It is never easy being the second son, you see it in so many families. Always having to play ‘catch up’. Around the time that every one of his friends was choosing where to fit into society, author Martin Worthy, a second son growing up in Hillingdon, was actively trying to find his way OUT. Thirty countries and thirty-five years abroad, he certainly did some of that.
Martin J Worthy
So, ten things .. ..
Although I still have this British passport, was blue but now is red, I do not feel British. I am home here, just as I am in Chennai, just as I was under a bush next to a highway . . . I FEEL this planet as home, and as we look up at the sky, don’t you just want to send a prayer up to all those other beings who perhaps know nothing of our existence. We are all one.
I have always felt it quite fitting that I was born a Gemini – my inner twin has been a charming and inspiring fellow traveller throughout this life; I sometimes think I couldn’t have done it without him. No, seriously, without that inner voice we are all just flapping around, at the mercy of the winds of life.
I am a fiddler – not the violin type, but a fiddler with a curious mind and even more curious fingers. I could never just throw things away, once they are broken. No, I would keep them safe for months, pull them apart and keep them handy for a few months more – only then, to throw them away through lack of interest rather than an inability to fix them.
I started writing on an old friend’s throw away, nearly forty years ago now, you could not even call it computer . . . I had to load the operating system from a 5¼” floppy every time I switched it on, and then another floppy for the writing program. I tap tap tapped away on that for a couple of years, wrote my own “teach yourself 10 finger typing” program in BASIC, before I finally invested in a ‘new’ computer.
I was in Denmark at the time I first became acquainted with Word and Windows. My poor 386 processor and 4Mb RAM struggled to keep up – ‘twas a good job I had an enormous 80Mb hard disk to save all my work on(sic!) You know, back in the days when we had not heard of gigabytes.
It sounds strange, but I have no friends. That is, I feel that everyone of us is related, connected; which means, no one is any longer a friend as such. Thousands and thousands of brothers and sisters but no friends – the realisation shocked me as much as it might do you.
Which leads perfectly into the next one, that also shocked me as it became real for me. That is that, though alone, I never feel lonely; and in fact I have over the years begun to like my own company more than ever before.
I have never felt that these things folk consume (that I do no longer) are forbidden to me – meat, alcohol, tabacco, eggs and all those funny drugs I used to find so much fun. I am often asked why, and the answer that I don’t like or want them anymore, doesn’t seem to satisfy them. What is freedom if it is not to eat, drink, smoke or do what you choose?
There is a change in how I experience time now. We are gregariously seizing upon each new taste, new experience, trying to save time to get there. I have time to give, I am going nowhere, nothing pressing to do before a certain time – discovering the joy within seems means that in an obscure way, time itself is no longer mine to give, take or lose.
Lastly, a secret I didn’t put in my memoir . . . tricky, as I have been so honest, but try this: I cry often. I cry for the state of the world, for the way people treat each other, for the truth that often people create their own suffering and I cannot peel it away from them. Even now, a tear comes, when I feel how little I have given back, how insignificant it is to write this book, to offer my time and energies to those wishing to start meditation. I do not see it as a weakness, though few would know it, it is my private secret!
Yes, I would like to know you, just as much as I would like you to know me. There is no hierarchy in the world but the one we self-impose. How we all live our lives is for each one to work out, but with association we can get support and inspiration, we can share our trials, our successes, our moments of insight and delicacy. Finding what was never Lost . . . is my way of sharing some of those moments of mine with the world.
Finding what was never lost…and then just giving it away by Martin J. Worthy (published 6th March 2018 RRP £ 9.99 paperback, £3.99 ebook) is available to order from online retailers including amazon.co.uk and to order from all good bookstores.