Thursday, July 15

Walking down memory lane

People have a variety of reasons to 'go on holiday'. They go to relax from their often stressful jobs, to see areas they have an interest in, they might get dragged along by their partners or sometimes just travel to impress their neighbours, friends and acquaintances.

I decided to fly halfway around the globe when I heard that my niece gave birth to a new member of the family. However, as I don't go Germany too frequently, I included visits to other relatives and friends in my itinerary.

Now, at the end of my 'holiday', I realised how tired I feel after cruising around, catching up in person with a lot of people I haven't seen for at least two years. Even more, as I embarked on a path of change with my Alexander Technique teacher trainer, this five weeks abroad turned into a sometimes bewildering experience.

Our habits build up quite randomly unless we learn to become aware of them, so obviously family and friends that surrounded us for a long time have a big part in shaping the ways we react to our environment. Before I started learning the technique, I slowly extended my comfort zone by changing the places I worked and lived in, challenging myself to adapt to new environments and forging new friendships.

Even before the trip into my personal history, I realised how much of a pattern this moving from place to place looked like. I was searching for something, without knowing for what, and getting used to become quite unhappy in the process. Nevertheless, I always found glimpses of happiness where ever I went. I also carried some old habits with me around the world, and picked up new ones where ever I stayed for a longer period of time.

This time, I noticed some distinct periods of my personal development, linked to the people and places I spend my time with. I revisited my unhappiness with big business while staying with friends who gave me the strength and motivation to survive in the pool of sharks called Frankfurt. I became son again when staying with my mother, loving and caring uncle for my niece, desperate yet hopeful brother, nerd, anarchist, rebel, lunatic, ex-lover or friend for others.

I could see more clearly how I acted and behaved in my past, and how much this past shaped the ways I encountered friends and family when I saw them again. By reliving some past habits, I detected some of the patterns in it, and could let them go.

I got myself deliberately into the grip of my past, but with a lot more presence than before.

Besides enjoying seeing a fresh human being, my niece's baby, I wanted to find some more direction for my future. I had some vague ideas what I wanted to do after my training, and had the desire to gain clarity what I can and want to do. Amazingly, with little effort, I managed to find what I was looking for, although it still means to continue working a lot towards my next target.

If you have ever experienced wholeness, even a tiny glimpse of it, freedom of movement changes its meaning radically. Yes, muscle tension indicates the restriction we impose unto ourselves, and physiological and psychological knowledge hints at the places where these restriction hide. Yet, we move continuously, either on the trodden path of our habits or on new paths. What we have done or do often disguises how we do things, whether we move from dead end to dead end or choose a direction at another crossroad. At the end, every road leads to Rome, anyway.

When in Rome, act like Romans. While I spend my time on this journey into my past, I knew suddenly how many Romans I met already, and how few of them seem to inhabit this planet. Rome wasn't build in one day, which makes it easy to spot the looney, sorry, spot the Romans among us.

Enough of proverbial wizdom for now. Freedom in thought and action certainly fits better into narratives than into the dominating binary, black and white thinking, which seems overly popular in our times. In the past, when something or someone (mostly my ego) brought me down, I tried to get comfortable with it. Now, forward and up brings me back to the path, and opens perspectives I never imagined.

The unknown remains unknown. But without wanting to build my future, I can only get caught in the prisons others built for me. Golden cages failed to make my ego happy, while my self gained happiness even in failure. The simplicity of life amazes me more and more.