Allotments

Sketch a day - 195/365

Today we started the day with a walk-run. Mostly a walk but a little bit of a run.

Up until recently I have always had a very compleatest approach to running. Nothing counts unless it's all running. Push to limits etc etc. Long COVID has necessitated a switch in that thinking. Pushing to the limit is no longer possible. Instead everything good, even in small disconnected chunks has to be counted as good. Every little moment of joy or achievement goes into the ‘it counts’ pile now.

And setbacks have to be seen in a wider context now too. So that it's possible to see a new emerging pattern. I am not going in circles. Now I see it's a kind of gentle spiral. I am never getting anywhere as directly or quickly as I would like, but also I am never in as catastrophic or hopeless or becalmed situation as I fear.

So I couldn't run again for a while, but today I managed a slow 13 minutes of running.

That's ok. Better than ok. That's great.

I am trying to bring this way of thinking to how I make sense of the world right now.

It's not easy.

The blunt tools of populism that we are being hammered with feel impossible and huge and so undiscriminating that it can feel bewildering /impossible to know how to effectively resist.

But, I keep remembering Einstein’s words. Paraphrased…

At the heart of every problem, somewhere, there lies it's answer.

I may feel like the world is descending in ever decreasing circles, but we are not. The challenge is to look for the story that is hidden in front of our eyes. To see the whole in a new way. To discern the answer that is sitting there in plain sight.

In these times of real time genocide, this may sound like so much hot air. That may be true. On the other hand it's also true that before my good friend Dan encouraged me to start seeing rest differently, I was stuck seeing it as a problem and consequently I was unable to ever truely stop. I spent two years pushing to be better instead of allowing myself to rest and heal. I could barely walk let alone run during that time.

Which is a long way of saying - Reframing the stories we tell ourselves and each other at the moment is one of the most powerful things we can do to resist and to find solutions to things that feel impossible to fix.

With that in mind, one day, Palestine will be free of terror and violence. One day Israel and Palestine will be at peace. One day humans will be the guardians of this planet that we were sent here to be. One day the curbs on democracy that the UK govt has rushed into being will be repealed. Feel free to add in your own one day here too. If you feel like it.

What all of this has to do with a drawing of an allotment in Micklethwaite may not seem immediately clear.

I mean, I ran past it this morning and was reminded of how beautiful it is and the thought of drawing it was lodged then.

But perhaps thats not entirely it?

I dunno. Maybe there is a metaphor about seasons and change going on somewhere in my brain? Maybe there is a feeling towards the pattern of chunks of shared land. Maybe there is something beautiful in the idea that lies behind people working together to tend small parcels of land into a whole tapestry of hope?

Dunno.

I have been feeling quite fragmented today. Emails and planning and admin and trying to get my head into the rewrite of the Otherhood play.

I guess it hasn't felt like the best or most productive of days, but I am trusting that somehow it will prove to be useful nonetheless.

We will see.

That's the news.