A Heroes Quest

Wish you were where?

I had a fascinating conversation with a particularly lovable, stripey friend just a few years ago. It was around 2007. It was about how utterly fabulous it is to be a grown-up. Some people lament the passing of their carefree childhoods. But we, having arranged to meet for a grown-up dinner on the flap of her horsebox, in which she lives, were commending ourselves for being highly excellent and well adjusted grown-ups and we simply had to celebrate the fact.

I am reminded of this right now... Porquoi?

As I frantically and repeatedly stab this keyboard in cold blood, oh odious, fluff-ridden, enemy that it is, little flashbacks of azure seas and afternoons of careless floating in balmy, salt water intrude noisily. It's all backwards. These "peaceful" memories manage to skid across the path of my mind's eye at such an alarming rate that they make my head spin. They're like skud missiles. I think it is because they are images of paradise lost. They are somebody elses' reality. Even whilst I was there, I was undergoing terrible crises of conscious trying to decide whether I believed in destiny or parallel universes, because surely not both of these theoretical realities can co-exist. The result at the time, was having the smallest component of the known universe compared to my bottom, over breakfast.

When I left England I was leaving behind a career into which I had been stockpiling my dreams. Little ideas and connections for later. It was merely Duplo blocks in the grand scheme of things, but these were strong foundations and I was proud. I was afraid of leaving all this groundwork behind and of loosing my identity as a result. Fears like this can become a self-prophecising fate. The notion of drawing to you that which you most fear, is a common philosophical concept in all the most fascinating ancient cultures. But every stage of life is an incubation period for the next. We know deep down we should choose the path which meanders, although we cannot see what lies beyond it's boughs, nor imagine what we might encounter along it. This is known as the Heroes Quest. If you take the Bullet train direct to success without passing the word go, then what will you do after that? Or even worse, what will you do if you have reached the top without ever learning how to fail?

So although the setting from which I have been recently extruded was idyllic. My Caribbean dream was fraught with disatisfaction. There was a nagging doubt hanging over the whole affair like a big black cloud in otherwise perfect skies and all because alternate realities simply cannot co-exist, at least not in the same body at the same time. All the while, as my trajectory took a wild leap off course, some tiny glimmer of myself remained. This fragile hope was recognised by the unlikely but careful and nurturing friends I made on that unlikely atoll.

But still, something just didn't fit. This misfit feeling sat on my shoulder for all those months. It's presence made my soul quake; like the malnourished dogs which I would smuggle biscuits into, whilst shop keepers would repel them in an amusing type of joust with an array of ubiquitous furnishings, most commonly an upturned chair.

So the images of paradise lost haunt me, not because they are lost but because they are a glimpse of a future, a beautiful but unwanted and unsuitable future for me. They were of someone else's reality and not my own. I will again experience those physical things, as and when it suits me to. I have already laid and strengthened the groundwork for my own future, my career, my reality as subtley and slowly as our skin lays out the lines which describe our physical history. We will always become the people we are meant to be. We don't always need to fight and indeed we shouldn't. Although I cannot know what surprises will bound up to greet me next, I am writing the story now. My story comes from within me and I hope it will never again unfold without me. I pledge to be present from now on. 

This is why I am so ready to celebrate my grown-up-ness. I am responsible for my own destiny. I have a choice all of the time. Even if it is as simple as chosing how to feel about a new situation. For now and forever more I can take myself where ever I wish and I have learned that I can change anything I want, with a little bit of healthy perception.

I am also starting to understand that soul mates come into your life for a short time, fill you with love and light and then they move on to fulfill their own destinies whilst giving you the freedom to fulfill your own. These paths cannot be guarunteed to run parallel forever. We would be cruel to try to cage a bird. Yet we can be grateful to have encountered it at all. And many more may I hope to meet.

So can parellel universes exist at all? Well they absolutely do. That dark entity shaking me by the shoulders was my personal destiny, or possibly the hole there-in, which was painfully missing me and my presence within myself. I was sightseeing in an alternative reality, while my soul reflected. During that time other marvellous things were being lined up somewhere out there for me to encounter when I will be good and ready. My ex had already stepped into his own parellel universe, to where I would never again speak to his heart. The translation filter between our worlds had already warped our words so far beyond recoginition. We could not hope to ever possibly understand each other deeply again. We belonged in different futures, since far in the past.

These days I am always in the right place at the right time. Lucky me you may be thinking. But it is truth. It is my mantra and my belief. This holds me fast in the here and now, secure in the knowledge that things are and will always be just so. I have never lived in the moment so much as I do now and I have never been as close to contented.

The amazing thing is that we are always subtley changing. Moving always towards ourselves and not away. At the moment I like this metaphor; as though I am a-fixed to one coloured square of a Rubix cube which is enormous compared to me. Every so often it shifts and twists to place me next to a completely different square, which only moments ago it's mere existence I could have only wondered at.

This blog is dedicated to Jungle Jim.