June 2020
When he left to return home I felt sad and upset, numbed by the realisation that an epic adventure was all over and a return to withering and wilting away on my own beckoned. 3 mesmerising days bursting with #freescenes made me feel alive once more. Life had me fading from patiently waiting for others to push pens and click keys so I can progress.
The trip was off the cuff, and the script was adapted from previous plans to wind through the South Coast across several days. Like many of my creations it was intense and dare I say mind-blowing! Yes, several pit-stops combining researched sites with some in-the-moment adventure, as is my MO.
I’m not going to delve in to the detail of places. That’s something I will have to do in another post, definitely! But in short, we scarpered through New Forest and South Downs National Parks, along with a quick whip detour to the blistering isles and quays of Chichester Harbour AONB (haha, another one for my project!).
Sites that will forever ring fresh in my memory include the foreign-like magical views of Black Down at dusk, the grandeur of sea by Eastbourne from Beachy Head, the blustering winds along the Seven Sisters that had me scream with the joy of feeling alive, the petrichor and serene skies around Harting Down, and the sunset at Butser Hill (pictured above).
We had never experienced anything like it in Britain
Wow, that’s a grand old list! Yet that’s just the tip since there’s so much more, like the time I saw actual honeycomb for the first time in my life from a Beekeeper (see below) keen to share his stories! Wonderful chap he was.
But I want to marinate for a moment on something I’ve felt for years. Something that I encounter all too frequently, that incenses me because of how disempowering, myopic and wasteful such ways of living are yet are also commonplace, as I’m sure many will agree by the time they’ve read this whole post.
This is probably one of the most complex, colourful + crucial natural creative processes on the planet,
and you can do it all in your back yard!
Culture of experiencing
When you search a place online, explore some piece of media like a film or music, delve into an outdoor activity, or want to learn about people, what are you guaranteed to find?
Reviews. Ratings, rankings, recommendations, awards, certifications, polls, points, percentages. Then there’s an incessant obsession with likes, skills, abilities, performance, value for money, and there’s plenty more metrics out there I’m sure.
Now fair enough. These metrics can help provide an insight into what you may experience, assist with planning and organisation, or filter your choices and/or options.
But these MEASURES are an active and growing element of what you could call a commodified culture of experiencing the world. As they often play a significant part in how many people approach, engage with and experience people, places and activities, I feel they drain their essence, their spectrum of colours, and their wider potential. They damage the dynamics between all active elements!
Let me explain.
Metrics can have the effect of framing, shaping and constraining how people behave and interact. When people do their ‘research’ everything they encounter creates numeric and quantifiable expectations that some will then go out and try to fulfil or exceed. Your baseline, views, values, intentions, objectives, goals, have been set by some external source. They have set the core meanings and interpretations of the experience that awaits, curtailing/inhibiting you from setting YOUR OWN.
Another consequence of commodification is people lacking the courage or desire to go out and discover and explore people, places + activities themselves, and instead increasingly wanting everything neatly organised on a platter packaged with bubbles, ‘guarantees’ and a commercial smile.
Where’s the gumption?
TAKE CONTROL! Be your own author, take ownership of what matters most to you and what you hope to experience from an activity. Put your own stamp, label, colour, and/or caricature on people, places + activities.
Too often do I encounter people approach places and activities like a sport, measuring and comparing one to the next, rating and ranking one to the other. Such simplification commodifies and reduces the essence of each place and/or activity, and holds too much weight on expectation for future experiences to ‘beat’ what has come before.
You could say a similar thing about people. Comparing new people to those you have encountered before may mean you don’t give them a full and fair opportunity to reveal who they are in all their forms, in all seasons, and instead enables wider norms/values/stereotypes/prejudices to ‘cloud’ your engagement with them.
Yet how do you know what you want if you have yet to experience everything the world, with the myriad places, people and experience it fosters + harvests on a daily basis? Well put simply, you don’t!
So have your essentials + fundamentals, but be prepared to discover something new, revealing, unexpected. For me that’s the definition of living well, of experiencing ALL that the world continues to (re)create and manifest. So don’t MEASURE and compare, rate and rank, one place/person/experience/activity to the other, give each it’s OWN MEANING!
Significance of mobility
For many years I’ve fostered a burning desire to discover and explore, yet often lacked the means to access. It probably partly explains why I am so effusive in my praise + appreciation when I am experiencing something because of its novelty. As experiences of places, people and activities have often been rare, I am hugely grateful and will take full advantage of the chance I have when it arises.
I will squeeze every drop of juice from the fruit in my palm, and rinse the remnants on my skin with my soul as I dance to the beat of the drum in my heart.
Just ask my fellow travellers! When they join me for a trip, many are exhausted afterwards, but leave with eternal memories + a cascade of emotions that will forever keep them beaming. That’s what matters most to me.
Nevertheless, as I write, my level of mobility is beginning to evolve, but I will never undervalue the significance of having the means to open up doors and pursue a plethora of possibilities + opportunities. It’s frustrating when you have to wait on other people/systems/institutions, and/or remain dependent on them to be able to do things you enjoy! I am just grateful that I can now do more, and excited by the adventures that lie ahead!
Appreciation + Discovery
This has probably already come across in previous paragraphs, but this is what life is all about for me: appreciation, and discovery. Of people, places, activities, experiences, past-present-future. Good, bad, whatever emotion they evoke. I’ll be grateful and grow from there.
It’s the ethos of my blog, and these sentiments + values are most pronounced in series like #GUSH + #FREESCENCES. Check the overview of each series if you haven’t before by clicking on each word + hashtag.
Life isn’t a sport, a series of activities to score wins + avoid losses, but an art where I try to live with feeling, meaning, and endless curiosity. It isn’t a series of acts of consuming anything and everything you encounter, a transaction of give and take, it’s an EXCHANGE.
Life is about experiencing meaning, not finding something to measure. Live your life according to YOUR OWN values + feelings, make your own plan, carve your own schedule, and also be prepared for this to formulate itself, in the moment.
drBACKPACK 