This is a note to self, a journal of sorts. You might find it relevant too…
Yesterday my partner and I got on a train out of the city and headed for the peak district. We’d been planning a little hike for a while, and the bank holiday weekend – coupled with great weather – provided the ideal opportunity to make it happen. We found a nice route, one that wasn’t too tasking and we could complete in 2 hours. However, we had to hop on a train, get to the destination station, and walk for about 40 minutes to the designated starting point of the 2-hour route. So, we got ready that morning, boarded our train out of the city and got off with our printed map and directions in hand. We just had to find the starting point…
Except, it wasn’t as straightforward as we thought. We pulled up google maps on our phones and trotted away from civilisation into the woods, ostensibly towards the starting point of our long-awaited walk. As we searched for this starting point, we walked through woods rich with diverse flora and fauna – majestic trees, shrubs, ferns, birds and furry mammals – in a world of their own. We saw trees standing tall to the heavens and fallen tree stumps that served as makeshift bridges. We saw boulders and rocks enclosing a pond with clear water flowing gently through. We saw nature at its finest.
The thing is, for the 30 or so minutes we had walked hitherto, we were preoccupied with finding this starting point. At some point, we struggled to make heads or tails of the seemingly contradictory directions our phones gave us, and naturally, we started getting stressed about it. We had imagined that we would have a lovely day when we got on the train that morning, and there we were, past noon, and we hadn’t even started our walk.
But then something changed. Maybe it was the cool breeze that whistled through the woods, maybe it was the smiles and cheerful greetings of the other ramblers that came our way, maybe it was the soothing effect of the thick, green canopy that enveloped us, but there was a noticeable change in our demeanour. We realised, pretty much simultaneously, that our erstwhile attitude hadn’t served us thus far, and a change of approach was in order. We talked, and agreed to put away the maps – both paper and digital – and dispense with the goal of finding that starting point. We were already out in the woods, walking in (and with) nature, taking in the beautiful sights and sounds of ponds and waterfalls. We were already on a blissful walk, albeit not the one we’d planned. The moment we embraced the idea that ‘this is the walk’, everything else fell in place. The pressure of no longer having to find a designated starting point lost its hold on us, and as we embraced the idea of rambling and going with the flow (literally – of water), our day got infinitely better. It didn’t much matter that we weren’t walking on the route we’d mapped out. It was irrelevant that the maps and directions we’d printed out were now moot. All we knew was we were surrounded by the elements we’d gone in search of, and we were having a lovely day.
And what a lovely day it was. We ended up walking through fields with the sheep and along the edges of ponds with the ducks, climbing tree branches and making silly faces for selfies, stopping for chit-chat and refreshments on the benches, and basking in the wonders of nature. We rambled for much longer than we’d planned, and it ended up being more dynamic, more enjoyable, and much more of an adventure than we would have been able to script beforehand. All of this was made possible because we had the presence of mind to realise that our walk wasn’t going to start at some arbitrary point up ahead. Rather, we were already on our walk; all we had to do was to be present for it and enjoy it. In other words, we realised that the satisfaction didn’t lie where we thought. It wasn’t about that future destination; no, it was, as they say, all about the journey.
This realisation couldn’t have come at a better time for me, given the rather challenging couple of days that preceded the walk. Most of my gigs hadn’t gone to plan – some were cancelled, and others had low turn-outs and disinterested audiences. Each time, I came away from said gigs with a little less resolve than before, as if each poor outing had chipped away, just a little bit, at the joys of making and performing music live. I carried this feeling around with me all week like a heavy load on my shoulder, and not for the first time. I’d felt like this many times before, and often enough to know that seasons like this come and go. One thing that always got me through was the thought that someday, I won’t just be an up-and-coming artist; one day my creative career will truly hit the stratosphere, and when that happens, I’d love every minute of making and performing art. I always told myself that until the day things take off, I have to keep doing the arduous, painstaking work, and forego any prospects of momentary pleasure because it’ll all come in the future. I always believed that now’s the time to labour and toil on the walk toward the destination, because when I arrive at the destination, it’ll all be worth it.
I know now, that this is a load of nonsense. The idea that one should labour and toil today, all for the prospects of some reward or satisfaction in the future, just isn’t a good way to live, or work, or pursue a creative career, or do anything else. Life is in the day-to-day, life is about the journey. Sure, there’ll be some bad days here and there, but if I can’t see fit to find something to appreciate in each day, then who’s to say that I’ll appreciate the destination, whatever it may be? Speaking of the destination, this is perhaps the biggest misconception that has seeped into our collective subconscious, that there’s something to aspire to, something to work towards, a place or a point or a measure or a rung on the ladder to reach for. Any such place or point or measure or rung, is at best arbitrary and has been defined by people who don’t know better, or at worst misguided and has been instilled by people who – dare I say – are given to artifice. The idea that we should spend every waking moment working towards some arbitrary point in the future where the proverbial pot of gold lies at the end of the rainbow, is not only insidious in the long run but also inimical to our short-term well-being. When we fix our eyes on some future point where all will be well, we miss out on the day-to-day joys or short-term wins, and we also fail to process our day-to-day defeats (and there’ll likely be loads of them). However, it is these small wins that grant us the fortitude to soldier on, and it is these defeats that arm us with the tools we’ll need to conquer future challenges. In other words, fixating on the future robs us of the ability to prepare for the future. This is a curious paradox.
This isn’t an argument against striving to be better. This isn’t an argument for throwing caution to the wind and prioritising instantaneous delight at the expense of delayed gratification. This shouldn’t be misconstrued as a case for complacency. Rather, this is all to say that while it is expedient to plan for the future, we shouldn’t do so at the expense of the lives we have to live in the moment. The thing about the future, as the old expression goes, is that it never comes. There’s only you, in the present, with the ability and agency to act in such a way that puts future versions of you in a better position, relatively speaking.
For instance, in culinary terms, if your goal is to eat a slow-cooked meal for dinner, and if you know that the slow cooking process will take 8 hours, the best thing that present ‘you’ (the ‘you’ that exists at breakfast time) can do is to prep the ingredients and get cooking, so that future ‘you’ (the ‘you’ that will exist at dinner time) can enjoy the slow-cooked meal. This is what it means to live, and act, in the present. The alternative would be to sit and visualise that delicious slow-cooked meal that you’ll eat at dinner, rather than actually preparing the meal. Come dinner time, when there’s no food to eat, you might wonder what went wrong, but you can’t turn back the hands of time and undo the past. Of course, it is possible that present ‘you’ might mess things up a little. Maybe you’ll cook it all wrong, maybe the meal you end up with at dinner time is different to what you originally planned or visualised, but that’s life. When dinner rolls around and you’re faced with a different meal, you can be confident that given the ingredients and directions that were available to you earlier, you acted, and it resulted in that meal. In other words, you’ve done your best and you’ve learnt from the experience, be it a success or failure, and failure, as another old expression goes, is just another pitstop on the road to success.
The life of a budding creative isn't dissimilar. There are endless aspirations, prospects of self-actualisation and promises of lofty heights and big dreams on the horizon. There's a temptation to almost live life in limbo, waiting for the day those dreams become reality so that the good life can finally begin. What we fail to realise in moments like this, is that we're already living that good life. We're already making music, or painting portraits, or writing poetry, even if it's for a grand old audience of one. Despite the hardships that independent artists face, the days of humble beginnings can be filled with just as many blissful moments as compared to the lives of established artists. All we can do is keep going, give our best, and learn from our experiences. That’s all anyone can hope for really. So the next time you find yourself fixating on some arbitrary point that you’re walking towards, it may behoove you to stop, take a breath and realise you’re already doing it, and say to yourself: this is the walk.