A Sense of Direction

I am writing this on Wednesday evening.

Almost twenty-four hours ago, Fruitloop, Fabrice and I were sitting around a Brida table talking about sleep.

Fabrice explained how, during his military years, he learned to sleep almost anywhere: on the ground, beside a tree, inside a vehicle, sometimes for only five or twenty minutes. The important thing was not comfort. It was recognising the opportunity.

When you can sleep, you sleep. You never know when the next chance will come.

He also spoke about trust. When somebody reliable was keeping watch, he could close both eyes. When the person was, as Fabrice put it, “a little bit special,” one eye remained open.

Rest was not something he created alone. It depended on the people around him.

The meeting finished.

Except it did not.

Just after six o’clock on Tuesday evening, Fabrice and I set off for a walk above Cleebourg.

Actually, that is not completely true.

Fabrice went for another walk.

I tried to keep up.

The Highest Point

The plan sounded reasonable enough. We would climb to the highest point in the area, enjoy the view and then visit some old Second World War defences hidden nearby.

Three hours later, shortly after nine o’clock, we returned.

Today, my legs still remember every hill. I am not fit. Fabrice appears to regard steep ground as a normal part of conversation.

Fortunately, he is patient.

The view from the top was glorious. Below us were Cleebourg, the vineyards, the villages and the forests. Roads that had seemed separate from the ground now belonged to one landscape.

From above, the area made more sense.

I could see where things were and how they connected.

Sometimes we need to change our position before we can understand the place where we already stand.

History Beneath Our Feet

We continued towards an old anti-tank ditch from the Second World War. Nearby were bunkers inside former military terrain, and we went closer to look.

Standing beside them, it was impossible not to imagine the people who had once been there.

What did they see?

What did they hear?

What did they fear?

What was it like to wait inside those concrete spaces, knowing that somebody might soon be coming from the other direction?

Fabrice is French. I am German. I live in France. He works in Germany.

Eighty years ago, those identities could have placed us on opposite sides of the same ground.

On Tuesday evening, we walked through it together. We looked, asked questions and tried to imagine the people rather than only the uniforms.

Whichever side they were on, they were still human beings inside bunkers, surrounded by uncertainty.

History feels different when you are standing inside it.

Tired Body, Clearer Head

When I arrived home, I was a wreck.

My legs were tired. My body had formed a clear opinion about hills.

But my head felt different.

It was clearer. I felt more motivated. Almost twenty-four hours later, that feeling has not disappeared.

I am already wondering where we should walk next. I want to understand this area better, hear its stories and discover what lies behind the next hill, inside the next forest or beside the next village road.

That surprised me.

The walk used energy, but it also gave something back.

What Rest Returns

The theme of this Pineapple is Rest.

When we began, I assumed we would talk mostly about sleep, holidays and doing less. Instead, the conversations kept moving in another direction.

Martin explained that a concert begins before the first song. There is preparation, travel, anticipation and the people he meets along the way. The experience continues long after the music stops.

Manfred said his caravan holiday begins when he enters the car, not when he reaches the Netherlands. The road is already part of it.

Ralf’s wife rests through swimming, cycling and running. Ralf rests through driving, food, machines and finding sardines in a Spanish supermarket.

They spend the same weekend in completely different ways, yet both return with something.

These are not stories about escaping life.

They are stories about entering it more fully.

Living or Consuming?

Martin and Manfred arrived at a question which has stayed with me.

Are we living life, or consuming it?

The difference is not always obvious.

We can visit a place without really entering it. We can attend an event while already thinking about the next one. We can photograph a view before we have properly looked at it. We can complete a holiday as if it were another task.

Done.

Next.

Modern life makes this easy. There is always another message, another programme, another destination and another thing waiting to be consumed.

The experience can finish before it has had time to reach us.

But some experiences stay.

A concert returns two years later. A caravan journey becomes part of the holiday. A triathlon weekend becomes a story about marriage. A Brida meeting about sleep continues into a three-hour walk through vineyards, forests and military history.

Perhaps that is the difference.

We do not only pass through the experience.

The experience passes through us.

Finding Direction

This issue is called A Sense of Direction.

I do not think direction means having a perfect plan. It may simply mean being present enough to notice where we are.

On Tuesday evening, we climbed high enough to see how the roads, villages and forests fitted together. The view did not tell me what to do with the rest of my life.

It did something smaller.

It made me curious about the place where I already live. It made me want to move through it more carefully. It made me want to return.

Perhaps rest works in a similar way.

It does not always remove us from life. Sometimes it returns us to life with clearer eyes.

I am writing this almost twenty-four hours later.

My legs are still tired.

But I already want to go again.

Perhaps that tells me everything I need to know about the difference between escaping life and returning to it.