Dear Friend,
One rare Saturday, me and Dad walked down the old disused railway line from our housing estate into town. Rusty cans and old mattresses, discarded crisp packets, bundles of newspapers, that kind of public space. You could see Nana’s back room window and the outside loo from the elevated section that ran past her back yard.
Every Saturday there was a market on the car park as you entered town.
Dad was unusually talkative. He’d been working since he was fourteen, by this point in his life that would be twenty years or so, still in his thirties, two boys and a wife. He was looking for a change. Thinking outside of the box.
Almost as if it were a confession he told me how he wished he could run a market stall. I looked over at one of the blue vans selling I think it was kitchen ware, the stall owner certainly seemed to be having a good time joking and chatting with the small group of women gathered round his stall.
“Three hundred quid in your back pocket, and your own boss.”
I’d never heard Dad talk like this.
“Maybe you and me should rob a post office?” he continued.
I was shocked.
I’d seen armed robberies on the tv. Balaclavas and shorn off shotguns. I didn’t see us doing that, but I was still at the stage where my first response was to take anything said as literal.
I don’t remember if I had anything to say about it. A reply wasn’t being sought, I worked out he was being whimsical, but it was shocking. A life on the run from the law. Where would it end?
We’d have to rob more than one post office, but there aren’t that many of them in Cumbria, plus people know people round here. Anyway, why couldn’t Dad have a market stall? Look at all these ones. The people in possession of a transit van and a table of goods for sale, what secrets were they keeping from the ordinary folks working for a pay cheque?
Dad never did set up in business for himself.
One spring our front room was suddenly full of garish oil paintings from Egypt. Uncle Dennis and Dad were considering setting up a shop.
“What do you think of these?” Dad asked me and Kevin. A serious question. He was looking for our blessing as if we had any idea of his chances of success.
This was a few years since the market stall idea. I was becoming spiteful. My face was breaking out in acne. No encouragement was forthcoming from me, Kevin thought they were okay. The paintings disappeared. Never mentioned again.
A house divided cannot stand.
My heart aches when I think of how Dad’s days ended. Would it have been different if he’d had the encouragement and the courage to go for something new, something different, find out if it was what he wanted?
Now that I live in a grown body, you realise how mistaken it is to look at greying hair and wrinkled skin as evidence of maturity. They’re just signs that time has passed. As we age we can become more at ease with ourself, less bothered about what people think of us, but also less sure of ourselves, more aware of the pitfalls of our ambitions. More protective of the tender places. Where we got knocked.
When an idea for something new comes, how easily we can dismiss the possibility. Maybe our legs are tired and that hill looks too far away, too steep a climb.
You can have days like these. It’s contrast. Shadow and light. It’s been raining here now for several days straight. The cloud cover unbroken. In Mexico there’s drought. How joyous they would be for our rain.
The drought is real.
The lack of possibility, fiction.
Our world is thrumming with potentiality. No matter how much time has passed, while we are here we can begin something new. This something new, it does not come from the future, it extends from this present moment. All of our potentiality is here now. When we see no way forward it is because we are staring at the smoke screens of the mind and mistaking them for reality.
Following our breath with our attention we can return to the present moment. Feeling the aliveness inside. Listening to the sounds of the rain, or the wind or the birds singing. The voices of the people. Notice your heart beating, closer than your dearest friend.
Sometimes we need to withdraw and rest in the moment.
Another thought will arise, Another action.
One step at a time. Think of it as weaving. The cloth of your life is yours to shape. My Dad could’ve had a market stall. He could’ve started out doing weekend markets. Seen how he liked it. Grew from there.
We can do what we want. Starting from where we are. The key is not to allow the mind to overwhelm us. Being here now and doing all we can. Working with our idiosyncrasies and perceived limitations. It matters how we spend our lives.
Sometimes the encouragement doesn’t come from where we want it to. Why limit ourselves?
If the thing you want to do is already being done by another take this as evidence it can be done. Let that be encouraging. Is there room room for one more? Of course there is.
The hardest thing to fathom about humans is how we can be so utterly unique and yet so similar. The way you do what you do, only you can do it like that. The way you are, only you can be this way.
We need you.
Just as you are.
A smile on the inside. Give that to yourself and we all share in it.
That’s the way of it.
Whatever it is. You can.
Go for it.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey