adventures – Observations and Misunderstandings

Humour me, I’m going to be self-indulgent. I’ve been having some weird sensations recently. It has been a long time since I’ve gone this long without travelling to another country. Even travelling within one place. The lockdown has made me change habits. You can’t run off somewhere when you fancy a change if the whole world is on lockdown. Sitting on a jungle beach in Costa Rica, diving in the Andaman Islands or maybe with a mate of mine in Brazil. Just sailing somewhere warm like Fiji or the icy cold north has also entered my little realm of fantasy recently. But I’m also in a weird way happy not to be running off. As I said habits have changed and I see possibilities with this version of normality I have created. It needs to evolve and it’ll change immeasurably before I make it in my own image but I suspect all of those things will still happen at some point before and after I reach this point. I’m really happy with this too. These sensations though have nothing to do with future desires or ways of life. These are feelings from the past.

For much time I have forgotten my adventures, determined not to be that guy who just lives on his them, repeating them to someone until they get bored and you’re forced to move on. This forgetting though has also been because I have been creating new ones and haven’t needed to dwell on things that have happened. Now though without this ability to move on and find something new to experience, I am stuck experiencing a new way which I’ve allowed forced upon me. I different kind of forward. I have found myself over these last few months remembering past events or people and this began out in a sad way as in a way I wished I could go back to these moments. This is entirely natural. This has evolved though as now I have found myself experiencing these moments and seeing them through eyes that are happy to have had them. Instead of desiring their return I have been appreciating them, but more importantly in the strangest way experiencing parts of them once more.

It’s these sensations. This is the important part, the rest is a different special. To imagine yourself back in the moment and experiencing the forest air on the nostril, the sea water on the hot skin, the rain on the face. The emotion of seeing someone or experiencing a place that leaves you speechless. Even the sounds and visuals that I felt have been coming back to me. It’s hard to explain but it’s as if I’m experiencing memories with an intensity that touches on the actual moment as it happened, not just a thought of something that runs through my mind as a movie screen. I’ll go with it because it’s fascinating and I know it too won’t last forever. It’s all just about trying to understand. That’s all we can do. Be the cabra.

I spoke the other day about being present when drinking your coffee or smoking your cigarette. Not only does it allow you to enjoy it more but the act of being present and the resulting benefits to body and mind are invaluable. Today I spent eight hours cleaning bread baskets. It’s not an overly taxing job as there’s a machine you put them in that does all the hard work but without doubt it is monotonous and you spend most of the day being painfully aware of the enormous pile that never seems to get any smaller. In times of monotony we have a habit, or at least I have a habit, of dreaming of adventures in foreign lands, things I would like to incorporate into my life or simply what I fancy eating for my dinner. Today was no different and while some may argue these are great chances to have a really good think about stuff, and there are credible arguments to suggest there is truth in that, it doesn’t allow for the exercise of being present in the moment if you’re living in fantasy land.

Buddhist monks have written, I know because I have seen it, that we should put as much attention into the most menial of tasks as we do the most important of tasks. If we are capable of this, when we really need to focus and be present for something, we are far more practised and it is far easier. That seems to make sense as it can be hard to switch things on and off. On top of that if we are living in fantasy land, or making plans as it’s commonly known, then we’re as far from being present as possible. That of course may not be the aim of life but it’s not a bad thing to try and incorporate a little.

But as I said fantasising can be fun and let’s be honest imagining you’ll be sailing in the sun of Greece soon or sitting on a Costa Rican beach probably trump being stuck away in the north-east of England in the corner of a bakery getting wet monotonously. It would be nice going to Costa Rica though, I’ve heard a great deal about it and it seems like a good place for me to rediscover my love of travel. Plans this year have been somewhat difficult with all these virus shenanigans. In someways it’s been good to break the habit of just disappearing on a foreign adventure the moment I fancy a change from whatever the norm is and knowing planning is pointless, has made me do far less of it which allows me to step out of my head a little more often. Is that a win, just maybe. Did it prevent me dreaming instead of meditatively focusing on each basket, well no of course it didn’t I’m not a Buddhist monk. Alas, one more time I become aware I am but a simple and fallible human.

Tag: adventures

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