And, to pick up the story from
it’s really quite riveting cliff hanger yesterday, I do indeed open the door,
go back into the kitchen and COOK. I take the three recipes, I turn the heat
back on, pick up the chopping board and the knife and the ingredients and I, to
use an American phrase, cook the hell of them. We do have a virtual beer
session with our friends, which is predictably fantastic. They are a set of
people for whom the miles do not make a difference, and, as they are also one
of those groups of people with whom it is possible to share any sadnesses, but
also with whom it is possible to forget them, and lose ourselves in just having
fun, they are perfect.
Back to the cooking though, as I
triumphantly pile my Som Tam salad onto a plate, adding the garnish of a
carefully patterned ring of sliced tomato and cucumber, I feel confidence
flooding through me like a transfusion.
“Wow.” Says M.
It’s all the endorsement I need.
I add a flourish to each dish, boil eggs as an added garnish and marinade them
in soy sauce. I arrange each dish lovingly, moving them around until they are
in what seems to me to be the perfect formation. If M is agog he is kind enough
not to say so.
The fact is, it is clear to me as
I cook, and my mind settles, that I have always known that this was the
solution. I am an ‘all or nothing’ person. If I am sad because I can’t do
something, the only way I know to get over it is to do it. And some. Not just do it, but really
do it.
Also, I reason as I carefully
chop my tomatoes, rivalling M’s perfect geometric shapes (almost), it is hardly
a recipe for self respect if you don’t pull your weight at things. M genuinely
loves to cook and will, I know be actually disappointed if I insist on doing
all of it. But I should do more. It’s never a good idea to let yourself get to
a stage where you have, for so long, relied on somebody else to do something,
that you start to be fearful of doing it yourself, or even forget how.
“Do you think,” I ask M, who has
not been privy to this rather epic turn of mind, and is therefore watching me a
little warily, “that we could take turns? You know I cook tonight’s dinner and
tomorrow’s breakfast and then you do…”
I trail off because it is the day
before Christmas Eve. I know that M has lovingly and excitedly planned our
Christmas Eve evening and Christmas day meals and I don’t want to steal that
pleasure from him.
“Of course,” says M, like the
saint that he is.
I reassure him that he can do
Christmas.
Later, explaining the thinking to
M, he agrees, though I think he is sorry that he couldn’t reach in and
magically alter my escalating state of self disappointment at the time.
“It isn’t something you can help
with,” I tell him, “only I can do it, it has to come from the same brain that
concocted the problem.”
And this is the answer. This, to
me, absolutely embodies the answer. Live life, says my tag line for this blog,
so that it makes a good story. But you can’t just follow a plot someone else
writes for you. If you want a good story, you have to write it.
“They say you go travelling to
discover yourself” I have said, “but all I am discovering are things I’m no
good at, or how many things I am too scared to enjoy.”
But I realise now that you have
to decide what it is that you want to discover, and then set out to find it. I
don’t want to come home and say to people that I went travelling and discovered
that I was a scaredey cat. I want to come home and say that I discovered I was
scared, but I did it anyway. That I took those fears by the throat and I
conquered them. My mistake was assuming
that travelling handed things to you on a plate. That you simply became relaxed
and chilled out and more confident and fearless just by virtue of having been
away. That’s not the case, I was right the first time – travelling really is
brutal. But you have a choice of what you do with this new information. M and I
could buckle under the strain, or grow stronger together. And in fact at no point
have I doubted that we were doing that. But I don’t have to simply note my
fearfulness or my tendency to panic and feel sad about it. If I want to
discover inner strength, I have to look for it. Treasure is never so easily
come by.
“We are conquering fears.” said
the German couple we met back in Dalat, as they confronted snakes and jumped
off the top of waterfalls.
And yes. It is a verb. To
conquer. It doesn’t just happen. You have to drive it.
M and I will cycle again when we
get the chance. I will admit how I feel about it but doggedly do it, until I
don’t feel that way any longer.
When we are in New Zealand, the
adrenaline capital of the world, we will do something like canyoning, in safe
hands, and in my instigation. I will tell the organisers I am petrified and
that I am here to get over that. When I mention something else we might do in
New Zealand, FlyBoarding, my friends chorus “oh no. There’s no way I would do
that, I’d be far too scared.” But that
wasn’t something I was actually afraid of. Nor snakes for that matter. Or
spiders. My issue happens to be bikes. And heights. And not being good enough.
Everybody is afraid of something.
It’s not just me.
Fearlessness, is a state of mind.
And I am not here to discover. I am here to become.
Postscript: I am writing this on 11 January, having become hopelessly,
but happily, behind with blogging. I am therefore in a good position to tell
you that having come to this conclusion, and having reached this pinnacle of
confidence crises, this travelling meltdown, I have never again felt that way.
We have been cycling and I have climbed high structures to see beautiful
scenery. I have cooked some meals I am very proud of, and made a lot of friends
along the way. Travelling is ruthlessly honest. You discover what you are made
of. But once you’ve discovered it, you can mix it about a bit. Just don’t
expect the rose bushes not to be thorny.
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