MUSINGS FROM MIDLIFE
My Stories
Finding Something in Nothing
"Just where you are - that's the place to start." Pema Chodron
Five am and the rooster crows. My alarm clock. Usually I love it, prone to making me chuckle whilst climbing out of bed. This morning I hate it. The usual up and go is not there. I lie still. Fuck this. Full of anguish. My heart caving in. Can I even launch myself out of bed? I am exhausted, bordering on broken.
A training morning. I need to get my kit on and go. The world seems like a black and white slow-motion movie, with no sound. I do not know how but I get dressed. I pedal twenty-five minutes to the velodrome.
The Journey
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice — though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. “Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you did not stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognised as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do — determined to save the only life you could save.