LOST

Life, for the most part, seems to be about following a thread. One foot in front of the other, keeping at least one hand gripped to it at all times. Sometimes the weather is good and you can see the thread stretching right out towards the horizon. You can check co-ordinates, consult your compass, even make adjustments to where you think it might be leading. Other times the visibility is bad and you’re just head down, slow trudging forward through the rain & fog.

For most people, the line stays taut and the focus is simply on forward motion through good and bad. But in unprecedented times, the line breaks. On a regular Wednesday afternoon you get a phone call that a loved one has passed, or some health-related news comes back negative. The cutting of the thread makes the whole world collapse. There is a period where everything stops spinning. Everything that used to feel important suddenly seems trivial. Reconnecting the thread takes time and, when you eventually fix it, it is never quite as strong, never quite the same. But with patience you can usually get it back into some kind of working order. Back on track. Back to the grind. Back to living life.

What I want to talk about here, though, is when the line does not break. It just goes slack in your hands. It hasn’t been cut, there has been no life changing event, it just loses its tension.

This has happened quite a few times in my life. All the wind gets taken out of your sails with no obvious external or internal cause. When I was younger I would panic and pick up a different thread, one that seemed to lead somewhere else entirely. Change job. Change project. Change outlook. Walk a new path. But when I started Concrete Junglists I promised myself I would not let go of this thread. I would stay the course no matter what. See if there was gold at the end of this rainbow.

When the line goes slack now, I have to be more Buddhist with it. Rather than doing what I used to do, panicking and inventing something new, I have to breathe, slow down, think, and keep walking with the loose thread in my hand.

I am not just talking about creative block, those spells where you convince yourself that everything you have done, and everything you will ever do, is rubbish. They are frustrating, but they usually pass and sometimes even end in a breakthrough, you almost always end up levelling up in your craft.

I am talking about something heavier. The existential crisis. The moments where you start tracing back through the big turning points of your life, examining your own personal butterfly effect and wondering where it all really kicked in. Where the small decisions were that quietly led you to where you are now.

Am I doing what I should be doing?

Am I as far ahead as I should be?

Am I really who I say I am?

Are my parents proud?

Am I proud?

Does anyone really care?

These are the questions that gather like dark clouds. They black out the room in your mind, bring on the insomnia, start turning the cogs of depression. Your current situation begins to feel like the sum of an endless negotiation between the past and the future, and somewhere along the line the bartering has broken down. The thread of your life is limp in your hand.

The voice in your head becomes louder. What you once thought was just yourself on auto-pilot starts to feel separate, something deeper. Something more real. The real you bartering with the automatic you, trying to wake up and work out the best way forward while the line of your life hangs loose in your hand.

What I have learned in these moments is that you just have to keep moving in the direction that feels like forward. The same one foot in front of the other. Keep going. The only real failure is stopping. Deciding not to go on.

I have also noticed that, in the past, whenever I thought I was picking up a new thread to a completely different destination, I was somehow always tethered to the same path anyway. As if some strange free-willed fate had its hand in things. I was always walking up the same mountain, just in different guises.

The line always regains its tension. The horizon is always just beyond the fog. Your path, whether paved or rocky, is always beneath the soles of your feet.

Life does not always go as the crow flies. It teaches you lessons you only notice in retrospect. Along the way you are joined by some beautiful people and some harsh teachers. And maybe it was never really about the destination anyway, only the journey.

Will there be gold at the end? Will there even be an end? I do not know.

All I have learned so far is to stay on course.

So far, so good,