BOG STANDARD / CHERRY ON CAKE

BOG STANDARD / TEARS OF LAUGHTER 

Bog standard is a conceptual award awarded to things that are assumed to be so commonplace they have nearly no value.

If you were visiting England from another country and someone told you that this supermarket was ‘bog standard’ wouldn’t they erupt in tears of laughter?

WHY?

A bog, first of all is an extraordinary manifestation. But even better than that is the beauty of the human, that they have the imagination to reference a supermarket with a bog is hilarious. It is hilarious. A bog is nothing like the things that have the bog standard. That alone is hilarious.

PERSPECTIVE / STORY TELLING IS A GIFT THAT KEEP ON GIVING

When we follow the stream of personal perspective, swim in it, live it, it has its highs and lows, how can we laugh at these highs and lows? Cherish them? By understanding the enrichment personal perspective gives to all the things in the world, you might then appreciate and look in wonder at the daily miracle of life.

A BOG STANDARD EXAMPLE

My sister and brother Paul don’t like shabby places, unclean places, bad food, they like things how they like them, they have a good standard, their own personal gold standard, the standard that makes them feel good.

They are people, dear human beings, they have a framework built on personal experience and preference built over time and fed by mainstream ideas and little quirky offshoots and over time the mind and emotions learns to herd them into these preferences as it’s been taught is the way.

So they work towards these goals. They work towards their gold standard. The body and mind through duality work to Shepard them into these experiences, through like and dislike, love and fear they are moved into the experiences they want.

But what happens when you seemingly out of choiceless ness, despite your best efforts, have to experience BOG STANDARD? 

A BREAKFAST AT MORRISONS/ THE UNINTENDED CHERRY ON THE CAKE

My sister and her husband, brother Paul like what they like, I can’t convey how magnificent that is and what it means in a wider context. They must have clean, safe spaces, they must have cafes  that are clean and pleasant, the food must be good quality, reliably so, they rely on these things when they are adventuring, they have these things at home, they must have them abroad too. They must have these things. So the game is set and can begin (again and again and again).

Driving to Scotland to stay in a lodge in a highland resort, they want the best of both worlds, a place in the raw and rugged wilderness of Scotland and a reliable comforting space where the needs of a child’s idea of a holiday can be reeped. They want a balance. They are brilliant parents. Their intentions and desires are fantastic.

With all the best will in the world they booked Air BNB as a pit stop because it’s a long drive from the Midlands.

They could have booked anywhere along the way, the road was open. However, they had needs and desires which penned them into one particular place. They wanted to visit an old family friend along the way who lived at a good pit stop place. They needed specific accommodation because they had a young child and new baby. They had lots of particulars which streamlined their choice into one inevitable place, the gold standard being a main factor, to always maintain that alongside the variables.

So they booked a nice looking place in the right area that ticked all the other boxes. There was only this place that fit. 

They arrived at dusk. The sat nav took them to the place. ‘Do a U turn, this can’t be it’. And this is where I as a detached observer of their situation begin to laugh because I’ve seen this play out for them time and time again. They have a brilliant sense of humor about these things after the fact. 

They arrive at a building that reminds them of the buildings in an undesirable and wholly avoidable, worse then bog standard, corrupt, depraved, below the bog to the pits of hell area in the shire where they live.  

This area they speak of is actually one so dear to me personally. It is a place where I found a home of magic and friendship and comfort. A place that is safe and warm and comforting because I touched the scared there. 

This is how the plot thickens and thins for all of us. This is the magnificence of diversity and why we should never strive to be other than what we are. 

So, they did a U turn, and another and another in disbelief, until inevitably they had to accept this was their place, for tonight, just for tonight. 

It was a shabby place, in a corrupt and depraved neighbourhood. The only saving grace was that it was opposite the police station. The door wouldn’t lock, they had to wedge it shut. Their son on the other hand said it was the best holiday ever, there was a PJ Mask game there and because he had to push the beds together he got a boys quilt and a girls quilt. He found the silver linings because he’s not yet employed in duality. That is not to put him above his parents, their experience is phenomenal because of their ride through duality. He will go into it one day, every day and no day. He is right now like everyone but his personal experience reflects it, at home already, so he can appreciate diversity. Because when we are home we have nothing but love and when love is observed diversity and duality it lives. But we will all come to understand this over and over again and want it over and over again and forget it over and over again. There are no losers only winners.

Back to their story, now the nightmare accommodation had been accepted and they had made it familiar so it was less frightening, at least now they could have a comforting meal… once the door had been wedged shut. 

As I tell this, never ever assume anything but I marvel at them as I marvel at myself, all they have experience I have, either through them or through me. So, to get comfort for their bodies as is natural, they ventured out. There was no where to eat, no where. The train station had been set on fire two weeks ago, a limbless man wandered the streets hobbling. They finally found a pizza place. They ordered, they waited, waited, waited, the update kept coming that the pizza was later and later and later and later. But it would be good they hoped when it arrived. It arrived to add great insult to injury. This innocent manifestation has its story, it has its lifeblood. The pizza crust was white, it had cheap tomato puree, it had a ‘splattering’ of cheese, it was stone cold. Stone Cold. 

It was dead. It had no richness. It had no comfort. It had no joy. No pleasantness. It has no warmth. It was insult to injury. This pizza is an abomination. 

Now here is the secret, through like and dislike and insult to injury you know without a shadow of a doubt what you are after. Richness, comfort, joy, warmth, the warm blood of a loving life. Great, never ever deny yourself this.e

Yet, we will interject here. A friend of mine once escaped arrest from a foreign country and spent a long time running in this country in the shadow of capture. He was starving. He hasn’t eaten a decent meal for a long time. That is when he came across a red onion. Red onion. When he ate this gift he will never forget the flavor and nourishment, the gratefulness he felt. From that moment onwards, red onions had become sacred. Without starvation  red onion wouldn’t get the chance to become sacred. I have tossed many red onions as abominations to my kitchen.

Do not assume this is a story to contrast the other, to say the other should feel grateful for the pizza, absolutely not, they should see the pizza as a disaster it is, to negate this is to negate the wonder of diverse experience. It is in the contrast where the true treasure is found. Later on my dear siblings will find sacredness through their personal circumstances. We are all one, all is sacred but at different times and in different ways we find out what is sacred.

So, the pizza was an abomination which it was. Fortunately they had a conversation with the old family friend who had reassured them that the place where she lived had plenty of beautiful cafes, they could have a good breakfast. They rested half in fear of the neighborhood and half in hope of the breakfast. 

Good morning weary travellers. The treasure is in sight. Let’s meet this kind lady, let’s reep the promise. When they met the old family friend, excited like children to find out about the cafe’s nearby she had spoken of last night, she then looked at them ‘gone out’, stumbled over her words and said ‘Let’s go to Morrisons, that is the best cafe around here’.

Oh now the tension of hope is breaking into a comedy. Morrisons? Morrisons? The cheap little cafe in the BOG STANDARD SUPERMARKET. This was too much. In disbelief they pulled up to Morrisons, I can only imagine how their hearts sank and how awkward it was to not meet their friend with the completeness of their disappointment.

Imagine they had? Imagine they had not stifled it? I ask my brother and sister to imagine what may have happened if they had just said ‘Absolutely not, Morrisons is a diabolical place, horrendously cheap little place, unreliable, unsafe, joyless, unwanted’. Owned it. Owned their reality? Without judgment, without diversion? Pearls of laughter at themselves. As I had pearls of laughter when they told me this story. I laughed as the observer of such richness, they cried at the time of personally experiencing it and laughed again once it was over. They know it is funny but not at the time. We all end up in pearls of laughter when we truly accept ourselves. Why is that? Because to accept life and yourself in its full diversity is to realize and accept yourself, you are life and all its diversity, and whilst right now you may only be experiencing one framed part of it, it will not always be that way, you will realize one day you are all of it, then you might realize where all of it is, where it all always it, where you always are, forever, realize why you created diversity, then diversity can’t hold you, you know you hold it, you hold it and wonder and marvel at it as yourself as was you original and constant intention. 

Morrisons is the cherry on the cake. In the moment you realize what diverse personal experience is giving you, knowledge of yourself, personal experience no longer owns you. You then can begin to own it. We go in and out of the dark of this life after life, but there is only us experiencing this now and always now.