Before we start walking, we should pause. A sense check – how are you? I mean, how are you really?
I ask because when I say, “Let’s walk,” it sounds such a positive statement, doesn’t it? Whether walking away from something or walking towards something, it is a positive and an intentional act.
This might be how we feel, but there are always multiple realities to all our lives; the layers upon layers of lived experiences all wrapped up in a closely spun web of feelings that we interpret and reinterpret in every waking moment.
One such reality is that sometimes we really don’t want to walk. If that is how we feel, “let’s walk” can sound like a punishment. It isn’t always a comfort to move on. Sometimes time doesn’t heal, it just allows us to get used to the pain. Time marches on regardless of how we feel, and so the choice to march or be left behind, regardless of how we feel, is hard. Perhaps, therefore, walking is not always positive and intentional.
I don’t know if the self-help gurus have the answers that the airport bookshops would have us believe. I don’t know if the marketeers always have the slogans that resonate or if social media has anything to say beyond the thud-thud-thud of its incessant drumbeat; but being told to “move your cheese”, or “just-do-it”, or that we should “feel the fear”, may not feel very kind.
Indeed, it may feel like just another thing we don’t do very well; something else to weigh us down.
What then, if you don’t want to be marvellously brave, or inspirational, or to be told that you are a star, or to see everything as an opportunity? What if you just want to be quiet?
What if you do not want to walk, because something’s in the way?
I remember being told once that I wouldn’t be successful until I got out of my own way. I am not sure what successful means, but I do often feel that I get in the way of myself. I know I struggle with an overdeveloped fear of letting people down; that I won’t live up to their expectations, and that I will ultimately always disappoint them. When invited to be part of something, more often than not, I will say something like “that’s kind of you to ask me, but there are better people than me for what you need.” Sometimes I even hear the words leave my mouth before I know I am going to say them.
As a result, I have walked away from lots of things that others might feel would be an opportunity, but I am rarely disappointed that I have turned things down, it is more a sense of relief that at least I will not let those people down and be exposed as a failure.
Why am I sharing this now? Well, not to drum up business clearly! I am sharing this thought because I know I am not the only one who feels like this and for whom something is in the way.
If I were just to bang on about “opportunity” and “potential,” not only would I not believe it myself, but I would be a hypocrite too.
We will walk together therefore, if you will come with me, not because it is obvious or easy, but because there is doubt and it will be hard.
I have mentioned before that we will walk to a playlist that can be a soundtrack for our time together. Sometimes we will need a song to lift us (and I have plenty I want to share with you) but sometimes we need a song to ground us. When Kurt Cobain scrapes his rasping voice across the jagged lyrics of “Something in the way,” we are not caught up in the melody or the hook, but in the relentless repetition that borders on despair. The quieter his voice describing his pain, the more intense we know it is felt.
The song is one I turn to when my mood lowers. It reminds me that my feelings are not a problem to solve. My feelings are me, and my pain is neither to be solved nor left behind. I am not living in a musical where jazz hands can make things better.
The challenge for me, and I think for all of us, is to find a way to carry our pain so that it is not in our way.
I have always said that we should especially worry for those who appear to be quietly coping, because they may have no idea how to ask for help even if they appear to have found a way to carry their pain. They deserve not to have to carry our assumption that they are ok.
We should walk together therefore, not because we are full of hope and wish to seize each and every opportunity, high-fiving along the way; but because it is harder to walk alone. We should walk together, because if the “something in the way” might be about us, then we can carry our pain more lightly between us.
If you know me, you will know that I don’t love change. I don’t want to be noticed. I don’t need to be heard and I don’t need to be right. But I do need to be kind. It eases my discomfort with the world around me, and I long for the time when the kindness of strangers is felt by everyone who needs some support. That’s why I am walking.
Please walk with me therefore because I don’t think I can walk on my own. I know something is in the way and I know I need your help.
In the chapters that follow, I know we won’t find the sort of answers to caption a poster of a soaring condor, and we won’t discover a tried and tested step-by-step guide to happiness; but I believe we will find that whatever is in the way for each of us might be easier to carry if we are together and not alone.
I hope our next step is one we take together.
Take care. Paul xx
