Tracks (2)

“I ride my bicycle to ride my bicycle.”

(Zen proverb)

It’s time for me to follow a different track.

Time to pause, play, lift my gaze and travel for a while without a plan.

I know I’m one of the lucky ones. Over recent months, I’ve been surrounded by friends and family, stayed fit and healthy, and stimulating, worthwhile work has been constantly available. So I’ve spent time alongside colleagues and clients as we’ve found the insight and illumination to help us navigate our way through some difficult, challenging times.

But many of us are now contemplating different paths. The lure of the office, the hours of commuting, the constraints and coercions of screens and consumer lifestyles seem to have less attraction now.

It’s time to reflect, refresh and revitalise.

So I’m taking some time out.

I’m going to wander beyond the edges of the map and journey without a destination. I know that as I drop my notions of purpose and achievement, the uncharted, open, expansive spaces will do their work on me.

As we let agenda and itinerary fall away, we can each sense into new energies, and feel the fragile, softly emergent patterns that offer new possibilities for the future worlds we will travel through. Transitions will be inevitable but the route we take makes all the difference. As we discover new tracks through life, we can expect that our lives will, themselves, shift and morph with us.

We can travel differently, with the expectation that we will find ourselves, not at the destination, but along the way, .

It doesn’t matter if you journey afar or simply walk around the block.

Travel lightly, without a plan; travel to wherever your tracks take you.

And, as you can guess, I will ride my bicycle to ride my bicycle.

Notes:

I’ll be back in a few weeks - but until then, I will be ‘difficult to track down!’

In moments like this I enjoy the provocation of ‘Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility’ by James Carse which, even after 35 years, feels very prescient.

Finally, if you are thinking of your holiday reading list, have a look at ‘The Things You Can Only See Only When You Slow Down: How to be calm in a busy world’ by Haemin Sunim. It’s a lovely compendium of simple messages that will help you rethink and reset your priorities as you consider a return to work.