Posts tagged with "lost"
Traveller, There Is No Path
In truth, I have found it hard since my return from Knoydart. Hard to process my experience, hard to readjust, hard to hold on, hard to blog!
On my return I felt very alive, hyper-sensitized. Alive to the beauty in everything (particularly my fellow human beings), alive to the land I inhabit everyday, alive to the words of others, alive to the lessons in all that surrounds me.
Everything felt important and connected. But if everything is important and connected how do I pay enough attention to it all? I realize that in order to survive, to get through our daily lives, we attach importance to very little that is really important. Paying the kind of attention that living and not merely surviving demands, slows me down, causes me pain, makes it hard to move forward with certainty.
I have felt very lost since then. I have lost my ability to prioritize my everyday tasks. What I feel needs my proper attention is out of kilter with what seems to be being demanded of me by others. I have lost my sense of time. I feel I need to slow down when the world seems to be demanding my speeding up. I even think I’ve lost my sense of humour. Nothing feels very funny right now. Humour seems to be located in a negativity towards others and Knoydart had been a time lived without negativity, a time to interrogate what needed my proper attention, a time to see others and the world around me in the most positive way.
I spend a good deal of time explaining to my students how precious it is to be lost, how it is from this place that more creative possibilities exist than any other place. ‘Learn to love being lost,’ I say, ‘surrender to it, stay open to the lessons to be found this place’.
So, now I find that I don’t know where I am and I’m unsure of where I’m going, unsure of my purpose, unsure of my agency. I reflect on my solo and how strong I felt on that day, how being lost led to being fully present. Then I remember this line from the Spanish poet Antonio Machado,
Traveller, there is no path, the path is made by walking.
I resolve to keep walking…I will make my steps deliberately slow.
