Category: thoughts

thoughts

~ Castaway ~

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~ Castaway ~

“The humans in this world often scared me. It was their faces – the way they talked; the way they walked. It was the magazines they read, the television shows they watched, the fake smiles, the relentless consumerism and empty conversations. It was true that there were some humans not like that, but they were hard to track down among the swarming masses. Stuck on this rock with them, I liked to have my own space and to be able to travel away from that grey world of concrete and contracts and citizens. Unfortunately my existence on this planet was subject to the concept of money, and this meant I needed a job to do those few things I liked.

I went online and read their job adverts. They all asked for an ‘outgoing people person’; for a ‘team player’; for a ‘career-minded individual’. Reading the criteria, I had to laugh in despair at my limited chance. I was none of those things, so what was I supposed to do? Lie? Wear a mask? ‘Play the game’ – as they often said? If it really all was a game then it was a bad one. It seemed that there was some sort of fix – that the cold-blooded sociopaths and liars rose to the top while the most intelligent took anti-depressants and sat in therapist offices paying for the right not to go insane. In a world of steely-faced executives and agents, I felt like a castaway soul stranded in the dirt, chained down by gravity – trapped in a cage of slowly decaying flesh and bone. Since I was born I often felt homesick for a place I’d never known; homesick for a place I’d never been. In the worst moments I gazed up into skies above thinking that maybe my species was somewhere out there beyond the neighbouring solar-systems and stars. After all, there was an endless ocean of galaxies and worlds out there, but somehow I had ended up in one full of things I just didn’t understand. The situation was strange, but what else could I do? Where else could I turn? Where else could I go?

I thought some more about it and decided that my only chance of escape was to let myself become a beacon of insanity in the darkness. I decided that my only chance of escape was to set fire to my soul and let my eyes blaze with a brightness so bright, that if someone was out there searching for me, they might just be able to find me and come bring me home.”

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(taken from my book ‘The Thoughts From The Wild’ available here)

thoughts

~ Beyond the Billboards ~

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~ Beyond the Billboards ~

“The day people learn to be happy with the contents of a backpack is the day a lot of rich people go out of business. Those billboards and advertisements aren’t there to guide you to happiness like they say. They are there to marginalise you and make you feel perpetually incomplete. No matter how much you buy, those billboards will still look down on you and tell you that you need more. If you finally get that phone you want, they will be there to tell you that it’s now old and unfashionable; if you finally feel peaceful and secure, they will be there to scare you into buying the latest form of insurance. My advice? Empower yourself. Rise beyond the billboards. Delight in the free things and find yourself becoming richer than ever before. Watch more sunsets and less televisions; wear more smiles and less makeup. Become the centre of your own universe – the maker of your own material. One day you might just wake up and find you possess contentment. One day you might just wake up and find you possess fulfilment. One day you might just wake up and realise you have something that the greedy people will never have:

you have enough.”

beyond the billboards

 

 

thoughts

~ A Priceless Pleasure ~

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~ A Priceless Pleasure ~

“I do not want gold or diamonds. I do not want my own parking space at work. I do not want to be popular, or to be noticed when I walk in a room. Such things are only hollow joys – pleasures dependent on the opinions of others. No, I only want what I have always wanted deep down. I want to feel myself wander free through the woods of discovery. I want to feel bewitched by the stars and corrupted by the animals. I want to feel the wind and rain drench me to the bone as I delight in the sheer joy of being alive. With the spirit of adventure in my blood, I will joyously hunt those horizons of freedom; possessed by the magic of nature, I will forever delight in the daylight of dawn. No status or riches are required for such pleasure. Just give me the simplicity of light, air and rain, and you will see me bloom like the flowers in the meadows, you will see me dance like the leaves in the wind – you will see my soul swoop and soar like the birds that welcome the skies of an unstoppable spring.”

pricless pleasure

thoughts

~ The Drum In The Deep ~

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~ The Drum in the Deep ~

“Often in this life, if you listen carefully, you hear a faint noise beating somewhere distant inside of you. It is not your heartbeat or your pulse, but rather a haunting sound which beats occasionally, and beats louder at certain times. It beats louder when you are passively drifting through the days and weeks. It beats louder when you are surrounded by people who make you feel alone. It beats louder when every ounce of your being knows you are living a life that is false to your real self. That beating noise is the entire universe shepherding you away from the swamp of a sterile existence and guiding you toward the shores of your own destiny. It is the drum in the deep; the call of the wild summoning you into the lands where your true purpose and fate reside. The sound is unpredictable and can come at any time. Sometimes the drum can beat early in the morning; sometimes it can beat in the middle of the night. Sometimes it can beat when doing the dishes or the grocery shopping or staring out of the window of a train on the way home from work.

I believe that as human-beings we all recognise that internal call into the wild. There are many people out there who ignore the sound their entire life – who stick their fingers in their ears and suppress their natural instinct towards doing what they were undeniably born to do – in going to the places they were born to explore. And it is clear to me that the more it is suppressed and ignored, the more it drains and decays individuals from within. One only has to walk the sidewalks of life to see the people who have totally ignored their innate calling, and as a result have become bitter and jaded individuals with eyes empty of any lust or wonder for life. For me, I could spot that sad look from a young age, and consequently I knew that as soon as that drum sounded, it was time to put on my boots and chase down the sound ferociously over the horizon.

Because the truth is once you are called there is no way to ignore that drum in the deep without letting it gradually destroy you from within. The only way to deal with it is to follow it curiously over the horizon; to venture into those unknown lands and search for the source of the sound. You have to accept it is your master, and that you are its slave to be summoned. Sure, the journey it can take you on may be dangerous, tiring – even painful – but to ignore it totally is to commit some kind of spiritual suicide; it is to starve and suffocate your soul slowly to certain death. Such a fate was never an option for me, and I guess that is why I sit here alone tonight: writing these words, plotting my next adventure – still following that haunting noise ferociously wide-eyed through the universe. The drum has called me into the wild for many years now. It has been an epic adventure – an epic voyage into the unknown. And yet I have still not silenced that drum in the deep. But, truthfully, as I continue this magical journey toward the source of the sound, as I feel my veins burn with adventure and passion – as I look back on a path that has set my soul on fire and made me fall in love with the overwhelming beauty of existence – a part of me hopes that I never do.”

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 (taken from my book ‘The Thoughts From The Wild’ available here)

thoughts

~ The Migration ~

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~ The Migration ~


“After a long day of walking on the trail, we stood by the river in a small, sleepy town in rural Spain. Barefoot and drunk, we shared a smoke and a bottle of red wine as the sun set below the hills of the valleys around us. As the river and wine flowed down, he told me his reason for walking across the country. Eyes transfixed to that reddened sky, he told me of his sixty-hour working weeks, his stress and utter disarray with how his life back home had become so jaded and devoid of life. He spoke of the pain, the emptiness and, finally, the decision to leave it all behind with a one-way plane ticket into foreign lands. In that moment I could feel the relief and freedom emanating from my fellow human-being. Clearly these were things he had bottled up inside of him for too long – things that had secretly tortured and broken him down over many years. Now out here walking across Spain, he had decided to make his stand against the absurdity of it all. It was a shifting position that I recognised from myself, where my journey into the wild had begun a few years previously. Like so many people caught, chewed up and spat out by the cultural machine – he had finally been pushed too far and now his response had begun.

    It is true. In this life there comes a time when a man can no longer accept a situation of existence which has belittled him for so long. The breaking down comes gradually over many tickings of clocks and traffic jams and deadlines. There’s more to life than this, his heart demands ever more loudly. After the days of emptiness have been endured too long, a snapping point is reached. It is at that moment when the spirit is unleashed and a great migration begins. Outward he moves beyond those cubicles of pain. Into the night of the unknown, beyond the security – beyond the bickerings of fools and preachers and bosses and politicians. Beyond them and their soulless advice. He moves into the hazy dreamlands where the mad and mystics wander, where the eyes blaze bright like stars – where the traveller stands barefoot and bewitched under skies of freedom and nothing is certain but the pure fleeting transience of life. It is there where the spirit is cleansed. It is there where the ships of the soul set sail toward the shores of destiny. It is there – in those lands of the living – where the world shines clear and life is finally experienced in all its chaos and beauty and mystery and magic.”

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(taken from my book ‘The Thoughts From The Wild’ available here)

thoughts

~ The Hills Above The Cities ~

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~ The Hills Above The Cities ~

“A brain overcharged by absurdity; a soul starving for something real. Another day of menial work and superficial interaction had left me craving a space of solitude. Like I had so many times before, I took myself up to that hill that overlooked my hometown. Standing above that urban expanse with its rows and rows of streets sprawled out before me, I cast my gaze outward and watched the city lights shimmering in the night. There they were: the flames of humanity flickering in the abyss of the universe; the human race floating through space, going about its transient existence. I stood there for a while and absorbed the sight. From the outside looking in, I thought of all those people living in those houses, walking those sidewalks, staring into those televisions and bathroom windows. I thought of the families at dinner tables, the lovers entwined on sofas, the friends laughing together in the bars and clubs and restaurants.

In that moment a great feeling of isolation crashed over me. In vivid detail, I began to realise just how much I was cut adrift, floating uncontrollably further and further away from those shores of human belonging. And no matter how I looked at it, there seemed to be no way to pull or anchor myself back in. It had always been this way from a young age it seemed. The times I tried to fit myself into the herd had torn and twisted me up beyond repair. I simply didn’t understand my fellow species, or any of their customs. I didn’t understand the conventions. I didn’t understand the expectations and traditions. I didn’t understand why everyone wanted to be the same rather than live a life true to themselves. It was all a great mystery to me: the jobs, the media, the school-system, the paperwork, the small-talk, the religions – the monotonous routine. It seemed that I was allergic to it all. In my most desperate times, I did try to fake it, but like an undercover alien with a bad cover story, it was never long before people cast their looks of bewilderment upon me, before they realised that I was not one of them – that I was an intruder.

It’s not that the situation of isolation was completely soul-destroying, of course. There was a great joy to be found in sailing your own ship, in walking your own path and getting lost among your own mountains of madness. Often I felt great pleasure in not being labelled and closed in to some sort of box of limitation. There was a sort of freedom that many people never got to taste, let alone fully explore. But still despite that, I was burdened with the situation of being a human-being, and like all human-beings I needed to stare into the eyes of someone who understood – of someone who recognised me for who I really was. I guess for a while on my travels I looked out for those people, expecting to find them on sunset beaches and sitting wistful-eyed in smoky bars in foreign lands. Sometimes I was even lucky to find one or two, but the interactions were usually short-lived, lasting only a few hours or days at the most. Like captains of two ships briefly passing by in a wide ocean, we stared into each other’s eyes and exchanged knowing glances before disappearing silently into the mist.

Yes, the more I stood there on that hill and thought about it, the more it seemed this was the destiny of someone like myself. The cards had been dealt and I knew deep down in my flesh and bones that it was my fate to sail alone, to get lost in the mazes of my own mind, to dwell in solitude among those mountains of madness. This was how it was; for some reason I would never fully understand, this is how it was. I guess by now it was just a matter of acceptance: a matter of accepting that I was a lone wanderer – a matter of accepting that I didn’t belong. I guess by now it was a matter of accepting the fact that no matter where I went in this world, I would always return to those hills above the cities, standing alone, staring up into the skies, looking for something – anything – to come and take me home.”

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(taken from my book ‘The Thoughts From The Wild’ available here)

thoughts

~ A Thought From The Wind ~

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~ A Thought From The Wind ~

“Watch the sunrises. Watch the sunsets. Walk barefoot when you can. Stand tall against the storm and laugh in the face of stupidity. Soak in the sunlight and don’t feel guilty about devoting time to your passions. Travel if you get the opportunity – even if it’s just to another town or neighbourhood – travel. Explore your surroundings. Explore your creativity and express yourself. Even if your audience is just one person, share the contents of your soul with another. Practice mindfulness and don’t bother wasting money on lottery tickets. The illusion that happiness can be bought with money is just there to keep people toiling away in a hollow rat race. Listen to those starry-eyed children – they have more wisdom than you think. Also listen to the elderly, teachers and gurus, but never forget that true insight and knowledge comes from walking your own path. All the books in this world cannot ever replace the authentic experience of one person rescuing their truth from the wilderness. Believe in your own voice and don’t allow yourself to be marginalised by any institution, culture, religious book or writer. At the end of the day, your very flesh contains the fundamental fabric of the universe; you are the entire cosmos expressing itself as a human-being for a little while. Your skin is literally made of stardust so don’t be afraid to shine, don’t be afraid to dance – don’t be afraid to live your life with such blazing brightness that the stars above you weep with envy.”

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(taken from my book The Thoughts From The Wild, available here)

thoughts

~ Infected ~

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~ Infected ~

“One day in this life you realise you are infected with the condition of being an outsider. The symptoms are revealed to you gradually. As you walk the neighbourhoods of normality you realise your heart yearns for something else. Stability and security only give you a feeling of sadness. You have no interest in the contract of life offered to you. As you stare at the rows of houses and green lawns and shiny cars, as you look up uninterested at career ladders before you, as you stare wistfully into space in the supermarket queue, you gradually begin to realise that something isn’t quite right about it all. Every ounce of your being rejects the things you were told to desire. What gives you fulfilment simply isn’t available in their stores or on their menus. You have no interest in material riches or status. Their television shows and newspapers are toxic poison to your mind. You are allergic to their conventions and expectations. The suits and ties don’t fit you. What is important to them, to you seems utterly meaningless and trivial. In your world adventure and exploration and art rank above all else. Yes, accept it: you have the alien madness – the condition of being an outsider. You are infected. Do not trouble to even try and cure yourself, it will only make you worse. No, no, no: forget the therapists, forget the sensible advice, forget trying to fit into a society which doesn’t fit you. Do not trouble yourself. Here is what you shall do:

    Let the infection take over. Let your eyes become bloodshot with blinding passion. Let your skin be shed, let your soul be set on fire – let that heart of yours become filled with poetry and madness. This is it: you were never one of them anyway, and the sooner you accept you never will be, the more powerful your mutant soul will become. You will liberate yourself from society and walk those streets with a rare strength and joy – a feeling of freedom not known or understood by those who define themselves in groups. The world around you will glisten with magic – you will see things they can’t see; do things they can’t do; go places they can’t go. You will attract strange glances and stares – sometimes in secret admiration, sometimes in fear. You will terrify some and inspire others beyond belief – and as the infection spreads further, you will grow stronger and stronger – fiercer and fiercer. Nothing will be able to hinder you. Things like isolation and rejection will only fuel your desire further. No cage or poacher will be able to capture your wild heart. You will be unstoppable like a storm; you will be impenetrable like a mountain. You will live the life of a fearless adventurer and go to the grave knowing that your life was lived with absolute fullness. The flowers around your grave will blossom with an exotic beauty; the birds will sing songs about your adventures at your headstone. You will have been totally consumed by your passion. You will have stayed happily infected till the end of your days. You will have died knowing that this world could never find a cure for your beautiful madness.”

(taken from my book The Thoughts From The Wild, available here)

infected