This
past week I have lived in an environment where clocks don't matter.
Where dinner happens when someone is hungry and is shared with
whoever is there to share the joy of eating. I was welcomed into a
way of life where decent time is spent encouraging one another's
achievements no matter how large or small. I spent a week with an
inspirational collective of people who live in vans, bathe in a
communal shower block, and share everything from friendship to food,
and from moods to music.
I
have also spent many late nights this week sitting in the cold,
crisp, dark looking out across the staggering view of the mountains,
alone. After everyone was asleep, I could be found curled up with a
hot water bottle clutched to my chest. Just sitting. Nothing more.
Perhaps it was my Quaker senior schooling that taught me to sit for
so long uninterrupted. Or perhaps it's just that sometimes there
isn't enough time in life to process all that happens. Perhaps these
moments of solitude are the ones that can prove to realign us.
I
am beginning to recognise that I am at my happiest when I am occupied
and challenged. I realised this more than ever this week, whilst I
had all the time in the world. I had no internet connection, no one
to teach, no appointments to attend, and no way of doing any career
work even if I had wished to. For the first few hours it was lovely
to just hear the sounds and songs of the place I was newly arriving
into. However, by the end of the second day, I had put together and
edited a two minute video edit of my teaching work in Marrakech, in
order to be able to have a two minute reel to make applications with.
And, like a drug addict with a fix, my levels of happiness increased
and rebalanced. As it transpires, my mind doesn't stop working even
when my muscles are at rest!
"Teaching Reel"
My
experience this week reminded me of a children's story I once read.
It was a simple story that told the tale of a circular creature that
had a segment of himself physically missing. He travelled the world
looking for this lost slice. When he eventually found it, he slotted
it into the segment that was empty in his circular being. And in
doing so, he found himself silenced. On his great travels previously,
the gap had been used as a mouth to speak and be heard. In his
journey to find the missing piece of himself, he found more than
enough in life itself. He decided that he did not want to be complete
if it implicated being silenced. Thus, he rejected the missing piece
and went on with his life a little incomplete, yet entirely
fulfilled.
I
can identify with this peculiar childhood tale. For perhaps we aren't
meant to be checklist complete. Perhaps the journey is what fulfils
us, rather than the finishing line or end product. Perhaps sometimes
just to sit alone in the dark, on a snowy mountain is OK. There is
value in pause. However, I equally see and feel the value of spending
the whole of my day doing and seeing as much as I can, in order to
have lived as much of my potential as I possibly can. I am not
obsessive. I am making the most of my opportunities. And so I shall
continue, in pursuit of my greatest ambition – finding the front
door of Liberty's.
I
am interested in people's infrastructures. Everyone has their own set of stories,
injuries, and choice of path. Everyone, as this childhood story tells the
tale of has their own tally of segments they may feel are missing, or temporarily unreachable. We are human. These shadows, these idiosyncrasies, are what I find
fascinating in us. They are what make me love what I do and what make me who I am as a person. You have yours. I have mine.
Here's to the journey!
HV.
X