The Train Journey
You are standing on the platform, on a cold, bright autumnal morning. You are excited for the journey ahead, and super excited to reach your destination. The train pulls in and you step on and find a seat by the window. You settle down as this is going to be a long journey.
As the train starts to move your excitement builds, you are on your way, you are finally going to get to where you want to be. As the train leaves the town it gathers speed and soon the town becomes countryside and the fields are flying by as you speed through. In the thrill of moving fast and watching the world fly by outside your window, you briefly catch a glimpse of your own reflection also in the window, but you choose to focus out to the world flying past. After a while you start to get a bit bored of this whoosh of green and blue, something catches your eye in the passing field, you look as hard as you can but the train passes so quickly, you cannot make it out. You start to approach a town, and the landscape changes, you can see houses and the train line goes along the back of the road of many houses, you try to see the detail in the houses, the gardens, the flowers, the people, but they all fly by so quickly it’s a blur. The train approaches a station, but it’s not stopping here, you fly through, clattering over the rails. You look really closely to see where you are, you crane your neck back to see the name of this station, but it is such a blur, you cannot make it out, you don’t know where you are. It just leaves you with a headache. You start to feel frustrated and the constant whizzing past of the world makes you sleepy. You try to sleep but you are uncomfortable and the clattering and shaking of the train stops you from feeling settled. You just want to get there now, you know you will feel better when you arrive, why is it taking so long?
Suddenly it goes dark; the train has entered a tunnel. All of a sudden there is no world rushing by but a strange reflection of yourself in the window, you look odd, not quite like yourself, a little ghostly.
The light returns without apology as you squint to refocus. The journey continues for what seems like forever, you are going so fast that the world is a blur and finding yourself in a constant state of frustration and discomfort, but you are holding onto the hope that it’ll all be ok when you get there.
Hours later the train starts to slow down, you are coming towards your destination and the countryside passes away and you find yourself coming along the track at the back of some beautiful houses. The train slows some more. You sit up and look out; you can see children playing in the garden and the smiles on their faces makes you smile too. The lady in the next garden is tending to her roses, they are such beautiful reds and golds, and you are able to see the colours so clearly now, in fact the slower the train goes the more and more detail you can see, the more life you are able to witness, you are so absorbed by it all that you no longer feel uncomfortable and tired, but you come back to life. All of a sudden you can see the shape and the texture of the leaves on the trees and the emotion on the faces of the people you pass, slowly moving through, taking everything in and enjoying every minute. The train slowly pulls into the station, you are here, you have made it to your destination, the place you were so excited for, but now, this is tinged with a little disappointment, ‘I wish the journey would go for longer’ you think, ‘but not so fast this time, I want to see and feel everything.’
I sometimes think our lives, or things in our lives, can be like a train journey; we start off with the end in mind, we are focussed on our destination – the future. We can even tell ourselves that when we get to where we want to be or achieve the things we want we will find real happiness or real peace – but we have to get there first. Or it may be a simple as getting through today so I can relax tonight, or living for the weekend, or just getting your head down until the next holiday, or it could be on a bigger scale – until I retire, or buy the big house, or until I finally have the money to set up my own business. This desire to reach a destination can cause us to be impatient and we end up rushing through our lives to get to the next thing. At which point there is likely to be another thing that we start to strive for and then off we go again.
The world we live in also pushes us to rush. Our systems and timetables are focussed on getting things done in the shortest amount of time possible, not wasting time, meeting deadlines. We lead busy lives where we need to get to work, get our work done, look after children or elderly relatives, run our homes, be fit , eat healthy and so on. How often do you complain that there are not enough hours in the day? We are surrounded by beliefs about our use of time that can also play into our urgency drivers, “we haven’t got all the time in the world”, “time is money”, “hurry up”. We are flooded through our media with ways in which to ‘hack’ time, to get to the same place without having to do the work, or avoid the journey. It is continuous and relentless and the world just seems to be whizzing by and we struggle to focus and see what is really around us.
What happens when we do this is we become frustrated, tired, unwell, uncomfortable and generally unhappy, we lose connection with who we are and can sometimes even feel like a ghost of ourselves. But we also miss so much along the way, so much detail, insight, beauty, connection with others and those wonderful moments that are often the ones that make life so special.
I have recently started my Yoga Teacher Training and in our first session our teacher explained that Yoga is both the path and the destination. In much of my Applied Theatre practice we focus on the process not the performance, it is what happens in the workshops that causes the magic to happen and the lives to transform, what happens at the end of that process – a performance, for example, well that is just the cherry on the cake.
As a coach I work with people to find ways to slow down and reconnect with themselves. I help people to find joy in the process. This means getting out of bed in the morning and being excited about their day, whether that is a Monday morning or a Saturday morning; it means feeling a sense of achievement on a daily basis; it means living with a sense of peace and contentment, so that they no longer feel like something is missing; it means having a deep knowing that they are pretty damn cool; it means trusting in their own judgement and intuition; it means that they are able to deal with those dark tunnels in life with more clarity and resilience; they are able to laugh more and find joy in many more parts of their lives; they are able to work out why they are feeling frustrated or uncomfortable and change that; they are able to make more confident and clear decisions and overall they start to live the life that they have always dreamed of right now!
In fact, when we slow down we really do stop wasting time and start living purposeful and meaningful lives.