The Plan Unfolding Of Itself...
Today my body asked if we could please not run for two hours over the cliffs... My spirit was a little disappointed as it enjoys soaring over the hills, with body as it's vehicle...
But body said 'no'.
So instead we jogged down to the beach and walked the length if it on the crunchy pebbles... Some people were swimming right at the end and I had a momentary thought of stripping off for a quick skinny dip - but it remained a fleeting thought that passed quickly through...
It was lovely to walk instead of run, and watch the thoughts rise and fall... I can't remember what they were now as it wasn't a space where anything particularly creative or insightful arose! It was simply a meditation in the move... Resting in the gaps between the thoughts; and feeling myself become the sound of the sea, the scrunch of the pebbles, the squeaks and squawks of the gulls, and the laughter of the brave swimmers...
Last night my sister Rosy, Nick, her husband and my nephew and neice Jamie and Jess, came to supper... It was very good fun; I loved hearing all about their lives, together as a family, and as individuals...
We also talked about the books we enjoy reading... Rosy gave me 'Love for Lydia', which I remember totally loving as a fifteen year old... She has just re read it, and said she loved it as much now as when we first discovered it...
I can't remember much about it... Other than feeling enriched by the experience of reading it...
I had a voracious appetite for books as a young person, and as an adult too, when spaces opened up for reading...
Twelve years ago whilst on a sabbatical in Spain where I was writing 'Running to Learn', I also read twelve books in the four weeks I was there...
And one summer, a few years ago, I had a quieter time work wise and read books every evening. I particularly remember being touched by Sebastian Faulks 'Human Traces'...
As my life became more consumed with working in the lives of others, reading seemed to fall away, and only re appear in those bigger gaps...
But in the beginning, I found literature to be a window into the soul of human beings... I learnt so much through recognising myself and others in the characters created by the author. I received many insights and much wisdom from the words written, which opened me to a deeper understanding of the human condition.
The subtle observations, the under currents in dialogue, a look, an unsaid word, a misunderstanding and how this shaped whole lives, fascinated me... I liked the idea of a career 'doing something to do with books', or 'directing actors on a stage...'
Instead as my own life unfolded on its own path... Seemingly of itself, and running lead me where the running path wound; I found myself listening to the real life stories of people's lives...
This first began when I was seventeen years old and working for my coach in his centre; personal training in 1977 before personal training was a known thing....
And so my reading stopped... And instead I listened and I found that true life is a story, a narrative and that all the subtleties and insights and misunderstanding and unsaid words shape lives just like in novels!
And instead of 'doing something with books' or becoming a 'director of actors on a stage', I have found that life is my stage, and all who I meet the actors on it, and instead of directing them... I guide souls back to themselves, but only if they ask me too...
And that it is books having something to do with my life, rather than my life having something to do with books...
The plan had a plan and is unfolding of itself it seems...