Author's note: I wrote this first thing this morning and forgot to post it. It is now tea-time, and the sweet Easter day unfolded as planned, and this moment of faintly disconcerting oddness feels a long time ago. But I'm going to give it to you anyway, because it ends well.
Here it is:
I love Easter. It’s one of my favourite festivals. So I woke this morning thinking about eggs and bunnies and daffodils and chocolate and friends and family and love and everything. Already, on one of my sweetest WhatsApp groups, an old friend has posted a picture of her Easter table. She has gone full maximalist with the daffs and the Easter bunnies and I find myself laughing and wondering where she is going to fit the food. Another friend, who lives in Mexico, posts a very different Easter, of her riding with her compadres along a beach full of people on their Easter break.
And just as I am smiling and thinking of the miracle of social media and how it brings people together over vast distances and how it takes me all round the world - I am in Dorset! I am in Mexico! - the fates laugh their dark laugh and remind me why I have to keep control of my inner Pollyanna.
Some random bloke sends me a picture of a a proud, erect courgette. Seriously? Fellas? Is this a thing? On Easter Sunday?
I have a terrible habit of saying yes to anyone who wants to befriend me on social media, as long as they have a horse or a dog in their profile. I think in the old days I didn’t even require the horse or the dog. I am generally trusting rather than suspicious and I always start from the belief that people are marvellous. That’s how I end up getting those weird, random messages where someone you really don’t know just sends a line which goes something like, ‘Hello, Tania, what are you doing?’ Or ‘How are you?’ Which sounds nice but isn’t. It’s massive passive aggression, because I don’t know this person from Adam and I’m an introvert and I’ve got work to do and I never have enough time and I can’t keep up with my most cherished old friends, let alone waste any minutes replying to bizarre strangers who appear to have no boundaries.
The courgette is in this category. It’s not aggressive enough to be evil porn, although I would say it’s the thin end of the wedge. (Tumescent vegetables may act as a gateway drug.) It’s just odd and inappropriate and utterly pointless. I have no idea who the person is, although I see he’s sent me a racy poem before which commits the double sin of doing appalling things to the English language whilst being faintly demeaning of both women and old people.
I block, block, block. I’ve been thinking about boundaries a lot lately. It’s such a dull and hackneyed word and such a life-changing (and life-saving) concept. I always steal from the great Brené Brown when it comes to drawing clear lines and she once said something I remember as: here is my sacred ground, and here I stand.
Here is my ground, which does not involve sending uninvited vegetables to women I’ve never met, and there is your ground, random internet bloke, which apparently does. I draw my line between the two of us, and off you go.
So, this Easter does not start off on the precise note I had planned. I was going to find adorable pictures and send them to all the old friends and then go and have a gentle ride on the red mare, and then go up to the family for special Easter lunch. Instead, I have to deal with unwelcome strangers.
But they are quite useful, those strangers. They’ve been coming at me a bit lately, one way or another, and they remind me of what I do not want to be. They also remind me about never getting smug or taking things for granted. I will always have failings, even if they don’t involve courgettes, and I need to pay attention to those and work on them and keep an eye out for them. (I did something catastrophically stupid only yesterday, which I would to love to learn not to repeat.) And the internet people who have no boundaries and who get furious and who end up shouting at other humans IN CAPITAL LETTERS are not just fruitcakes to be dismissed; they are little invitations to compassion. This bit is quite hard work and I have to squint my eyes and get the elbow grease out, but I am starting to try to make this a practice, and it is - instead of judging, the idea is to say to yourself: if I had what they have, I might be acting this way too. In other words, that odd person, that inappropriate person, that intrusive person, that plain angry person, probably had some great wound from childhood which they can’t heal, or some such, and nobody loved them enough to teach them how to behave, and there but for the grace go we all.
I still have trouble with this concept, because I think, well, yes, everyone has old hurts and scars and we don’t all go around sending people courgettes and being unpleasant. But I do think it’s not a bad place to start. You don’t have to go nearly as far as the profound Buddhist practices of non-judgment and compassion, which I think is where this idea is most clearly seen. It’s right there at the beginning of Gatsby. Fitzgerald wrote, at the very start of his masterpiece:
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
And there it is at last, the perfect Easter message. I got there eventually. I wandered and rambled and, finally, arrived. Happy Easter, everyone.