“This world is your best teacher. There is a lesson in everything. There is a lesson in each experience. Learn it and become wise. Every failure is a stepping stone to success. Every difficulty or disappointment is a trial of your faith. Every unpleasant incident or temptation is a test of your inner strength. Therefore nil desperandum. March forward hero!”
― Sivananda Saraswati
With these words echoing in my hollowed soul, I march on. The Scottish Highlands beckon. And so I load all the shrapnel into a tin can, move to the folds of the mountains up north to start a new chapter in my life. London has been a hard but fair teacher, and despite it being a challenging move I will miss it dearly, and all those that made my time so healing over this last year. Three and a half years here have brought many new experiences into my life, and it seems almost impossible to be able to encapsulate all of them and their impact in one post. I have volunteered in the house Handel lived for most of his life, learnt about what weeds you can eat, enjoyed very civil high teas, been offered lifts by strangers and hitched rides on lazy canal boats. I've sunbathed on locks and overcrowded parks, and sampled only a handful of the hundreds of museums the city has to offer. I've explored cobble streets Dickens, Shakespeare, Hemingway once walked on, cycled up the Pall Mall on many occasion (my favourite car-free stretch of London), eaten dinner in a 1940's disused underground station, sampled cuisine from Ethiopia, Korea, Vietnam, Hawaii, the Caribbean, Mexico and wandered through China town on rainy Chinese new years.
I've eavesdropped on many a Polish conversation, drawn people on public transport until they noticed me, dressed up as a zombie, fed foxes, seen street art that made my eyes pop, guerilla gardened, poked around Victoria cemeteries, walked through the Thames tributaries in waders, fallen asleep on night buses, minded the gap and found to enjoy the unique delights of a British carboot sale. I've hugged 100 year-old oaks, seen where Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, and Moholy-Nagy lived, been to folk festivals in old abandoned war-damaged chapels and acoustic concerts by log fires. I've fallen in love with food markets, learnt about natural dyes and raw food, lived in London's first eco-village, become a cyclist, shopped at food co-operatives, planted trees, volunteered at peace gardens, learnt about foraging, built clay ovens and attended climate change protests. I carry all these memories with me now to a new adventure.
What I've held onto to so long no longer exists, with each exhalation I learn to accept that a new breath needs to replace the old one. I lost my best friend year, but as a truce London offered me many new ones to help mend my broken heart. As well as this new chance to live mindfully in the mountains. I hope to share those experiences soon. London, you really have been a treat.
