Alive

Julia Chi Taylor

Anadi and I spent our New Year on a mini break within our Christmas break!

We had taken the whole week off to play and be together

And then – to see the New year in – we ‘journeyed’ for just twenty five minutes on the tube – to Richmond…!

Transported in a flash to a completely new land… It was as if we were seeing it for the first time…

The building we stayed overlooking a river across a road – a vast tranquil vista – with parkland just two minutes walk away.

A lovely room to relax in, with sumptuous bed – and a spa to return to after we’d circled the beauteous wooded grassy sandy trails on the first morning of 2022…

The weather like spring – we jogged and talked our way around the landscape we know so well

And yet each step ever new – treading the pathways with others on foot, on bikes – and we waited awhile to cross a trail – as little people on little ponies went by…

All of us were taking our first steps into a new year, a new day, a new hour, minute, second – a new moment…

Creating our lives with each footfall, with each breath

From the source of all creation – all we know and don’t know emerging and ever expanding

We the light of our own lives

Creating and shaping

The energy limitless

When we allow its magic

And forget everything we ever thought we were…

Who we are cannot be thought.

And yet thought is how we create our experiences here…

So it is worth becoming conscious of what we are thinking!

Conscious that we are thinking…! And take time to experience the silence in the gaps between thoughts. 

And then when we witness from this place of stillness

We can watch our lives unfolding

In each step.

This step when we live it fully – wholly – always takes care of the next…

However many times I have run around Richmond park – and I have been doing so for over forty years now – it is always different…. 

New, fresh, magic, holding the promise of the fresh, without end or beginning.

Life shimmering in every breath we take.  

What a gift we have, this wonderful opportunity

To be here, now

Alive 

Dear Diary; Life is to be Lived

Richmond Park in autumn, brown green red leaves, green grass, green parakeets – and people… Cycling, walking, wandering people – dogs bounding about in the watery yellow November sun…

We had woken late on Sunday and made our way to a coffee shop for breakfast… Carrying our cups of steaming coffee and paper bag with pastries in, we had found a spot on the pavement where the sun shone bright – we basked there like lizards – enjoying the warmth of the almost winter rays on our faces … The day before has seen us breakfasting instead on a bench in the rain – we had huddled on one under the covering of a building!

We then found our way to Wimbledon common and ran about for awhile on the expansive verdant grass, following a route along beside the golf course, and then through the woods, we crossed the road to Richmond Park…

I ran there first forty years ago, no path carved as there is today; back then we found our way around the outside, climbing over fallen trees and running on paths made by the deer and other runners… I was twenty one and a half years young – hardly begun.

Now the route is clear and ordered but still the wildness remains, the raw beauty, nature abundant with crackly autumn all about.

A dog splashed into the water beside us

We laughed 

And on we ran… I am sixty one and a half years young now – hardly begun.

Every new day dawning as if it were the first one ever

To be lived… It is the first one ever, there is no other like this one… I like to run with no purpose now; like the child I was when I first begun – to run – for fun – for the joy of each step…

Of course in truth, even when I picked up ‘purpose’ – there never was – but I thought there was…

Miles to be logged

Times recorded

Journeying to a race, and then another and another…

With purpose… And I discovered so much in this purpose – about my self – and about how to let go… So that now once more there is none…I have journeyed in a circle, and now it looks very much the same, this life of mine.

I go running – but instead of logging the miles and recording the times

I don’t… 

The running step revealed to me so much, the purposes I followed showed me the way back to my self – to run to become.

And so it is…

Whatever path we are treading is our own to tread

There is no one way to truth, no authority can lead us there…

Every person must find their own way

The purpose of life is to live it

With a purpose or without

To live

Life is for the living

Life is to be lived