And to think I let him captain my magic carpet in my dream last night

I got set some homework by my spiritual director to write something about what the last few weeks have been about. This is what I wrote.

So. The last few weeks. A few hundred hours that have seen me inexorably creeping towards the day, the hour, the minute, the second - the precise moment - of my death. That’s not a moment I ever really think about. It’s off, unseen, in the future, and I think about the future about as often as an apple does. The future’s like some abstract concept that’s so abstruse as to be rendered meaningless, a bit like wondering what precise thought at this exact moment in time is living in the mind of an accounts clerk living in Swindon. The only time the future ever figures prominently in my mind is thinking about what and when I’m going to eat next. So actually, I suppose, that means I’m thinking about the future for pretty much most of my waking time. But remove anything edible from the picture, and it’s fair to say I’m as short-sighted as a mole on dope when it comes to viewing life through the lens of time.

However the future’s been muscling in on my thinktank these last few weeks, albeit in a sneaky, indirect sort of way, by disguising itself as the present. For I’ve been feeling a growing agitation and frustration with my life as it is now, which has led to me thinking about what I might feel looking back from the hypothetical vantage point of the day of my death.

As 2011 uncomplainingly trotted towards its wintry demise I’d been feeling weighed down by a relentless fatigue and weariness. I reasoned that my job was playing a reasonably sized role in that, so I was looking forward to some time off over the Christmas holidays. And quite rightly so, for it was lovely having a three-week hiatus from the drudgery of being a faceless automaton doing an unfulfilling job in a field of work for which I care about as much a rat’s hairy left buttock.

Christmas Day itself serves as a handy little microcosm of what those three Yuletide weeks were like. It was a gently paced day of many parts that gave it movement and life, without ever really being overly tiring - a bit of time enjoying the green and sun outside, a spot of tasty time eating sodding good food, some quality time with friends, and fun time playing games. Because games are fun.

I didn’t realise quite how cathartic a time this was though until my first day back in the office. Half an hour sat at my desk was enough to prompt my one and only New Year’s Resolution. For those 30 long minutes had suddenly dragged me back into the familiar feelings of tiredness, apathy, unfulfilled-ness and frustration; they had pressed play again on the tape that would often be the soundtrack to my working day: an endless loop of me saying “I DON’T CARE” in a tired, apathetic, unfulfilled and frustrated voice. And so I resolved to not be doing the same job in a year’s time.

If I was more trusting I may well have quit there and then, but then that may not have left me with enough money to buy myself burritos, so I restrained myself. I envied Kate though, that she was able to pooh pooh her job when it was pooing all over her health, as I’m sure that putting my poor old body through this every day is playing silly buggers with my health.

Because I’m a clever old bean, though, I know full well that the rubbishness of my job is only part of a wider problem. I’m not just feeling tired, unfulfilled and frustrated in a multinational bank, but in much of life as well. And because I’m an insightful old bean I know full well that that frustration is directed at myself, and I’m tired of myself.

I’m tired of waiting, waiting for something where I don’t even know what it is, other than a new life that obviously isn’t going to magically appear or, more likely, an inevitable decline of my health and life.

I’m frustrated that I give in to fear and choose the safest, risk-free option. I’m unfulfilled by being closed, and by meeting an opportunity and looking for the reasons to say no. I don’t want to pass time, kill time, and to shrivel, shrink, waste and rot until I get to the end of my life and think, well, the food and cups of tea may have been lovely but really, was that it?

I want growth, depth, life, fullness. I want to experience fully, to taste fully, to hear fully, to express fully, to live fully, in all of life’s myriad highs and lows. I want divine union, and to feel that breath breathing through me.

I want to say yes. I want to believe in myself, and to not think I’m useless and incapable. I want sharpness - to sharpen and be sharpened. I want to share. I want to live with expectancy. I want to see obstacles as things to be overcome, not reasons to not even bother trying. I want a mirror, so I can see the times when my subconscious is sneakily making me settle for the illusion of safety without me even realising it. I want to move, and I want to move away from creating my own peace in a still but stagnant pool, and instead to find harmony in the life of the river. Along with some nice wild salmon, as I rather fancy cooking them up into some proper tasty treats.