Anniversaries

Today is the 20th anniversary of my first great self directed adventure. The trip to England that Icommenced on this day in 1985 was the marker for so many years of my life. For many many years (and probably even now at times) I saw my life as bisected by the trip and its experiences. Two separate people who I couldn't rejoin.

During writing for a unit on Autobiography of Spirit and Soul, I attempted to analyse this hallowed experience. i was helped to understand England as a place of exile and return, part of the cycle and movement of faith through deserts and oceans and wilderness rather than it being the elusive promised land or merely a precurser of "pie in the sky". To come to yourself, it is necessary to journey.

On this day as I remember again the fuss at the airport and the nerves of my naive young overprotected self and the book drugged plane trip I am amazed to find it seems more than a lifetime ago...even more I am amazed to find traces of the delight and joy and appreciation of light (helped by the grey overcast autumnal day it's started as here) and the optimism for the future that marked that day. I stood then on the precipe of an unknown future - it didn't turn out as I rehersed in imaginings...my life hasn't turned out how try imagine either. I wouldn't trade either - the definitate or the mundane, the bisection or the journey.

As I start this I hope that when it comes to such an anniversary there will have been imagining and delight and that it won't have turned out at all like I planned - life is too rich for that.