Day 25

We must say yes to life. Yes to life with all of its beauty and terror. Yes to life with all of its brilliance and depravity. Yes to life with all of its sorrow and bliss.

Laurence G. Boldt 

I am conducting a staring competition with a large gecko. I’ve seen him before – we’ve done this before. He’s a cheeky fellow who looks a little like a dinosaur in miniature. Each time he sees me looking at him he freezes and we both sit, immobile, waiting to see who will “blink” first. It’s always him. Finally he gives up on the idea that I will ignore his presence and he darts into some new territory with a funny, waddling run, high up on his tip toes as if he’s trying to keep his body as far from the ground as possible. Or as if he’s trying to create the most imposing height he can manage. Which is pretty funny, because, large or no, he is still a gecko, and not particularly intimidating in the grand scheme of things. But then, little dogs can have equally big hearts, can’t they?

I win the staring competition again today and then allow myself to be distracted after he has admitted defeat and lost the game. When I glance up again he is vertical on the trunk of a leaning shrub. He is leaning out, using his new vantage point as a lookout post, just like a child trying to obtain the giant’s view of the world. It’s hard to imagine I have ever seen anything more amusing or enjoyable. Before I can take a photo, he is gone and off to some new adventure.

Observing people is wonderful and enriching, but there are times when it also becomes too tiring. People need to be enjoyed in small chunks, I find, even from a distance. They seem to absorb energy like black holes. It’s funny how such apparently performance-focused creatures are actually absorbers rather than givers of energy. But they are. They demand something from you and leave you depleted. And that is when it becomes a true delight to be reminded of the spirits of so many other beings who do not take and sometimes even give. The gecko, for example, acknowledges my presence and my annoying existence in his life as a kind of obstacle, but then moves on about his business, leaving me to mine. And he reminds me that at whatever level you choose to experience the universe, it is rich with adventure and opportunity.

Despite my plans to avoid them today, people intruded on my thoughts this morning, perhaps inevitably. Anzac Day. I had expected to find the beach much more crowded than usual with a local Dawn Service, but it was empty. All the action, it appeared, was down south. I thought of heading down to observe and offer respect from a distance, but knew that I needed solitude. The early morning was darker than usual and appropriately sombre, brooding. The wind was rising, turning the morning into a struggle. I tried to think about war and the horror of being caught up in it, but my mind cannot encompass something so enormous. I have tried many times. I have read many books about personal experiences of war. Two of my favourites are from the German perspective of World War II: Hans Peter Richter’s I was there and Friedrich. Most of what I have learned has been from the perspective of, if not moral superiority, then at least the self-reassuring position of “least wrong”. But I do not think I believe in right or even least wrong. In this vast universe in which it can be right for a baby bird to die or become prey as part of the natural order of things, how can there be a “right”? Or a “wrong”? We are all culpable, if culpability there exists, simply through the fact of our being. And no matter what action we take or do not take, there will always be another perspective that is just as important. So I was glad to read Hans Peter Richter’s memories and feel allowed to rest in the dilemma of simply being human.

I remembered also a girl from high school, who is a pacifist. For her, all war is wrong, in any context. She came to her deep conviction through knowing how many of her own family members were lost to the Holocaust. World War II yet again. Somehow that war is easier to think about than anything in the present. I do not want to know that war rages right now and that people – and the land – continue to suffer unspeakably. Because then I would have to accept responsibility, and I am too much of a moral coward to do so.

Anyway, the girl at school – I can’t remember her name but I do remember her talk to our European history class – could not bear any violence against people after knowing what had happened to her own family. Of course, one of the questions put to her was whether she would prefer the Allies not to have liberated the concentration camps. Couldn’t there be seen to be a just cause for war when it involved protecting and saving lives? She fully acknowledged that there was no logic in her position and that her argument was full of contradiction. But she also acknowledged the irony of destroying in order to save. She only knew that she could countenance no violence nor justify any military intervention in any circumstances. I admired her position and wished I could share such certainty. For me there is only ambiguity and an infinite plethora of perspectives. And a great distress at the very thought that any human being, in any context, could seek power over another. That is sheer naïveté I know – we all do it. I do it. When I manipulated the doctor who gave me my medical certificate. When I sent an email to my boss, stating that I wouldn’t be coming in. When I looked at the girl in the park yesterday and froze out her comments. I was seeking power over my situation. And to do so I had to create a situation in which my interests prevailed over those of others.

And so this morning I walked and brooded, along with the rising storm. I thought of people choosing to enter the military – to defend our freedoms? Or create their own? I thought of those who are not given the right to determine whether or not they will fight. I thought of boys excited by the game of war and by the idea that war is a big, exciting adventure – a way to escape the monotony of the real world. The sky briefly darkened in response, and for a little while the waves came in such quick, unexpected and drenching succession that it seemed that a great wall of water was heading for me in still motion: forever surging but never quite reaching me. I even felt frightened by the ferocity, both of the cloud and the water. They seemed to want to swallow me up. But then, as the sky lightened again and I became accustomed to it, the sense of threat lessened. I began to enjoy it and become part of its grandeur and to recognise the breathtaking, terrible beauty of it all. I watched as gulls sailed before the wind, allowing themselves to be propelled faster than they ever could be by their own wing power. And I discovered that, even fighting against wind and rain, I was no longer fighting. Instead, drinking in lungfuls of pure storm, I felt restful. I was at rest and at peace within the heart of the storm. The storm was, and I was, and it was good.

I walked further than usual this morning and discovered two more sets of campers! Serious campers, not just people passed out on the beach after an overly-celebrated party. One girl was camped almost at the gates of one of our poshest hotels. I had to laugh to see her audacity. Why not indeed? If you are going to sleep with all the beach as your bedroom and the sky as your ceiling, why not choose for yourself the very best? I wondered at their lives and their ability to tell me that what I see as convention and reality are mere illusions. Reality, as I know it, exists only because I choose to allow it to. I choose to let society tell me what life means and how it should be lived. Choosing does not make it so. Or at least, if it does, it is a reality of my own creation. Life is far more infinite and full of possibility than I acknowledge it to be.

Now, back in my apartment, I am not thinking of war or loss or sacrifice. I am thinking about the astonishing richness of experience and opportunity this universe has to offer. I am remembering another sunrise, a few weeks ago, before I began this quest. Goodness, it seems such a lifetime ago! It almost feels as though that sunrise happened to another person. Yes, that’s a dreadful cliché, but it happens to be a very true one right now. The “me” I am now feels very far removed from the me who went into work every day, believing there was no other alternative. On that other day, for that other person, the clouds played the most astonishing game with the sun. I had not set an alarm, so by the time I reached the beach, the sun was already over the horizon and the colours had shifted from rose to gold. But clouds still mercifully hid the sun, preventing glare and making the light soft and pleasant. I often find it difficult to walk on the beach with a newly-risen sun; it is too bright and painful. So I was grateful to the cloud that morning, making my later-than-intended walk possible. The sky was largely blue and clear – the colour of baby pastels. Except, of course, just above the horizon, where one large cloud formation conveniently lingered.

Soon the sun peeked out over the top of the clouds and the light became unbelievably brilliant and beautiful, forcing me to look away. I continued on my walk, turning my head away from the sun, and quickly became re-absorbed by my thoughts. It therefore took me a little while to realise that it was no longer bright. When I turned my head at last, the sun was behind the cloud again. How as this possible? It was a still morning and the cloud did not appear to have shifted, and yet it must have, since the sun was clearly not descending again. Once again it reached beyond the clouds and brilliance burst forth. Once again I looked away, wrapped in dreams and fears and unspoken hopes, until I realised that the anticipated pain of glare simply had not materialised. And again. And again. The longer I watched this pattern the more I could gradually see the shift in the cloud formation. It seemed to slowly move from a long, narrow formation into a taller, thinner version of itself, darkening all the time as it competed with the sun.

For close to an hour and a half I remained on the beach and in all that time, the sun never once won its battle. Everywhere the sky was brilliant blue, except just at that precise point where the sun might seek ascendency. In my mind, that day stands out as “The day the cloud ate the sun”. Pure fancy on my part that there was a game at all? No doubt. But what is synchronicity if not the attribution of meaning to apparently random events? And how much meaning and richness does our willingness to believe add to our lives? How much more magic? And how much more ability to imagine the complex web that connects all life? Richard Dawkins would no doubt shake his head in disgust yet again. But within me, a sheep is laughing. A sheep is dancing a highland jig on his hind legs and exposing the spirals and pentacles concealed beneath his wool. I have named him Cosmo, Sheep of the Universe: Pantheist Sheep with Attitude! And he does love to laugh.

Right now I am enjoying knowing just how intimately I am connected across all time and space to everything in our solar system. Everything I am is an expression of billions of unique factors working together, coming together in this moment and linking me to everything and everyone else. It does make it seem silly to be anything except ourselves when you think about it that way, doesn’t it? To try to create ourselves into something different or “better” is like denying all history throughout the universe – everything that ever touched our lives. It seems quite rude and very ungrateful not to acknowledge and honour the people we have been created to be.

How often have I complained to myself of the monotony of my life? But monotony is an illusion, a not seeing. It is a refusal to recognise the energetic moments of possibility in the world. Picasso said that inspiration exists but it needs to find you working. If I were to borrow that expression now I would change it a little: opportunity exists but it needs to find you paying attention.

Imagine the ocean. It undulates and cascades but the more you look, the more it seems largely unchanging. Then, out of the corner of your eye you see unexpected movement and you realise you’ve missed two waves colliding to create a giant column of spray. You’ve missed the gull swooping or the fish leaping. You have missed the tell-tale spout that speaks of whales in the distance, or even the wonder of a giant, lazy tail rising and slapping again at the water.

Opportunities come and go in endless succession. They rise, waiting to be ridden, but then the moment passes: the wave peaks, breaks, crashes and ultimately subsides back into the formlessness of apparent monotony once more. It is a fool who does not watch for the next wave to rise. You cannot know where the action will be, or what form it will take. Every time, every moment, will be different. But if you are attending…

The other morning, as I sat in my safe haven among the dunes, I sang softly to myself. I saw no reason not to, as there was no one around. I had seen and heard nothing. It was not until I stood that I saw how wrong I was. Just the other side of the small hillock of sand on which I had been sitting, a woman crouched, motionless, professional camera poised and ready, pointed at the sunrise. She did not startle or react to my emergence; no doubt my idiotic singing had already alerted her to my presence. And she had no interest in me. Her eye was on bigger things. I will not immediately forget the concentrated energy in her posture and in her expression; nothing so still has ever seemed so fully and actively alive to me before. She could not know what opportunities the morning would present to her recording eye, but whatever they might be, she was ready. Ready, waiting and willing to respond.

I still find it hard to live fully in the here and now, to respond to each passing moment rather than planning my life away. But the ocean, the bird, the gecko – all have taught me where the energetic possibilities of the universe play. Life is full and terrible and wonderful, and living in it right now is truly scary, seat-of-your pants stuff. Like the train in Divergent, opportunity does not stop and wait. It is not safe. You must be ready to risk everything to leap on board.