Live Outrageously!

I sit here on the banks of the Thames, watching two crews rowing, while seagulls glide serenely over the gently moving waters. There is a stillness to this moment, but also the background hum of the relentless traffic of London. The day lies ahead of me, wide open, like a vast blank canvas, as I ponder the words of David Whyte's poem 'What to Remember When Waking':

There is a small opening into the new day

which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live.

What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough

for the vitality hidden in your sleep.

I sit basking in curiousity, wondering what the day ahead will unfold...

I am sat here by the Thames because I am now a wanderer. 

Two weeks ago I left the bungalow I had been living in with two friends and set out with my life packed up into two bags, heading out without plan or goal, to see where the wind would take me. One friend nicknamed me "sadhu Sam", a name I relish. I am a pilgrim.

But how did I get here, to be sat by the Thames, utterly free and unbound, resting in this vast empty space of possibility, exploring without any desire to control or manipulate, to grasp or resist?

During my childhood, I received the ideal training in how not to wander. After private education in a highly academic and sports-focused school, I studied PPE at Oxford, the ultimate training in how to compete, how to drive yourself beyond your healthy limits, how to set overly-ambitious goals, how to do do do do do. 

By the time I left Oxford, I was so forward thinking, so driven, so ambitious, so competitive, so active, that the idea of a extended wander would have been an anathema to me.

However, in the Tao Te Ching, the old Taoist sage Lao Tzu writes:

"One who seeks knowledge learns something new every day.

One who seeks the Tao unlearns something new every day.

Less and less remains until you arrive at non-action.

When you arrive at non-action,

nothing will be left undone."

Fortunately, life also planted within me a desire to "seek the Tao", and the universe sent me a variety of teachers to guide me on my own journey of unlearning. After university, I found myself drawn to a community of people with and without learning disabilities, called L'Arche Bognor Regis, where I was taught how to slow down and let go of my ambitiousness, an excrutiatingly torturous, but also profoundly liberating experience! I also began a journey with meditation, learning from masters like Thich Nhat Hanh, Thomas Merton, Laurence Freeman, Thomas Keating, Teresa of Avila and more, about how to heal my compulsive doing and how to nurture a way of peaceful, accepting, flowing openness. And, lastly, but my no means leastly, life granted me the unrequested, bitter-sweet gift of "bipolar", which ground my life down to a complete standstill until I learned a deep attunement to my body and mind, and begun to master the art of listening.

I recently found myself approaching a threshold, sensing that life was calling me to sever my last ties with that old, goal-orientated, purpose-driven, ambitious, competitive mindset that once ruled my life. Years of unlearning had brought me to a crescendo, a moment of decision, an opportunity to practice what I had come to preach.

And so, here I am! 

Along with David Whyte's poem, today I've been reflecting on a old piece of Quaker wisdom, which says:

Live adventurously. When choices arise, do you take the way that offers the fullest opportunity for the use of your gifts? Let your life speak.

I've chosen to add a little flair and wildness to that sentiment, and so have taken on the mantra: 

Live Outrageously!

So begins my wandering.

Let's see what unfolds...