08 Feb Connecting More Through Challenges
"The difficult things in life are the things that join us up" - Derren Brown
We went to see Derren Brown’s “Showman” in London and the theme was about how our difficulties and painful times connect us far more.
A couple of weeks after the show, I was walking along the river Itchen. It had burst its banks and was difficult to walk along. It dawned on me how the obstacles along the overflowing river showed what Derren Brown was getting at.
Have a listen to the story, or read the transcript.
Audio transcript
Yesterday, I decided to go for a walk by the river. And it was cloudy. It hasn’t been raining that badly for a while, so I figured the river might be okay, but I would still wear my wellies, just in case. Boy, oh, boy, was I glad I was wearing my wellies, because it would have been a very short walk if I hadn’t! So where we’ve had all that heavy rain at the end of 2022, some bits of the path have river water flowing over them, so you need wellies or you’re going to get very, very wet.
But then there was one bit and it just looked like a muwasddy puddle. And then there was reeds, so I’m assuming kind of before the river had come closer to what was the path, but it wasn’t there now because there was such a big puddle there. And I started to walk through this muddy puddle and I got to a point where I felt my foot sink down a little deeper than was comfortable, so I backed up, thought I would try the muddy area to the right of it that was closer to the river. Again, foot sank deeper than was comfortable, and yes. So I stood there for a while, wondering what to do, got back to the start of the puddle and then wondered, “okay, am I just going to turn back?”
But then I thought, no, I’m going to try it. And so what I did was I went along the side. Now, this involved going into some thorns, but I slowly kind of sidestepped my way along, scratched my hand in the process, but I made it. And there was this feeling of satisfaction that I had made it to the other side and I could continue walking for a lot longer.
And I went walking a bit further. And then when I made my way back, I got to this puddle and there were three lads coming the other way. And, yeah, one of them had just abandoned his boots. They weren’t welly boots, they were just walking boots. One of them was now wearing mud for boots. It didn’t look like he had boots that much.
And the other one seemed to have escaped quite well. I’m not entirely sure how. And there were other people. Like, there was a man that was given his daughters, I assume they were his daughters piggybacks over, and it got us all talking and connecting.
And when I went to see Derren Brown with my partner Tony for his birthday in January, 1 of the themes of Derren Brown’s show was, it’s those hard moments, it’s actually pain and those difficult moments that connect us far more.
And it made me realise as well, this challenge is obviously it wasn’t really that hard a challenge, but the challenging part of the river connected us much more than anything else did . Other people we bumped into along the way, you just say hi, or the dogs might come and have a sniff or something, but that was it. It was very brief.
But this difficult-to-get-over muddy puddle, part of the river provided far more of a point of connection, of a longer conversation than anything else. And I think that’s a really lovely metaphor for and we can often have these dreams of this ideal life, of everything flowing smoothly, but actually it’s the challenges, it’s the difficulties that add the richness, that add the meaning that help us connect more.
So that’s my little sharing for today.