Your reminder to just be
Psst...nature is trying to tell you something
This week I arrived back from a trip to Spain bearing all the hallmarks of a good holiday: some irregular patches of sunburn, a beach bag still full of sand, and the feeling that I might explode if I so much as look at another breadstick.
I found the city different to the London I’d left five days earlier.
Bitter winds and endless drizzle had given way to the first signs of summer. Cars swinging around street corners, blasting reggae and trap with all the windows rolled down. School kids riding on each other’s handlebars. Office workers eating their sandwiches in the park. Enough short skirts, shorts and shades to make Adele proud.
With the rise in temperature, the collective mood had lightened. As if a spell had broken, London was London-ing again.
A timely reminder
I know that many of you reading this have been in a bit of a funk lately. And for those of us who live in the UK, perhaps this year’s seemingly endless winter did have something to do with it.
But to blame it on the weather would be too glib. The reality is that life is tricky. It pulls us in different directions when we least expect it. It forces us to contend with our own flawed and inconvenient humanness.
That’s the whole premise of this newsletter. Selfishly, writing is my way of grappling with all those complexities and quirks, nudging them towards ideas that help me make sense of the chaos.
And what I love about Substack is being able to share those ideas with a community of people who really get it—it’s so reassuring to know that we’re not going through any of this life stuff alone.
But what my holiday (and losing my mind watching Paramore and Taylor Swift at Wembley Stadium last night) reminded me is that sometimes we need a break from all that thinking…
A case for just being
You know what they say: you can have too much of a good thing. Much like all the little packets of breadsticks I consumed on holiday, I can be guilty of overdoing it.
Immersed in coaching training, I’ll admit that I’ve become a bit of a self-development junkie. I can spend hours studying, journalling and reading, not to mention all of the coaching I’ve had. And to be honest, I’ve always spent a lot of time in my own head.
But too much time in there, and it’s easy to lose sight of the point of all that reflection: to enjoy life out here.
On holiday, my friends and I devoted ourselves to that very cause.
In the mornings (well, afternoons), we’d flip flop down to the beach with our parasol. Once there, we’d stay horizontal for the rest of the day, fuelled by a constant supply of crisps and only getting up for beers and dips in the sea. Nights drew in late and we’d have dinner watching the sun fall below the horizon, casting Barbie-pink rays in the sky.
Unlike our catchups in London, where life updates have to be crammed into a 1.5-hour restaurant booking, we had enough space and time to let conversation fall where it may. Sometimes it descended into giggling and silliness. Sometimes we chatted idly about our lives, able to observe them from a distance.
Teetering on the precipice of our 30s and hurtling towards some big changes, I was conscious of savouring this moment of stillness together—a moment to just be. To share a bottle of sunscreen and moan halfheartedly about being covered in sand. To stake claim over our youth with in-jokes and drinking games.
For the first time in months, I felt properly relaxed. Discarding all my careful routines and thoughtful rituals—morning pages, yoga, clever books and podcasts—for carbs, sherry and laziness felt, paradoxically, like pure health.
So I’ve kept this post deliberately short. Forgoing hours of writing and re-writing for pizza in the park and a slow Sunday evening.
I hope you can do the same. Because that’s what summer is for, right? Nature’s reminder to take a break and linger in the being; the doing can wait.