The End Of All Our Exploration...'
As I was jogging along the road today to meet Anadi here in the Calypso bar on the seafront, it occurred to me I have nothing to stop me... In my running I mean.
The running is one of the most obvious places where the tension within me has revealed itself over the years ...
When I was struggling with an eating disorder - in my teens and twenties and to a lesser degree into my thirties - I would veer between the 'If I weighed such and such all would be well and I would be able to run like the wind' myth, and 'if I didn't have an eating issue I wouldn't even have a 'weight issue'... But where would I put my tension then....?
The eating issue fell away... Eventually, after about twenty years!
And I was free...
When in the grip of it it used to pray 'please let me be free from my eating disorder, if I am free from this, I will want nothing more in my life...'
And when I was free of the constant thoughts of 'eating' and 'not eating', my life did change, significantly and forever and it was a huge relief to enjoy eating again.
Of course the release was a slowly slowly, layer by layer of pain and tension being stripped away as the years passed by
It became clear to me that the eating issue was simply where the inner tension revealed itself...
To be replaced instead with pain in my body...
Always a chronic injury, somewhere, a place in my body that limited my movement ... A hip, sciatica, planttafaciatus... Long term chronic conditions that meant it hurt to run...
An ankle injury for months, then an achilles... The nerves on the bottom of my feet once which meant walking hurt... Running wasn't so bad as I could 'run my feet in', and the pain would go - to a level.
And in between... times when there was freedom of movement. Enough time to remind me that the natural state of our body is to be healthy and free....
Enough time for me to keep clearing the tension, to keep letting go, to keep aware that by holding onto the tension I was afraid of both living and dying...
Stuck as we are between the fear of fully being ourselves, and not truly knowing who we are and what being ourselves really means...
And as I ran along today, I am aware that it doesn't hurt to run, that any tension left in my left side is clearing, day by day, week by week...
And I am wondering what all the fuss was about.... But I am also aware that I don't mind what comes out, what 'results' I achieve...
But that I am committed to doing the very best I can to let out whatever is within....
My fun has always come through focus... My play has always been about 'practice'.
When I was a little girl it was about practicing hurdles in the garden, or high jump, or, at the age of six practicing running the length of the playing fields, and getting my Dad to time me, again and again...
When I was eight years old and had just leant to swim, the swimming class were all earning our badges for swimming a quarter of a mile, or half a mile... I spotted the badge for a mile, and would not get out of the pool until I had swum the 64 lengths... My mother was sitting there, with my little sister Rosy waiting for me - it took an hour... The pool was empty, everyone else had gone home....
Back then, I didn't have anyone to compare with, the times on the playing field were for my own satisfaction, because I wanted to beat my own time...
And so fifty years on I return as TS Eliot says to this place, and know it for the first time.
Practicing for the sake of practicing, seeing how fast I can run for my own satisfaction...
Running free, being me, no tension, just freedom to be myself doing what I love!
We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
T. S. Eliot