Not failure ...

I have written before about my need to put things in writing as a way of unravelling and making sense of my own thoughts and feelings. I do not know when this started but it is certainly not a lifelong habit; in looking back, I am aware of the complete absence of anything resembling what has now become completely normal for me. I can only recall one occasion (prior to consciously setting out on this Journey in Faith) when I did something similar, and that was while in Spain after leaving school.
It is strange to think that I was eighteen years old at the time, had not started work, had not met the person I would marry, had no children of my own, and had never imagined the home in which I now live. In short, my life as I now know it had yet to begin; and, though completely unaware of it at the time, I had no idea who I really was, and had not even begun to wonder who I was going to be.

The few bits of writing I did during those weeks in Spain were not done for the same reasons at all, though I now recognize in my fragmented memory of them hints of what was to come. The single occasion when writing helped me to see clearly what my thoughts and intentions were, came about as a result of simply feeling rather fed-up and generally down in spirit. I had only two or three days left before I was due to sail from Vigo back to Southampton, and, having that day had a single lift on a lorry all the way from Alicante to Vigo, I was just marking time until the boat took me home. I was annoyed, in a way, at having had such a good lift, but at the same time I was ready to return.
All I could do was hang about. I was hungry, having been living on a shilling a day for the last two weeks, though that did buy me a bread roll, a piece of cheese, half a kilo of grapes, and wine in my wineskin. I looked forward to the boat as the thirty-six hour journey included several meals - all paid for with the return ticket I had bought in England.

I had walked out of the town looking for somewhere to spend the night, and it had begun to rain. Having not found anywhere better, (I found a dry place in a timber yard for the next night) I walked into a wood on a hillside overlooking the road, and sat down on my rucksack against one of the tree trunks with my groundsheet thrown over my head and back. I had no tent.
As it grew darker, and colder, and wetter, I began to think about what I was going to do when I got home; what I was going to do with my life. And then I began to write it down. I knew exactly what I would do, and I resolved to turn my thoughts into reality. I would make my parents proud of me, and I knew how I was going to do it. I would take my place happily in the real world of family, routine and work.
By the time I put the notebook away, I had tearfully promised my parents and God that I would make it all happen, and, with my new-found resolutions helping to make me feel happier with my lot, I huddled down tighter under my groundsheet in the hope of getting some much needed sleep.

Sleep did not come; only more cold (it was October), continual rain, and the early discovery that my groundsheet was no longer waterproof. The longed for dawn found me soaked and shivering, and the discomfort made me every bit as miserable as I had been before thinking the thoughts which had developed into those promises.
I was already losing my belief in what I had resolved to do, but I told myself it did not matter anyway as I was the only one who knew; they were only thoughts, not real promises.
I was slipping before I had even started, and I felt guilty about that. I was failing almost as soon as I had made the decision, and, having promised not only my parents and God but also myself, the whole episode only contributed further to pre-existing feelings of failure which, for the most part, I had managed to keep suppressed.
But those thoughts had been written down, and though nobody else would ever know of them, they would not completely leave me while I still had that notebook; - and that was to be for a very long time.
I finally destroyed it twenty seven years later.

It was my memory of that night that prompted me to write to someone years later when I heard from the parents that they had received a worrying letter. Their son, far from home, had made it clear that he was feeling very low. When those to whom we write are unable to help in any way through lack of contact and not knowing exactly where we are, such information is naturally upsetting and disturbing. My letter contained thoughts based on my own experience of writing while feeling low but without posting anything to anyone, and without speaking about it later. My suggestion then still stands for anyone in a similar position today; that we should write our thoughts down somewhere that will enable us – at any time – to either keep or destroy them, rather than actually writing home with them. Writing home, or making any other form of contact, is of course the right thing to do if we include details of where we are and our plans for the immediate future; even more right if we are asking for someone to come and get us. But without this, all we do is perpetuate the worry in those who most love us and care for us. Recording our negative thoughts and feelings, but keeping them to ourselves, not only protects others from undue worry but also leaves us in a position where we can still, at any moment, take complete control of our own life without any shadows of conscience to confuse the picture; shadows resulting from having shared important thoughts with others and then appearing to fail to see things through.

Feelings of failure are just as likely to cast shadows without others knowing anything of what goes on within us; in all probability we shall think we have failed ourselves. But this should be seen differently; we have not failed, but have simply changed our minds; and changing one's mind is not necessarily a bad thing.
It is probable that, however true we think we are being to ourselves, we are still being influenced in our decisions, ideas and desires, by a constant stream of outside forces, some recognizable and others not. And when we think we have at last come to know what we really want, we enter into that supposed solution for a while, until something wells up within us once more, building in force, until we can no longer continue along the path we have taken.
It is not always that we decide to get off through lack of perseverance, or a realization of having misjudged either the path or it's destination, but rather that we are made to change direction: we are forced off that particular path.
There is a path, a direction, and a whole way of being that is right for each of us: - for which we have been made; and we can experience much of our search for that right course as being pushed aside into what feels like failure. It feels like failure because we have not yet found it; we have taken another wrong turn, and if the direction had been one into which we had been led by others, the unavoidable sense of having let them down can turn our supposed failure into an even deeper distress. But this is where we are called to believe in ourselves, and to believe in the worth of whatever burns deep within us. This is the gift with which we have been blessed, and recognition of it reveals the light that will guide each of us into the fulfilment of our potential.
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