There Is No Plan B

I'll be honest, I am an options guy.  Whatever it is that I decide to do, I always give myself an out, an escape route, an alternative, call it what you will.  I never let myself get tied down into a situation from which I cannot extricate myself when it's necessary to move on.  I'm committed just as long as it works for me.  Commitment has never really been my forte.  At least, that is one way to look at it, but that is not the complete picture, that is only one part of a greater story.

Let's talk about commitment.  Sure, I've never been married.  My relationship track history does not make for the most pleasurable of readings.  Actually, it would be a pretty short coffee break type of read if I'm  honest.  And when I say coffee, I don't mean Sunday morning lounging around on a sofa with the papers in a cosy, stylish cafe, with notes of jazz mixing with the aroma and the ambiance.  I mean more of a quick, blink and its gone espresso.  I've lived in more places than I care to think about.  I've had plenty of jobs and I've tried quite a few careers.  I know many people in many countries around the world, in some way, I have touched the lives of thousands of people, yet my close friends number only a few.  I can pack all of my belongings into a couple of suitcases that would fit into the back of a car.  That's my flee mentality right there.   

Then there are the things that I have deeply committed to in my life, like the pursuit of my dreams.  Hang on though.  You know what?  Thinking about it right now, I see something more than the pursuit of my dreams.  Suddenly, I see with absolute clarity my entire life history and the pattern therein.  My life has been about more than my dreams, my life has always been about my heart.  It is easy to confuse the two since our true dreams live within the heart, but there is more to the heart than only dreams.  

I have always been emotionally connected.  I never really understood this until quite recently.  It doesn't just mean my emotions are on the surface (although  they generally are), it means that I live through my emotions, I experience life through my emotions.  The heart contains our emotions as well as our dreams.  Our hearts are the windows to our souls, they represent the real, authentic you.  The connection that I have to my heart is incredibly strong.  It is truly my driving force.  Everything I have ever done, every decision I have ever made, has been because of my heart.  The voice of my heart is never quiet.  Sometimes it whispers to me, other times it's like a sonic boom that explodes with such force that tears form in my eyes as a way of releasing the pressure.  Oh yes, I cry a lot, both through laughter and through sadness.  There was a time when I was ashamed of this, when I turned my face to hide my tears, but not any more.  My heart really is everything to me.  In fact, my heart is me and I am my heart.  Our link inseparable.  Even my signature, unknowingly to me for many years until someone pointed it out, contains a heart shape.  I have needed to follow its calling, I could never escape it.  It has led me on some of the most amazing adventures, to witness some of the most incredible things, to meet the most wonderful people, and it has led me to the pits of despair, to complete and utter hopelessness, where only sadness and pain were to be found.

Yet, I would never change my heart, I trust it completely.  I am here right now because of it.  Everything I have ever done has led me to this point and my heart has been leading me here in its own way, showing me all the things I needed to see, teaching me all of the lessons that I needed to learn, leading me to the people that I needed to help me along the way, always guiding me towards the inevitable.  And here I am, finally after all of these years, faced with the inevitability of my life.

My heart is changing.  I can feel it. There has been a subtle shift inside that tells me that things are different to how they used to be.  My heart continues to speak to me and I to listen to its voice, but that voice is no longer urgent and incessant.  It is no longer driving me onwards to the next place I need to be, because I am in that place.  My heart is content.  Tomorrow, I am stepping through the doors of a school classroom for the first time as a trainee school teacher.  This has been my long held dream, the dream to which my heart was always leading me, subtly steering me and guiding me through the turmoil and turbulent waters, giving wind to my sail when the currents ceased, moving me ever on, inexplicably towards my destiny.

I am ready, finally ready to stop moving.  I don't want to move again because I feel that I have come home. It's more than simply that though.  I am ready to commit.  Fully commit to my life, to the life I have always wanted, and the life that I have been denying myself for so long.  I don't mind that it has taken me this long because I know deep down that I was never ready before, even though there were times when I wanted it so bad that I would have done anything to keep it.  I couldn't have kept it before because my heart would have moved me on, just as it did, it had to move me on, I understand that now.  Not this time.  Here I am, tomorrow one of the longest held and one of my greatest dreams turns into reality.  That is not the end because I have several more dreams.  Tomorrow only marks the beginning.  Without tomorrow, I will never realise those other dreams.  To realise those, I have to stop moving, I have to let go of my options, I have to stop looking for the escape route.  And you know what?  I know that I will because my heart tells me that now is the right time.  Commitment doesn't start with a 'C', it starts with me.  And just for once, there is no plan B.

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Barbaric Yawps And Why They Are Absolutely Necessary

The sun beats down upon me, it's relentless heat seeps into my skin, causing droplets of perspiration to form on my brow, on my neck, on my chest.  I'm breathing hard now, sucking great gulps of air into my lungs, fighting for my breath, in desperate need of oxygen.  I'm standing up on my pedals, my legs continue to push hard, one, two, one, two, over and over, as I sway the bike from side to side, in the rhythmic dance of man and machine versus gravity.  I look up the road ahead and finally I am able to see the crest of the hill approaching, tanterlisingly close now, I can sense that this hill is conquered, and the feeling spurs me on.  I push harder, dance a little more and I'm there!  The hill is mine at last but there is no time for celebration because now begins the wild exhilaration of racing down the other side.  As I hurtle down, bent low over the frame and handlebars, I sweep around a bend at great speed, and as I do, I let out a great yell, an untamed roar, an expression of freedom and of deviance.  I feel a deeply intense moment of joy and well-being, as my soul soars and my heart flies free. 

In this moment, when I yelled out, I was experiencing a moment of absolute love.  Love of life, love of my path, love of the possibilities, love of myself.  As this wave of love washing over me, I could not help myself.  I felt a strong impulse to shout out, to let the world around me know that I was in a moment of pure and unadulterated happiness.  I was reminded of a couple of lines that Walt Whitman wrote, in his poem entitled, Song of Myself and that feature in the movie, Dead Poets Society:-

"I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world."

I understand you truly Walt.  These are the moments when heart and soul are completely free and unshackled from the physical body.  These are the moments when a primeval sense of pure joy and freedom engulf you, sweep through you.  You transcend the physical and become your true spiritual self.  These feelings do not come from without, they come from within.  They surge through you, an unstoppable force that no one can control.  These feelings are your true soul, you true self, your true power and beauty.  In these moments, you truly become a god.  For in these moments you are the mountain, the river, the lake, the forest, the valley, the ocean, the bird, the fish, the beast, the clouds, the wind, the sun, the moon, and the stars.  In these moments, your spirit returns to the centre of all things, and all things become one thing only.  And that one thing is love.

I had experienced another moment before this, a moment that was the complete opposite.  A moment of incredible deep serenity, peace and calm.  I had spied a rope tied to the bough of a tree, with a large knot on the lower end, just perfect for swinging on.  Grasping the rope in my hands, I stepped backwards, one, two, three paces, then ran and launched myself skywards, pulling my legs up and locking them around the rope in a tight grip.  Whoosh! Back and forth I swung, slowly twisting around one way and then the other.  I lent back, taking the weight of my body against my arms, pushing my legs forward, and I gazed up at the tree top above.  It was mesmerising.  Through the small gaps in the foliage of the leaves, the sun broke through with a shimmering light of radiant brilliance, glittering and sparkling like a million diamonds.  As I swung, so the angle changed and the light appeared to dance, reflecting off the deep green of the leaves.  Here was a beauty that was hard to surpass, here was a miracle of nature playing out above me, here, in this moment, I felt blessed, and I knew I was witnessing a special moment.  An upwelling of joy came to me and I felt such pleasure, lost in that moment, a moment of sun, leaves, bough, rope and me.  I wonder now, as I think back and picture it once more in my mind, whether the sun looked down upon me, and felt the same joy that I felt in that moment, to see a heart that was so full of love.

During this one morning, I beheld two very different experiences, and one thing linked them both.  Through letting go of our conscious thought, we can find moments of intense emotional pleasure.  Moments when we are able to connect to everything that surrounds us.  In these moments, we transcend the physical and we enter the place where our true spiritual self resides.  These are moments when we feel an undeniable connection to everything that surrounds us, a connection with life itself.  When we experience these moments, our hearts journey to the centre of the universe, to the place where time and creation itself began.  And in that place, in the great heart of all things, is found the one thing that connects every other thing and makes all of life possible.  That one thing is love.

The next time that you find yourself in such a situation, in a place where you feel an intense connection to all that surrounds you, when you know that your heart and soul are flying free, do not be afraid, give voice to your own barbaric yawp, share the moment, and shout it out across the roofs of the world.

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Do You Believe In Signs?

The other day at work, I was talking with the hotel concierge in the lobby, when an elderly guest approached.  After he had finished speaking with the concierge, he turned to me and told me that he had thoroughly enjoyed watching me teach scuba diving the day before.  He told me that he thought I was a very good teacher, because I possessed the right qualities for it: knowledge and skills in my subject matter, enthusiasm, and patience.  We talked some more and he told me his name was John and that he was himself a teacher of many years standing.  I thanked him for his compliments and I told him that they meant a great deal to me, as I was thinking of going into teaching formally as a high school teacher.  What he said to me next was the sign for which I had been seeking.      

For many of us, making tough decisions is a difficult process.  I know that at times, despite everything that my heart is yelling at me, despite all of its urges, I feel completely unsure and afraid of the consequences, afraid of the unknown that lies down the particular path I am considering.  Even if I know and understand the logic and rationale behind the decision that must be taken, I still feel a deep sense of trepidation.  When this occurs, I feel the need to seek out something illogical, something mystical, something spiritual.  It is as though some primeval sense demands it of me.  I start to look for something that will show to me the rightness of the decision that I am going to make.  I begin the search for a sign.

A sign.  It shows us the way to go, it tells us the direction to take.  Without them, we would quickly become lost.  Imagine driving down the highway and not having any sign posts to show you which exit you needed to take.  You could guess and you might be right, but until you turned off and tried one of the exits, you would encounter uncertainty and doubt.  Life is like this too.  Throughout our lives, we are taught to read signs of all kinds.  A smile means that someone is happy, dark clouds gathering on the horizon means rain, a feeling of thirst means we are dehydrated.  To get through life, we need to know the signs, to be able to read them, and we need to be able react to them.

For sometime now, I have had the idea of becoming a teacher running through my mind.  To tell the truth, it's been there for many years as an idle thought, perhaps nothing more than a curiosity, since I was ten years old.  More recently, it has begun to turn into something more, it has started to grow wings.  This is an idea that keeps on coming back to me, time and time again, it seems like I cannot rid myself of it and it cannot rid itself of me.  If I were to go through with the idea, it would mean a significant life change and a commitment.  It would mean turning my back on my current life and turning instead to something completely new - a path that is unknown and dark to me.  I am afraid of this idea because of what it means, but at the same time, I also believe that it is something that I must do, something important for my life.  To help me with my decision, I have been on the look out for a sign to show me the right way.

The other day at the hotel, John came as the bearer of that sign.  In those words that he spoke to me, I knew the rightness of the path that lies ahead of me.  We cannot create the signs, they have to come to us of their own free will.  There are days when we are desperate to find the answer for which we urgently seek and we see nothing.  Those are the times when we feel as though we have been deserted and left to our own devices.  Sometimes that is a sign in itself.  There are certain decisions that can only be made between you and your heart.  There need not be any other external factor involved.  Other times, we look and we are rewarded.  I remember a time when I was alone in Malaysia.  I had just separated from my partner and travel partner and we had decided to go our own ways.  I was travelling back to the Perhentians Islands to continue my scuba diving education.  On the boat from the mainland across the South China Sea to the islands, I felt lonely, sad and afraid of what was happening.  I can remember looking over the side of the boat, towards the bow to watch the white water that sprayed up as the boat cut through the ocean.  There, in the spray I saw small rainbows, brilliant colours of arcing light that just hung there, motionless, as if they had been waiting for me.  It was the sign that the decision that I had taken was the right one, I felt a sense of peace sweep over me, and my heart felt at ease.

Sometimes we misread the signs, we see only those things that only exist in our own truth of a situation.  How many times have I made the mistake of believing that a girl I liked very much and was giving me lots of attention, was attracted to me?  I figure that because of the attention, this girl must really be in to me, so I decide to ask her for a date.  The reality is that she is only being her usual friendly self and is this way with everyone.  I misread the signs because I saw only what I wanted to see, not the reality and the real truth of the situation.  I am completely unable to read women - period.  They remain a complete enigma and a mystery to me, but that is for a different post.

A sign reinforces our point of view and helps us to feel more comfortable with our decision.  Whether we like it or not, humans have a deep need to establish a spiritual connection, to believe that something exists that is greater than ourselves.  We are part of this great mystery of life, we are part of the miracle.  Signs hep us because they meet our psychological need for reassurance, that a greater power is willing us to go in a certain direction, that we are being helped along our path.  Maybe none of this is correct.  Perhaps it is all too easy to make the pieces fit, to look back with hindsight and to make certain things become the truth.  Would my life have turned out exactly the same if I had not seen the rainbows that day?  Perhaps it would, perhaps it would not.  It really does not matter.  All that matters is that I believe that life places signs in front of us to help us, to guide us, to show us the way that we need to go.

The other day at the hotel, John was the bearer of my sign.  When I told him that I had long thought of becoming a school teacher and that I was now seriously considering the idea, his words held meaning for me.  "It is your calling", he said.  And you know something?  I truly believe that what he said is right.  John is an angel, a messenger that came to me, that spoke the words that my heart needed to hear.  I do believe in signs, do you? 

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