iRelle

… groan. All creatived out. Sorry. At least I didn’t make an a-maze-ing pun.

Yesterday My family went to Tasmazia for my nephew Henry’s first birthday. Tasmazia huddles underneath the lengthy shadows of Mt. Roland, which also overlooks Sheffield, Beulah, The Promised Land and Nowhere Else. There was some snow sparkling up on the hills in the watery, intermittent sunshine and a rather invigorating chill in the air, but the rain stayed up and the mazes kept the wind away, and in any case we were too busy to notice the weather – at least until we packed into the cars for hour-and-a-bit trip home. I fell into a bit of a philosophical pit, and crawled out of it with this allegory about life and mazes clenched in my teeth:

In the maze of life, you never see anyone else really clearly. Even the people who you walk with, who you’re closest to, are either behind you or in front of you and you only ever see one side of them at a time. Sometimes you even lose sight of them, or it feels like they’re just about to slip around the corner and all you can see are the soles of their shoes. And there are other people in the maze – you can hear their voices over the hedge, but you never see them, except for a glimpse of them in the distance as your paths cross. You don’t really know who they are. Sure, you can name them. You could probably even categorise their personality traits and explain why you do or don’t like them. But have you ever really seen them for who they are?

And look at yourself. You can see shoulders, hands, stomach, feet… but not your face. And this is how you are most familiar with yourself. You can’t separate yourself from your body and see yourself from another direction, see yourself as others see you. But you have the best view of yourself: the only real 3D view, with all its layers and interlocking pieces.

Of course, the most striking resemblance (and the most documented one) between a maze and our lives is the abundance of twists and turns along the way. We can never see what’s up ahead, only the path towards it. Maybe we can imagine the next goal, but until we get there we never know exactly how it’s going to map out. There might be long straight paths where you can fall into a comfortable stride, but at the end it twists into an uneasy series of hairpin bends that make you falter and stagger a little.

And perhaps the most telling thing about ourselves is the way we handle the dead-ends in our lives. Do we see it in the distance and turn off before we get close enough to check if it is just a corner? Do we come round the corner and abruptly up against a solid wall? And if we do, how do we react? We could have a laugh, shrug it off and head back the way we came… it all looks so different from the opposite direction, after all. Or we could slide down the wall, put our head in our hands and cry until someone comes to find us. We could get mad and throw a few punches at the air, stamp off to find someone or something to take it out on. Or we could try to scratch our way through, wear down the wall and ourselves with the effort. We could give a matter-of-fact sigh and set off at a steady pace to find the next logical thing to do. We’ll probably face every dead-end differently. But what matters the most is that we get back up and go on to see what’s around the next corner.

… now, that’s this little self-lecture over with! See you tomorrow for Sharing Sunday, everyone!

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