Tag: knowledge

Life’s Pot Of Gold

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

My eye hurts and I’ve felt a little sore the last two days. I think I need a holiday. Summer is drawing to a close, the numbers of visitors to this little village are ever so slightly decreasing and it feels like a period of time is drawing to a close. With Autumn comes the shedding of leaves as we move into a season of rest and recovery. The hibernation is upon us and with it like it’s time to step back out into the world. It is both daunting and exciting to make another change in life when you have been within one version of existence for so long. I was supposed to only be in this village for two months and that was last October. I won’t be giving my friends the satisfaction of having stayed for a full year but at eleven months it’s not exactly been a fly by visit. I understand more now and have gained an appreciation for a life in one place which I didn’t have before, as well as life already lived strangely enough. Despite being desperate for a holiday and being able to see something new I now know I am capable of returning to a state of existence previously beyond me. Will I miss it when I’m move one. Probably actually yes. But not this exact version.

When in a few years from now the stories of peoples time in lockdown are all out I look forward to reading about them. Of course there will be people who just drank beer, had BBQ’s and got bored but there will be as many who learnt new things and ways of being. When I speak to people here invariably they all say the same thing that they hated lockdown after a while and were just desperate to get back to work. Maybe I have been asking the wrong people but it is also one of the reason’s I know I can’t stay here. I love it very much but I need more, I need to be surrounded by people who want more. Maybe more is unfair because I’m probably just repeating previous mistakes in my understanding and valuing others, I just want different. Something else, something other than this version of existence. The constant search through the permanent existential crisis of life. But nothing is permanent, not even crisis and certainly not ones involving purpose and worth. Yet we continue struggling through them, determined to find an elusive answer we’ve promised ourselves exists. Was the pot of gold not buried below the very tree he was sitting under as he first devised how best to leave in search of prosperity. Despite everything; knowing, understanding and being still remain divided. Can they ever come together?

Yet it is more positive than it sounds. If anything has become obvious from recent events it’s that in life you just keep going. We find joy and happiness in the unexpected but we must be open to seeing and embracing these unexpected. To understand that everyone has a pot of gold out there somewhere but that they themselves already have both the map and the spade is key. First though we must stop trying to use others maps and others tools. With this all becomes exciting once more. It actually is possible. It’s always been possible. It’s just down to us to make it probable.

A Tall Tree In A Dark Forest

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I was lying in bed this morning feeling frustrated. I’ve not been sleeping as well as I usually do and that usual is to close my eyes and suddenly the alarm is going off nine hours later. I’m not sure why I’m not, but for whatever reason I find it understandably annoying. The frustration I suspect is like a wind that gives the fire oxygen but it’s a lack of something that’s the kindling.

I’ve led a reasonably interesting life so far, been to a few places and met many faces. I don’t really feel proud of it like it’s some accomplishment despite the positive response I get when I tell some people. There is certainly a lack of contentment and despite how it may appear I feel a constant drive to achieve things. I often see some of my friends or really successful famous people and I’m envious of their lives. They seem to have a success I don’t. Careers, homes, families and bank balances yet I’m thirty four and my instincts have rejected all of these things until now. In fact I still see the futility of some of them and I know the things they have sacrificed to achieve them, things I’m seemingly still unwilling to as I plan my next adventure. Can we adventure forever though? We can’t eat our memories, we can’t shelter under them and eventually we just become those repetitive old travellers others avoid because all they have is their stories. I don’t often tell my stories unless they come up as a relatable anecdote, I don’t want to be that person.

So why the frustration? I hope you don’t feel me to be self indulgent with this piece but it’s simply I know expressing thoughts like this can help others with their own thoughts. I’m not saying my thoughts are anything special but more that I’m not unique and we all suffer the same things just through different eyes. The frustration stems from a lack of something in life as I said. I’m not sure if it’s a home because I have one now and it’s great and safe but it’s not going to bring me happiness on it’s own. Maybe it’s a family? A wife and kids. Again I’m unsure of that, although I don’t doubt it would be nice to have a woman in my life. Perhaps it’s just wanting it all, or more precisely wanting an idea of how I imagine it’ll be.

I was thinking that for all the knowledge I’ve learnt over the years; meeting wise people, reading wise texts, experiencing moments of understanding; I still don’t seem to put much of this into practice in my own life. It would explain why it is still knowledge within and not wisdom. The only thing I’ve learnt is that unlike twenty five year old me I try to avoid giving wise enlightened advice or talking in that empty way people do when they think they know it all. I feel an immediate inclination to end the conversation, or I’ll carry it on but sometimes it just feels stupid. I know it can impress people, and you see people taking it in but it doesn’t feel real. Unless you start living it it’s just a series of empty words.

A series of desires about something we imagine we want and a series of empty words then. I know the rhetoric about contentment and desires but I’m not content and I still desire. I know the words that give the impression of a level of enlightened but I feel as far from enlightened as I’ve even been. This is the frustration then. Why what I know doesn’t correlate in any way to how I act. This is why I feel confident I can say this aloud and it will resonate with others, another thing I know is that others don’t act on what they know either. Perhaps it’s just part of being a fallible human. Perhaps we just need more than knowledge of words. This drive to achieve life, live it to whatever fullest version we choose. Again this is just an idea of a desire. I think I need to end this here because I can see myself going in circles. The answers aren’t attached to my tail. Maybe the answers aren’t attached to anything. Maybe there are no answers. Perhaps that’s what I’m missing, but what does that even mean? Just empty fucking words again.