Tag: adventure

It’s Time For Now

Hamar Williams1 Comment

It is such a shame that the idea of living in the moment has been flogged to death. It’s past the point of cliché. It’s such a shame because it’s also something that is of such importance. Recently I have been attempting to practice this and have had far more actual and empirically measurable success than ever before. It seems strange to suggest it is something measurable because it is something you experience without a computer scanning your brain waves. You feel it though and it is measurable because your conscious mind can compare it to previous memories of experience.

Recently I have been able to bring my head out of the clouds. The clouds were anxious one revolving around the stresses of a man soon to turn thirty-five and with little to show for it in a conventional sense. What we must always remember is that we are not alone in this world and undoubtedly somewhere someone is feeling very similar emotions to us in this moment. We are never alone in our worries, people have been there before and others will be there in the future. But the actualities are not important, the point is that we lose ourselves in our mind and struggle to exist in the moment. While I am thinking about the enormity of the future and the size of the task of achievement ahead of me I am not experiencing anything that life gives me while I am sitting on this boat, or spending time with friends or family, or walking up the mountain, or whatever it is.

At the other end of the spectrum, I have just spent the last half an hour coming up with a pretty spectacular plan for this time next year involving hitchhiking through Patagonia, and sailing to Antarctica or the Chilean fjords on the west, or both. This escapism into fantasy may be a hell of a lot more enjoyable than embracing the anxiety of sorting ones life out but it is equally as pointless. Of course we have to come up with plans to make anything happen but it’s important not to spend more time in them than is absolutely necessary. The moment this happens it is nothing more than escapism.

What of the success I mentioned earlier then. It’s not ground breaking. Somehow you need to find a way to step back, to centre yourself. It is as if you step out of your mind for a second, observing yourself. See your surroundings and understand you’re not in that future, you’re not taking on the entire task of fixing life there and then, or you’re not sailing fjords. Step back and see what your eyes see, what your ears can hear, nose can smell. You just come back into yourself for a second and in the process break the chain, the flow the mind was rambling on in in it’s old habit. Then you realise all you have is today, and think what you can do in this moment, today, how to achieve whatever it is the mind has been intoxicated with all this time. You can’t do anything more than you can do now, you take it one step, one day at a time. That is all, that is all you can do. Nothing else is important, but when the time comes for it to be so you’ll deal with it then, one step, one day at a time. Even then we still procrastinate, it doesn’t stop us being lazy, we continue to put things off but at least we only have to deal with little things as they come. In time who knows, that’s the future, it’s conjecture, it’s still nothing more than a fantasy. It’s not now, it’s not real.

Renovating The Mind

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Depending on how we live life it can appear that our existence is just one long series of bubbles. I’ve left my previous bubble in other words and found myself in a new one. I say too about how we live our life because for some they only ever experience one bubble. I don’t suggest that is a good or a bad thing, it is just another experience. The two versions of experience can allow us to put differing importance upon a variety of things. For the last ten months I have been working in a bakery making pizzas, driving vans and doing some renovations. In that time I existed in a little village by the sea. It was very difficult not to get caught up in all the little drama that involved and I both thrived on it and was broken by it. Now I’ve followed a familiar path I know and moved on. I’m in Greece living in a boatyard with the intention of doing some work on a boat. Shall we say renovations in a different form, of boat and mind. My bubble is changing and evolving into something else. I am rediscovering different types of importance.

As I look back on these previous months I realise how much I got caught up in an entire world of small things. That isn’t to say they weren’t important because clearly they were at the time. Some I wish in hindsight I hadn’t got so involved in or reacted to in the ways I did, but all it shows is how easily we can get lost in the worlds we inhabit. In a way it could be argued as a good thing, was this an example of me living in the moment. The intensity of the bubble representing how present I was. In truth I know I wasn’t that present as I spent large chunks of the time fantasising about being anywhere else. But that didn’t stop me putting value on what I was experiencing. Now having left and with the time to step back from it all it seems so unimportant. All the things that caused anger, stress and anxiety. What were they for, what was their point and why did I allow them to engulf me.

This is one reason I enjoy moving so much as it allows me to be able to observe things in at least a physically detached way. Mentally I am still not objective but I can see now having left that the fears and stresses were not important, at least not in the way they felt at the time. This detachment then allows for perspective. As I said it isn’t to entirely devalue these moments but perhaps it’s about being able to better understand our own reactions in them. I was thinking recently that surely old people should fear nothing having experienced so much and survived it all. Evidence suggests otherwise but theoretically I like this idea. It fits then with the one that this chapter I have just stepped out of was challenging but I survived it. Maybe not intact but I survived it still. Any damage can be understood, resolved and released, used as experience if and when similar arises in the future.

I know this is entirely about me but my intention is to use my experience and hopefully help another understand their own. We’re never as unique as we like to think we are and simply see, understand and experience moments in our own ways. I take from others my own version of their version and someone else will do the same of mine, relating it in a way that they can understand and learn from. Is understanding and learning not the whole point. Everything else is just a tool for that end surely. One more thing to help us unlock the key to step from one bubble to the next. Another brick in the development of understanding.

Desire All

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I’ve been fantasising again about running away and living a life of adventure. I should probably be clearer there, I daily fantasise about running away and living a life of adventure. It’s a tricky one coming from a life of seemingly constant travel to one in which I’m now in one place for three months shy of a year. It’s not that I’ve never stayed this long in one place. On two separate occasions I went a year, but they were in slightly more exotic places, Ibiza and Athens. There are times I wonder why I left either of them but I know why. It’ll probably also be why I leave here too. The problem though is that when I’m constantly on the move I start to find myself craving some stability and a home. It’s like I want the opposite extreme of whichever extreme I’m currently living. I share this not because I like to share, although I clearly do, but because I know I’m not alone in this kind of thing. We do this, we all do this. Maybe not to such extremes or perhaps a different type of extreme, but we all desire what we don’t have.

The question then is what hole are we trying to fill when we decide to fulfil our desires. I say this not just in the sense of running off and finding a boat to an exotic land, but I, we, buy things too. We desire and consume stuff, just lots of random stuff, and this must be for a reason other than because either we need it or we’re zombies who’ve been bitten by capitalism’s contagion. Sorry about the alliteration, I’m fallible. The point is though that there must be something we’re searching for other than the obvious; the adventure or the new t-shirt. Have they found a way of hacking into our inner selves and discovering that we have empty spaces which need filling. Or has life and the world we live in created these holes that we’re constantly trying to find answers for.

Desire is not a new thing. People in huts a thousand years ago desired something more so they sailed the seas and invaded countries. There may have been necessity and survival in a way very different to our own but there was still desire too. People have always craved jewels, there were wars fought over nutmeg, people killed for love. There is something natural about desire then, it’s about improving our own circumstances and making our lives better. It’s that drive that makes things better through ideas and inventions. Yet we are told by Eastern Philosophy to be objective and tame the desires within.

Ultimately these desires lead to suffering. I don’t doubt the Christian Bible will say something similar, as will the Koran. So is one right and the other wrong? Life is never so simple. We can use our desires to improve our worlds we live in, to help us strive, but if we can’t do anything about it then we will only suffer through our desire. If something is out of our control what is the point of allowing desire to take over. We must learn to be more objective, just be careful not to desire it, although it must be in our control so surely that’s fine. I was going to suggest it’s a crazy minefield with no answer but that all seems pretty simple and straightforward to me. Now then, that palm tree I was thinking about, I’m sure that’s something within my control…

The Inquisitive Child

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It would be appealing in the moment to say an important lesson had been learnt today. In a way one was but perhaps not the obvious and straightforward one. You see, I did something silly. Although that’s one way of looking at it. The other is that today I discovered something new which makes it a great move all round. If you’ve been following this blog you’ll have heard me refer to all sorts of different jobs I do, one minute I’m working in a bakery, the next I’m renovating a house, and then I’m making pizzas; I may have mentioned others but I forget, anyway the point is that yesterday while stripping wallpaper in the flat next door I discovered a CD-ROM. For younger folk this is a something that was commonly used in a previous decade to put files on computers before we all got fast internet. It turns out putting random CDs into computers is not necessarily the best idea. My laptop stopped working and then wouldn’t load up properly. The lesson learnt then would be not to put random CDs into computers. It’s a bit like telling a curious child not to taste everything they see just incase it has a new exciting flavour.

In moments like this though I prefer to focus on the favourable positive elements of a story and the lessons learnt. Did I learn never to put random CDs into my laptop again? Well in a way yes, but seeing as I’m typing this now there must have been a happy ending. You see I managed to open up the back of my laptop, take out the drive and manually remove the CD. My computer then loaded up perfectly and seemingly all is back to normal. But it’s not normal because I have the added satisfaction of fixing a problem and of learning something new. Is that the lesson learnt? Well again kind of but that’s hardly a lesson in the metaphorical sense. My favourite type. So I learnt not to taste random things I find, but I didn’t really because I’ll probably taste them again. And that’s what’s important. The inquisitive mind should never be caged. Why would you not want to know what was hidden inside something random you find. I’ve found some cool stuff in my life. Maybe it’s a sign I lack contentment but that urge to discover that takes me on adventures to foreign lands also seems to make me see what’s on random CDs I find under old carpets. To recognise there is discovery in every little thing. Maybe understanding that leads to more contentment in a way. Who knows, except time. Time knows everything.

Forever the child tasting new discoveries. I hope that never changes.

The Present & Desire

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I was thinking today about finding balance in life. I’ve probably mentioned it before but it always appears to be something that alludes me. In one moment I’m dropping everything and running off on an adventure, and the next I’m craving the stability offered from a home that if I’m honest I’ll struggle to create because I’m always running off on the adventures I yearn for after too long in a stable home like environment. Now either that’s an inability to find balance between the two or it’s an example of someone not being happy with what they’ve got and always believing the green happiness grass is just around the other corner. It’s also just an example of someone who wants it all, and probably another few examples of all sorts of things. For the sake of this though lets stick to the idea that I am unable to find the required level of balance.

There once was a time in life that like everyone else I believed that if I just did, saw, bought, met, went to x, y, z then happiness would be sure to follow. I was not conscious of that belief but certainly it was unconsciously there playing a part in my decision making. I am not suggesting for a second I’m some enlightened being who has managed to rise above such things because I still crave all those things in my own little pursuit of happiness but am aware that with their receipt I won’t be taken around some magical corner that happiness was simply hiding behind. It is also probably most likely that accepting this will bring me closer, as well as not actually looking for it in the first place, but as I love missing the point in the moment and clearly only know it intellectually I’ll continue this self-defeating quest.

By not constantly imagining the answer is around some instant corner nobody has ever seen let alone looked around, we must surely stop craving these extreme changes in life, such as finding the answer in some foreign land or by the hearth. Importantly also it takes away from the present, in that you’re neither in the foreign land or at home if your mind is always looking out for some hypothetical feeling of happiness it imagines it should be experiencing. You forget to actually enjoy the place you’ve made the effort to go to or the contentment and security of home when you take the time to relax. I suspect were we to enjoy these things properly we may stop craving them so much when we don’t have them anymore. Have you ever drunk that last mouthful of coffee without realising before looking in the cup to find there is no more and feeling unsatisfied. Compare that to really taking the time to enjoy and appreciate that last mouthful; you are content with what you’ve had, you feel satisfied. Why would life on a larger scale be any different.

Movement

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I will attempt to write this without sounding like some arse who just wants to boast about all the wonderful adventures I have. It is simply an attempt to give a little background to the person whose words you are hopefully enjoying reading. The reason for this is that today I have arrived in Dublin for a Christmas with relatives over here and I realised I am back abroad again despite the fact I thought I was done with it for this year. Over the last ten or so years I have traveled pretty intensely, convincing myself I’m stopping but ultimately just taking a break. This year I started in Scotland before following this route – Spain – Gibraltar – Spain – Italy – Scotland – Ireland – Scotland – Ireland – Spain – Ireland – Scotland – Sweden – Estonia – Finland – Sweden – Scotland – Australia – Scotland – Spain – England – Ireland – Scotland? Each stay was for a variety of lengths and mostly they were for living, sailing, stag partying and family holidays. It has been quite the year, my carbon footprint must be massive despite the fact I sailed between many of them. Australia alone is the equivalent carbon that I can be allotted for my entire years consumption were we to successfully avoid a two degree rise and ultimate human doom. I don’t regret any of these trips even though it means I am certainly part of the problem. I once spent two years not flying, my high point was the overnight train from Paris to Madrid but I’ve made no attempt to repeat that period of ideological superiority and I don’t mind.

The point is I travel a lot, and after the last trip to Spain I thought I was finished for the year. The question is, will I ever finish. I’ve had many conversations with people who tell me that I am so lucky to be living such a great and free life, and I wince and suffer, I try to explain I’m tired, want some normality and can’t stop despite wanting and being desperate to. And then I’m off again, and so happy in the adventure and discovery once more. For this is a life worth loving but one I can’t bring myself to love anymore until I’m doing it again, or fantasising about such things. People experiencing normality want adventure, and people with constant adventure seem to want normality. What a ridiculous species of monkey we are.

And then I went and got distracted, and drunk…and now I’m drunk. I should leave it there I’ll finish it properly tomorrow.