Fran’s brow crumples in confusion.
‘Where did you find your sense of self before your husband came along?’ Marleen asks.
‘In Mum,’ says Fran, tears springing into her eyes.
‘Fran’s mother passed away a month before she met Robin,’ I explain. ‘Carly came along not long after.’
‘I see,’ says Marleen, accepting a peppermint tea. ‘It sounds as if you’ve never had the opportunity to find your own centre, your own sense of peace. Life has moved too rapidly.’
‘I don’t understand,’ says Fran, sounding as she did when she was a little girl, when she wasn’t allowed ice cream before dinner.
‘Our sense of peace doesn’t come from others; it can’t. Everythingchanges, nothingor nooneis for ever. Our sense of peace must come from within.’
‘How do I find that peace?’
‘There is nothing to find; it is already there. Simple awareness. The reason you can’t see it is because of your “self”.’
‘Marleen, you’re speaking in riddles,’ says Fran agitatedly.
‘Our self is made up of our thoughts, emotions, our sensory experience,’ Marleen explains patiently. ‘Beneath self is simple awareness, peace. Once we find that peace, then we can enter into compassion. That’s when the real work begins.’
‘What work?’
‘Of being one with everything and everyone.’
Fran rolls her eyes in either irritation or frustration or both. ‘You’ve lost me,’ she says, turning her attention to the menu as Ginny comes to join us.
‘Ginny, thank God,’ she sighs. ‘Please, join us, save me from this New Age mumbo jumbo we’ve fallen into.’
‘Sounds intriguing,’ Ginny laughs.
‘You look as if you need a drink,’ says Fran, once Ginny is settled. Fran’s right, Ginny does look as if she’s had a day of it.
‘I’m not sure a drink will cut it,’ she laughs. ‘Perhaps a new career instead?’
‘How so?’ I ask, noticing a theme beginning to grow between us: me, Fran, Robin, Ginny, even Carly.
‘I just can’t keep up any longer. I’m not even sure it’s worth it any more.’
Ginny gives a brief overview of how her life has become: no balance, little sleep, poor diet, no weekends, ill health, dwindling confidence, the desire to hide away.
‘You sound burnt-out,’ I say, having recently read an online article about its rise.
‘You sound like Robin,’ says Fran, not cynically, worriedly.
We chat for a while about Ginny’s situation, what would happen if she gave up her job, if she could take some time to travel and work remotely as a freelance consultant, but the conversation is left unfinished when both she and Fran are pulled away by a handful of remaining readers to discuss their work.
‘Aren’t you glad you’re not in that period of life any more?’ I ask Marleen.
‘It feels like a lifetime ago, don’t you think?’ she says pensively.
‘Almost as if it were someone else’s life,’ I say, no longer able to recall exactly how I felt when Bill and I gave up on the idea of a child, as if the memory belongs to somebody else.
‘It was at that stage of my life that I learnt the real meaning of self-compassion.’
‘How so?’ I ask, keen to learn more about Marleen’s past, certain that she hasn’t been this version of herself all her life.
‘That’s definitely a story for another day,’ she says, emptying her cup, leaving me with a head full of stories.
