Two-storey skyline
NEWSLETTER #9 | September 2023
Onwards and Upwards
Arriving in London at 25, I was ambitious for summits to scale.
I’d finally got my foot in the door as an Assistant Director and was impatient to make an impact. Amidst the big buildings of the capital, I planned to make, conquer and acquire; shows, companies, theatres, audiences, knowledge, relationships, good times, savings, a roof over my head and someone to come home to.
I pounded the streets of the big smoke on foot, weaved around its monuments on my fixie, revelled in the speed of the tube, relied on the network of night buses. I never stopped moving, insatiable for more.
The city architecture was a constant reminder there was always more I could be doing: starting something new, reaching higher, improving.
My motto; ‘onwards and upwards’.
Two-storey skyline
Jump forwards 15 years; I’m 40, married with three kids and I’ve quit the job I worked so hard to get. We decide to get a dog and relocate to the sea.
One day not long after the move I’m walking her along The Saxon Shore Way. We leave the house, head through town, along the creek, out past the orchards and towards the sea. And that’s when I notice it.
Everywhere I look, I see a two-storey skyline - and beyond it, familiar but long-forgotten, the horizon.
Like the Saxons did a millennium earlier on these very same paths, I work it out as I walk.
I realise that thinking big means looking up, aiming high. It narrows your focus - which is important if your goal is to scale heights. Stirred by the skyscrapers, I’d gone onwards and upwards, just as I’d aspired to.
But as I reach the sea-shore and the horizon transmutes from second-floor rooftops to the point where ocean meets sky, I locate a new compulsion; to refocus my future thinking from the vertical to the horizontal. From pushing onwards and upwards to travelling inwards and outwards. I’d spent so much time looking near and high, I’d forgotten to see far, wide - and inside.
Inwards and Outwards
We’re hard-wired to prioritise foreground motion over background change. We watch the minute hand but don’t notice the hour hand.
Which means thinking long-distance is hard. It involves deciding on what matters most, defeating the voice of self-sabotage, deciphering where to even begin and discovering the dedication to go the distance. Post-pandemic, we’re particularly conditioned to see with short sight.
Focussing on the horizon means zooming out. Beginning with the macro, not the micro. It’s getting closer to what we want to do, not what we feel you should. How we want to be, not what we want to have. People over things. Navigating by compass, not map.
It’s appreciating, not acquiring. Going deeper not higher. Valuing what we already have, not searching for meaning in the new. Aspiring to contentment not accumulation.
The horizon is where where we conceive of cathedrals not shopping malls. Where succession plans succeed. Where ice-cube trays are refilled. Where compound interest lives. Where wills are written. And where the destinies that precede them are self-authored.
Where two stories are enough.
The horizon is humbling; a gentle reminder of our tiny place in the world.
After all, heights can be surmounted. But we can never reach the horizon.
There is a Chinese proverb:
When is the best time to plant a tree?
20 years ago.
When is the second best time?
Now.
And maybe the best of all trees to plant are those in whose shade we will never even sit.
