Heroes Not Zombies

When I left rural General Practice in Southwest Scotland to join my friend Sandy in the big city of Edinburgh I swapped villages, farms and fields, for busy streets, blocks of flats and the noise of a city life. Sandy and I had a small Practice initially which was split between two different parts of Edinburgh – Portobello and Mayfield Road. In those early years there were two distinct communities of patients, one in each area, and the ordinary everyday involved a fair bit of doing house visits in both parts of the Practice, as well as driving from the one area to the other to deliver clinics in each of our Practice premises.

There was a link between the two. Well, I know there are always many different roads to choose between any two destinations, but one of my favourite ways to travel between them was a small road looping round the base of Arthur’s Seat in Holyrood Park. It was like a small voyage through the countryside between two webs of city streets.

Arthur’s Seat is a such a presence in Edinburgh. It’s an ancient volcano and dominates the entire city. Holyrood Park, in which it sits, has several small lochs which invite you to sit by the water for a while. General Practice work is, however, busy, busy work, with plenty of demand, lots of patients to see, homes to visit, every single day. Sometimes, often in fact, I’d feel on the edge of being overwhelmed by the long list of visits to make and tasks to perform, all with an ever present pressure of time. I’d drive between the two premises via Holyrood Park and sometimes I’d see an empty park bench.

An empty park bench.

Can you imagine the feelings of longing, the huge surge of desire, the unattainable wish to stop and sit on that bench?

It could become like a life goal. “One day I’ll stop and sit on that bench and just do nothing. Just for a bit. Not forever, of course, but without a deadline, without a need to be somewhere else in a few minutes time.”

I never sat on that bench.

Years later, on holiday in France, I saw this old sign on the wall of a small village house –

“Gently in the morning, not too quickly in the evening”

I thought of that park bench when I saw that and I thought…..”one day!”

Much later an Italian friend of my mine told me about “Dolce far niente” – doing sweet nothing – and I realised it was the same thing.

How life can be so utterly full of busy-ness that there just never feels like there is time to stop, time to pause, and just be. (Ha! Ha! What sprang into my mind there was Bart Simpson saying “I’m a human being, not a human doing!”)

This is such a deep human need. I think we find it in all cultures. Although often we have to justify it to ourselves as a “time of contemplation”, “a few moments of mindfulness meditation”, or “a time to reflect”. Now, I think all those things are great too. I think they all have the power to bring quality to our lives, but they aren’t the same as slowing down to the point of taking a pause, and just….being.

We need to “Mind the Gap” – need to find those spaces between one task and another, the spaces between one breath and another, the spaces which exist between the end of one thought and the beginning of another.

I wish I’d paid more attention to that. I think it would have been good for me. But, hey, it clicked eventually, and even now when in retirement a day can fly by filled with “things to do” and “things which need done”, I remember to stop sometimes, and……

……pause.

When I stop to enjoy a pause now, I don’t try to “empty my mind”, or “still my thoughts”, or “focus on my breath”, or anything like that. I just start to notice. I hear bird song, like the bird which sounds like a squeaky gate (I’ve never seen that bird but I hear it often!), or the flapping wings of a pigeon flying overhead. I hear the sound of the wind in the vines. I feel the temperature of the air on my skin. I smell the newly cut grass. I see the ever changing shapes of the clouds in the sky.

Then I carry on and do what I was intending to do next. But I’m back.

Back into the present instead of lost in the memories and imaginary futures where I was before the pause.

Back here in the real world from the world of thoughts and concerns which was filling my life before the pause.

I feel re-connected.

Who’d have thought stepping out of the flow for a spell was the best way of being in the flow?