Unexpected reading
Dusting a crammed shelf next to my desk, my working copy of Trapped falls to the floor and I pick it up and open it.
It is unexpected reading; and I am scared, not because, as used to be the case, I am anxious about finding grammar glitches and typos, but because I wonder now, how I will feel about the writing, and the experiences after so long. Have they finally left me and gone away to a dignified retirement? Am I encouraged by what I read?
I’m baffled and bemused to discover that it still makes my eyes water; and I notice in the midst of what was always an appeal for help, the acres of time I wasted. Even as an adolescent, I was aware of that wasted time and regretted it; but now, I think, Why did I accept it? How the Hell did I tolerate it?
The answer, like these questions that have sat up and beg me to pay attention, lies I suspect in the discipline and open-ness to truth that is forced on me by getting older. There is something about being young, that feeling of having all the time in the world, that gives us permission to sit and wait. That sense of timelessness which we can squander is often characterised as the joyous, endless horizon of youth, the notion that anything is possible. And so it is, providing we take the chance to do something. Or else, it can become a field of endless, formless regrets.

Inevitably, the field narrows as we get older, until our demise ceases to be a remote probability and becomes an urgent motivator: It’s got to be now or never! While young, I accepted my situation because I could see no way to get out of it, and I tolerated it, because there was no choice. I had neither the type of Georgette Heyer character nor the energy to defy expectations by leaping up and eloping. Nor, in fact, did I have any idea what I would rather do. Oh, yes, of course I knew I wanted to get away, and dreaming of escape has always been a favourite fantasy, but after the escape, what then? That was always the stumbling block.
Thanks for reading.
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May 8, 2019 @ 9:59 am
I still remember reading this powerful book. I think we all have our regrets at time wasted when young. If I could go back there I would go back and give myself a darned good boot up the frock – I could get really angry with myself about it – and I didn’t have the fences to negotiate that you did. In the end – what can you do but put it all down to experience and step right over it. I know live in the now is a fairly trite thing to say but there comes a time when that is actually quite comfortable. xx
May 8, 2019 @ 12:05 pm
Thanks, Diane, for your thoughtful comments. Do we all have regrets at time wasted? If so, that is a comfort. There is no reason for rehearsing regrets, is there? That said, I do have days in which I find myself assaulted by sorrow, swimming in it, and puzzled, after feeling genuinely free and cheerful. Perhaps that may have something to do with moving more slowly than I would like to, so that I feel I never outpace my regrets. Or perhaps it’s simply down to the weather. The best cure I’ve found so far is to get outside and notice the world moving…
Thanks so much. xxx