Sat on a train, looking forward or back?
28th December 2015
Sat on a train, looking forward or back?
As the end of another year approaches we find ourselves reflecting on the past year, pondering our journey through the last 365 days. It is inevitable and during this reflection we try to assess how good the last year has been. We define our hopes and needs by reviewing the progress of where we have come from in a belief this might inform where we might go in the future. We measure our lives and value by our past experiences and use these experiences to shape our hopes for the future.
We are irretrievably defined by our past, as each experience encountered, the choices and decisions we made, the hurt and joy felt have chiseled our character. The constituents that make us a distinctive and forms the platform on how we further interpret the world around us and our plans for the future.
However, these characteristics and the way they inform our choices need not be determined in such a way as to produce fixed outcomes. We are offered a multitude of options and, like that experienced in Frost's - The Road not Taken, we encounter situations, choices and have questions asked of us. Questions that, by the very nature of who we are, may not be fully answered - we are not fixed.
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference"
One way of looking at our journey through life is to compare it to a train journey. We sit either with our backs to the direction of travel, or facing forward.
With our backs set firmly against the forward journey - we are always looking back, to a past that is increasingly disappearing. Our understanding of the journey ahead is limited, and our understanding of the journey is made by making sense of the speeding scenery as it zips past and stretches far away from sight.
Then, if we decide to sit facing the front, we see our destination heading towards us, where we are able to see bends in the tracks and approaching stations. However, we have lost sight of all that was behind. Our past, the departure point and the land between there and now is stretching away, disappearing over the blue horizon. Our past is now cut off.
So which way to face on our journey? Do we determine our path by looking to our past, or by searching into the future? Should one tense take dominance over the other?
Rebecca Solnit recognises this dilemma as she points out that we navigate our journey via a series of abstractions, where we are looking into the distance (be it far ahead or far behind). In the end we are navigating our lives by peering towards the distant hills on the horizon. From this viewpoint we look for the meaning of things from shadowy shapes drawn from memory or hope. Whilst the real information, the necessary guiding waypoints, are immediately around us, in the here and now. To see them, and understand our journey we may need to simply get off the train and stop, look around for a while.
All journeys involve new experiences and we learn and develop from how we interact with these experiences. We need to make our lives free flowing journeys where we are prepared to just get off the train every now and then. Psychologists and physiologists believe the brain is most active when walking, plus if the brain experiences disruptive events it learns. Therefore, we need to occasionally get off the tracks.
How ever we approach our journey it will reveal much we never knew before and this understanding should be treasured. We should not care what seat we took, but just engage with the journey and if choices come, take them without regret, or hesitation as every choice will bring new learning, skills, understanding and an appreciation of the 'now'......Happy New Year and future journeys.
The Layers (Stanley Kunitz)
I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.
As the end of another year approaches we find ourselves reflecting on the past year, pondering our journey through the last 365 days. It is inevitable and during this reflection we try to assess how good the last year has been. We define our hopes and needs by reviewing the progress of where we have come from in a belief this might inform where we might go in the future. We measure our lives and value by our past experiences and use these experiences to shape our hopes for the future.
We are irretrievably defined by our past, as each experience encountered, the choices and decisions we made, the hurt and joy felt have chiseled our character. The constituents that make us a distinctive and forms the platform on how we further interpret the world around us and our plans for the future.
However, these characteristics and the way they inform our choices need not be determined in such a way as to produce fixed outcomes. We are offered a multitude of options and, like that experienced in Frost's - The Road not Taken, we encounter situations, choices and have questions asked of us. Questions that, by the very nature of who we are, may not be fully answered - we are not fixed.
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference"
One way of looking at our journey through life is to compare it to a train journey. We sit either with our backs to the direction of travel, or facing forward.
With our backs set firmly against the forward journey - we are always looking back, to a past that is increasingly disappearing. Our understanding of the journey ahead is limited, and our understanding of the journey is made by making sense of the speeding scenery as it zips past and stretches far away from sight.
Then, if we decide to sit facing the front, we see our destination heading towards us, where we are able to see bends in the tracks and approaching stations. However, we have lost sight of all that was behind. Our past, the departure point and the land between there and now is stretching away, disappearing over the blue horizon. Our past is now cut off.
So which way to face on our journey? Do we determine our path by looking to our past, or by searching into the future? Should one tense take dominance over the other?
Rebecca Solnit recognises this dilemma as she points out that we navigate our journey via a series of abstractions, where we are looking into the distance (be it far ahead or far behind). In the end we are navigating our lives by peering towards the distant hills on the horizon. From this viewpoint we look for the meaning of things from shadowy shapes drawn from memory or hope. Whilst the real information, the necessary guiding waypoints, are immediately around us, in the here and now. To see them, and understand our journey we may need to simply get off the train and stop, look around for a while.
All journeys involve new experiences and we learn and develop from how we interact with these experiences. We need to make our lives free flowing journeys where we are prepared to just get off the train every now and then. Psychologists and physiologists believe the brain is most active when walking, plus if the brain experiences disruptive events it learns. Therefore, we need to occasionally get off the tracks.
How ever we approach our journey it will reveal much we never knew before and this understanding should be treasured. We should not care what seat we took, but just engage with the journey and if choices come, take them without regret, or hesitation as every choice will bring new learning, skills, understanding and an appreciation of the 'now'......Happy New Year and future journeys.
The Layers (Stanley Kunitz)
I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.