I trained outdoors again a little bit last week, because although the gym is keeping me incredibly fit, I have been missing the downs and the sea. I have come to realise that I really need my ‘sea fix’ everyday, and that I have been missing its ever changing moods, its power and beauty – it’s magnitude.
As I ran along the seafront yesterday morning and relished the sound of the gulls squawking and circling. The waves crashing on the pebbles took me back to my summer on the beach, ‘aqua jogging’ in the sea to heal my knee in the cold water, and I still have a scar on my calf from the waves crashing me down on the pebbles! I felt a speck in the universe when I was there, and became a part of the ocean, on my own on a misty summer morning.
My run yesterday was a very different experience for my senses than the big TV I have adapted to in the gym, and have even come to enjoy, which is strange from one who never turns on my television at home!
As I ran, I was reminded of one of my all time special books ‘Jonathan Livingston seagull. I read this book 36 years ago and I have recently found that this year ‘Jonathan L S’ is 40 years old! I loved the book, and in my first term and first week at 6th form college, being in the A’s ( for Armstrong) ‘set’, we were asked to do the first assembly, a once a week affair. There was a deafening silent response to our tutor’s request, and unable to leave that silent gap alone, I leapt into it – ‘I’ll do it’ – I volunteered.
I had come from a small all girls’ school with no more than 250 pupils and I found myself offering to stand up in front of over 800 boys and girls. It was up to me what I did, and rather bravely, I now on reflection think, chose to read a rather philosophical script from Jonathan Livingston Seagull, because it had resonated with and touched me so deeply.
I read a passage describing the gulls swooping onto the scraps and their whole life being about finding fish to eat to survive. Then the passage spoke of Jonathan circling in the sky, high up, above the flock, learning to fly faster and more skillfully. He was discovering that there was more to life than just surviving, he wanted to be all that he could be and essentially to be free.
It spoke to me because I wanted to be all that I could be, to strive for excellence and my dream was to run for England – but most of all I wanted to be free. I believed that it was within me and that I needed to work hard and believe in myself, to never ever give up, and that I would find the freedom I sought in running as I dreamed. However hard it seemed at times, Jonathan inspired me and the two quotes that spoke to me then, and still do now, were these …
‘your whole body from wingtip to wingtip is nothing more than thought itself in a form you can see, break the chains of your thought and you break the chains of your body too’
Later on in the story, these words spoke to me, it’s when Jonathan is teaching Fletch gull to fly and Fletch says ‘Are you saying I can fly’ and Jonathan says ‘I am saying you are free’…
We are all free within ourselves and we can all fly as we dream. It may be hard work and we may have set backs and challenges along the way, but by staying present to our own truth and trusting that the answers are within, not only will we fly free and have the confidence to express ourselves authentically, but we will find that we impact and affect all those around us in powerful and positive ways
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