Heavy, dull, grey threatening cloud overhead this campervan morning, back to hats, hoods and heavy fleeces once more. The light mirrors the cloud, it’s grey, heavy and is slowly and inextricably darkening as I sit. There is a weight to the light too, and with it a suggestion of rain in the air. A pair of blue tits dart here and there, the penetrating two tone call of an unseen great tit in the ash. A few starlings flit between the trees. I can hear the blackbird, but can’t see them this morning. The reply to its song appears close by to. A lone magpie happens past, stopping for a short while and then gone. The happenings of nature in a suburban garden. Motorway drone once more in the background, my coffee is chilling way too quickly. Another Friday is upon us and for some heralding the end of the week. Whilst continuing to make my way through Mac McCartneys book, I came across a Jon Young quote :
“ In order to move forward in a better way, we have to know exactly where we have been “
An echo of the famous Soren Kierkegaard quote :
“ Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards”.
Kierkegaard refers to the personal, Young refers to the ancestral, peoples, communities, but both pretty much tied together. My decision making this week has involved rifling through my past to work out what was stopping me moving forward. I sat with my mother yesterday, drinking coffee whilst she espoused, once more, her past and difficult childhood and summed it up with, that’s why I am who I am, or something along those lines. It brought up in me an encounter I had many years ago, my first proper job, where I flirted with becoming a lawyer. I worked with a partner in a firm who was a lovely man and we had a conversation once around trust ( I have no idea why this conversation has stayed with me ). I said that I trusted no one, which he felt was sad, but continued that he supposed it prevented me getting hurt. It took me a good few years to understand that the trust thing was in fact not my thing, but my mothers. Her story yesterday, the connection with my encounter many years ago, still fresh in my mind after all these years, allowed me to put another piece of the jigsaw together. To find the root of the thought pattern so to speak. I am glad to say that I abandoned the law, thank god. My trust issues are understood, accepted and I have moved on, but even now layers keep being pulled away. Lovely days people.
“ Like an ocean, life is deep, but we are just floating on the surface.”
Michael Bassey Johnson.
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