Interesting how the penny sometimes can drop when you least expect it.
While walking our grandson`s dog this morning, it just happened to me out of the blue. As today is my 66th birthday and from today I am officially an old age pensioner it became clear to me that I have just exited what my grandson at 16 is entering : The Thick of Life!
Upon entering The Thick of Life whether at 16 or after finishing university in their late twenties, young people have a long haul journey in front of them.
It’s not just working of course. It`s starting up a family, setting up a home of their own, raising children, paying the mortgage or rent, possibly going into business of some kind. Becoming middle aged, then having grandchildren of their own and so on. In the meantime Time passes by.
One day this long tunnel of responsibility, happiness, hard work, aging and the rest of it suddenly comes to a dazzling exit point!:
Retirement has at last arrived!
The light at the end of that very long tunnel is here all of a sudden!
Well, that is how I perceive it today! It may be completely different for others who` d reached retirement, but as for me it’s a huge relief and amazing joy!
Looking back from this exit point, I am re phrasing what I have always thought was a tunnel: In retrospect, I can see it clearly now that actually it was a Labyrinth. For a tunnel is just one straight or slightly bending underground road, or perhaps it’s a railway or a waterway.
However a Labyrinth is full of twists and turns, where we are nearly always travelling towards the wrong direction even if ultimately we will find the way out.
In a Labyrinth we can never see the exit light beckoning us until the last second! Instead we just follow through multiple turning points, hoping but never actually knowing if we`re making correct decisions.
In a Labyrinth, there are no clues which way to go to get out. In fact the more difficult a Labyrinth is, the better it is. An easy Labyrinth is no Labyrinth at all! The very point of it is to make us get completely and utterly lost in it! So lost in fact that we might get scared: what if we never ever get out?
That feeling of self doubt and panic is what garden designers aim for when they draw up their outline for a new hedge labyrinth.
I find this interplay, this bilateral pulling between self confidence and utter panic very attractive, in fact absolutely fascinating!
Both in literal Labyrinths and in the Big Game of Life!
It has elements of playfulness and flirting with our senses somewhere deep down which I love so much. It has humour, challenge for mind and spirit hidden within it. It offers opportunities for testing us of our survival skills, our resilience, personality and charisma.
Under pressure all these are stretched to see where and when they might shine or snap!
Imagine if you could film the exit point of a well designed, really complicated Labyrinth. As people appear from the dark suddenly into the dazzling light of freedom.
Libraries of books could be written of their body language and fascial expressions as one extreme emotion switches to another.
Some might just smile and leap out gracefully like a ballet dancer. Some might sigh hugely as if a stone just fallen off their shoulder. Some might have the remains of panic on their face still pale as a ghost.
Some might have tears in their eyes if they have been desperately lost in there. Some might have had huge arguments about stupid decisions made by somebody else who misled them all.
At extreme cases, some might appear looking like a panda: with a black eye from a punch up!
(No, I am not going any further suggesting a good crime scene for Poirot to solve: who stabbed the one who never made it out!)
Anyway you get the gist of it!
Labyrinths are proper challenges one way or another whether in gardens or elsewhere. In what shape we step out of the Labyrinth of our past half a century makes its point: of how we`ve managed our different departments while being completely lost in the grinder!?
Did our Labyrinth bring the best or the worst out of us? Did an innocent angel step in and an axe murderer step out at the end?
Did we even come out alive?
If we made it, did we pick up new skills along the way, did we encounter and learn from strange yet wonderful opportunities? Did we meet other panic stricken runners in there?
Did we step up as group leaders, encouragers, cheerers, healers or Peace makers?
What footprints have we left behind in those short but confusing zig zag formations? Did we realize that those never ending walls have absorbed our emotions, heard our conversations or odd arguments.
They have scanned us through and through by the time we got out to the Light.
The Labyrinths of our lives therefore know us inside out!
The Universe knows us inside out.
God knows us inside out.
And there is nothing wrong with that whatsoever!
I think it’s good that we should be known, understood and loved as we are: Warts `n` All!
Why shouldn’t everything we`ve ever thought , said and done not be brought out into the Light of Truth? What`s the point of hiding anything?
Is there a better way to run the Universe than the way it`s run?
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Knowing this, while we are still doing the `miles` inside our Labyrinths, we might be more mindful of our conduct: Of how we trample over the weaker, of how we exploit those around us.
I am not just talking about other human beings. I also mean animals: do we treat them with loving compassion and respect? Or do we exploit them and even eat them, simply because Might is Right!?
What about our planet; our Big Mama Mother Earth that had birthed us all? Do we exploit our advantage over her too?
Or do we go the extra mile in becoming compassionate healers of her many wounds? After all, who else but us made those wounds?
When we come out at the exit point after half a century of struggling uphill against the tide, what damage have we created and left behind us?
I think we should ask this very same question at the ultimate Exit of our lives. What will we have contributed and what harm have we caused? I think it’s good to ponder on such profound questions.
As everything is interconnected and as such interrelated in the Universe, whatever we add or take away will have ripple effects, eventually reaching and effecting everything else!
The Universe is the penultimate Labyrinth.
Each galaxy in it with each of their solar systems are full of metaphorical labyrinths. All cosmic matter travel through millions of light years of tunnels, black holes etc. What happens in a garden Labyrinth also happens in the Labyrinth of the Universe.
CONCLUSION:
We are all one.
Matter is all one, even if it’s spread out trillions of light years apart. Space is all one.
Deep Soul Searcher, Life Lover, Wisdom Seeker. Yet at times an utter fool. Plant based chef & innovator, trying to make this world a better place for all of us
What a profound reflection on the journey of life and the interconnectedness of all things, Peter! 🌟 Your perspective on Labyrinths, both in gardens and in life, is truly thought-provoking. Embracing unity and compassion is a beautiful message to carry forward. 🌍💫
