The Happy Place

When people say 'find your happy place' they usually refer to 2 things. Occasionally it's used as a joke - a wind up for an aggravated person. But more often than not, it refers to a state of mind. A place of complete serenity where worries and stress no longer jar your every thought.

So it never really occurred to me that you might actually be able to find your happy place ... And go to visit. 

The other day I read a post on a blog I follow called Absolutely Lucy. It was all about how she remained happy and about finding your happy place. She said a 'happy place' is a place that you've been to which holds some fundamental importance for you. Your 'happy place' could be a park, a beach, a house. Anything that makes you happy and holds happy memories. It's so simple and I don't know why it never occurred to me before. 

I was having a bit of a dip earlier on last week when I happened to read Lucy's post. I began to wonder about my happy place because I needed to get there. It's hard to start to think of somewhere happy when you're not in the mood. But I still tried. 

Lucy's happy place was an island off Malta called Comino. I went there with my family some years back too so I retraced the holiday through my mind, remembering the beautiful turquoise of sea and the spare rocky expanse. We had literally just been dropped off the boat on a baron land in the sea. I remember worrying that the boat would not come back to collect us and that we were sold our death in the package of a 'pleasant day trip to a popular tourist island'. 

It was a good holiday, but this wasn't my happy place. I went through the catalogue of my other recent holidays. This year we went to Borneo - it was my childhood dream come true and, even though it ticked off number 1 of my bucket list, this still wasn't my happy place. Not because I was ungrateful or because I didn't have an amazing time but because the time we spent on the island was so jam packed that there wasn't a lot of thinking time. 

Thinking time. Where had I had a lot pf that recently? Then I found it. My happy place. An island near Bali: Lombok.

We've been there 2 years in a row now to the same hotel. It's an absolutely beautiful place. It's set right on the beach with its own infinity pool that looks out onto the sun setting behind the mountains of Bali. The water is clear and pickled with colourful tropical fish. When you walk the length of the beach: a walk that takes a leisurely 15 minutes, you get to a bend where large boulders block your entrance. The waves crash over these boulders as though trying to break them and there are fish that stick themselves to the rocks and advance with each breaking wave. 

This year, we sat atop these rocks and meditated: a method that James had learnt from his recent trip to Cambodia. We sat and tried to clear our minds. We thought of nothing and listened. There were no people on this stretch of the beach. It was ours. 

Thinking about this place; remembering the warmth of the sun, the stillness of the sound, the erratic push of the sea, the sticky smell of salt, puts a smile on my face. This was the place that immediately took me away from my low spell and gave me drive and motivation. I clung onto a menory that I loved. Something that I wanted to repeat. 

I remember visiting those rocks a couple of times over the weeks and coming with pen and paper. I wrote poems, I wrote feelings, I wrote prose. It worked wonders for my creativity. 

In the light of reflecting upon that holiday, I now have a new determination. Something I've wanted to do for ages was travel, especially travelling solo. Lombok is my happy place, but I wonder how many more happy places there are out there. It is my plan to start out to find my happiest place on earth! Perhaps a bi ambitious, yes, but there's no time for ambition like when you're alive! 

Under the sea ... under the sea ...

I remember the first time I looked underwater.

The sea, from above, always looks so scary. A distorted version and poor mix of colours, shades and depths. Though I could happily swim in the sea - provided I didn't go out too far - I wasn't quite ready to bring clarity to the ill-manufactured still.

One beach day on holiday I finally made a pact to at least look. Snorkelling was what people do on holiday. I had pet fish at home. When I got older, maybe I wouldn't want to do handstands and play on surfboards all my life (in that there was needless worry). I ought to just check. 

I was speaking with a friend, who, if I remember rightly, was in the midst of a full-fronted ramble. I dropped the hairband that I had on my arm at my feet on purpose as I slowly zoned out, paddling my feet in the sea. 

"Oops!" I whispered, stopping her momentarily. I pulled the goggles I had been twirling on my arm onto my face and bent to pick up the band. 

The water was so clear and there were little grey fish ebbing away from my black hairband that was drifting with the current. I grabbed it and surfaced.

"Wow!! It's a different world down there!! It's a different world down there!!"  

My friend was unfazed. I suppose she had already seen the spectacle that had shocked me so much. 

Steadily a love of the sea developed and encapsulated everything I did. I went home and swapped Barbie's for plush lobsters and fish and a box. I made my own aquariums and watched reefs on TV.

Still to date one of my favourite programmes is "Blue Planet". I can't get enough of the majestic ways of the sea and how, as humans, we have been purposefully denied the priveledge of being part of the underwater world. 

I would say that God made us without the capabilities to breathe underwater or produce a film over our eyes to fashion homemade goggles. But, if you don't believe in God, and believe in evolution instead, the concept still holds. We have been denied that opportunity. It was only because of human skill and craftsmanship that we have protruded on the land of the fish. 

However, there are many lessons to be learned from the sea. 

When the Killer Whale comes into any animal programme or conversation, I squirm inside. I've watched countless attacks of Killer Whales on baby Humpbacks and the process doesn't seem fair. 

So, there I was looking for something less gruesome than another episode of Heroes, when along comes a nursing mother and baby on Blue Planet. You can almost tell by David Attenborough's voice that there is some malicious content on it's way. This Killer Whale pod chases a mother and baby for 3 hours. Then once the baby is tired enough, they separate it from the mother, drown it, kill it, eat it's tongue and leave it. 13 months carried by the mother. Something like a month of Earth and gone - all for it's tongue. 

We can almost match this injustice with our own kind. Murderers; who take lives for no reason. People who steal babies. Arsonists; who start fires. All for what? Not much more than a tongue. 

But, even though I had seen the wonders of the underwater world, I was still fairly scared and it took me a while to go out and swim in the delicate covering of the bikini, knowing that I was exposing myself to the fish and (moreover) jellyfish. It wasn't a very inviting welcome!

But after a while, every beach meant snorkelling. Every empty shoreline meant going deeper. And every glimpse of coral meant finding more. 

I absolutely love the sea, and though I don't believe that as humans we were ever given the right to steal glimpses of the sea, I so glad that we have. 

Tree Hugger

Nature cannot be compromised. It can be retained or destroyed. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Regardless of whether you believe in a God or not, everyone associates nature with divinity. Atheists will try to convince themselves that beautiful landscapes aren't a work of God or any higher being. The religious will work to convince themselves that it is. And anyone in between will be weighing up both arguments. 

You can fall in love with nature, just as you can a wife or husband, boyfriend or girlfriend. You can find yourself, be yourself. I know that staring out at the Indian Himilaya and walking in the valleys of its surrounding foothills is where I've been truest to myself. I figured out what I wanted in life, only to return home and lose all concept of my dreams that were so perfect they seem detached from modern and artificail reality. So conceivable in the wilderness, in a life of tent living and trekking, those dreams were lost to the baffling power of the modern world. It was nature that made me see what I wanted: to immerse myself in religion, straddle continents in a bid to see the whole world and live the simplest of lives by farming, teaching and living of the land. 

The impact of nature is humongous. Just 2 weeks and I was a changed - or realised - women. I had been on a pilgrimage to find myself and settled for nothing but what was true in my heart. Just 2 weeks. And that was all thanks to nature. 

Ask a gardener and they'll tell you how much dedication is needed to maintain a healthy, natural environment. Ask a building developer and they'll tell you how easy it is to destroy everything. 

The fragility of nature is awe-inspiring. Rainforests, deserts, mountains, beaches all create such a strong image in the mind and heart but they are so helpless. 

When I walked down to the beach behind my house one evening, I felt the weakness and powerlessness of the nature. The beach had been a pleasure spot for us on many muggy evenings and warm winter afternoons. White, coarse sand that singed the skin from the bottoms of your feet spread for kilometres. And the sea that lapped at the shore had been so clear and turquoise. Looking out, the horizon was made of the ocean. Just ocean. 

Only I went one evening and realised all those features were gone. Bulldozed, the sand was laced with tyre tracks. There was now a walkway. Nice? Bit at all. Sand had been dumped out to sea and lorries full of more sand and rocks growled along it. At the end of the arm of sand was an island. Trucks were loading the island with rubble to pad it out and laying out the foundations for, what we later found out, was to be a hotel out in the water. All the sea that had once run rampant, crashing against the rocks and dragging small boats out to sea was now stagnant; baking still in the man made lake. The vast expanse of sea that we had taken our kayak out and paddled half way to the Burj Al Arab was now drowned under many feet of imported sand. 

The future income prospect has not, so far, been worth the damage. The UAE, Dubai particularly, has grown so fast within the past few decades. Sprawling and generating a brimming economy we were hardly in need of any more development. 

But maybe I've got it wrong. Maybe I haven't. But the toll of the land is heavily evident. It's a beauty that's list FOREVER! Something as natural as that is never coming back. Ever. And when they realise it will be too late. For that one, seemingly unimportant, beach in one of the hottest places in the world, it is already too late.