But seriously. I’m
sitting outside in the sun, hearing the church bells ring the hour. Noon.
I’ve just had an early lunch (chick pea dahl) and have fed the dogs (not
chick pea dahl). And I’m sort of half thinking. My thoughts are a mess these days, a total
mess. I keep retreating to meditation,
to the place of no-thought, but then I wonder – should one always seek to
escape? To run away? Isn’t it opting out? Just another form of distraction, through
no-distraction?
And meanwhile the world is so screwed up. Or rather, we’ve screwed it up so badly. Recently I have been re-reading books I read
when I was young and, in particular, the ones that nudged my green
sensibilities. The ones that probably partly influenced my book Walker. Shabono. Ishmael.
Have you read Ishmael? It doesn’t
make for comfortable reading.
And then (this morning at the gym) I finished Liz
Jensen’s The Uninvited. It was a cheap
Kindle download and I picked it up because I’d quite liked The Rapture and
Louis Drax. I’d wanted some mindless
entertainment, some frivolous distraction but there again – those uncomfortable
issues: our over-population, the non-sustainability of growth, our greed, our living
so out of kilter with the rest of the planet… and despair washes over me.
And then I ponder – does it matter? We are born. We live. We die.
Like all animals. Yet, unlike (as
far as we know) other animals, we make up stories. We call these stories things like ‘True Love’
and ‘Challenge’ and ‘Work ethic’ and 'Happy Families' and ‘A Good Life’ and ‘Personal Growth’. Or maybe for some of us the only story is ‘Survival’. It just depends on our circumstances and our
personal bent.
‘You’d be happier in an ashram,’ Adrian often says to
me. Maybe he’s right. But I’m not sure that an answer either – it’s
just another story. Probably there is no
answer. The thing is, nobody knows.
I let my mind wander over the D.H. Lawrence story, The Man
Who Loved Islands (my second favourite DHL story, after The Man Who Died). Have you read it? I haven’t revisited it for years. But, as I remember, it reinforces the idea - you
can’t run away. No matter how I may
fantasise about a simple life…a little hut…in the deep woods… on a shoreside…on
an island even…I know it won’t solve anything.
Should we be trying to save the world? It’s tempting to say so but nothing is
changed for sheer force of will, is it? You can't change people. You can only change yourself. Big changes will probably only come by internal change. One person at a time. Can we change enough? In time? Should we? Who knows?
And, really, does it matter?
Yes, I’m repeating myself…I told you, my wondering whirs around, a cloud
of unknowing. Does it matter? Probably not.
But it’s still sad. And now the church bell rings again. The half hour. And I'm just wandering in my mind out loud.
