It’s not an illustrious journey – Croydon, a small town in south London, is not high on people’s bucket list, and by foot is not the flashiest way to travel – but that’s a key part of the journey I’m about to undertake. No matter where we decide to go and how we get there, there will be our joys and challenges. Our joys and challenges will arrive in different forms and have different faces, but they will all emanate from the same source.

And I’ve long felt that if I can’t do the inner work close to home, then there is little chance of me being able to do my work a long way from home. Far from home, where there is plenty of novelty, distraction, and an inadequacy of support that will prevent a good long look at the major happiness disruptors. What this ‘journey about home’ underscores for me, is that some of the most important personal work I need to do is back where I was born and raised. A place I once thought of as home…where I thought I was solid, until I understood that I wasn’t…

Easy to be Buddha in the mountains

I’ve heard it said that it is easy to be Buddha in the mountains. I dare say it is easy to be Buddha anywhere. But if I were to see Buddha in the mountains, and I may I have had a glimpse or two in my time, I would ask whether they could still be Buddha in Croydon. The point here is that I think Croydon (and it is not just Croydon – some places are far worse) adds a few extra challenges to a person’s sense of calm and connectedness.

“The Buddha was interested in the happiness of men. To him happiness was not possible without leading a pure life based on moral and spiritual principles. But he knew that leading such a life was hard in unfavourable material and social conditions¹.”

There are the IKEA towers, the Nestle offices, and that weird ‘stack of 50 pence pieces’ building up near the East Croydon train station, but there are no mountains to calm the nervous system. No sea or lakes, no forests or jungles, no deserts, or swamps, but tonnes of concrete, asphalt, and plenty of shopping opportunities. People struggle, and I struggle. A town divided, by wealth, by race, by all the categorisations that miss the point of the best bits of being human. Limited by geography, yes, but there are also things that have been intentionally put in Croydon that aren’t designed to nourish a small boy.

And when I was a boy, I didn’t understand this. I learnt to cope as best I could with what I was presented with. And when things were difficult, such as feeling anxious or aggressive, I thought that it surely meant there had to be something wrong with me. Back then I didn’t appreciate that what I was feeling and how I was responding was understandable given the environment around me. If I knew back then that to create happy people, we need to have environments that nourish and enable us…then, maybe I’d have found the place a little easier to bear and found it a little easier to forgive myself for not being my best self. Then maybe I’d have set about doing what I could to make the space a little more convivial for myself and other people around me.

Sadly, I did not do that. Instead, I left. And for many years leaving became my go to remedy for resolving pain and unhappiness. Physically leaving, if we can, being a popular remedy for many of life’s difficulties. Psychologically leaving another remedy. And sometimes they almost work. But it is also a running away, an escape, checking out, and it is dangerous to let that go on indefinitely. At some point we have to plant ourselves firmly in the soil, free from the distraction, and say this is me. 

The non-epic, epic

Epic is dead. In fact, I don’t think it’s ever really been very alive. At its core, epic just means being bigger, better, further, faster than someone else has yet done it. In this day and age, with the appreciation that we have one world and finite resources, the obsession with the epic – the bigger, better, further, faster – is a problem. The vast resources it requires and with no additional happiness. And where does it stop?

The key to any journey is not making it about the arrival, the completion. It is about the experiences on the journey itself, as well as the intention behind making the journey. There may never be an arrival. And whilst most of those footsteps will hopefully be joyful, when the pain, heartache, and challenges come, as they always will, it helps to have a reason for pressing on that goes beyond being able to say, “I did it”. In pushing for the epic, it is all too easy to lose sight of something deeper, something rarer, something that will transform the heart and soul.

And so, Croydon, the place I was born in. It is no Bhutan. But it is a place I will walk towards, a place I may or may not arrive at. Although it’s not really about Croydon. It is about undertaking a journey that I’ve long wanted to do, to get to know something of the wider land I was born to, and to allow me to get deep into a life well lived. It’s about setting my intentions and being with whatever unfolds along the way. And if I can’t be with what unfolds, then finding acceptance in that.

Setting my intentions – from where, how, and with whom

It’s probably a good point to mention that I live in Scotland. Added to the fact that I intend to take a path that weaves the lands, the walk could be about 800 miles…I’ll pass through a few places I once lived in. Places I mistakenly thought of as home, not appreciating what a place to call home requires. 

There will be some blog posts to accompany this journey, minimal social media (I don’t care for it, since it doesn’t serve happiness), but my priority is connection along the way. Connection to the land, to my body, and to my heart. I will make this journey unsupported, meaning I’ll carry everything and walk everything. Connection with others is essential – a vital source of happiness. From the smile of a stranger to the flutter of a bird. Whatever I meet along the way, I want to be with it. I must not stretch myself. I must stay mindful. Open. But wary too. There is plenty of positive in our world, but there are things that can bring a journeyman down. So designed that some of our spaces are to do so….as this ‘journey about home‘ seeks to reveal.

*** This is the first blog post I’ve written about this ‘journey about home‘. There will be other posts to update on my progress south and give reflections about happiness and wellbeing – I’ll gather all the posts together as I go on this page. Follow the blog if you like. Don’t expect much in the way of social media updates. The next post I publish here will give something of a loose route plan.

Footnotes:

¹ What The Buddha Taught, Walpola Rahula

Photo image attribution: Peter Trimming / Buses in George Street, Croydon /  CC BY-SA 2.0 (modified on original)