Back in 2018 I went to the island for the first time. I’d booked the holiday long before, planning to explore the other islands, take in the history, walk, swim, generally adventure about the place.
By the time it came around, devastation had hit, and the trip became an opportunity to take a step back, take stock.
By the time it came around, it felt like there was something else in the wind, a coming force of nature that was about to sweep me off my feet, and that got in the way. I loved being swept off my feet, but only because I’d forgotten what it feels like when you’re then dropped from that great height. As if I didn’t have enough turmoil in my life. But that’s a story for another time, another place.
This isn’t about stories. This is about the nature of stock-taking which I came back to a year later.
I went back to this island this summer ready to look inside rather than out, to look forward rather than back. Perhaps I was stronger than the previous year; perhaps I was reaching the boundaries of Overwhelm. A lot of what needed to be done had been done and I could ‘take a breath’. Pause.
In between the pauses, I decided to ask the questions. Some questions had been nagging away for over a year; others were only now surfacing. Some of them were my questions; others were suggested by coaches, mentors, writing tutors or simply shouted at me from the pages of books, magazines, newspapers. I had been asking myself questions all year, but I hadn’t spent dedicated time listening to the answers. I hadn’t searched for congruence or inconsistency. Basically, I kept walking into the warehouse and looking at the higgle-piggle of what was there, but not doing the count, not searching out the redundant and the obsolete that can be discarded, not looking at the riches that I have that can be deployed, or enjoyed, not looking for the gaps that need to be filled – or indeed the spaces that don’t. Gaps and spaces. The same but different. I wrote something about needing to find another word for walk, a word that means proceeding on foot, but in a less defined way than walking, a more meditative way. I suspect that there will be much of this, as I search for my meanings. Was it Humpty Dumpty who said that “words mean exactly what I choose them to mean”?
But of course they don't. Words matter – they colour and clothe meaning in their own nuances. Words are powerful things and we should be careful how we use them.
In searching for my meanings, I might stumble across my meaning, my purpose, or I might not…but already I have learned that there is a profound difference between a gap and a space.
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The problem, of course, was that I didn’t know where to start. I wonder if the creator god had that same problem. Every creator since has certainly said “I’ve got this idea. I just don’t know where to star" we say. It’s rubbish of course, we’re just looking for excuses not to do so. Sages have said that we should start at the beginning, go on to the end and then stop. Sadly, it’s never that simple. My advice – which I sometimes forget to take – has always been this: it doesn’t matter where you start only that you start. Pick a corner, any corner, start there.
So then, I should just pick a question, any question and start there.
I sat with my journal one morning and wrote down a long list of questions. I realised that many of them would only ever have syen answers. Some of them would result in thoughts and self-debate; others would produce lists. I once tried to delist my life. That didn’t turn out so well. I realise now that I need the lists, I want the lists, it’s so much easier than trying to hold everything in my little brain that would rather being doing something more creative than just trying to remember stuff.
That’s what lists are for. Remembering stuff. That’s their job, not mine. What I’ve only just realised is that the list is not a threat to be overcome, to be ticked off, wrestled into submission and completion.
The list is a record of opportunities, an array of the richness of the choice before me, a platter of choices, of things that I might do. Might, not must. I don’t must. Some lists by their very nature will never be completed: in both senses. They will never be completely compiled, let alone have everything on them ticked off. Books are a prime example. There will always be more books. Some I will get around to reading. Some I may decide I no longer want to read. I might cross them off. I might add them back. Some I might read and leave on the list to be read again. I will always discover new ones. And I will always on a whim decide to read something else that never even made it to the list. I have shelves’ full of books – and why would I be keeping them if I didn’t intend to read them (again). A full bookshelf is itself a list.
I set out my questions below and over the course of the next year I will share some of my answers to them. Not in any particular order. Not necessarily in completeness. Syen.
I invite you to do likewise. If you have other questions that you think might find a place on my list, let me know.
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The questions, in no particular order:
- What am I afraid of?
- What do I write just for the love of it?
- Where am I?
- What's great about my life right now?
- What's not so great about my life right now?
- What am I willing to just accept? And what do I have no choice but to accept?
- What do I want to change?
- Where do I want to go?
- What do I want to do?
- How do I fit all my wants into my daily, weekly, monthly, yearly schedule? Do I want a schedule?
- How can I serve? What can I contribute?
- What do I have to work with?
- What will I have to work at?
- Who can help me?
- Who do I want to help?
- What's obsolete or redundant, and how do I remove it?
- What do I want to learn?
- What do I want to earn?
- How do I want to look, and feel?
- What is my identity – how do I see myself, describe myself, be myself?
- Who do I want to spend time with?
- What do I want to read?
- What movies do I want to watch – and when will I make time to do so?
- What do I want to create?
- What do I want to share?
- What do I want to hold purely for myself?
- How much effort am I willing to make?
