Earlier this summer, we were advised by our doctor to cancel our planned holiday to Spain as a result of ongoing concerns over my wife’s health.

It was a bit of a shock, and despite the obvious concern I had for my wife, who at that time seemed a little improved, I was disappointed.

My disappointment had its basis in the upset the cancelled holiday would have to the rhythm of my life, which is punctuated by long periods of hard and stressful work, punctuated with occasional weeks of rest and sun.

In the week we should have been away, we had a short weekend break and then I went to work.

All week I had this sense that in all the events which took shape in my life each day, these were experiences which I should not have been having.

I was here instead of there.

The exacting routine of my holiday plans of :

run –

breakfast –

walk –

sunbed –

lunch –

paint or read –

balcony –

meal –

alcohol –

sex -sleep

was replaced by a week of deadlines, pressure and frustration.

The experience made me think about how I often fear the unknown when I consider changing the fundamental pattern of my life, for something more in tune with the call of my soul to be me.

The experience of being here, instead of there provided me with an insight into the ramifications of making a choice, to do something different to the normal course of events in my life, and how I would no doubt be feeling a sense of loss or disappointment if the new type of life I chose, did not measure up to the one I had left behind.

But that logic is flawed, that logic is skewed, that logic is false, because it pre-determines the outcome before the journey begins, and it puts a rose-coloured glint on my current experience which does not reflect the pain and the struggle that I have experienced over many years.

It might have rained on my planned holiday, I might have been fallen and twisted my ankle, I might have eaten some dodgy food etc etc etc – my view of how life would have been “there” whilst I was “here” was nothing more than imaginings.

The reality is that life, is experienced as it is here, in the present moment, and the alternative is as thin as the air so long as it is a choice forsaken.

The important part, is to be able to respond to the call of self and to live the choice made, rather than look back or across to the choice which is not made.

My next blog will be: Raindrops In My Tea

William Defoe