Sometimes the thing we most passionately and desperately seek hides in plain sight, simply because we have not yet learned to recognise it or accept its legitimacy. We may spend years in searching, attempting to pin our desires to objects we can more readily identify and label. But each time our goal remains elusive as shimmering light, always just out of sight, beyond the horizon. Or intangible as a beautiful mirage. Until at last we see what we have always seen and in ecstatic knowing, name it. The act of naming is not merely an act of recognition and claiming, but an act of defiance, an act of reality-creation.
One year ago, in my diary I wrote:
I have spent my last night in my first-ever apartment... More than any other thing I will miss being able to just walk across the road to watch the sunrise... And yet, of late I have been so busy... that I have barely been to the beach at all. And that is what I need to change.
Packing up has taught me how quickly new possessions and attachments are acquired. In accepting the loss of something as magnificent as the morning sunrise, I realise that the problem is that... I never really claimed it. It is not the sunrise itself that matters, it is the fact that I have allowed myself to be claimed by other demands.
I wonder where and when my next apartment will be. What I hope to acquire next are not possessions but the ability to prioritise spontaneous, creative play. I want to let go of "work first, play later" and put my energy into what matters most. If I can achieve that, then I will benefit even more from my second apartment than I have from the first.
This apartment has seen me explore my sexuality, become a Pagan and then move forward as Pantheist. It has seen me write my first novel. It has seen the development of the Lunchtime Philosophy Club and my participation in the Book Club. It has seen the birth of my writing circle. It has sheltered and nurtured me. That is a special debt of gratitude I owe to this little home. And now I move into uncertainty, away from my beautiful beach and open horizons, in order that I might learn and become more.
Exactly one year later, improbably ensconced in my second magical apartment, I find myself once again exploring my desire for the limitless. Only this time I see something new. As I huddle in the Sunday-morning luxury of reading in bed I think again about what I desire in solitude. Only this time I recognise it, not as fantasy but as ambition. My dream does not require a geographical landscape but a mental one. For the first time I see unstructured time on a grand scale not as "laziness" or "escape" but as a voyage of exploration into the uncharted depths of being. It is the most exciting ambition I can imagine. To set a goal is to set limits and to attempt to chart the terrain in advance, sight unseen. It is an attempt to mitigate the presumed guilt of undertaking a perilous and possibly productless journey by creating an imagined product at the outset. And in so doing I would render the voyage null and void. To truly venture forth I must embrace the wild uncertainty of being and abandon myself to risk and the possibility of pointlessness in search of that maddening and elusively shifting, infinite horizon.
I have mourned my lack of attachment to any useful pursuit, failing to notice the one consistent passion through all: the desire for the inner pilgrimage, the journey for which there is no map and no known destination. The act of naming is a revolution.
One year ago, in my diary I wrote:
I have spent my last night in my first-ever apartment... More than any other thing I will miss being able to just walk across the road to watch the sunrise... And yet, of late I have been so busy... that I have barely been to the beach at all. And that is what I need to change.
Packing up has taught me how quickly new possessions and attachments are acquired. In accepting the loss of something as magnificent as the morning sunrise, I realise that the problem is that... I never really claimed it. It is not the sunrise itself that matters, it is the fact that I have allowed myself to be claimed by other demands.
I wonder where and when my next apartment will be. What I hope to acquire next are not possessions but the ability to prioritise spontaneous, creative play. I want to let go of "work first, play later" and put my energy into what matters most. If I can achieve that, then I will benefit even more from my second apartment than I have from the first.
This apartment has seen me explore my sexuality, become a Pagan and then move forward as Pantheist. It has seen me write my first novel. It has seen the development of the Lunchtime Philosophy Club and my participation in the Book Club. It has seen the birth of my writing circle. It has sheltered and nurtured me. That is a special debt of gratitude I owe to this little home. And now I move into uncertainty, away from my beautiful beach and open horizons, in order that I might learn and become more.
Exactly one year later, improbably ensconced in my second magical apartment, I find myself once again exploring my desire for the limitless. Only this time I see something new. As I huddle in the Sunday-morning luxury of reading in bed I think again about what I desire in solitude. Only this time I recognise it, not as fantasy but as ambition. My dream does not require a geographical landscape but a mental one. For the first time I see unstructured time on a grand scale not as "laziness" or "escape" but as a voyage of exploration into the uncharted depths of being. It is the most exciting ambition I can imagine. To set a goal is to set limits and to attempt to chart the terrain in advance, sight unseen. It is an attempt to mitigate the presumed guilt of undertaking a perilous and possibly productless journey by creating an imagined product at the outset. And in so doing I would render the voyage null and void. To truly venture forth I must embrace the wild uncertainty of being and abandon myself to risk and the possibility of pointlessness in search of that maddening and elusively shifting, infinite horizon.
I have mourned my lack of attachment to any useful pursuit, failing to notice the one consistent passion through all: the desire for the inner pilgrimage, the journey for which there is no map and no known destination. The act of naming is a revolution.