Remote Control

My Mum once told me to enjoy life. But she added a warning, and that warning was that time has a habit of speeding up as you get older. She may as well have told me not to panic. Or to smile, and that it might never happen. That was the attention I paid to her advice, and to her for that matter.

And yet I remember her words well, and now, in the context of who and what I have become, I understand where she was coming from. This wasn’t a soundbite. This wasn’t knowledge. She meant what she had said, and in order for me to understand, I had to think. And mostly, I had to think about her and how she cared for me. Widening the context, I saw her well. Decades late to the party, but I got there in the end. I looked back at that time, and those moments we shared, and I saw the world through her eyes. Her son rushing headlong at life like there wasn’t a second to spare. 

How often do we truly take stock? And when we do, will we see the contradiction that we made of ourselves. I had all the time in the world when I was younger and yet I raced through that time like it didn’t matter. Like I didn’t matter. 

In my defence, I wouldn’t say I wasted my life. Not all of it anyway. But I could have done so much more. Been so much more! Instead I put my head down and I sped through what people laughingly refer to as their best years. If these were my best years, my recollection of them is blurred, and the importance I placed upon them is misguided. These were times to endure. A means to an end. For me, it was all about the destination, only I had no clear idea of where it was that I was headed. All I knew was that anything was better than here.

Running. Always running, and whilst I was at it, I kidded myself that I wasn’t running away from anything. That I was running towards something, but hadn’t yet decided what that thing was. I’d know it once I saw it. And I’d know it when I arrived.

I was educated to do this. I was naturally adept at learning. No parrot was I. I both envied and pitied the parrots. But I was no better than them. I fared no better. I sought to understand, but made only half a job of it. I wanted so much to uncover the secrets of life, the universe and everything, but always I fell short in the comfortable blankets of my fear.

Education was another means to an end. Learn the subject. Pass the exam. Gain a passport to a bright future. No one ever taught me what it was all for. Why it was that I was learning what I did. 

It did not help that I lived in an enclosed and dying world. A place that had seen better days. It’s once fine suit was shabby and worn. Stained with a life of hardship and a million tears. The main prospects for employment had once been jobs for life. I wandered the local graveyard and observed the final conclusion of those lives. A well-worn rut around the dial of the clocking-in machine. A rut that ironically came to an end at the age of sixty during a ritual that entailed the gifting of a golden timepiece that would never see the light of day. So many monuments to men who gave their lives to industry, only to finish up with killer questions as their final companions…

What was it all for?

What am I for?

The wives of the condemned workers bemoaning a future where their husbands would cease being of use and get under their feet. A prophetic phrase. Six foot under their feet as they added another endless chore to the list. Tending a grave paid for by the money saved for a holiday of a lifetime.

Perhaps I can be forgiven for trying to fast-forward through that little lot. Building and building a momentum that might just afford me the courage to crash through the prison walls of a working class nightmare that was dying before our very eyes, but was still conscripting green and wet behind the ears soldiers. A sausage machine that promised security and doled out misery. The dole being the rotten carrot on the end of the whipping stick. The dole being the punishment for those who didn’t have anything about them. The lazy. The inept. The walking dead.

On Saturday mornings, we’d shed the homes that we ungratefully believed we were outgrowing and meet up. Riding on wheels that squeaked cries of freedom as we pedalled furiously to gather together. A rebellious tribe. Safety in numbers. The camaraderie of the undamned. Not thinking we were better. Just different. Damned in a different way, yet scoffing at the traditionally damned.

Wandering around Town, we would take care not to get too close to The Locals. They had something that was catching, and it was terminal. We fancied we saw a vacancy in their dribbling phizogs, but we never looked too hard. I think we knew we’d see our own pale and earnest faces staring back at us. This fate awaited all of us. Escaping it came at too high a cost for most.

Even in the grey desperation of a dying town, dreams were sold. So many dreams that no one escaped their allure. The promise of finding The One, settling down into a blissful life and having children. No reality was applied to these dreams. Even when we were all drowning in the mess of that same reality. 

There may have been a heady, lustful interlude with a fine young lady who was as clueless as we were, and we were all intent upon that adventure. Not even the stark warnings of the fallen could turn our heads from this one. The oft repeated shattering of love’s young dream when the three little words were uttered…

I am pregnant.

We were children, surrounded by an army of children, and we had often looked up at the grey faces of our parents and wondered how it could have gone so wrong for them. Never did we consider the obvious conclusion; they’d had children.

We were what had gone wrong. We’d brought with us an infinite weight of responsibility and that weight had crushed any dreams our mothers and fathers may have had before we came along and changed everything, like it or not. At best, our parents could mark time until we flew the nest, only for us to follow their broken example and repeat their mistakes all over again, adding our own errors and regrets to further damn the next generation.

History doesn’t repeat itself. That is a lie we tell ourselves. We give sentience to time and try to excuse ourselves the responsibility of living. 

I was running away from this and so much more. Too blind and stupid to realise this was exactly what I was running towards. A middle-class dream that was the same tawdry dream fancied up in a cheap suit and splashed with a sickly sweet cologne to mask the stench of the rotting corpse beneath. A sick fantasy inducing a person to dream away their decent life. Prostitute themselves for a career that no one cares about, especially the lonely wife and neglected kids. Dancing around the greasy corporate pole, desperate for attention. A narcissistic game that only the truly deranged can ever win.

Silencing the voice that asks softly…

What was it all for?

What am I for?

The voice of an inner child that is silenced over the years. Locked away and forgotten. Neglected in favour of madness. The necessary sacrifice that must be made to get on. The forgoing of humanity to become something acceptable in a corrupted world that feeds on lost souls.

I climbed on my horse and I rode out of town. I went on a quest for meaning and I found the void. Again and again, I raised my lance and charged at whatever stood in my way. Never once did I best my opponent. But then that was never going to happen, for my opponent was me. Always me. I was running away from myself and all I ever found was me.

It was only when I fell from my horse and let go of my lance in the pain of my abject failure that I saw what I was about. Laying in the filth and mud of the life of lies I had carefully crafted, I saw myself for what I was. There in the distorted reflection of the murky puddle that I lay in, I saw how low I had become. There was no armour. I had always been naked. Naked as the day I was born. 

What I thought was strength was only avarice and envy. What I considered to be a life was theft. I was taking and never had it occurred to me to give. 

When had my head gone down?

I asked myself over and over. I replayed my life and saw no evidence that I’d ever lifted my head in the first place. It took me a long while to realise that I was asking the wrong person. That I was indulging in a self-piteous dialogue with the dead thing I had made of myself. To my shame, I continued to ignore the stifled voice of my inner child. Too much of a coward to face the music. To listen to the cacophony of noise I’d made as I avoided living.

My inner child broke out of the prison I’d made for him. I can take no credit for his release. There was no grand gesture. No epiphany. I’d even failed in failing myself and could not see how fortunate I was in my poor execution of this sloppy and ill-considered venture.

He appeared when I most needed him, and in time I came to understand that I had always needed him. That he was me, and the rest of it was a terrible mistake. There was no moment of forgiveness, for there were no recriminations. Only the simple wisdom of innocence. 

My inner child was a dog with a voice. There was a purity there that it took me an age to see. He was patient with me and allowed me the space to be. To learn. To grow.

Still I made mistakes, but at last I acknowledged them and in doing so, I used them. Failure no longer hurt, because this was an opportunity to change and adapt and be better. Success was an illusion that kept a person from being more. 

As I at long last allowed myself to live, I found a whole new world and ever so gradually, I became something different. Someone different. And then I became someone. I got with the program and I became the someone I was always meant to be.

There is a magic to life and living it. I could feel it before I ever truly experienced it. I began to understand that I was a part of something far bigger than I could ever comprehend, but my inability to comprehend was not ignorance, for I at long last belonged. I had found my place and in being at one with this, there was a power that ran through me. A power that was mine, but was never mine to wield.

At first I was content just to bathe in that magic. To be at one with it, and feel the peace and joy that it conveyed. But then I realised that I could use it. That I was meant to use it. And so I slipped under its surface and allowed myself to truly become at one with it.

When I rose from the depths, I was forever changed. I opened my eyes and I saw differently and in seeing differently, I was different. I was what I was always meant to be. A celebration of my inner child. Innocent, vulnerable and full of wonder at the gift of this life and everything around me. Nothing mattered other than the moment I occupied. The past and the future were mere thoughts. I should by all means consider them, but they no longer defined me. The shroud of my worries slipped from my shoulders and I was proud in my nakedness. My vulnerability no longer left me fearful. I was born vulnerable and it was as much a state of being as the smile that transformed my face and lifted my spirits. 

As the magic coursed through my veins, I heard its name, and that name was love. As I accepted this simple truth I heard many other truths. Truths that had always been there for the taking, but that I’d closed myself to.

This was when I learnt to control time.

I slowed my breathing and I focused on true meaning, and as I became one with time I understood what it was that I should do, and I made that change, returning to my true state. Embracing my inner child and relinquishing grand lies about being an adult and striking out into the world on its terms, not mine. I began to work the way I was designed to work.

I stopped reacting.

I paused and time stood still. I had lied to myself so convincingly, and one of the biggest lies I told myself was I don’t have the time. Turns out that I always did. When I ceased reacting, I not only made the time, time gifted me a pause. In that pause everything made sense and so did I. I paused. I thought. I responded. 

In responding, I created meaning, and what I did as a result was worthwhile. I considered, and in considering, I was considerate. In the moment that the magic of love afforded me, in that pause for thought, I found an eternal peace and I also found me. 

This is not to say that I ignored my gut feeling. Why would I choose ignorance in such circumstances? But now I have aligned the trinity of me. My gut, my head and my heart. I am far, far more than I ever was, and I occupy each second of the day in a way that I never did. I was gifted the miracle of life and now I use it wisely and lovingly. 

Now I live in the pause of time. No longer do I fail to live as I charge towards a false and empty promise that resides in the fantasy of a future that can never come to fruition. Instead I invest in myself, and in this moment, and I know my future selfs will thank me for it. 

Magic is real. All we have to do is believe in love and be open to the truth. Try it. Simple truths are all around us. Pick up the remote control and look at it anew. 

Pause.

Now in that pause, take a deep breath and centre yourself. Find a little peace, and in that state of calm, think about what is important and how you should respond.

Time to look at the remote control again and see another simple truth…

Play.

You press play to return to the moment and rejoin the flow of time. Your inner child is waiting for you to play. Always has been.

Play is learning to live. Learning to live is growing. And all of this is living well.

Move on from the stand-by button, you were never meant to live like that. Play and never stop playing, just learn to pause once in a while, use that time that you are gifted, ensure you’re on the right track and aiming for what counts, then go again. Live, love and play!