There are other things I've done which haven't carried the thrill of success. They've felt heavy and awkward, like lugging round a massive rucksack. I think it's important to pay attention to those things too, to figure out the difference between events that make you feel alive, and burdens that make you cry through the night.
I was 20. The light from the wooden corridor snuck through the half-open door and lit a strip of bunk bed. Andy was awake. The rest of my uni friends were playing Uno just out of earshot in the alpine log cabin.
"You OK, Matt?" Andy said from the other bunk. I told him I was thinking about something, something that hadn't turned out the way I had hoped. I asked him what I should do. After all, he was 22 and at that time I thought that that bit of extra experience counted for something. I remember his voice fumbling through the darkness, trying to let me know that some things you just have to learn how to cope with. I didn't know back then, how often the same question would recur and for how long. That was eighteen years ago. I had no idea.
I often think about that conversation in the darkness of Samoens 1600. I heard the sadness in Andy's voice and I hear it now, echoing through the years. The question itself has been a 'massive rucksack', something I've tried to figure out and put down, time and again. I came close a few times, but always it turned out not to be the answer, always hope was raised and dashed and the question washed up onto the empty beach.
Still, I led the band practice tonight and it went really well. There, I am confident, controlled and flowing in gifting as though its river were carved out of the landscape just for me. I wish I could be like that in the rest of my life. Who knows how it might have turned out?
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