Connecting up the various parts.

As a child I would walk the two miles to school and the two miles home mostly on my own after all the children who lived closer to the school had peeled off and gone to their homes….It was a long trudge, uphill and down….however the thing I had to amuse myself with were my thoughts….they were vivid and colourful and provided me with a kaleidoscope of entertainment. It was as though I wasn’t the one generating them as they tumbled in…I loved ‘thinking’ which seemed an occupation and when we as kids were sent to bed before the adults I would love that time in the dark to dream and imagine.

Later on in life when I lived with others in a community, I was puzzled by a feeling I had of disconnection it was as though I had a subterranean life but my mind was not connected to it and I was locked in the exterior world unable to access my deeper parts. The deeper parts made themselves felt however they seemed far far away way and I wasn’t reaching them.

It wasn’t until I was living on my own in the outback in a semi desert area…in a house that was a little isolated from near neighbours when 45 degrees was too hot to go ouy seeking distraction .that I brought together these two things, that is my interior life and my exterior life. What did I go to the desert to find? it was me that I met there. I met the good and the bad, the injured and the whole the strong parts and the weak parts of me. This delving was painful and I felt there was something like a front end loader inside me digging tunnels and pathways. As Nietzsche says;

Only great pain, (the long slow pain that takes its time)

compels us to descend to our ultimate depths.

and so that is my tale of solitude and connecting my parts. Luckily I still love ‘thinking’ and look forward to unbroken stretches of time where I can think and come up with ideas. So the long walks to and from school and hat desert experience stands me in good stead on many occasions.