People said they envied me. But, I was going
to bed each night
trying to convince my body it shouldn't wake up the next morning.
When I gave myself three out of ten for quality of life just
a few weeks ago when I first met Mick at a preview evening in
Ware, I wasn't aiming to be the centre of attention, it was
simply and honestly the highest score I could claim. I had reached
middle age, retired early, lived in a nice house in the country
with two great children and the perfect partner. People said
they envied me.
All that fell apart overnight for reasons too common to need
me to detail, it was just that I had never thought for a moment
it would happen to me.
I spent the next two years experiencing the whole range of
negative and destructive emotions, none of which I had ever
felt before. I adopted an unconscious defence of denial and
sunk very low indeed. At the time I went to the preview evening,
I was going to bed each night trying to convince my body it
shouldn't wake up the next morning. That is fact, not
an attempt at melodrama.
My background is one of a working class upbringing, grammar
school education, local government career and a poorly developed
sense of ambition: a bit of a Jack of all trades with a perhaps
an overdeveloped sense of cynicism. I went to Ware that evening
in a quite detached but curious (now a word that holds a different
meaning for me and all other SA graduates!) frame of mind, absolutely
certain I wouldn't pay for the subsequent three day experience.
At the end of that three hours or so, I knew I had heard something
interesting that I wanted to know more about because I didn't
feel I had grasped whatever it was had been imparted. I assumed
(a common reaction in me) everyone else would have understood
it better. In any event, the next morning I booked on to the
three day self actualization experience at Canary Wharf. I clearly
recall being puzzled as to why I was doing this even as I was
quoting my credit card number over the phone!
At the end of the first day, I texted home that it wasn't
possible to describe what had gone on, that it was 'experiential
only', though I knew that I wouldn't come home the
same person as the one who left. Those who know me would be
fairly certain I had become insane to use a phrase like that.
Not me at all.
The whole of the three days was a wonderful experience for
me. I met a small group of really great people who were funny,
supportive and honest. I hadn't laughed so much for years.
If nothing else had come out of it, those memories would have
lived on. And that American fellow clearly knew stuff other
people don't!
But that was the just the beginning. I don't yet want
to commit to paper the specifics of the changes that I have
made in my life in the intervening four weeks because it is
too early. But the important thing is that it is ME who has
made the changes: all of them. I have had clarity of thought,
the return of a positive attitude, the taking back of the control
of my own life I had inexplicably ceded and a degree of self
confidence I truly thought I would never feel again. These changes
affect my marriage, home, work and other relationships. And
having been inwardly dismissive of the claims of 'synchronicities'
seemingly spontaneously happening, I have watched these take
place repeatedly. I have found myself laughing as yet another
so-called co-incidence emerges.
Everyone notices immediately the change in me. They ask questions
and I see them grapple with the concepts I try inadequately
to describe. Like me they baulk at the cost but I just tell
them that it was the best money I ever spent. And I haven't
even been to Maui yet, though I have already booked!
Despite others' claims to the contrary, I know I haven't
been brainwashed or joined a malevolent cult. I also know that
I have changed my life around in a single month. Inside me,
where I can compare how I am now with how I was before, that
feels like a pretty amazing testimonial in itself.
Peter Hoblyn
Gravenhurst, Bedfordshire, UK
|
Home
