THOUGHTS

Gripped, as I am, between the pain relief of a thousand tablets and the mechanics of a dysfunctional back, I stop and think for a while. 

Dismissing the mild euphoria of a  temporary consolation from pain, I consider how lucky I am. I am not being sarcastic, ironic, or whatever literary device explains most of my tweets. I am feeling genuine luck at being able to consider each day as a gift. Yes, it's free of work, and often mobility, but I am unharnessed from the rat race and left to discover a world from the discomfort of my own bed. 

I travel far. Currently I am in Pip's world of Great Expectations and I'm also considering the legacy of Empire via Sathnam Sanghera's excellent Empireland. I arse about on Twitter and love to contribute to Ian McMillan's growing gang of Early Morning Strollers. You don't need to be mobile to explore the world. You don't need working legs to follow Mr Jagger's interest in young Pip or to walk in the size 10 footsteps of the British in India. All you need is a curiosity for the world and a desire to understand people. 

There are far more books and people in the world than I'll ever be able to read and understand. But what I've learned so far is that the more I read, the more people and places I get to see through literature, and even the more times I arse about on Twitter, the more I realise we are pretty much the same. We mostly have the same hopes and indeed the same dreams. We have the same desires and we have the same dislikes. We may wrap them up in our own individual way but our conclusions are the same. We want to understand each other. Twitter can often be the place of the most misunderstanding, yet I find it empowering and it allows me to walk alongside a great range of interesting characters. 

In conclusion, I do feel lucky. I have time to explore, maybe too much time (have you seen the length of this ?) but if you can't find the joy in life from learning something new then who knows, perhaps you already know it all? Perhaps you've learned everything you need to know? That, I would say, traps you more than me. More than my dodgy legs crumbling back and my unwelcome newcomer, diabetes.

Thanks for reading this. I hope you learned something, if only about me. And that's the key. The more we learn about each other, the farther we travel. I'm off to the foothills of India to see what happens next. I'm travelling light.