Riding the Waves to Eternity

Last July I mentioned that I had been in the departure lounge of Edinburgh Airport and had been struck by the futility of the exercise – taking an early flight to London to meet a couple of people and then flying all the way back home again.

I was in the departure lounge again this afternoon, this time flying dahn sarf to Sunningdale for a training course.  And my mood is different – partly because I like coming to Sunningdale and partly because I am re-reading Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha, a novel which I have not read for a great many years – thirty or so I think.   These two things seem to me to be linked.

One of the reasons I like Sunningdale is the element of retreat, the element of having an opportunity to be alone and to think whilst in pleasant surroundings.

And, of course, me being me, I find Hesse’s tale of the man who rejects the company and teachings of the Buddha in order to find enlightenment for himself to be a good text to set the pattern of my mood.

I am going on my way – not to seek another and better doctrine, for I know there is none, but to leave all doctrines and all teachers and to reach my goal alone – or to die.

There is a feeling which I often have that some kind of epiphany is just around the corner and that it will be here shortly.  It doesn’t happen, but that doesn’t stop me keeping my eye open for it lurking in the bushes somewhere.

There is a cliche aspect to this but perhaps it is no surprise that I am drawn to wild places and isolation, or to activities which encourage concentration to the exclusion of distractions in one’s surroundings.  I think, perhaps, that it is also linked to why I like rapper so much – being simultaneously an insider and an outsider – an eccentric if you will.

Rapper is not about the dance, it is about the assertion of the dance, about doing something which the observer may consider odd or eccentric because it is important to celebrate the odd and the eccentric and too eschew the bland homogeneity which would otherwise pass for existence.

We live in an age where homogeneity and conformity are revered; where corporate behaviours, attitudes and ideologies run rampant as the new orthodoxy (though this is not that far from the old orthodoxy):

• why build a guitar for yourself when you can buy a perfectly good factory made one from a shop?
• why go out into pubs and sword dance when you can go and watch football on the telly instead (and was there ever a more evilly destructive invention than football on telly in pubs)?
• why think for yourself when the press will do it for you?
• why seek out the wilderness when you can get steaming on a package trip to Ibiza?

No!  I reject that thinking.  We need to find and celebrate self-hood and to listen to our inner voice and follow its calling.  Not greed, not selfishness, but self-awareness until that time comes when, in the lovely words of Chris Wood, we just close our eyes and let go.