Inner journeys

Watch Out

Yesterday’s post got me thinking… I believe I gave up wearing a watch when I was thirty years old. I have never worn one since.

It was a symbolic gesture. For the previous seven years I had been Director of a family and children’s service agency in Northern Ontario. The job had required a high degree of organization and responsible management of my time. I oversaw the work of 30 social workers; was legal guardian for one hundred and fifty children; answered to a demanding Board of Directors; and advocated for thousands of indigenous and French Canadian families living in an area of 300,00 square miles.

Time was always of the essence. Organization, structure, clarity, efficiency, and just plain energy were important ingredients in a recipe for success. Deadlines and schedules were a vital and constant part of my daily life.It was a wonderful ride while it lasted…and then one day it just stopped…around the time I let go of my watch.

It was not a sudden thing. I had known the end was coming for sometime. I knew that a certain body of work had been completed. I could have stayed. I was loved and respected and they wanted to pay me…essentially whatever I wanted…except that I didn’t want anything. I was complete…and I actually had the sense that professionally there was nothing else to do there At the age of thirty I was finished…and content. What next…if anything?

Do you know the feeling? Sometimes these transformative moments come quite suddenly…a near death experience…the loss of a loved one…the birth of a new life. There are many such moments. The thing is that we often don’t catch the moment or understand the real significance of the event until later…if ever.

Yesterday I chanced upon an interview with John Cleese, the iconic British comic of Monty Python and Faulty Towers fame…among other achievements. In the course of the interview he mentioned that he disliked repeating a comedy routine. It didn’t feel authentic…perhaps a little dishonest… and it definitely was boring.

This was exactly the sense I had when I dumped my last watch. I couldn’t repeat the same act…I couldn’t keep on doing the same thing every day.I needed to incorporate what I had learned and carry it to a new level. I believe that that desire is part of the creative experience and the desire to develop a meaningful spiritual life is definitely a creative Path.

On the lighter side I initially justified my action by saying, “ Why do I need a watch when everyone else has one? If I really need to know the time I can just stop someone and ask.” That generally worked well…and sometimes it didn’t. I was in Montreal some years ago and I was late for a meeting with my son. It was an “Oh no, I’ve done it again!” moment. I was on the run. As I crossed a main artery a man passed in front of me…definitely a watch wearer. I was running and waving…yelling in French and English, “ Pardon me sir, but can you tell me the time?”

The man seemed terrified. I repeated my request. Finally he came out of his paralysis and started running away from me, all the time yelling, “No! No! No!” with his hands up in the air.

Ha!” I thought, as I kept running, “so he was English.“ but I had no idea what had happened…why my simple request had caused him such anguish and fear. I arrived a little late and when I explained to my son what had happened he advised me that it was not wise to ask for the time… or anything else on the streets of Montreal. Chances are that my simple request would be misunderstood and if someone took offense that might not be so good for my health.

My, how times have changed over the years that I have been on the planet. We have largely lost the innocence and comradery that was part of daily life when I was a child.

Do you ever think about that? I mean about how your time has passed/is passing and about your place within it. The best way for me to describe my sense of the passing of time is that I am sitting in a very small boat…perhaps a canoe. I am in a river. I believe that I know the destination of the river that I am in but I am not sure. I have never been there before. The river currents change constantly…as does the vegetation along the shores and the shore itself. Occasionally some lighter debris flows past. something from upstream…from my past…catching up with me as it were…maybe I notice it…maybe not…but it is all part of the journey.

What I am trying to suggest is that we really never make much sense out of it all…unless we pay attention…to the river…the currents…the obstacles…the weather…and especially the debris that catches up with us. Life can be a pretty surrealistic journey….one that can have very little meaning unless we pay attention to the details…unless we connect the dots as it were. I had no sense of this deeper meaning when I was young. I was just enjoying myself in the deep end of the pool. How my sense of time and its meaning has changed over the years

Which brings to mind a Jimmy Cliff song…I Can See Clearly Now…”I can see clearly now the rain is gone. I can see all the obstacles in my way. Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind. It’s goon be a bright bright sunshiny day…a bright, bright sunshiny day.” Rock on Jimmy…and thanks..I finally got the message after all these years.

Towards the end of the John Cleese interview the interviewer asked him if, after all his great successes, there was anything else left that might be of interest to him…that might challenge him. Cleese paused..reflected…and then replied that he was very happy living with his sheep and goats but that yes, there was one thing that he wanted to investigate and that one thing was whether or not there was any deeper meaning to what we call “life.”

In a sense I was asking the same question when I took my watch off so many years ago. Of course I had no idea of that at the time. Now I do…Now I am connecting the dots…I am actively pursuing that deeper meaning…or perhaps it is the IT in me that is leading me on. i I don’t really know.

But what happened after I dumped the watch definitely did change my life…and as so often happens when we take strong life changing decisions…a teacher appears…often in unusual circumstances. Mine showed up in a beauty magazine in a dentist’s office in Kapuskasing, Ontario.