The journey is the reward - 21 days to go.

When I sit down to write this blog I never quite know what it will be, sometimes more factual, sometimes more philosophical, but as is my underlying intention, always a reflection and reaction to my journey. 

(And I do hope that some you will pluck up the courage to comment on it – but I assume that will come once I start to reflect on being in Guatemala etc.)

Selling and giving away my possessions is like removing boulders that are blocking my path and that “less is most certainly more” and it is lovely to know that so many objects will be appreciated differently in a new setting.  For me, the less I have the more I can access my senses and try to open myself up to fully engaging with the adventure ahead.

Mr Moggs and Dame Kiti
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It was very tough (very tough) giving up the cats, Mr. Moggs and Dame Kiti, and returning them to the Cats Protection League, a big lesson in the dangers of anthropomorphism! But it was a great nine months with them, though I miss Mr. Moggs waking me by tapping my cheek with his paw!

Last January my life plan was different, and yet again I realised that I was missing something, and excuse me, but,

Where do you by the ordinance survey map of life?

Well, if it can be bought I seem to have missed the adverts for it and certainly never seen the shop or maybe I have seen it but didn’t have enough money to buy it or just couldn’t find it in a scale that worked for me!

I am amazed, astounded and often mystified by the relative ease by which some people are able to find the map, and happily follow it, seemingly knowing the destination and able to work out the best route.

When I was a kid I used to enjoy jigsaw puzzles  and I remember being bought a series of map jigsaws with lozenge shaped pieces for the place names which you inserted once you had completed the larger map of the country. Somehow for me it was all too logical, I wanted to mix up the pieces create new country or change the place names.

My map of life seems to be out of a box of mixed puzzle pieces, a few fit together and take you in one direction then by one means or another I manage to make a connection with an entirely different set of pieces and I am off in a different direction and looking in the box there are plenty of pieces left, many as yet, blank. And I have a whole heap of lozenge shaped “certainties” but no lozenge shaped holes have as yet appeared in the map to put them in! And I suspect never will!

Quo Vadis?
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How does the saying go “to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive” though for me the Taoist version “the journey is the reward” seems to make more sense.  When combined with a mantra from my psychotherapy training “the map is not the territory” I start to see how and why the vagabonding Knowmadic life, has a deep, inherent and necessary appeal for me.

On my wall I have a world map, but it is the “Peters Projection” which represents countries according to their actual size in 2D rather than trying to preserve a 3D view. It is a shock!   Europe and the USA look so much smaller and Africa is so much bigger!  Well of course they never changed in reality but the mind shift required to absorb this information and then to realise how "traditional" maps have completely distorted the territory of our understanding – it is pretty radical.

Peters projection 
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I suppose that the theme that emerges is that I simply cannot grasp, accept or believe in the “is-ness” of a logical map of life, and that uncertainty is the fuel which powers my life view.

Not satisfied with just accepting things, I want to know more about the “why” and more about the “territory” and trust that the map will look after itself. Each experience for me creates a new piece to that map jigsaw entitled “my life” and of course I have no clue as to how many pieces it contains, what shape it is, its difficulty or whether it is even do-able. 

The joke of course is that on the day that I have all the pieces 

I will be very much like Monty Python’s Parrot!   

  (click to play)

“The journey truly is the reward in and of itself.”