Above and Beyond
The vibrant background thrum dissipates to soft white noise as midnight creeps by.
Looking up, braced by a bank of silhouetted houses opposite, there’s the Plough to my left, the angled span of Orion to my right, and ahead of me a hazy nothingness. Unimaginable in scale; beautiful and enigmatic.
In a town ticking gently along in repose, it’s just me, the consuming stillness, and a canopy of ancient stars piercing a leaden sky.
And I’m all the better for it.
~~~~~~~~~~
In the winter of my second year at University College London, I’d decided to move back into my parents’ flat. My motivation was part monetary, and part raising a tattered white surrender flag. I simply wasn’t able to maintain the dysfunctional pattern I’d initiated the year before. I was beginning to feel a bit too lonely, and I could see the writing on the wall if I continued blindly in that fashion for much longer.
For all of the new self discoveries I’d made, I now longed for stability to underpin them. And time to reflect.
I didn’t dispense with my ritual tipsy walkabout of London entirely, but they became less frequent. A couple of times a week, at most. After all, missing my train stop and sleeping outside Milton Keynes station in December was a pretty bad scene!
Settling into my new pattern I soon realised that, aside from lectures and the odd night in London, the rest of the week felt pretty hollow. Exacerbating this further, I’d become a resolute night owl. My body clock was all fired up but, in a small town with nothing on the horizon, I had nowhere to go. What on earth could I do to pass the time?
It became imperative for me to occupy myself, and not dwell too much on the reality of the situation I’d found myself in.
It’s at this point I must sheepishly point out that this was pre-broadband internet, pre-YouTube; five channels of late night dross England.
Eurotrash, American Football, awful movies…. none of them did the trick. My mind invariably turned to catastrophising and overthinking.
And this was becoming more acute. Scarier. I was increasingly aware that even the blemished limbo of university had a shelf life. The idea had been to study, get a good job and move on. That’s what should happen, right? But that was never on the cards.
Coursework and lectures were totally automatic pilot, and I had no social life whatsoever. Caught up in a web of “no present, no future” meandering I was lost, with no reference point. My feelings felt so important.
Looking back, it’s as if the universe had condensed itself and hovered confined in my head, bristling with all the concomitant responsibilities and considerations. I had an overwhelming impulse to work everything out; on a futile quest for omnipotence.
Totally unattainable, but if I was responsible for so much, I had to cover all bases.. be alert, anticipate, pull together, separate. Distorted thinking was taking root, and I needed to return to something I’d always felt safe with, to plant seeds of hope for my future.
Even as I diligently amassed those illusory transcendent powers, I knew pretty quickly that I needed a reality check. And perhaps that’s where my long term memory kicked in, going back to a favourite childhood memory and using it to ground me in the present.
~~~~~~~~~~
As a child, pesky wars and frequent confusion aside, there was a lot to enjoy. Hours of fun messing about with my brother, cousins next door, and friends at school. At the same time, as an avowed introvert, I was also happy with my own company, particularly when it gave me a chance to get back to my biggest love of all: reading. I couldn’t get enough of it; I began early, and just didn’t stop!
A lack of access to contemporary books meant I was weaned on the “Famous Five”, “Secret Seven”, “ Chronicles of Narnia” and a host of Rudyard Kipling and Roald Dahl stories.
I loved fiction and storybooks, and they really fired my imagination, but of all the books I owned, my prized possession was always my encyclopaedia.
Yup, I was that child!
My mind just hoovered everything up. Absorbing facts and figures as much as I possibly could. Dates are my particular speciality. My party trick? Ask me the birth and death year of almost anyone in history, and I’ll have a valiant stab at it.
(P.S: My other one’s randomly knowing the exact time without looking at a clock. I’m a hoot at any bash… call me.)
The best thumbed pages of all were without doubt the astronomy ones, especially the double-page diagram of the solar system. Space and the universe captivated me… it seemed so incredible that all of that was just.. there.
Arousing suspicions of espionage probably wouldn’t have been a good look in Baghdad at the time, so binoculars and telescopes were a bit thin on the ground. Instead, with no real way of taking my wannabe hobby any further, I had to live vicariously through my teenage uncle in the north of England. My pen pal, I eagerly awaited his letters to hear all about the treasures he could see from his back garden with his reflector scope. Jupiter, Saturn, star clusters.. I was hooked. It sounded utterly brilliant!
Fast-forward a decade and a half later and there I was, in my time of need, sitting on my parents’ balcony in the cold of winter, watching the stars as they reassuringly spread across the sky. Unknowingly regressing to progress. It made me feel so much better. I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t that important, after all, and I NEEDED that.
We’re born, and socialised to think in hierarchies. Organised structures facilitating a necessary division of labour. Each has their task, each plays their part in achieving a shared vision.
They’d be perfect if it wasn’t for that irksome, unpredictable human element! When you throw real people into the mix, those logical structures become highly susceptible to corruption and iniquitous action.
I believe it hinges on how we deal with our shared, innate fear of the unknown. We all contend with this in our different ways, but in some, the journey results in a great deal more collateral damage.
Fear can lead to accumulation: The more you have, the safer you feel, and the freer. By extension, the more dominance you exert over others, the more agency you feel you have. A path towards dehumanisation, detachment and a goal-orientated outlook.
And we don’t have to look too far to find an everyday example of this: the rise and survival of the class system.
An accident of birth places you at the mercy of a hierarchy gone terribly wrong, serving the elite rather than the whole. Work, living conditions; even the education system appear to be grossly unfair and skewed against the majority.
And that’s because they’re meant to be.
At the top of the pile, generations hoarding the privileges and advantages for them and theirs have granted them the ultimate in freedom. There is no consideration for others because in their world, they don’t exist! I won’t even go as far as to say there’s a conscious contempt; I genuinely don’t think it occurs to them that sharing the wealth and the privilege is an option. A moral compass is an optional extra when you’ve been conditioned to (successfully) cling onto what you have, and value it.
But, hierarchy doesn’t have to be all bad. In my case, I needed urgent confirmation that I was much smaller than I imagined to act in a healthier way. It’s never a bad thing to realise you aren’t at the top of the tree, above learning and above collaboration. We’re social creatures, and in a world less suited to reinforce that, it’s essential we’re all cognisant of that.
In a transitional period, I had my space to dream, to drift and to experience a grounding state of wonder. Why I was here, or how wasn’t important. Just the fact I was. The answers would have to wait for another day.
If anyone’s struggled with mental health woes, I’d love to hear what you’ve managed to do to keep yourself motivated and grounded. What works for you?