can bring.
I went to a secondary school in Marple and was equipped for the school with a whole uniform collected ‘nearly as new’ from a family who were emigrating. I was delighted to go to this school and to wear the uniform( maroon I recall) and it wasn’t until we started to play netball, that I realised that ‘something’ was amiss. Badly amiss!
My games skirt had pleats. Lots of them. All my form, and all the year wore skirts without pleats. This made my skirt different, made me different and I felt this difference acutely every PE and Sports’ lesson.
I was convinced that ‘everyone’ regarded my skirt as living testimony to my second hand status. My skirt was second hand and so was I.
A + B = C ….hands up anyone who has NOT played this consequence game?
I thought so.
Thus my sense of shame was watered twice weekly and I lived in dread of any close questioning about the origins of my ‘difference.’
My pleated skirt became a symbol of my not fitting quite in. I felt a fraud. An outisder who didn’t have the right equipment to feel at ease.
So I asked my parents to replace the skirt. Again and again. Until one day, even though we were now moving to another town, my mother kindly bought me a conventional, non-pleated skirt.
The relief would be huge. For the final half term I would be as everyone else. I would look the very same.
And then someone asked me where the pleated skirt had gone. The whole changing room admitted that pleats were far more intersting than their uninspired offering and that they had secretly envied my pleated difference all year.
As I type this I replay that moment again, and feel once more the sense of utter surprise.
Intensely! For I had spent so much time focusing upon my shame, I had not focused on any other reading of the situation. I had overwhelmed my perception with my very unhelpful map of reality. My shyness and the dreaded pleated skirt had become one.
But when my focus was challenged, my perception had to change.
And it did