In Search of Lost Words

Sometimes you read something and, for some strange reason, it stays with you forever. It could be the words on your favourite pencil case, a feel-good quote in a shop window, the slogan slapped on the back of your cereal packet. You may read it once, or twice, or a thousand times. For some strange reason these words just get you. Or get into you.

“The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes” – Marcel Proust.

At nineteen, perched on the end of my bed, beneath thundery skies (both physically and metaphorically), I read, and re-read Proust’s quote inscribed on the front of my brand-new university-ready notepad. The words struck me - not in a lightning-bolt-from-the-sky kind of way, but more gently – the way you might first make eye contact with someone you instinctively know will be a friend for life. Words as satisfying and comforting as a Sunday roast.

This single sentence spoke to my very core. I picked it up and safely stored it in the rucksack of my mind. I cherished it, I kept the words polished and gleaming, as I travelled through the delicious, exciting, scary uncertainty of life. A sentence that served me so well. That re-energised me when I felt my mind start to sink. That inspired me to explore, to think, to believe – and to keep on believing. So why, as life became busier and busier, as I raced through my bloated calendar so full of doing/meeting/seeing/lunching/appointmenting, did I close my eyes to these words? Why did I let the coughs and splutters of my overflowing to do list distract from the patient silence of these words, waiting so calmly, so kindly, for their overdue preen and polish? My slower-paced lockdown life has given me the chance to unpack my mind’s rucksack, to find a sunny spot in my bedroom and empty all its contents onto the carpet. With a cup of coffee and the sunbeam’s muse for company, I untangled from this mass of things the words that helped shape my life.

New eyes.

New eyes.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve heaved boxes of scribbles, comments and quotes out of the garage, left untouched for too long. I've dusted off all my story notes and ideas hurriedly written down in between shoots, on trains and planes, after interviews, and before racing on air with seconds to spare.  I’ve halted the bullets of “Well you should have done this years ago”, “Think of all you could have achieved if you’d tried sooner”, “Do you really think you can do this?”. They weren’t easy to stop, but they’re no longer firing out of every follicle. And I’ve made a pact with myself that not everything has to be perfect. Where I am now may be wildly different from where I end up. But the very act of doing, with all its imperfections, is in fact the best move I can possibly make.

I have taken the time to shake out my rucksack, and let the words I love so much tumble back into my life. I’ve made space in my brain, and on my desk, for my mind to dance, and for my hand to write – just as I know they were born to do. “The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”