The road to nowhere

I wrote yesterday’s post lying in my bed. At my Dad’s. Not that I have a bed in my Dad’s house but now that we have our little campervan I can be lying in my bed anywhere.

In fact I was there to “take my Dad somewhere”. He had chosen to spend Christmas and New Year alone and, predictably it had got him down.  Getting out the house and going somewhere, anywhere, seemed like a good thing. In fact my taste for going places came from him and the motorbike trips we used to do together.

Penny and I got the van to enable us to go lots of places. We love going places. Unlike me though she is still in full time work so it’s going to be me who is going even more places, hopefully lots and lots of them.

But I am always aware of Jon Kabat-Zinn’s truism that “wherever you go there you are”. Add to that that “the grass is always greener”, and “it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive” and you get some sense of the excitement tinged with realism, that I feel as we grow into our use of our new toy and set off on our road to nowhere.

I have always loved going places and being places. I am lucky enough to have traveled the world with my speaking career. But the paradox is that as I get better at being present, not escaping this moment by living in the future or the past, I will be spending more time now, here, the only time we ever have, and I will be spending it wherever I am – like it or not!

[The photo was taken at dawn on top of The South Downs on one of my first trips]