Today is going to be a relatively short one because I am neck deep in stuff, trying to answer the following question-
How to pack a life into two suitcases?
I have three days to pack up my life, dividing it into three piles (if only there were just three physical piles 🤣!)-
Take
Store
Throw away / give away
This is because since my last post, everything, as predicted, is ‘Go, go, go!’
It’s hugely exciting. I’ve got a licence to practice, and a temporary work permit, which means the plan is real. At the end of the month I’m leaving the UK and heading off to live and work in the Cayman Islands!
It is evident that different parts of me have very different levels of acceptance of the reality of this. I am grateful that the very practical part is dealing with the to-do-list with an impressive level of skill and persistence. I am seeing flexibility, task management, and problem solving in levels that I had no idea I possessed! A great friend commented on it being a vertical learning curve, and that perfectly sums up my feeling of climbing an eternal mountain. Climbing a mountain whilst the clock is ticking…
Every so often I notice that another part of me is watching on, happily enjoying the day, and every so often, she hears someone ask where I’m going to be living in two weeks, and she hears me answer, and maybe sees me show a photo. I experience a sense of her sitting up slightly and lifting her head, asking, ‘What? What’s happening?’, as if this is all totally new to her. Yet still she seems to brush it off, going about her day, maybe making lunch, and putting the washing out! If the penny doesn’t drop for her soon, she’s going to be in for a rude awakening when we get on that coach to the airport with our life in suitcases, and no return journey home!
I suspect this part of me is protecting me from the magnitude of change that will result from this amazing adventure. Not ready to appreciate the reality of being unable to call up my friends to go for a walk before dinner. Not having the ease of the routine route to the shops, and the conversations with people I bump into on a walk into town, the comfortable exchange of wildly different opinions in book group- all things that come from being in a place for a long time, and building deep friendships with people and places.
She loves these things about her life, of course she doesn’t want to think about leaving them all!
But huge things are about to happen, and such a lot is about to change. Like entering a new romantic relationship, I am offering my life, and my heart to someone new, a country and the people in it, and asking
‘What kind of life might we make together?’
No matter how compatible I think we might be, no-one can tell me how this will all turn out. I simply have to discover it by being in it!
Here I am!
After such uncertainty, it is wonderful to have been able to start the many balls rolling. In the last week I’ve been able to book a flight, find tenants for my house, and book the removals. Which reminds me, I need to confirm the storage unit. It isn’t going to be any fun if I’ve created my three piles, and the most valuable one has no-where to go from the van!
And right now, I really I ought to sorting and packing, and not writing this! The clock is ticking very loudly. My neighbour stepped in from the rain this morning, looked into my front room and declared how much I had to do. She offered her thoughts about another problem that had popped up in the last 24 hours, generously offering so much advice, that in the end I had to throw her out,
‘You have to go,’ I said, laughing. ‘There’s so much I need to do!’
And this afternoon I found myself sorting through a pile of writing, listening to an audiobook by Jack Kornfield, remembering the benefits of mindfulness and the RAIN approach (by Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach, see this link for more information).
Recognise
Accept
Investigate
Non-identification
Whilst on N for non-identification, I opened an old notebook, and a page fell out. I picked it up and started to read a poem with no name, dated 8th November 2017-
What do you know, cat?
What do you see
with eyes dark and searching,
looking at me?
I wonder and I ponder
what a cat knows
as she sits and stares
chest rising and falling with
the soft buzz of her purr.
A stillness which takes
me weeks, months, years to achieve
in meditation, undoing
the spirit of the age,
the passion for speed, for doing, for achieving.
My cat achieves nothing
but stillness,
watchfulness,
and sudden bursts of a pounce,
to catch a passing moth.
Not to eat it
but to torture and play,
patting it with her paws
until it falls
still.
She is tamed,
captive in her comfort
dependent on me.
I feed her.
I keep her warm and dry.
I furnish her with soft furnishings
where she curls up and purrs.
Does she want more?
Filled with questions of life’s purpose?
I cannot know,
yet at moments I see a light in her eyes.
Understanding
(unspoken of course)
something more.
And for a moment,
together, I think we know it all.
The universe is ours.
And then that glimmer is gone.
Cat and I are simply
Cat and I.
She turns away,
declining to share her
wisdom with me.
Pretending she doesn’t have any.
Just a cat stilling herself to sleep.
After reading the first few lines I felt tears on my face, and put the poem down.
I wrote this poem about my cat, who sadly died earlier this year. Her passing made this adventure possible, and I miss her every day. Her ashes are in a box, which as I type, is sitting on a shelf just above my head. What am I to do with her? It is a question I have asked many times, and not yet found the answer to.
How cold the options seem when considering the things we love-
Take
Store
Throw away / give away
I am reminded of a fourth option; one I already put into action when I gave a picture to someone, asking them to look after it until I came back, not knowing when that might be. It was my way of saying goodbye, but think of me still, have a little part of me. Being held in mind is even more special when we cannot be held within arms. And some things are too precious to be packed away.
As the rain falls in these last few days of summer, I think of my cat, with such gratitude that she came to me. Not everything that we take with us in life can be packed into a suitcase and carried physically. We cannot pack up our lives, and we cannot always give precious things to others to look after, but that doesn’t matter because the most important stuff is deep within us. My cat has been the greatest teacher to me, and whatever I do with her ashes, it is time for me to take her teachings on my adventure xx
Thank you to all the people who have helped make it possible to go on this adventure, and to everyone who will help in multiple ways over the coming weeks and months. There is a lot still to do, and if I am not able to post another article for a while, I shall be finding moments of stillness in the RAIN, and hopefully pausing to put my feet up for a few days as the first page of the new chapter turns.
But for now, I hear the clock ticking ever more loudly, and I need to go back to that ‘to-do-list’!
So exciting Jo. Reading your words takes me right back to the time when I was packing up to move to New Zealand, thinking I'd be back in a year! Can't wait to hear more of how your adventures unfold over there, please keep us posted 😀
How exciting - so happy for you 💛 I was in a similar situation about 10 years ago and remember well the frantic last few days of packing - and reading this has reminded me how taking that leap was life-changing - so glad I did it - wishing you a wonderful adventure 💛