The Totality of Experience

“Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. 
Sometimes we cry with everything except tears. 
In the end that’s all there is: 
love and its duty, 
sorrow and its truth. 
In the end that’s all we have - to hold on tight until the dawn”

- Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram
The sun casts a glance over the city of Zurich as I think about totality; the everything. The Swiss alps lay silently in the background as a cello softens my eyelids and relaxes my breathing. It is not so much what happens to us over elongated periods of time, but what we allow to happen to us in those unsuspecting instances that seem to find us. There is a journey of trips, dances, wide and narrow strides, falls and fumbles before us all; the only thing that I might contribute to mastery is the willingness to allow it. 

I try not to write guru-esque or with specific individuals in the periphery, but the only paint on my canvas has come from the significant others that trip and dance in my proximity, whether they be in the flesh or on the page. Today is a calm breeze that needs no punches or promises. Today is a willingness to accept the everything that I recognise from a few years ago, but its softness escaped me. I close my eyes every minute or so and smile; it is all still there. It is the reason my body moves as it does and my mind works in the way that it works. The quiet breath in behind closed eyes and the breath out as the lips curl up at the side in to a peaceful smile is the totality of experience: Ebb and flow.

In drawing a blank we create the space necessary to contain solution. In hopelessness we learn answers we could never previously hope to possess. In agony we learn how much we should push on towards joy. The problem I see floating around this is the stress response. The quickness of breath. The internal pressure to escape. In Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, if a man has his arms around your throat and you panic, you will lose consciousness. If you regulate yourself and spend what time you have investigating the mechanics of the situation then those same arms will teach you a solution. Being back on the matts again has reminded me of the softness that I allowed to escape me. 

I recall almost losing my mind a few years ago when I realised that each moment contains every moment that has been before it. I was asked how I felt, and I drew a blank for a minute or so. I realised that in order to respond I would have to list the entire spectrum of feelings whatever they might be. Ecstasy made me aware of agony, and loneliness paced the room with togetherness on its heavy shoulders. Sorrow brought me a smile that led me to solace, and solace reminded me that there are times when there is nothing to grab hold of. Then, with empty hands, I learnt that I had the space to nurture love and in loving I remembered what it was to live without it. 

I desire to be immersed in water looking over this sun kissed Zurich for the last time, and I want to do so with so many of you in mind. Some of you will be named, others will be anonymous, but all of you will be there...

I rest my fingers on my eyelids until they feel like someone else's. I grant my eyes permission to moisten. I place myself, aged ten, sat on my mother's knee with my left thumb in my mouth. I pull my hand away from my eyes and look at the two tears on my finger tips. I am sat at her funeral with my sister pulled tightly to me, not so much sad, but grateful for her. I am walking along the roads of my childhood with her children; silenced by a love that had until then terrified me. I am looking up at my late father smiling down on me as I walk roadside, hand in hand with a beautiful woman. He tries to tell me he is sorry, but I stop him. "It is your time to listen to me," I tell him. "I love you." The beautiful woman hears it and turns to me. I watch her eyes looking back at mine, and in that moment love and fear coexist. There are moments in life that are so beautiful that we must beam and weep simultaneously. 

Nothing exists without its opposite. Peace can not be felt having not weathered the storms, and one could not survive the turbulence without an awareness of light summer breezes. I am sat in a hotel room on my own, and with every one of you. I am as joyful as I am sad. There will, no doubt, be a time when the heart tries to close again, but to worry about that is to prematurely close the heart. For all of the love and pain that the rest of this journey brings, I welcome you in totality. 

Thank you for seeing me this far. x 





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