Do you remember the John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett class sketch first shown on The Frost Report in the mid 1960's – I look up to him and I look down on him….?
I was reading something recently where someone shared one of those pearls of wisdom that her mother had passed on to her – Don't look upwards and compare yourself. Look downwards and you will be that much more content.
This is wise advice in all areas of life – be it career success, material possessions, physical appearance, or in matters of love and friendship. If we constantly compare ourselves to those that have "more" we are more likely to feel discontent with our lot. If we look to those who have "less" we are more likely to feel grateful and thus content. Social media is a comparison trap to be avoided. It is the very devil for sowing discontent because people tend to present their carefully curated highlights, not a low-down of their disappointments and failures. We thus compare other people's "outsides" to our own "insides", which is not a fair comparison.
When it comes to ringing it is easy to compare myself to those that have more - more experience, more natural talent, more focus, more stamina , more coordination- than it is to compare myself to those with less. One reason is because I mix with people who, in the main, have decades of ringing experience on me. Had I started out 50 years ago, who knows where I would be now. But I didn't so it is not unsurprising that I usually feel that I fall short. I look upwards and feel a minnow in comparison but it is not a fair comparison. I need to look downwards at those coming up behind and celebrate how far I have already come.
But when it comes to handbells there is no one really to look down to because I cannot see any one coming up behind. A few newbies have a flirt and then seem to reject them for whatever reason – too difficult/too boring/too abstruse/too niche? Thus when I feel somewhat disheartened because the big boys and girls dislike my uneven rhythm and find me difficult to ring with/I do not "know" the tunes in the way that others do/I cannot hear the treble and have to rely on looking for it/I still need to think very, very hard to know which way to go at any change and all sorts of other negatives, I need to remind myself that a couple of years ago I not only knew nothing about handbells but crucially I knew nothing about methods. Zip. Nada. Rien. My blank sheet has been scribbled on at an accelerated rate but there are huge gaps that I have to try to compensate for when ringing because whatever I do with little bells has no tower foundation.
I am sure that I am not the only one out here in what feels like an exposed position, but it would be good to have a cohort coming up behind, ringers with limited experience of ringing, who are trying very hard to be successful with handbells. At present, the only reference that I have to look down on and recognise progress is me. Whilst it can be useful to use my past self as a benchmark of comparison, it feels a little like marking my own homework.
So come on you novice ringers, why not give handbells a try and give me a point of reference that is liable to sow contentment? It would be an act of kindness on your part because however hard I run, I know that I will never manage to catch up with Proper Peal Ringers and will always be trailing behind liked an annoying little sister wanting to play but not up to the game. I need to redirect my attention to those that are just starting out - someone to look down to, wishing that they had what I have, because I do recognise that I have been remarkably fortunate that so many people have bothered to help me make the progress that I have made, even if I do put them off with my irritating lack of experience.
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