I planned to walk out from Hoveton & Wroxham station. The day did not go to plan.
Whenever we say that some days just don't go to plan, we should stop and ask: whose plan? Maybe they went entirely to plan, just not ours.
I have not been very good at the idea of surrendering to life. It's taken me a long time, but I've finally worked out that there is a difference between "surrendering to what life has planned for you" and just saying 'yes' because you are a people pleaser.
As I'm not a natural people-pleaser, I've long been an advocate of learning how to say 'no'. It is therefore something of a challenge to find myself being called to learning the art of saying 'yes'.
What I realised (after a while) was that there is this difference between seeking to please people, keep the peace, not rock the boat…and seeking to serve them. Sometimes the boat has to be rocked in order to land the fish. I realised that surrendering sometimes means 'yes', sometimes it means 'no' and often it means 'wait and see'.
Surrendering does not mean just hanging around and hoping something will turn up, and then waiting to see what happens next. That isn't surrendering to life, that is dropping out of the experience altogether. It's the difference between going with the flow and just sitting stagnating on the rock midstream.
Surrendering requires awareness, the ability to recognise when a gift is being offered and then being gracious in accepting it. Being gracious is more than being grateful. Being gracious in accepting life's gifts requires us to be thankful, but it also requires that we are diligent in putting them to use, to doing the work that they empower us to do. If you're given seeds, plant them. If you're given tools, use them. If you're given materials, create with them. We meet the universe half-way by using what we're given in our own unique ways – and by being open to being given more, even when we don't think that the 'gift' is what we want or need.
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All this talk of surrender is because I have been reading The Surrender Experiment (Michael A Singer) and I did not enjoy it. I have a worldly problem with people who tell us they are multi-millionaires and it all happened by accident without them having to do a thing other than be deeply spiritual.
I'm not suggesting that Singer isn't deeply spiritual, but reading between the lines of the book it is clear that he also worked like a slave in his worldly endeavours. He can give credit to his gods and his gurus as he chooses, but the playing down of the real-world effort involved really tees me off.
BUT I kept reading…because cynicism aside, I do believe the basic message. I'm alienated partly, I think, because his method of extreme meditation and yoga and retreating to the woods etc is not my path. His method is not the right method for me and therefore, I suspect, not the right method for a lot of other people.
Whenever anyone tells me that the only right way is meditation, the only right way is connecting with the breath and that everything else is lesser or wrong, I get indignant.
The Universe is more benevolent than that. Spirit is wiser and kinder. There are lots of "right" ways. We have been given free will so that we can choose which is the right way for us. Spirit would not have been so cruel as to give us the ability to choose without also giving us a menu from which to do so.
It is only when I tie these things together that I really "get" Singer's message. Surrendering to life, means surrendering to where our life might lead us. It does not mean follow his path. It means listen, look, be aware, and figure out where we as individuals are being led.
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I am being led back to walking.
So naturally, I go back to the way I used to walk, completely ignoring something that I wrote only a few weeks ago, which is that I need to walk again, but I need to walk differently. As I have clearly forgotten my own message, Life decides to lend a hand by reminding me. Hence the day out from Wroxham does not go according to plan. Not to my plan anyway.
My plan involved getting up early & getting out. It involved following a specific route. It involved being back at the station at an hour that meant I could go up to the shack and write.
Instead of that: I had a few life lesson reminders.
The first of the day's lessons was to surrender the idea that if I didn't get "up & out" there would be no point. I've carried that one for a long time. It's rubbish. I can go out at any time of day, all it changes is what time I will get back and/or how much I can do, how far I can go, in the meantime.
My small act of surrender for this day was to accept that I'd got up a lot later than planned, and not only that but I was called to read a few more chapters of the current book before I got out the door.
The second lesson was to surrender to the walk being different to the one I'd planned. My route was barred by a Footpath Closed sign…all insistent and angry in its redness. There was a time when I'd have had a different reaction…to Oh. Ok. Erm…?
There was a time when I'd have got the map out and figured out how to divert and get back on my planned route at the earliest opportunity. There was a time when the mileage mattered.
That time has passed, so my second little insight was that there is a close correlation between surrendering and 'letting go'. I simply let go of being able to do what I wanted, and stood for a while looking at the fields, the hedgerows, trees.
Then I wandered down the steps that led from the bridge to the lane and started a slow loop back to the station. It would be three miles rather than six. If I hadn't left the shack keys at home I might even have considered going on up to the coast. (Lesson No. 3!) There was a time when this would have felt like a defeat. On this day it felt like an opportunity. I was in no hurry. Whereas the path had been high on the top of the railway cutting, the lane was sunk in a hollow. The sun was out. So were the butterflies.
The orange tips darted enticingly. The green-veined whites posed obligingly.
A muntjac hesitated before darting away across an arable field.
Painfully neat hedgerows erupted into wind-sculpted trees.
Greater stitchwort and common daisies scattered white stars along the banks.
There were bluebells and stray tulips. And an ivy-covered gate that led nowhere.
I remembered that this is how I want to walk now. Slowly. Noticing little things. It doesn't matter how long I'm out for, or how many miles I walk, or whether I do what I set out to do. It only matters that I set out, and surrender to the day. And that I enjoy it.
~ / ~
Railway miles: 7
Walk miles: 3
