The Journey, Not the End

Something that has itched for a while is why I get so irritable in my daily life. I meditate at least once per day and have achieved some semblance of calm that I did not think possible a few years ago.

The reason is something very simple, that I only became aware of today.

I was never really present.

To elaborate…

For me when I was working, I’d be wondering how long it was to the end when I could go home. Most of us do this but the thing is, I really like my job. I work mainly with kids and have a lot of fun teaching them English.

Similarly, on my one full day off, Sunday, I would be wondering just how much wonderful free time I had left until the dreaded “sundown” moment occurs (clocks going back and the currently shitty weather means it’s now getting dark at about 5.30).

When I cycled anywhere (and I love biking) I would want to get moving as fast as possible in order to get from A to B and feel narked if I had to shift to a lower gear.

Most of my life I’ve “zoned out” of reality because it either bored me or scared me. By not being “in the moment” I was able to avoid getting too attached to what was going on and therefore, in theory at least, it would hurt less if bad things happened. Only problem is that this was a template from decades ago, designed to cope with anxiety and the depression of my adolescence. As a 50-something man, this framework no longer serves a useful purpose.

On the occasions when I tried to make myself stay focussed on the “now” I would be afraid that I would get tired, that I wouldn’t enjoy it or, worst of all, I would commit to being present, only to find that time was now dragging at a snail’s pace. A line in the Stephen King novel “The Dead Zone” has the character of Johnny note that while he is in hospital and in intense pain “he would look at his watch, certain that an hour had passed and find that it was only 8 minutes”.

Today I decided to be as present as I could be and what I always kind of knew would happen, happened. I had three lessons back to back with sibling and their friends and I enjoyed the lessons more through enjoying each to the end rather than constantly marking time as ten minutes became thirty and forty five the full hour.

When I cycled home it was both dark and pissing with rain but I focussed on the positives (it wasn’t cold, the night looked beautiful and the roads were relatively clear) and instead of thinking about food and hot tea when I got home I actually enjoyed how cycling back felt.

The journey has always been the point of life. We are born, we live and then we die.

The journey is fun.