On a Walk & Talk session once, we wandered the cwms of Llanwenarth Breast.
From pine, to beech, to oak… new growth everywhere, dappled light shifting constantly in the breeze.
Like thought.
“There’s an abandoned village in here somewhere,” my client informed me.
I knew there were ruined habitations, but had never linked any of them together. It became a game, every wall we saw “might be part of it?”
Then we came to this place. A full collection of buildings, perched at the head of the valley, almost completely reclaimed by nature. The notion of a street headed up between a few of them, but the human built structures had long been outpaced by the natural world.
Almost at the door of each ruin stood a hulking sycamore. Like a sentry.
It was sobering. A stark reminder of our impermanence. Compared with this landscape, we’re little more than mayflies, dancing fleetingly with life.
We’re here, we create for a while, and we’re gone.
It focused the mind.
Conversation turned imperceptibly towards the nature of our own creations. What did we really want from our time here? What would be cool to bring into existence? What were we kidding ourselves about? Where were we holding back?
By the end of the walk, we’d knocked down some walls of our own—the invisible, “WTF is that doing there?!” kind—and there was a plan. Some next steps to take.
Nothing big, because nothing’s big, taken in isolation. Just enough to get the machinery moving with intention.
One, small, imperfect step, taken in the moment.
Later that evening came the feedback. The steps had been taken.
Ripples had been made, and in some cases had already achieved resonance – troops were mobilised!
We’re all the same.
We all tell ourselves stories that hold us back.
When these are gone, well, then there’s just the work to do. So do it.
Because in the words of Napoleon Hill,
“Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.”
💟
Giles
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Giles P Croft
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