Inhabiting the spaces

A couple of months ago I was in Europe and took an Interrail trip with my youngest daughter through the cities of Turin, Milan, Paris and London. This offering comes from my reflections during our wanderings.

City. A city belongs to everyone. Everyone who is there, whatever their circumstance. Some cities are better than others at having big, beautiful and accessible public spaces (Milan came bottom of our list and Paris tops!). Public spaces are something I don’t give much attention to usually. In my rural existence I have all I need at home. If I go out it is mostly in order to do a number of errands then get home again as quickly as possible. But in a city people often go out in the morning and don’t return until late at night. I wonder how they do it?

If you are out all day then what do you do about that safe place I call ‘home’? How to stay grounded? I took up the challenge to find ‘home’ in all the spaces I inhabited during the day in each city I visited. It was certainly a challenge to stay poised in my nervous system given the ocean of sounds, smells, movement, colours - all demands on my attention that surrounded me. Yet I found a way - it is probably obvious to you city folk reading this.

I learned to stop. Sometimes you need simply to stop. To just sit. It could be on a wall next to a river or in a cafe full of people. And the same inside myself: I learned to stop and take time, to notice how I am being, and possibly return to neutral before continuing on my way.

We don’t need the noise and bustle of a city to bring us out of balance. Managing ourselves is a challenge of mind-body in any context. Even when you live in a rural valley on a green island.