Last night, as I was trying to
get to sleep, my mind was racing. The unfortunate thing is that it wasn’t
racing about anything in particular, or of any import. It was just racing. So I
tried to calm it. I tried a few relaxation exercises, one of which is to think
of a peaceful place, the default of which is usual a beach of golden sands, the
gentle swoosh as the waves gently race up the beach and whisper back to the
sea, the clear, blue skies above, the gentle wave of the palm fronds above. And
while if I was to find myself in this environment, I’m sure that I would find
it very relaxing, it wasn’t the kind of visualisation that was going to work
for me. (In all honesty, it never has been!) So I tried to think of areas and
places that I have found peaceful and relaxing in the past, places that work
for me, and not necessarily ones that would work for others or most people.
Eventually, I made my way to the top of one of the old pine trees I used to
climb as a teenager. The act of climbing was as much a relaxing exercise as the
goal of reaching the top of the tree (or as far up as one could go where the
branches would support you, rather than send you plummeting to the ground,
being stabbed, scratched, whipped and punished by the branches as you fell). It
was while I was toying with this imagery that I realised that I hadn’t actually
‘climbed’ anything (other than the stairs or escalators at various train
stations and shopping centres around Melbourne) for YEARS! That was it! I
suddenly had this need to climb something! (Luckily the need, the urge, the
drive didn’t need to be sated IMMEDIATELY! It could hold off. Otherwise I would
probably look a little weird trying to find a tree to climb at 12:30am in the
morning.)
That also made me realise that,
for the most part, climbing trees around most of the metropolitan area is
probably going to be illegal (definitely in gardens and on nature-strips….so my
gut tells me, at least), and if not illegal, just bizarre, if you aren’t a 10
year old kid or trying to rescue a bird or cat. So what was I to do! I needed
to climb! (Yep, you are right: none of this was relaxing and did nothing to
quell the racing of my mind!) I knew of two places that provided indoor
rock-climbing, but the last time I tried checking on the first, I’d been given
the impression it was prohibitively expensive. The other was still being built.
Both occasions happened years ago. So the place that was just being built was
well and truly completed and had been in operation for quite a few years. A
quick search revealed that it was definitely cheaper than I had imagined. I had
found my release. I was going to find my happy place….or at least scout it out.
And with that decision made, sleep soon came.
