Did nothing, went nowhere

We were chatting the other day about our respective summer holidays: unlike a Sunday sermon, my resume was short and to the point – I did nothing and went nowhere.

Four weeks of my life, summarised quite simply like that. Afterwards, when I thought of what I’d said, I started to worry.

I realised how easy it is to spend four weeks doing nothing: and, I have to say, how surprisingly enjoyable it actually is as well!

Then I started to figure that if, without any effort, you can spend four weeks of your life doing nothing and going nowhere, it may be just as easy to extend that out to four decades.

That’s a somewhat troubling line of thought! What have I been doing over the last four decades of my life? (For me, that’s since I started secondary education).

How would it feel to find you’ve spent the last forty years of your life effectively doing … well, nothing?

And where have I been going these last four decades? Just round and round in circles with the routines of a daily life I never really stop to think about at all? Just drifting in a dreamworld that I’ve filled with good intentions but have never made reality? Just running on the spot?

Scary, the ease with which a whole life might be frittered away. How easy and, worse still, how pleasantly enjoyable to do nothing and go nowhere!

But that, I’m starting to think, that seems to be the basic default setting on the hard-drive of my self-indulgent heart. Which is more than a little bit worrying!

Because it isn’t what I want at all. If life is one long ‘holy day’, I don’t want to reach its end and find my whole life summarised like that. I mean, what a fine one-liner that’ll be to have written on my tomb – He did nothing and went nowhere!

And yet, of course, while that briefly-stated summary of my four week summer break may be entirely accurate, it’s hardly the full story. I didn’t really do absolutely nothing.

It’s simply that the things I did don’t register at all on any sort of Richter scale of news: the little daily diary of my trivial pursuits can hardly have significance compared with all the headline-making players all around.

But yes, it wasn’t absolutely nothing that I did.

I married a son, for one thing: a son who might have died a year or two ago, but now is very much alive: and living his life with the girl whom he plainly adores.

Which meant a week or so of people, plans and partying ‘til all hours of the night. A healthy, fun reminder of the things that really matter in this life.

I pottered around in that patch of ground behind the house which, when I work hard on it, I sometimes feel I can rightly call a garden: a pleasant, restful sun-trap to relax in and enjoy. Conducive to reflection.

I read a good few books – and a few of them quite good as well! And the good ones took me places, as they do: secreting me away to other worlds, for days on end – shaping and then sharpening my perspective on this very factual world in which I live.

I climbed a mountain. Lochnagar. Strange to have a mountain called a loch! But the loch that gives the peak its name is quite a sight and the tumbling, white-streaked waterfall the other side was more than worth the sweat involved in getting there.

A sort of gentle training day for all that lies ahead. Mountain-sized adventures with some glories on the other side which, I have no doubt, I’ll really have to see to comprehend.

I even had a practice run of setting out, not knowing where it was that I would end.

A day beginning with worship in Perth, then on out into the highland hills, ambling, rambling through the glens – more drawn, I think in hindsight, than simply aimless drifting; drawn by some strange magnetism within, it seemed, until I found myself on Skye and the dark, compelling splendour of the jagged Cuillin mountain tops.

As if this was a taster for the lifestyle of such living which these coming days will bring. Going out to God knows where. Where the wind will take me. Reaching for and climbing up the hazard-laden heights of all those fresh horizons in my life.

I came back from there with a smile on my face and the dream of such living now pulsing afresh through all of my soul. Ready. Prepared. Eager for the action!

So it wasn’t really nothing that I did. And it wasn’t really nowhere that I went.

It’s just it sometimes seemed that way these last four weeks. And maybe that’s what these last four decades have been for me as well.

Simply getting me ready; making me prepared; giving me a hunger for the action which is now about to start.