being alive – Jonathan's Journal

My experiences last year in hospital and the time spent in Intensive Care clinging onto life has taught me a great deal. I was a frail, sensitive child. The archetypal seven-stone weakling. Yet, I have surmounted the seemingly insurmountable. I have stared death in the face and found myself, even in my weakest moments (both physically and mentally) and against all odds, able to keep up the fight to remain here.

I was listening to music earlier. It’s the relationship with silence which makes music so moving, for me at least. It’s in the interplay of the music against the backdrop of silence which was there before the song began and will be there when it has stopped, which makes music so affecting. The omnipresent silence therefore the canvas onto which music is sonically painted.

As it was then last year when my life hung in the balance, the silence of non-existence juxtaposed against the fight to stay here, even though one day I’ll be gone. I just knew my journey wasn’t done, that more of life needed to play out. I likely will not amount to much in societal or worldly terms but that’s not the point. I am reminded of the quote spoken by Warren Zevon back in 2002 as he edged closer to the silence having been given the diagnosis of terminal cancer. “Enjoy every sandwich” he opined on Letterman.

You know, I never really understood that sentiment until fairly recently when I was once again able to eat and enjoy a sandwich. Up until then I had been very careful about what I ate due to the extensive nature of the bowel surgery I had undergone. Life is strange. I had been wanting to go fully vegan before all the drama of last year and had successfully cut out red meat but still occasionally ate white meat and some dairy. Now, all of that makes me feel physically sick and I end up on the toilet a lot, which leads to that area stinging and burning, so in a way what happened forced me to adopt the life I always wanted but hadn’t given myself fully to before.

So it was then, I took a bite of a sandwich.

The softness of the bread, the tastiness of the filling, the feeling of doing something usual again after so long of eating in essence, bland foods. Before all of this, I would have needed to have been taken to a great restaurant with the most extensive menu to feel anything like that but nope, there I was, sat in my kitchen tucking into a regular sandwich and it tasted incredible.

But more so than that, it took me directly into that given moment. I could never get my head around the concept of Living In The Moment. I was always thinking about the past or planning towards a future. I understood it in my head but it never resonated with me fully. Now it does and I get it. I am now completely focused on whatever it is I am doing in any moment and I give my all to it, whatever it happens to be.

The backdrop is always silence, whether it be the knowledge that one day I won’t be here in the form I am now, as I once again enter non-existence or just writing in ‘silence’ which is never possible as there is always some sound happening whether it be one of the cats purring, the hum of the refrigerator, an owl hooting outside, rain pelting against the window. I’m okay with not existing as we all reach that state anyhow.

The simplicity of the moment is always there, perhaps making a cup of tea which has now become a minor ceremony as I imagine how many people, how many pairs of hands, how many lives were involved in the process of getting the tea from the Sri Lankan fields to my warmed teapot and then a flavoursome brew. It can be watching the refuse collectors first thing in the morning, as the truck makes its way up the street and often under the cover of darkness. The unsung heroes who work the menial jobs with little to no thanks and who get up at ungodly hours to work a totally unglamorous job, just so our lives run a little smoother.

Everything is different now.

My entire outlook has changed and for the better. I don’t just sense the interconnectedness between all things, I see it, I hear it, I KNOW it. But what I have been completely unprepared for is how much I have become the silence which is always there, playing out against the backdrop of my own life.

When I was a small boy, I had 2 large maps which I used to lay out on the floor. One was of the world and the other was of the UK. I used to put books on the corners to stop the maps from curling up from where they had been rolled up and stowed away beforehand. I used to feel like a giant looking down at both maps. The world map seemed so vast. Each country a miniature representation. I would look at capital cities and know that within that dot were millions of people in real-life, out there someplace, milling about and doing their thing.

The UK map showed just the geographical area in which I lived and yet the scope was still hard to get my head around. The idea that within each place name were people, places, houses, cars, families, lives. I was trying to visualise a person. Just one person. How they might look on that map but again the scale was too large for me to do that. Nowadays with online maps we can zoom in and make out individual people, cars and then zoom out again. That was what I was trying for. I was trying to make sense of the vastness of the world outside of what I knew. Outside of my street, the suburb in which I lived, the wider county and then the country. It was endlessly fascinating to me.

So it was recently, that I found myself in the back garden looking at areas where I could place bird feeders. It was in doing this, I discovered a concrete bird bath. I thought if I could cut the foliage from around it and wash it out, that would make an ideal place for the smaller birds to come and drink as well as wash themselves. I noticed there were a number of leaves in there. I approached to start moving them out from there when suddenly hundreds of tiny little insects began jumping into the air. Their home was the bird bath. When they were jumping they could easily be seen however when they settled back down again, they were invisible. A tiny world within the world of the garden, within the street, within the local area, within a suburb, within a district of a wider town. Worlds within worlds. I left them to it, without further disturbances.

I was that little boy again delighting in the enormity of the world except for a split second I was in insect form looking at the giant of the man who stood there spellbound in that timeless moment. Ever since spending time in hospital last year, I feel an interconnectedness with all things. I have always cared for the natural world and tended to it however there’s a spiritual side to it all now. A feeling of being alive in this moment and so when I am in the presence of other living organisms, whatever the size, I feel a sense of gratitude, awe and wonder that we are all here in this moment, reflecting life back to one another.

I am sitting here now typing this. I have a boy cat stretched out on the floor beside me and a girl cat laying with her head on her catnip toy. Across from me is the Buddleia bush which has grown exponentially since planting it out 2 Summers ago. In front of that is Hypericum and then to my right is a damson tree and to the left a hedge of some sort. Within that will be insects, arachnids, all sorts of creatures and they are all here right now, living out their lives.

Before I was taken into hospital and then into Intensive Care, I was aware of all of this on a knowledge level however subsequent to leaving and returning back to the land of the living, I am now aware of the world around me on a feelings level as well. It’s as if the millions of living creatures, some so tiny you would need a microscope to see them are all collectively in my mind’s eye all of the time.

Everywhere I look is life. The buds are returning to the bushes and trees, the garden looks greener by the day, the sun today has got its hat on, the birds are singing and within the boundary of my home and garden are millions of life forms. Their lives will largely go unnoticed by the many however not by me. Worlds within worlds within worlds.

Tag: being alive

Silence As The Backdrop To Life

Worlds Within Worlds