WALL, WHAT WALL? There’s ain’t no WALL!
So, a blog with the above title.
“What do you notice when you stop to take a breath, be still and take a metaphorical (or maybe even an actual) “view over the wall”? Do you look over the wall and say, “Thank goodness I’m on this side of it!” as you view the hum drum stressful lives of others, chasing around trying to stay ahead at work, pay the bills, buy the next model of I phone or try and stay ahead of your difficult teenager.
Or are you the stressed, busy person looking over the wall thinking you’d love to be on the other side smelling the flowers, watching the bees, listening to the birds, taking a breather from ‘life’ and simply being and reflecting on how good life is?”
The choice of view is yours of course. Come to that so is the wall. I gave a pretty full and honest account of the wall I spent the best part of twenty-five years hiding behind in the interview that is the last blog post.
Awareness precedes change. You’ve got to know there’s a wall before you can realise which side of it you’re on.
I didn’t know I was hiding behind a wall and might not’ve done ever if it hadn’t been for some amazing people that were around me, as well as some people making it quite clear they didn’t want to be around me. To be fair, I had to wake up to myself too.
But if you think about it, the signs are always there if you look. I had chosen not to for a long time. In fact, not looking had become my normal. That ‘normal’ I believed was ‘normal’ was actually not a good place to be. The Wall had to come down. Bit like in Pink Floyds ‘the Wall’ really.
To find my ‘happy place’, the place where I was happy and comfortable, I need tobacco and increasingly large amounts of alcohol. Realising something was not as it should be I made the first change, tobacco had to go. Really wanted to stop for a long time and when I really wanted to it was actually pretty easy. What I hadn’t expected was the mood swings I would become capable of without a cigarette that began to happen when I was drunk.
Taking chunks out of my protective wall was at first a much more difficult place to be, both for me and those unfortunates that shared my life at the time, in fact, for my then wife it was the last straw and she left. That journey is well documented in ‘the Three Year Pond’.
I’m amazed Gillian and my son stuck in through this period. I’m so grateful they did, because without their love, patience and tolerance I may not have made the biggest change and stopped drinking. I took me five years to get from knowing I should stop drinking to actually doing it. I knocked the Wall DOWN
AND then I found an inner peace I had not known for longer than I cared to think about or acknowledge. There’s nothing I can do about what I’ve done, it’s in the past, however I can use it to help others that are in the same or similar places, for whatever reason.
Now, you might think that is the end of the story, BUT it’s not.
Whilst I had broken the shackles of that said metaphorical WALL, I was left feeling a little lost, ‘what am I here for?’ What’s my purpose?’ After all, one of the most important facets of life is that it should grow. And grow constantly, that’s one of the lessons we can learn from observing the life around us.
I learnt who I was through a series of experiences that happened earlier this year, and if you’ve followed my blog posts, you’ll have some idea. That will probably be a large part of the next book.
Which side of the Wall are you on?
You can’t sit on this one!
If you’d like to know a little more come on one of the View Over the Wall Experiences.
Who am I?
Simon Pollard, Countryman and Modern Day Pagan
