fiftyfreeandsingle

I was asked recently what I thought I had learnt in the last year or two and if I felt that I had changed during this time. I can say for sure I’ve covered a lot of miles, and for each across a map twice as many in my thoughts and mind, but curiously it occurs to me that I have for some reason spent an inordinate amount of time & energy going uphill, himalayas, pyrennees, across Spain, in Italy & Greece & Sri Lanka. In fact hills & mountains, there have been bloody hundreds of the things, and so often when I’ve been traipsing uphill it’s occurred to me, Why? Why on earth am I doing this, why don’t I keep to the flat, the nice & easy, sure enough getting to the top of a hill or a mountain gives you a great view, and on occasion a sense of accomplishment, but then there always seems another one not far ahead, and rather strangely although I seem to remember vividly each one of those climbs uphill I cannot for the life of me remember the trips back down, why is that?

I dislike the oft proffered homily that life gives lessons, it always smacks to me of some great teacher being out there somewhere, some grand celestial being pulling strings, I don’t want or need one of those, but if we learn and grow wiser from our experiences, then perhaps from those hills & mountains I understood that getting to the places you want to be takes effort and energy, it isn’t an easy coast and there are no shortcuts. Beyond this I could say that I’ve learnt a lot about love in these last couple of years, I’ve met people that have had a profound effect on the way I in turn perceive the world and I’ve seen many places that have taken my breath away. I could rattle away and talk about what I’ve experienced though words seem wholly inadequate, maybe at some point I will find them, but above all what I have come to believe is that life is an incredibly powerful force, it wants to be, there is never stillness, we like to think of calm and peace, but life rages, churns, it is everywhere in the smallest atom and strewn across the cosmos, an energy of which we are all a part, that whilst life may feel non-sensical, random, filled with luck, good & bad, it is all a great dance, from the smallest atom to the stars in the heavens and everything between, us and every creature included, a cosmic dance, and to be alive is to join the dance, to move with it through your life wherever it takes you.