Living In The Past

So last I mentioned, I’d brought the story as far as my entering university in Canterbury – but neglected to explain how, some two years later, I happen to find myself a resident of the city of Guelph, Ontario, in the rather large country of Canada. Well, the answer is simple – I’ve taken a year out of my degree (BA in English and American Literature and Creative Writing, going very nicely, thank you very much) and gone and got myself a 12-month work visa so that I can be here while my girlfriend finishes her own degree in Landscape Architecture. Long-distance no longer satisfying, what needed to be, etc, etc, and, here we are. Now we’re renting a lovely apartment in a nice neighbourhood, and I’m doing shirt-and-tie office-type jobs (which I actually rather like), and playing more football (soccer) than at any other time in my life. It’s a jolly nice life, all in all. Before that, there was a fun and interesting summer in China (with a week in Tibet), and several mad (but good) months living with a bunch of fellow students in a rather large house near campus, and jobs as a student mentor, cake and then cheese salesman, and also a spot of volunteering sorting out the music at an Oxfam shop in town. I also spent my first year living in a caravan in the woods, without water, heat or electricity, cooking outside over the open fire. Boy, was it grand, and good, and exactly what I wanted – but, boy, am I glad I don’t live like that anymore. Seems like I’ve changed a lot these past two years…

Two years ago I was pretty much the same person I had been when doing all my travelling; indeed, I rolled up ready to start university armed with only a guitar, a sleeping bag – my entire worldly possessions – and about three quid in my pocket, and I spent my first week or two sleeping under a tree. I bathed in a tub on campus, dressed pretty shabbily – wearing only what I found or was gifted, and managing the winter wearing sandals, no socks (I had no socks) – and was often on the high street playing mad guitar or juggling (how I paid my fiver-a-week rent) or going for long barefoot walks through the woods, tromping in the mud and getting lovely and dirty. Needless to say, I was befriended by teenagers and hippies alike, and for a while things were pretty groovy. ‘Cept I soon got sick of it – soon got sick of the people I found I was attracting – and things began to change – especially after the girl came into my life.

Some of the changes I noticed were these: I started dressing more smartly, even buying clothes, and tossing out things that I didn’t find acceptable; I found myself intensely irritated by New Age flakes, and spaced-out hippies, and began subconsciously gravitating towards older, more together, professional types; I discovered a pretty well-developed ‘provider and protector instinct’; and I realised living alone in a caravan in the woods was all very well – mighty economical, for one – but being a hermit wasn’t really what I wanted to be. I no longer desired to be associated with the hippy crowd – I cut my long hair and put on shoes – I wanted to be taken seriously. To a large extent, I seem to have achieved that; my last job was for the Ontario Provincial Government, where I was often (good-naturedly) chastised for dressing too smartly.

So, while I say nothing much happened in those two years, in a way, everything did. University healed me – it gave me enough of an incentive to actually stick something out for longer than two weeks, or three months, even when it got to be tough and unpleasant and had me screaming for the road, or foreign climes, or pastures new. It got me to stay in one place long enough for me to finally go beyond that and get down to the business of sorting myself out. It gave me some sort of foundation for getting through the day-to-day, while the other stuff of trying out ways of being and shedding skins that no longer suited me took place. All in all, it gave me a lot.


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It seems to me that I’ve been living in the past. It seems to me that the ghosts of ‘travelling Rory’, and ‘spiritual Rory’ – and even, I realize, ‘post-spiritual Rory’ – have been hanging around long since their earthly lives expired. It seems to me that I’m really not who I was – but still kind of think I am.

It’s ridiculous, really – it’s at least three, if not four years since I last did any serious sightseeing in the world, yet it’s still such a big part of who I see myself to be. In meeting someone new, it’s never too long before it enters into the conversation – and even if it doesn’t, its almost always at the forefront of my mind – yet, what bearing does it have on my life as it is today? Similarly, what of my time wandering around America ‘soul-searching’, meditating, etcetera? It’s over a year, now, since I last did any kind of regular meditation, and, I have to confess, my life is about as far removed from ‘the spiritual life’ as it has ever been. If truth be known, the time I spend dwelling on ‘divine matters’ is probably about one ten-thousandth that I devote to football, sex, shopping, et al – and that’s probably being generous. So why still this idea that Rory is such and such a way?

I think, in part, it’s because I had such a big ego-investment in being what I was (traveller, explorer, spiritual seeker), and, also, because it was my way of identifying myself. When the spiritual phase ended, I had no real sense of what I was up to, beyond attempting some sort of recovery from the New Age nightmare I was tangled up in. But even that’s done now, and now…I’m back, I suppose. I’m back to being just a bloke, and being a bloke much like all other blokes, with a house, and bills to pay, and work to find and do, and groceries to buy and…I’m not really sure what you’d call that. ‘Drunk Rory’ segued quite seamlessly into ‘travelling Rory’, and ‘travelling Rory’ became ‘spiritual-seeker Rory’ without too much of a transition, but…what am I now? I don’t really know.

I guess I could keep looking back because it makes me sound and feel so much more interesting – yet if its merely who I was, and not who I am, what’s the point in that? What, really, is the point in keeping that game alive? I know, I know, there is a point in it, but it doesn’t really feel like what I want to be doing – it seems to speak more of dwelling in illusion than reality, living in the past rather than the present – and, in a way, it seems to be stunting my growth. I mean, how I supposed to move on if I can’t even recognize and accept where I am? How can I be fully in the present and let go of the past if I still think it’s happening? It makes no sense. It’s time to get over it. The only question is, how?

And the answer, perhaps, in part, is by writing it here.

So what am I today? Today I am…a bit of a bum (I don’t do much, mostly just relax, read, watch movies, play the odd video game, run around on a soccer pitch, do some occasional work), and…a loving boyfriend (great relationship with live-in partner, very caring, and happy and fun), and…career-wise, not much clearer (lately I’ve had urges to work in offices, still think lots about writing – but never do any – and will maybe move into teaching, definitely an urge to get something more fixed, and satisfying, and proper sorted out), and…and that’s about it. Maybe that’s why I look to the past so much; I guess my present just isn’t that exciting.

And yet…it’s more than that, it’s about growing up. I sense that my youth is over, that I’ve done pretty much everything I wanted to do with those years. I ran the gamut of experiences that one should probably run while one has the chance, and that is that. Probably this is part of the process; grieving, letting go, getting stuck, etcetera. Probably it’s all good…

I think this is why I find life hard right now. I feel like I’ve tried everything I can think of – done some wonderful things in the process (and some not so wonderful) – and now I’m waiting for something new. That something new lies outside my spectrum of currently available thought – it’s probably a more ‘grown-up thing’, and incomprehensible to ‘youthful Rory’ – and, as such, it’s hard to get an idea of what it is until it actually arrives. I suspect it may have something to do with a career, and a family, and a steady and stable life, and I’m pretty okay with the idea of that. But, like I say, since it’s beyond anything I’ve currently experienced, it’s hard for me to get any sort of grip on it and, in the meantime, I suppose I’m in some kind of void, where the old me is dying and the new me is waiting to be born. I feel a bit like a foetus, I suppose. I’m not sure if this answers the question of why I’ve been looking back so much, but I suspect it might have something to do with it – that, and always wondering when it (my glorious past) was going to ‘come back’ to me. But, I think it’s safe to say, it’s just not going to happen. It’s done. Over. Dead. And that’s not to say it’s a bad thing – I really do believe my life is better now than it ever has been (though I don’t think I could say that if I didn’t have my old journal entries to show me how ridiculously high and mad I was during my ‘happy phase’) – but just to try to begin and acknowledge that this is the way it is.