• Human beings have been trading stuff for an awfully long time. Some say for 150,000 years. It’s one of the biggest differentiators between us and the animals. It’s made our lives rich and cooperative.

    Here’s how it works…

    If one guy is great at making stone axes, and another guy is great at making wooden spears, then it helps everyone if they stick to their specialism, and swap stuff. In one sense, it’s simple math.

    Ug takes 1 day to make a stone axe. He’s good at it, because he’s practiced a lot.

    Stig takes 1 day to make a wooden spear. He has a natural way with the tree’s product.

    Ug never found the wooden thing easy, his fingers don’t work that way, so when he makes a wooden spear, it takes him 2 days. Stig is equally inept with stone axes. It just doesn’t bend the way his lovely wood does. It takes him 2 days to make one.

    Both of them need both tools.

    So if they are uncooperative and selfish, they simply make everything for themselves.

    1+2+1+2=6 days total work.

    However, if they stick to their specialisms, and Ug makes two stones axes, and Stig makes 2 wooden spears and they trade, then the calculation creates a different result.

    1+1+1+1=4 days total work.

    That’s two extra days created, one each, which they could use to make cave paintings, or practice their craft, or hunt more food, or hump Jane, or each other.

    Trade has become outrageously specialized in today’s world. We’ve gone way beyond spears and axes.

    What is your specialism?

    What can you do that no one else can do? Or what could you do, given enough hard work, that no-one else can?

    That’s what makes you special.

     

    Ewan Townhead

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  • He whispered to me this morning while I was making coffee. Amongst the sound of the grinding of beans, his voice spoke through my own lips.

    “This is not the way.”

    He didn’t refer to the way I was grinding the beans. I don’t think he has much to say on that subject. He was speaking to the larger grind. The grind of life.

    He meant the way I feel sorry for myself when things don’t go my way. The way I isolate myself when I feel ashamed. The way I silence myself when I feel angry.

    “This is not the way.”

    Not lounging in self-depreciating clouds of cigarette smoke and self-righteous armchair philosophy. Not maintaining my masks of professional competence and success. Not running away from love, from opportunity, because I don’t want to be tied down.

    That way leads full circle, to the source of my complaint.

    “I’m special, and no-one sees it” cries my ego.

    And the weight of his accusation mounts on the evidence table. The momentum of my writing, slowing to a dutiful march. The scores of likes on my Facebook posts, dried up in the political massacre. And more damning that all of it, the unshakable feeling that I’m off track, lost down some overgrown siding.

    I’ve fucked it up.

    That’s what the other guy says. The one who lurks in the recesses of my mind. He’s always there, the compulsive pessimist who doesn’t want to see me fall in pursuit of avarice.

    I’m running out of options. The escape routes keep bringing me back to the same room, where the walls are closing in and the rats have already scarpered.

    I sit down in the corner, light up another joint. Maybe this way I can see through the fog. Maybe I just need one more high to finally break through to the truth.

    And as the medicine takes hold I forget the question and sink down into the comfort of my dream. Until the effects inevitably wane, and I notice the walls again. They’re moving slowly enough that I don’t panic, and fast enough that I know I can’t stay here much longer.

    I reach for another chunk of hazelnut chocolate.

    “This is not the way.” He says.

    Well what is the fucking way oh great oracle? I’m pissed. The scorn is desperation, not hatred. Give me the map shit-face, I’m dying down here.

    He doesn’t answer. He just looks me full in the eye in that unwavering way he has. He loves me. That’s what makes him so infuriating.

    I pause. Something in me doesn’t run away like I’ve been doing a lot lately. I sit with him. He looks like Jesus, but he feels like me.

    Time slows down. I hear the hum of the refrigerator in the corner. The distant sounds of the world outside going about its business. I feel it, the poignancy of the moment. This moment. The one I can feel when I soften my searching. The one I can taste when I open my mouth and breathe it in.

    The one that holds the entire history of the universe, and the unknown future of all there is. Balanced, exquisitely.

    This. This is the way isn’t it?

    He doesn’t say anything, he just smiles.

    This place. The one where I keep walking, as slow as I possibly can, so that I notice just how beautiful the landscape is. The one where I choose each step, not from strategy, but from attention. The lift of my knee, the reaching of my toes, the planting of my foot, the casting of my gaze. One more step. Then one more step. Then one more step.

    What’s the way? I ask him.

    He doesn’t say anything. But I feel my heart break. Just a little, like the first crack on the surface of an egg as what is inside makes its way to what is outside.

    I’m scared. I tell him.

    He nods, in his bamboozlingly beautiful way. A nod that contains both bottomless compassion, and utter neutrality. I don’t know how he does that.

    I am scared. I’m scared of getting punched. Or laughed at. I feel just like I did when I was a little boy at Lowfield Primary School. My unconscious and innocent eccentricity met with unconscious and innocent ridicule.

    I had the wrong shoes. I cried when boys weren’t supposed to cry. I didn’t fit their society, I stood out, which wasn’t a good thing in working-class Sheffield.

    “You’re a man now.” He says.

    I don’t feel like one. I say before I think about it. I feel like a fraud.

    “That’s what makes you beautiful.” He says.

    He’s got me. Clever little fucker. He knows exactly where my weak spots are. He turns my own arguments against me. And I know exactly what he means.

    It’s the way of revelation.

    Not the kind of revelation accompanied by angels’ harps and priests and holy oppression. It’s the path that reveals. Uncovering what once was covered. Disclosing what was once locked away. Showing what was once held in shame.

    It’s not about me. It’s not some faux-vulnerability where I wash my dirty laundry on Facebook (I tried that – the high lasted as long as the social news cycle). It’s about revealing what I see.

    The world I see.

    The one that delicately surrenders itself as I look into my woman’s eyes, and see how deeply she loves me. The one that pulls the rug from under my complacency as I remember what truly fires me up. The one that brightens someone else’s down-trodden day as I tell them about mine.

     “That’s the way.” He says, and turns away to leave me to my gratitude.

     

    Ewan Townhead

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  • There are those moments that happen, periods in our lives, when we reach a fork in the road.

    The wheel of life has revolved, and we’re faced with a choice. A momentous choice perhaps. We feel it, like a beckoning from the future, or an intolerance for the present.

    Something wants to change.

    “I don’t want to change. I like things how they are. It’s safe here, familiar.” The voice inside me says.

    The resistance spins its insidious web, telling me how dangerous it is to change. The ego clings to its notion of itself.

    “Maybe this is a distraction, and not really what I want.” the resistance whispers in my own voice.

    But I can tell it’s signifiant. It’s palpable somehow. I just know, I feel it.

    I’ve reached a turning point.

    *

    There are two choices.

    We can choose the change that presents itself, follow the new course, and discover the undiscovered.

    Or we choose normality and keep plodding along the highway of what we already know. The wheel of change keeps on turning, and the choice point is passed over.

    And in one sense, it doesn’t matter what we choose. Because even if we plump for normality, the wheel keeps on turning. And sooner or later it comes full circle and the choice point is presented anew.

    Except this time, the urgency has been increased. The volume level higher. The insistence harder to ignore, the status quo harder to rationalize.

    It will keep turning, returning to this point, until we choose what we’re asked to.

    So in the longest sense of the game, we can’t go wrong.

    But the price is time.

    *

    I feel it. The turning point returned. I’ve been here before. Everything slows down. The buzz of my refrigerator hums louder, as the air in the room grows sharp.

    Life is asking me to level up, to embrace my power, to choose to show myself, to fulfil what I’m capable of. The fork in the road is right there before me.

    “Will you take it this time?”

    “Do I have to?” I whine. “It’s hard, I don’t think I can.”

    No, I don’t have to. And nor do you. We can plough on, doing what we’ve always done. It will come around again. It has before. It will again.

    But do you want to keep praying the price? The price of wasted moments?

    *

    Will you turn toward your higher self, and walk his or her path?

    It’s not some moral standard you must adhere to. There’s no judgemental God or parent who will castigate you if you flunk out.

    It’s up to you.

    Do you want it?

    Or would you rather turn back toward the safety of the couch, or a cigarette. The familiarity of a comfortable existence. Doing the work you’ve already been doing, because you’re good at it. It’s fine how it is.

    The turning point is yours. It’s not something you have to take. You can sit back and wait until the wheel has spun so many times, that the tension is unbearable, and you can’t feel a choice, except to leap. That’s life’s way of ensuring you take the true path eventually.

    You can do that if you want. I can too. I’ve done it plenty of times.

    Or, you can slow down. Right now. And take a breath, deep in the centre of your belly.

    It’s you that lies down that scarier path. Your truer nature embodied and lived a little more, with every small step you take.

    I don’t want to hurry you. But life is waiting for you down there. How long it will take for the wheel to turn around to this point once more? Do you want to wait and see?

    Or do you want to take that first shuffling step, down the road untraveled?

     

    Ewan Townhead

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