Can you ‘sit in the park’ of your life?

And know whichever path you take will be right?

Jan 12, 2025

Hello! Happy new year! I hope that as 2025 unfolds, you find that it is all you wish for and more.

Yesterday, in bright sunshine, I walked to my local park, a place I am often drawn to. It’s a traditional Victorian park, with formal ‘do not step on the grass’ gardens, a children’s playground and plenty of space to run around in. It’s hilly; several paths lead up to an open area with views to the arch of Wembley Stadium, and there’s a café, aviary and basketball courts.

The park was there for me during a time of reintegration into my own life and flat, after nearly a year staying with my mother during the pandemic. I was feeling somewhat anxious about living alone and remember sitting on a bench in the sunshine and taking a selfie; it was late spring and the green around me was abundant and my face looked natural, lined and honest.

Then the park was there for me again one summer when I needed to make sense of a relationship (read: situationship) I was in and had conflicting feelings about, and I took a basket to the park with books, snacks and a drink and lay on a sarong as children played around me. I breathed in the sunshine and healed a little.

Now my visits to the park feel like a thing I must do for my soul – I need to see the green and the sky and hear the birds, and find out what the plants in the garden area are doing.

Yesterday was my fourth walk there this year, and with my walking boots on I crossed the crunchy, frosty grass and up a hill back to that post-pandemic bench with a view. On my previous park visits I’d had to work out which path to take up that hill – there are two – and usually this kind of decision is one that can somehow send me into a mini spin. But the beautiful realisation I had was that they both lead to the same place, that whatever path I choose I would still reach the top of the hill.

On Saturday, I didn’t take either path, instead following a shaft of sunlight that led the way through the grass up the hill. As I sat on the bench at the top I looked up at the sky, I noticed the birds and the sunset and the people and their dogs (and I did not look at my phone), and I was simply there being me. Glorious me.

Is all this path-choosing and park-sitting a metaphor for life? Yes, I think it is.

I used to worry about whether I should go to this event or that (take this path tonight or another), or whether I should go out at all. I would get FOMO if I didn’t go to something, which often blew up into what I call FOMOTO (fear of missing out on ‘the one’ – read more about that here), and this led me to parties, to salsa, to clubs, to whatever, where I would scan the room for potential partners for life - and when I didn’t find one it was disappointing.

It’s taken age and experience to let that FOMO part of me rest, and to go to things purely because they bring me joy (read what I wrote about celebrating our ‘hotness’ here) to have faith that whatever path or night out I choose, I’ll be on the right one.

Last night I went to an ecstatic dance event – my first ever – and I only knew one person there. My sole intention was to explore, to see what I was drawn to do, to ‘sit in the park’ without any goal or aim, I was simply there to see how it felt.

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The beauty of this kind of thing (think of it as a sober rave with about 200 people in a wooden-floored room decorated with fairy lights) is that I found it easy to go by myself, and it’s a beautiful combination of a solo and a collective experience.

If you feel like dancing ‘with’ someone, you might make eye contact and see if they respond, and last night I found myself doing this and then mirroring the movements of a couple of other dancers. I was even brave enough to dance alone in the middle of a circle that formed towards the end, and where I found another dancer coming towards me and mirroring what I was doing, which helped me feel less exposed and more connected.

I’ve realised that dancing is a deeply spiritual experience for me and I think that’s why I love it so much, and I want to understand how it can become more of a collective, connected thing that I do. In the park I listened to my new ‘Where Love Lives’ playlist and as I walked around and picked up frosted and sparkly leaves I had a little dance to myself.

The life path I expected myself to be on right now (age 47) was the traditional marriage and kids one. And although I don’t feel like I had the choice of two paths - kids or no kids - not having children is the park bench I now find myself on (have I stretched this metaphor too far?!). And what I love about that is that I get to explore this park of life in exactly the way that I choose, trying a different way to go up the hill, the one that takes me off the track and into the sunshine.

What about you - are you exploring the park of your life? And how are you finding the path that you’re on?

If you liked this, here’s some other writing you might enjoy: