August is a time in Edinburgh when the streets are packed with revellers from all over the world and the locals complain about the time it takes to get anywhere in the city. This year there is no festival. To mark what would have been the opening weekend of festival season over the last few days, they illuminated the theatres in bright lights, some of which shot up into the sky. I could see them from my lounge. They reminded me of one of the things I most love about this city, one of the things that has been stolen from us and something I have enjoyed every year for the years I have lived north of the border. Theatre, music and the arts are one of my biggest, most life-long loves. I have had an enduring love affair with them since a young age and I can honestly say that books, plays, film and music have influenced me in ways as marked, if not more marked, than actual living people!! Suffice it to say, I have a long history with them. And for the time being, there is no present to be shared with them outside the home and relatively little prospect of a future (save perhaps for the cinemas).
This has been the case for much of our lives for the last five months or so. Much has been taken from our present. The future has had a clear “No Entry” sign placed on it and we have been thrown onto our own resources to find our way through.
I have always been one for planning for the future, especially with travel. I almost always have a trip booked. I wear this like a badge of honour: never come back from a trip without the next one being booked. Well, that’s out the window! With the future locked down and the present devoid of many of our usual distractions and entertainments, there has been only one place to go: the past. And so I have found myself off down a myriad of memory lanes, some more enticing and fruitful than others.
Recently I attended a three-week series of talks by David Whyte, the wondrous poet. The subject was “A Road Always Beckoning”, touching on the topic of travel, towards and from, the question of pilgrimage, of becoming. I loved it. His work captures so poignantly for me some of the realities of what it is to be human. Where we stand in the present moment, how we got here and who we are becoming on our on-going journey are profound questions, if only we stop to ponder them. Who have you become since COVID came? What are these times inviting from you? How is all that you have lived before evolving and morphing into the next chapter of your time here on this planet? How far have you come? How far have you yet to go?
Part of my time in recent months has been spent delving into the wooden chest my Mum gave me for my birthday when I was a teenager, and in which I have stored years of diaries going back at least 30 years. There are photos in there, love letters and pages and pages of writing….moods and moments and experiences of the last three decades. It is a kind of Pandora’s Box and packs a punch of a kind that has left me reeling on many occasions. Connections have been made, remade and relived both in my head and in real life as a result. It has been a time of reflection for sure and an integration of sorts. It has not been an easy process though. There is nothing like the passage of time to remind us of our mortality and to highlight that this is no rehearsal. “Who knows where the time goes” sang Sandy Denny so beautifully. The torment of regret lurks in the shadows, ready to strike.
I am not sure I have reached any conclusion, other than a stronger belief in the value of the journey over any sense of destination. Loss is inevitable: I am sad that there is so much I don’t remember and wounded all over again by the reminder of the visitations of pain over time. I rejoice at the sense of growth and some kind of wisdom, or softening or acceptance that I find in myself. I am reassured by the threads of consistency that flow through the pages and layers of dust in that box, that tell me that I am indeed me. I am still me. There is a sense of essence, a sense of Kateness that I find and a greater acceptance of all that this is, inside me. As a developmental coach, I wonder if this is the best we can all wish for: a more accepting, loving relationship with ourselves. Everything else surely flows from there. And finally, I am heartened by my on-going desire to continue stepping out in enquiry, curiosity and hope.
Santiago, by David Whyte
and that, you were more marvelous in your
simple wish to find a way than the gilded roofs
of any destination you could reach:
as if, all along, you had the thought the end point
might be a city with golden domes, and cheering
crowds, and turning the corner at what you thought
was the end of the road, you found just a simple
reflection, and a clear revelation beneath the face
looking back and beneath it another invitation,
all in one glimpse: like a person or a place
you had sought forever, like a broad field of freedom
that beckoned you beyond; like another life,
and the road still stretching on.