The still point of the turning world

[j4]

The morning went as mornings do: hazy waking, dozing, Wogan, and warm duvet counterpointed (or counterpained) by the looming inevitability of Life Beyond Bed. Layers of tights and skirts; everything outside was frosted, frozen. I wanted my feet to crunch as they followed their automatic path, but life doesn't always have the right sound effects. The clocks will go back soon, rewinding without a whisper. This morning Jesus Green was blinding, all ice and sparkle, and the roads were rivers of light.

I don't feel sick any more at the thought of going to work. It's a good job, with good people. But I can see clearly from this position (where before, I couldn't see anything clearly beyond needing to get out of a hopeless job) that it's not what I want to do with my life long-term. I know what I want to do with my life, I've made that clear before now, and I think I made it clear again today, though I didn't mean the conversation to take that turn. I don't want to weigh my life and other people's lives down with plans for the future; they saturate the feathers of our wings. I just want to keep on walking forwards, whichever way looks like the best kind of forwards at the time, hand in hand with somebody who's walking in the same direction. Perhaps we'll talk on the journey, or perhaps we'll stay silent and watch the scenery through each other's eyes. Shadows stretching out like stories before the setting sun.

Karate lesson this evening, after an hour of kicking, turned into an impromptu chat about philosophy with sensei. His belief is that we should do the things which "feed us", the things which enrich us and fill us with life and energy, and we should cut out of our lives the things which drain us. Personally I think that the realities of life require a little more in the way of sacrifice and compromise, but it's a good principle nonetheless. I just think it's more a question of moving towards the things that feed you, and moving away from the things that drain you, rather than trying to sever connections or leap instantaneously from one place to another. You can only cross a bridge one step at a time. It's harder if the other side of the bridge is moving away from you, but you won't make the journey any easier by trying to jump or carve pieces out of the bridge. (At this point, the rotten boards of the metaphor probably give way under my feet.)

At the moment I'm not sure if any one thing is draining me; it's just that I'm doing too much. Even once I stop working at the Carlton, I'll still be juggling too many things, and not giving my best to any of them. I know which things I want to have the best of me; I just need to work out what else has to give in order for that to happen. It'll come.

Comments

[oldbloke.livejournal.com]

I was gonna say something about doing what there is to do, whether it fees or drains you, while floating above it all with a zen-like detachment, although obviously you minimise the drains and maximise the feeds and try to make life choices that improve your ability to do that in the future, coz ultimately we are all of us alone and you can't depend on anything, but really that's a rather cold approach.
Rather than a total detachment, you want to be a giver in the way proper Christians mean it: because it's good to give; no expectation of any return; etc. It makes your 'heart' grow, and magically, good stuff comes back.

Or something.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I think there's two ways of letting everything flow over/around/past/through you -- one is to shut everything out, be oblivious to it all; the other is to accept everything, absorb everything, be part of the flow. I've always gone more for the latter, in so far as I go for either.

Oh I don't know. Sometimes it all seems to make sense, other times it just feels like words, words, words.