Life, with a capital L, has been somewhat chaotic in the past year – as indeed it will have been for many of us. We – as in globally, country-wise, personally – are in a period of extreme change, such as has perhaps not been seen since WW2. Certainly not in the West. It reminds me of a great giant turning in his 100 year sleep. We who built our dreams on his sleeping body tumble as he turns, clutching at anything we can hold onto as we fall. But the new, the unknown, beckons us on to perch, fall and grasp again, on and on. It is part of the unfurling thread of time.
Enough of whimsicality. Much has changed for me personally. I have lost a long-term friend on a seeming whim. She spat me out like a wad of flavourless gum. What did I do “wrong”? Nothing that would seem to warrant the termination of twenty years of a deeply rich friendship. Perhaps I was part of her own fall, let go of in the emergency of no-man’s land. Nonetheless I miss the person I was once so close to. I have been given notice by my landlord and find myself entering the arena of inflated rental prices beyond most averagely-waged people’s means: desperately looking outside of the box for somewhere to rent that will leave more than a few quid to spare for a pauper’s meal. So I live in limbo at the moment waiting for the next piece of magic to appear left field. Don’t get me wrong, I am not flakily lazing about in cloud-cuckoo land. I am seeking a solution to an equation for which an answer is currently unavailable – as the term goes for faults on the line, or a temporary disconnection from the internet. My definition of being poor is in the process of being rebooted.
In the world of consciousness-raising, self-improvement, spiritual seeking, we are invited to “live in the present,” the meaning of which evades us until we are simply forced out of some mental idea we have of what living in the present means, as in, how to strive for it. In short we attempt to make living in the “now” another valuable asset to notch up on the post of psycho-human achievements. When seeking the present moment in the vaults of the past fails, as it inevitably will; when all the mental gymnastics cease, then we discover that everything occurs on one level, like a moving walkway at an airport. Just by taking a step Life opens the next door and the next. There is no arriving. No destination. Now is always and ever just what it is, now! Clever words? No. simply stating the impossible in as clear a way as possible! Tautology no doubt…
In the meantime I work, write, plan, laugh with friends, swim in the sea and wait for the new version of my book to come out any moment now. Life in the present is not all bad!