I wasn’t here last week. I fully intended to be, but I have worked something out about the ‘climb back’. You cannot rush it. (This post follows on directly from the last one and will make more sense if you read that one first.)
I already knew that climbing out of the deep dark well is hard and that when I’ve done that there is such a relief being back in the daylight, breathing clean air, seeing the sky. It was the next bit that I had not paid much attention to. After I’ve enjoyed the immediate relief and being able to breathe for a little while, I start to stand up. That’s when I notice that the deep dark well is at the bottom of a long steep hill. Getting back out into the light is a massive achievement, and yegods I’m grateful when I get to that point, but then when I’ve caught my breath, I realise that the climb-back (or return to centre if that’s how you view it) has only just begun. There is invariably more work to do.
One of my guides and teachers says: the question is “how quickly can you pull yourself out of the mire and back to centre when things are not going the way you want them to go, and you are in reaction?”
I know what he means. I agree with him up to a point. It is a very valid approach on the day-to-day irritations and angers and frustrations. The more quickly we can come back to centre, the better. The more we practice our tools, skills and techniques, the more adept we become at doing that: at letting go of the triggers and returning to what matters. The more quickly we can interrupt, the better.
All of this is good practice, good discipline. It builds resilience. It strengthens purpose. It is useful and it is spiritual work and I heartily recommend that you find what works and practice it daily, so that you are strong in your practice when you need it.
However, if the black dog descends anyway or you fall into the deep dark well regardless…then quickly becomes irrelevant.
Irrelevant because it is a false hope. When things are deeply dark (however that deep dark arrives) there is no switch that you can flick. There are no floodlights. Instead, you have to light your way one measly candle-stub at a time.
And when the darkness clears, and you breathe clean air, and see the sky, and then stand up and see the path that still meanders up the hillside, there is no jet pack. What there is, is the fact that you have done the hardest bit, so please do recognise that, smile, give yourself credit. Breathe a sigh of relief. Then take a deep breath because there is more work to do.
The good news is that now all you need is consistency and time. Or variety and time. You need solitude and time. You need company and time. You need to keep up with or reinvigorate your practice and time. You need rest and time. You need breathing space and time.
You…Need…Time.
It absolutely is NOT about how quickly you can climb back.
It is only about whether you are still climbing. Overall. You are allowed back-slide days, so long as you can recognise them, brake, and start climbing again.
So, I too needed time.
Being out of the deep dark well meant I could re-engage with the people in my life. I could get up and get on with the things already in my diary. But there was a slowness to it, which initially I resisted (for which read 'resented'). Now, I recognise the inevitability of that.
In the past, in my working life, I would not have been afforded the luxury of recovery. I would have had to go directly from “can’t cope” to “manage the job and the team” almost overnight. We were allowed to be sick. Or we were expected to be on form. There was nothing in between. That is actually inhuman. Take up thy bed and walk does not happen in the real world. We crawl out of our bed, and maybe stagger to put the kettle on. It may be a day or two before making the bed we’re getting up out of returns to normal. Walking takes a little longer still.
Recovery. Recuperation. Rehabilitation. Restoration. Regeneration. Rejuvenation. Reinvigoration. Resurgence.
Do any of those things sound like a click-of-the-fingers instant switch?
No. Time. Slowness. Natural process.
I wrote the last piece mainly as personal therapy. Then I posted it as an act of “daring greatly”. Then I received confirmation, from a few people to whom it spoke, that it was worth having done that.
More tears resulted. Empathic tears. This-is-what-it-means-to-be-human tears. It’s-not-just-me tears. Healing tears. And I am so grateful to the people who took me to that place.
All the while I was returning to my own practices, picking up the ones I had let slide, reinvigorating the ones I had kept going (but maybe only just). I was climbing slowly.
I returned to my writing work-in-progress.
I went out and got lost. Literally. That’s a whole other story that may show up on these pages sometime soon. Getting lost is good for me. I don’t recommend it unless you feel resilient enough to deal with the adrenalin spike of having only the faintest idea where you are, no map, and a lack of trust in your internal sense of direction. If you can live with all of that – go do it. It gets the heart racing, and the instincts called upon, and (when you’ve found your way – however you eventually do that) there’s a big a relief and a tiny kind of pride.
My Dad always used to say that we haven’t had a day out if we didn’t get lost. But then, if you let your pre-teen kids map-read and rely on what they say, there’s a reasonable chance that you’re going to do so. I think that was the point. I don’t think he was just teaching us to read maps. He was also teaching us to get lost…to enjoy it…to notice the things we’d have never found if we’d stayed to the plan…and to improvise when we’d strayed off the edge of the map, or the world
had changed. He was teaching us improvisation, and problem-solving, and flexibility, and instinctual connection to the planet: the shape of the land, the position of the sun, the memory of
the way we’d come, the image of where we were going.
Alongside that, my Mam had a saying: “You’ve got a tongue in your head, haven’t you?” Her lesson was: never be afraid to ask for help.
Getting lost regularly is brilliant for building your confidence. It teaches you to figure things out for yourself AND it teaches you to seek out help and information from anyone you come across along the way. I reckon there’s a life lesson in that.
And if nothing else it means you come home with some dine-out travel stories.
I should probably say that I am not talking about serious, life-threatening, no survival gear out in the wilderness lost. I am talking about ordinary every day not knowing where you are or how to get back (or go forward) lost. In these track-every-move days, no-one does this. No-one goes out with only a rough idea of where they’re going. No-one wanders around unfamiliar towns or countryside trusting to thinking they know where they are, on the back of a half-memorised plan. To me it is an essential tool in learning to navigate the world, and therefore to navigate life.
When you are lost the two most important tools in your box are: your instincts and your ability to ask for help. Ok, maps and compass are also great things to have (note to self)!
When my walking practice lapses, it isn’t just the walking, the exercise, the new terrain, that I miss. I miss that feeling of having to find my way. I miss the uncertainty of ‘am I where I think I am?’ I think what I really miss is having to rely on myself. And then proving that I can.
So, on this occasion, getting lost was an important part of my recovery, in the sense that it brought me back to part of who I am: the walker, the Dad’s daughter, the go-look-see-and-find-your-way-back tiny-adventure-er. The map lover.
It was a short walk in unfamiliar countryside and yet it reconnected me with the land, with the history of my country (including lots of stuff I did not know), with my own curiosity. It reconnected me with the things I’m good at, and the things I’m actually pretty rubbish at but that I don’t let get in the way of where I want to go.
And it reminded me that lonely and alone are fundamentally different concepts.
And also that all those re- words require time.
I went away to walk AND to write. But when I first came back from walking, I didn’t write very much at all. I felt that I didn’t have anything to say. Upon reflection, I think I was just trying to find a way into saying this: that reconnecting is a slow stitching, not a switch flicking. It takes as long as it takes.
As does getting lost…and then finding your way back.
