Inside Out

Travel, I was told, would expand my mind. So I followed that sage advice. And I thought it had. It felt like it had. I felt bigger, and as a result I could only conclude that I was better for that. After all, we are supposed to grow. Firstly, we grow up. Then we expand. Our horizons broaden and broaden until we are spoilt for choice.

But then, life is a series of choices. Often, the choice we make is to make no choice at all. We bury ourselves in the sands of ignorance and pretend we are staying put, when there is never any possibility of that.

We balance precariously upon a large ball that is spinning at a thousand miles an hour. This ball, that hosts our odd existences, is also travelling at forty seven thousand miles an hour as it goes around and around a fireball that will eventually consume it. That is the wallpaper in this room of the universe. That is our context. 

Staying put really isn’t an option.

This is why the attainment of peace is no easy matter. Real peace resides in truth and that truth is all around us. We are immersed in it.

I travelled to the other side of the world to find myself and yet I was here all the time. I was here and yet I chose not to acknowledge myself. The sad fact of the matter is that we can spend a lifetime denying ourselves. Busying ourselves with the trivial until the unique miracle we are winks out of existence. We all run the gauntlet of never really having known ourselves and in the same breath we crave the knowledge and understanding of others. We want to be known. We want to be understood. We make all this noise. We sit in the corner of the room banging our drum in the desperate hope that we will get the attention we need. An angry toddler going about things in the wrong way, but no longer is there a giant to lift us from the floor, separate us from the noise, hug us and whisper the truth to us; that we are loved, and that in the gentle silence that ensues, we can listen to ourselves and who we really are. Only in that loving silence do we truly connect.

Returning from my travels, I came home. But home was no longer what it once was. Home was no longer where it once was. And so I made a fresh start. I moved away from everything I once knew, and everything I had connected with, and I laughingly thrust myself into a new life. I reinvented myself before I ever worked out what my self was. I had no clue what I was for, or what I was supposed to do.

Looking at the moths around me, I scoffed. Time and again they went around and around until they hit the burning bulb. There was some merit in their resilience and tenacity, but I wanted more, and convinced myself that I was more in that wanting. Not for me was the rut. Not for me the madness of doing the same thing again and again, yet expecting a different result.

Unwittingly, I imposed upon myself a strange exile. I wore the garb of a pariah and I beat a different drum. I spoke aloud of my hopes and dreams and I asked questions-of-meaning of those around me. My words struck fear within those people. A strange, outlandish and deceptive fear, for this fear could never reach a man’s heart. But then, how often do we listen with our hearts?

Throwing myself into work, I sought validity in my utility. I found some semblance of that, but it was transitory. The rewards of toil and the righteous ache at the end of a long, hard day. Still there was something more that I needed. I knew this because I felt a loss that grew even as I believed I was growing. Remaining steeped in a belief that I was doing what I must. 

We seek connection throughout our lives. We cannot bear to be alone. Isolation is hell. We don’t work on our own. A spare part lying beside a broken machine. We hear the truth of this in music. We see the reality of this life of ours in art. Those things speak to us. We feel what they say. Though seldom do we go beyond a momentary smile or tear. We nod at the alien message as though we understand, but we have no intention of ever learning the language. And so that fear visits us yet again.

The fear of knowing ourselves and understanding what it is we are supposed to be doing with our lives.

I did so much. I have lived a life. But I missed so much as I did. I crashed headlong through the walls and brought the whole house down, never looking back at the destruction I caused. I was a walking accusation. Asking questions of those around me. Questions I should have been asking myself, but I never had the courage to turn the table. I never paused long enough at the bathroom mirror to see who it was I was sharing my life with.

It was in the shadow of death that I saw life more clearly. Darkness contrasted with the light I had taken for granted for so long. The light we all carry. Light carried in the impossibly small hands of our inner child. The eternal part of us. 

Our soul.

I saw it then. That which had always been before me. The best part of me. 

This is where we connect. 

This is how we connect. 

I failed to connect.

A plague bell rang out in my office late one evening. I was alone, choosing to work late. Doing today. Not wanting to put off until tomorrow. A shallow avoidance technique. A coping mechanism against something I had not bothered to define.

I heard the dread bell and I knew things would never be the same again. The other worldly sound screamed at me from my mobile phone and for a shameful moment I considered ignoring it even as I read the three letters on the screen.

Mum.

In that moment I was a frightened little boy. The years fell away and revealed their lie. The little boy was what was real. The little boy knew how to be, even when I did not. My mind raced and I feared the worst. But the worst was that Mum was dead. Was Dad calling from her mobile? That was possible. He didn’t have a mobile of his own. Probably didn’t know my number. Relied upon Mum to call me and update me on what was happening in their world.

I delayed answering the phone, telling myself that I would rather not know. That ignorance really was bliss. I sat on my deck chair and I commanded the tide of reality to turn back. It ignored me and the phone’s screams rattled my teeth. I picked up the phone. My hand might have been shaking, but then all of me was shaking. I was filled with a curious energy that oscillated through me over and over again. Shaking me apart and reminding me of how fragile the pretence of our imagined existences really are.

“Hello?” I said quietly, even in the empty and soulless office.

“It’s Mum,” said Mum.

“I know,” I said in a sad approximation of the facetious and disrespectful teenager I never was. In contradiction to the truth. I had not known it was Mum. I should have told her that she had worried me and that I was so glad it really was her. 

I did not. 

I lacked the courage to tell her the truth of it.

“Are you alright?” she asked me, “how are things going at work?” She always did this. Asked about me. Opened the conversation up so I could offload my angst and stresses. A lot of our phone calls were heavily occupied with that. I would tell her my non-news, then became impatient and feel I had to round the call off, asking a cursory closed question about how they both were before pressing End. 

I wonder whether all children remain selfish like that. Destined to find out what it feels like when their kids fly the nest and don’t bother to give a shit about the two people who made their lives possible.

“I’m still at work,” I said dully.

“Oh dear, it’s very late,” said Mum.

I looked around me, usually I’ll check the time on the phone that was against my ear, “is it?”

She answered with a sigh.

“What is it, Mum?” I asked as calmly as I could.

“It’s Mum,” she said, “she’s been taken into a home”

I paused, not knowing what to say.

“It’s bad,” Mum said.

“What is it?” I asked, not sure whether I wanted to know.

“Dementia,” she told me.

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I think there was relief there and the release of a dark pressure that had been building since my phone rang. I reigned myself in, “I’m sorry, Mum. It’s just… how can you tell?!”

I was all the more relieved to hear her laughter down the phone, even as I detected a seam of sadness. There were silent tears in that laughter, “there is that,” she managed.

“Nan’s always been left of field hasn’t she?” I said.

“Not…” Mum began. She was going to say always, but I could almost hear the cogs whirring as she cast her mind back to her childhood and the firebrand that Nan had been, “you know, I’ve never really thought about how she was. Not like that. You do have a point, I just never thought of her like that.”

Was.

Mum said was. It really was that bad.

“Will you come?” she asked.

I did a mental calculation. It was Thursday. I was expected in work the following day, regardless of the work I’d put in this evening, “I’ll leave around lunch tomorrow. If that’s alright?”

“Of course it is,” I could feel a smile in Mum’s words, “she’ll be so pleased to see you.” She paused and I wondered what that pause meant, “we all will,” she added.

“It’ll be great to see you too,” I replied.

“Fancy a shepherd’s pie?” she asked.

Of course I did. It was my favourite, “always.”

The shepherd’s pie was, as ever, the best shepherd’s pie in the land. This was a dish that tasted of home and there is no seasoning to compare to the taste of the place you love and are loved. I had a second portion. As was dictated by tradition.

“We should go,” said Mum as she took my plate.

I tried to hide my shock and disappointment. I’d hoped that I could put it off until tomorrow. I was telling myself that I hated hospitals and an old people’s home was going to be more of the same. They are always too warm and then there’s the thick stew of smells, aromas and unsavoury stenches. Granddad had said that hospitals were places where you went to die. That if you weren’t ill before you visited, you stood every chance of being ill having been around all the death and disease. Granddad was a cheery old bugger. He really was. This take on hospitals stuck with me though, and it applied even more so to old peoples’ homes. Once a person was admitted, there was only ever one way they were leaving.

Mum drove. I’d just driven two hundred miles. She offered and pushed the offer with the practicality that she knew where she was going. I demurred and instantly wished I hadn’t. Driving would have given me something to do. Being a passenger freed my mind to play with my worries.

The care home did not disappoint. I was grieving before I was over the threshold. The loss was overwhelming. All these people had had homes and families and lives. They’d lasted the course and this was how it ended up. Homeless in a place that lied about being home. Room only for a few small possessions to remind a person of the dispossession they had suffered. I wanted to cry and I wanted to run away from this place and hide nearby. Behind a burning bush that had become the ideal hiding place because everyone was so lost they could no longer appreciate their own lives, let alone miracles.

Then a miracle happened right in front of me.

Nan.

She saw me and her pale, slack face lit up in an instant. I’d never experienced anything like it. Or that’s what I thought at the time. Now I think differently. Now I know that I had, but I’d desecrated the best of my memories in a process I’d mistakenly thought was growing up, but was more akin to going away from my self.

Time froze and gifted me this moment with my Nan. In the light of that expression I saw her beaming smile and eyes twinkling with so much life. I saw her and I saw more of her than I had ever seen. I saw who she was and who she had been and I realised that this was one and the same. The animated little girl who had never once forgotten how to love and play and grab a hold of every single piece of joy and happiness that this life presents to us.

“Who’s he?” she asked my Mum, and with that, the moment was gone, and confusion rained down upon my poor, dear Nan.

Afterwards, I felt so guilty. I felt weak and terrible in that guilt. I should have reached out to her. Held her. Been there with her in the only way that truly works. I should have taken her hand and if she willed it, hugged her. Made that connection and taken whatever she had. Tears on my shoulder. An uncertain smile. Anything. Everything. All of it. All of her. And the crazy, beautiful and amazing thing is that I would be giving her the exact same thing. Opening myself up. Daring to be vulnerable when daring is not required, for we are all eternally vulnerable, that is why we feel. That is what makes this life of ours so incredibly beautiful.

So often we do nothing.

This is a choice, even if we try to tell ourselves that it is not.

In the end, everything we do is a projection of who we really are. We fight our very nature. Seeking refuge and protection from what we are. We are vulnerable. That is the truth of what we are and we cannot avoid that truth. It will never change. We are supposed to share that. We are supposed to go out into the world and share our very self. Maybe that takes strength and courage, or perhaps it’s about realising that not to do so is cowardly and such a sad waste.

Anything else is a mistake. 

We see those mistakes all too often. If the makers of those mistakes took a moment to see themselves and ask, “is this who I really am?” They would stop, pause, reflect and answer “no, this is not who I am.” That isn’t what should happen. But it is what happens. We are painfully awful at listening to ourselves, let alone understanding what we should do with the truths that reside within us.

If we all did this one thing, the world would be a better place. Whenever one of us sees who and what they really are and lives accordingly, their world changes in that moment and is better for it. And there is more light in all of our worlds.

We should all become eternal explorers. 

The next time you are with someone you know, look for their real self. You will see signs of it. In the warmth of a smile. The twinkle in an eye. Heartfelt laughter. Listen to that music, really listen to it when it speaks. Look at art with every fibre of your being and you will see reflected in that art what it is to be.

I’m reaching out Nan. I’m doing it now. I may have been slow getting here, but I know it still counts. I wish I’d learnt this sooner, but as Nan was fond of saying, if wishes were eggs, I’d have a barn full of hens. What’s important is that I know now and so it’s down to me to make it stick. And I am. And I can feel the change already. The world is a brighter place for it.

Be the change.

Change yourself.

Change the world.

Dare to love.