STARDUST

A life like no other... like all the oth­ers.

That’s you and me on the un­fath­omable jour­ney. We have a one-in-one cer­tainty of death and yet, roughly speak­ing, there was a one in four tril­lion chance of you ex­ist­ing in the first place.

It is the ul­ti­mate priv­i­lege where every sec­ond counts. One might ex­pect it would fos­ter un­bounded good­ness and staunch any ten­den­cies for blood-let­ting.

In truth it often does. If given half a chance, quiet good na­tures far ex­ceed the rau­cous. The an­ti­dote to break­down has al­ways been in­clu­sive com­mu­nity, re­spect and bal­ance with na­ture and that sanc­tu­ary and hu­mil­ity.

Here in the peace­ful Pri­o­rat I have al­most all I need. Noth­ing is per­fect. Every­thing worth­while re­quires toil, rea­son and pa­tience. It is def­i­nitely not utopia. Au­thor James Hilton’s fic­tional Shangri-la in the novel Lost Hori­zon, seeded in Ti­betan Bud­dhist scrip­tures that tell of seven places of moun­tain peace, har­mony and re­mark­able longevity is far away, but.... maybe there is some­thing about moun­tains.

I have never lived in such an egal­i­tar­ian car­ing place where as­pi­ra­tion is to sus­tain what sus­tains. Val­ues and en­deav­our per­sist de­spite every­thing, in the on­slaught of un­fet­tered con­sumerism that cares noth­ing for the men­tal health of vul­ner­a­ble young peo­ple.

I am try­ing to fin­ish a mem­oir for my fam­ily, a tome that re­counts early life trauma, es­capes from an un­bear­ably un­happy house to roam as young as five into wilder­ness; to study and fol­low crea­tures, to sit and blend, to climb to sway­ing tips of trees, to run like the wind. I am writ­ing of what is now all too com­mon - fam­ily frac­ture and col­lapse - that played a fun­da­ment part in the form­ing of my char­ac­ter and soli­tary ten­dency.

There were mother’s af­fairs. There was a fist fight over her by men I did not know. My fa­ther was sui­ci­dal. I was a child of the sec­ond of my mother’s three mar­riages. We sud­denly aban­doned my fa­ther and our wood­land home to live in a vast, de­cay­ing five-storey tatty palace, a creak­ing, salt cor­roded for­mer hotel on a cliff-top over­look­ing the sea. The walls were yel­low with age. We had left all our toys and pets be­hind. In win­ter there were only us in the 140 rooms where the wind whis­tled under doors and ghosts stalked a boy’s mind. A stranger joined the fam­ily. He did not want me or my sis­ter. I learned fast how words mat­tered, how to rely on my­self.

I headed for the rock pools, the coastal path. Na­ture once again brought per­spec­tive and peace of mind. I could find my feet, my bal­ance, de­spite being vul­ner­a­ble, de­spite every­thing. It was tan­gi­ble.

There was no new-media mania in the palm of my hand, in­ces­santly feed­ing doubts, in­se­cu­ri­ties, fears and lies. If there had been such easy, blind­ing ad­dic­tion I doubt my men­tal health would have coped.

What it must mean to be young today. They too are star­dust.