Warning — Life Advice! First chapter. Establish a Principle.

 I have a pronouncedly neurodivergent family, and among the various manifestations of this is PDA (pathological demand avoidance) which mandates that one always ask questions rather than instruct, always offer choices, and refrain from suggesting any way ahead too overtly. Anything else is counter-productive — and I mean, extremely so!

So I'm not in the habit of offering life advice, lest it doom the unwilling recipient to taking the exact opposite path at their peril.

Then — if you too are pathologically demand avoidant, I say one thing only: ignore all this. In any case I am probably wrong. In the last five years the universe in its glory has treated me to example after example of how spectacularly I am capable of getting things wrong (all to do with Pluto transits at the moment I suspect, but that's another topic entirely). So I might be wrong; but so far the basis on which I operate has served me and mine well, and I thought you might be interested to at least consider it.

Straight up I should tell you that this is advice for the impecunious. I have no ideas about shrewd investments and have never entertained the notion of a career plan; that's not been my kind of life, not the path I've walked. But in case you die of boredom before I get round to what I want to tell you, let me begin.

The first thing is to establish a working principle, a meta-narrative of sorts, from which to make decisions.

When I was training for ordained ministry I learned to drive, and consequently was thrown in to driving to unfamiliar places through large towns when I was still at the stage of remembering which order the foot pedals were in and to turn the headlights on when it got dark. I had to drive to Aylesford from Hastings on a regular basis, and when I first did it I didn't know the way and I was terrified of the large and complicated intersections I'd have to traverse. My then husband (he's someone else's husband now) gave me a really helpful piece of advice. He said, "It's easy. You just go to Maidstone and turn right." 

Now, this served me well; because it was so simple that if I made any mistakes I could rectify them. It gave me a general, broadbrush principle to apply, that I could implement without endlessly stopping to consult the map (no satnav back then, no Google maps, no smart phones). It worked, and it gave me confidence; in life as in driving, confidence is a positive precursor to things going well.

So in this first chapter of Life Advice, I recommend that you put in place a clear and simple principle, a sort of North Star to guide you — something as simple as "Drive to Maidstone and turn right".

My own life principle is taken from a lovely book I once had — by a photographer, diarising the day of his elegant Siamese cat, each page having a photo accompanied by a caption. And one of the captions was this:

"She who sleeps on the floor will never fall out of bed."

That is my principle for practical living, and it has served me well.

Unpacking it, then. 

Life is full of uncertainty. Your spouse may commit a crime and go to prison, or leave you. You might unwittingly wreck your health by making the wrong dietary choices or accepting some kind of medicine in good faith. The financial and cultural fortunes of your country will rise and fall. Someone in your family may suddenly need urgent help, possibly on a longterm basis. All sorts of things could happen to you.

So though technically someone who sleeps on the floor can fall out of bed (roll off their sleeping mat), it won't make much difference. Do you see what I mean? What I mean is, things might go wrong, but the impact will be decreased to the degree your practice is humble and simple and lowly.

Digressing slightly onto the topic of actual beds but keeping with that principle of simplicity — my five children were born within a span of six years (Child 3 and Child 4 were twins).

So I had a just-four-year-old and a nearly-two-year-old when my twins were born: all still in nappies at night. 

Friends, I needed my sleep to get through! So I set up the cot with its side down, butted up against our bed and right next to me. I went to bed each night with one babe in my arms latched on and feeding, and the other just fed and asleep in the cot. We all fell asleep like that. When Cot Babe woke up, I swapped her over with Babe in Arms, and went straight back to sleep. Every night. Several times. Every morning I was well rested, the babies were contented and fed, we were all happy.

When my youngest child was worn, we got our Wild Card. She slept very little, but I still wanted a good night's sleep. So we changed to sleeping on a mattress on the living room floor, with a cot mattress and its own little cot duvet right up alongside it. When bedtime came, we went in and shut the door, went to bed and left Baby 5 tearing around the room with her toys until she eventually was ready to find her way onto her own little mattress next to us. We all got a good night's sleep according to our needs, and she wasn't lonely or abandoned or locked in anywhere without us. And she never fell out of bed.

Zooming out to the more general: I organise my life very simply — no debt, basic wholesome food, homemade or second-hand clothes for the most part, a small house with easy access from level ground, a modest size garden (more about that when I get on to considering choosing a home), a small car, and as few personal possessions as is practical. Everything very ordinary and easy to dismantle, nothing to make anyone envious of me, nothing to attract attention.

In fact, during the season of my life when I was much involved in a prison chaplaincy, and ex-prisoners or those on compassionate leave sometimes visited or stayed at our home, a burglar who specialised in gold used to call in often. A remarkable person with a gift for silence, I wouldn't know he had arrived until I looked up from what I was doing and he'd be standing in front of me. On one occasion, I asked him, "Phil, at some point I'd be grateful if you'd check through our house for me, and make sure we have nothing worth stealing."

"I have," he said. "There isn't."

It makes for peace, you see, and diminishes the impact of adversity.

So that's my principle upon which I organise my life.

"She who sleeps on the floor will never fall out of bed."

That's Chapter One of Life Advice, then. Establish a basic principle. 

What's yours?

More next time...