New Beginnings
New Beginnings. Dawn over Malhamdale, Yorkshire Dales
Life isn’t easy. That’s not meant to be a profound statement, it’s just something I’ve come to realise is true. I’ve been thinking a lot lately. As a chronic overthinker, this isn’t news to anybody who knows me. I’ve pulled at so many different thought threads that somehow, I have managed to weave them back together into something almost coherent.
Recently, I’ve read a couple of good books. Books that made me think and elicited responses I didn’t realise, or had perhaps forgotten, a book could. Tears, anger, a lust for nature, a need to hold those I love close to me.
When the Cranes Fly South hit me hard. So beautifully written with exquisite descriptions of nature mixed with the harsh reality of the brutality of ageing. To me it distilled everything down to one very simple idea: the desire to love and to be loved in return. Not in a grand way, just in a steady, enduring, growing together, sort of way. One that gives time to build something, to share experiences, create memories. To matter to someone and have them matter to you.
In the last year, I’ve lost more than I expected to. A relationship that meant a lot (in retrospect, much more than I knew – and I knew it meant everything, I just didn’t realise what everything was), and a close friendship that had seen me through a lot of the turbulent times life has thrown at me. Perhaps the grief felt heavier because, as you get older, the people you let in matter more. Or perhaps because, as we age, we become more aware of the passage of time and with that, the realisation that the opportunities we have left are finite. The idea of not having a child of my own is something I’m learning to sit with. It wasn’t something I’d wanted until the opportunity was gone. It was just a slow realisation that some doors close without ceremony. You don’t always notice at first, and then one day you do.
I find the finality of some things hard to comprehend. The fact that when we’re gone, we’re gone. No continuation, no second act or curtain call, just an end. It makes everything feel small whilst simultaneously making everything matter more. It makes me want to love harder, to make sure those who are still here, in my circle, know how much they mean to me.
I’ve always understood, intellectually at least, that nothing is permanent. I’ve written about it before. But understanding it and accepting it are two very different things. Lately I’ve been finding the enormity of that hard to reconcile. It’s one thing to talk about impermanence when it has a poetic feel to it. It’s another when it feels personal.
The Names made me think about something else entirely, about how fragile the path we walk is. How different things could have been with one decision, one meeting, one missed moment. It’s easy to look back and trace those lines, to wonder how close we came to entirely different lives.
Both have been a source of rising anxiety; the what ifs of what has gone and what is still to come.
I’ve found life hard recently. I’ve been out of work for a longer period than I have previously, and with that has come a loss of structure, of confidence, of purpose. My resilience feels like a house of cards. Dark thoughts have occupied more of my time than they have for a very long time. Not ones I’ll act on, but ones that tell me I’m not where I need to be. The world outside doesn’t help. It’s louder, more unstable, more uncertain. There’s a lot to take in, and not much of it feels particularly good. I can quickly feel overwhelmed, as though I’m swimming against the current.
What I do wish, at times, is that I could be easier to love. That whatever it is I carry didn’t get in the way quite so often. But as I get older, I’m realising that everyone carries something. Some people just hide it better. Some people don’t talk about it. But it’s there.
Despite all that I have just written, I wouldn’t change my life. Not really.
I’ve had the privilege of loving and being loved. I’ve stood in places that have made me feel alive, full of awe and unbridled joy. I’ve had moments that are mine, and mine alone. There are people in my life who have made me feel a love and happiness I didn’t know could exist. I have a young nephew, and he constantly reminds me of the simple joys of life and the importance of imagination and play.
Who’s teaching whom?
There’s a beauty to the innocence of youth. The belief that time is endless, that tomorrow will come, and we’ll play again. There’s no pressure to do things, no urgency, just the desire to have fun, to learn, to experience new things. To live every day safe in the knowledge that we can do it all again tomorrow and the next day.
Children live almost entirely in the present. They don’t measure their worth through productivity, status, regret or fear of what’s next. They find joy in simplicity. Blowing dandelions, asking impossible questions and pretending to be dinosaurs. Somewhere along the way, experience closes most of us off. We trade that openness for pressure, for survival. It’s ironic that those with the least experience of life sometimes have the most to teach.
As we get older and experience the losses that we inevitably do, there is a shift in the perception of time. We become acutely aware of how finite it all is. The pressure grows, quietly, to make the most of things, to not waste time, to hold on to what matters. But perhaps the trick is not to live as though every day is our last. Perhaps it’s to hold on to some of that innocence instead. To understand that time isn’t endless whilst still allowing ourselves to enjoy life with the same openness, curiosity and presence we once did.
I have always been a dreamer. I dream big and though I rarely achieve the big wild dreams, sometimes somehow, I manage to find myself where I only dared to dream. It’s shaped a life of different adventures and experiences, built friendships I couldn’t have conceived.
Lately I seem to have lost that ability to dream. Life seems cloaked, covered with a blanket weighted with negativity. The fire inside isn’t out but it isn’t burning like it once did. I can look to blame various things that haven’t gone my way but ultimately, I guess they are a part of life and the only one who can stoke that fire is me.
I remember my first session with a hypnotherapist. She asked me to tell her three positive things that had happened that week. I struggled to name one. By week 4 I’d learned to reframe, to seek out the positives, no matter how small. It helped rewire my brain to search for and hold on to those wins. Slowly and surely, this helped to bring me out of my depressive phase.
It appears I have gotten so deep into this dark cycle that I have forgotten all the times I’ve gotten out before, all the tools I’ve learned, some of which I’ve even written about. Nothing is permanent.
A night with friends planning a trip to the Alps to climb things I have wanted to for such a long time, fuelling the person that’s inside somewhere, stoking that fire. A night that drip-fed a little confidence back into me, allowed me to reminisce, to believe, to dream again. It may sound like hyperbole but it’s not, it’s left me realising that although things are not going to plan right now, if I make a plan, dare to dream, then something will happen.
It hurts, this life, perhaps it’s meant to. Maybe that’s what makes us feel alive. Those highs and lows remind us that we’re not just existing. Brief glimpses of the joy of topping out on a route in the Alps, bouldering with friends again make me realise that there’s still time. Maybe not for everything I once imagined, but for something.
I don’t need to have it all figured out. I just need to keep showing up. To keep putting one foot in front of the other. To keep looking for the positives, because even the darkest days have them. To keep looking for the light when it comes, and it will come.
It doesn’t always come in the way I expect, and it rarely comes when I want it to. But it does come. And when it does this time, I want to be there to grab it and hold on to it a little tighter.
The accompanying image “New Beginnings’ is now available as a limited edition print. A limited print run, signed and numbered, printed on high-quality 308GSM Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Matt Baryta paper, known for its exceptional texture and archival properties.