The Boathouse

Here I am reluctantly sat in the boathouse, a place I am to shortly learn to be a space of self-discovery.

As I watch the people that came into the boathouse to spend time with each other, they are all smoking and drinking, and perhaps smoking something that is other than tobacco as a sweet almost intoxicating smell wafts across my nostrils. Being a non-smoker I find the clouds of smoke as they billow and wisp across my senses a little nauseating at times and I wonder why on earth I let my friend drag me here.

Being an artistic soul she and her partner are great friends with many of the souls that inhabit the boathouse and it has become like a second home to them as they spend time with what I can only see as false hope trying to restore it to at least some resemblance of its former glory.

I continue to sit and listen to random artists who have a belief in themselves that they have the potential to become more than they are, led me to evaluate the different aspects of life, and made me realise that I am blessed and fortunate in my own life, to have a wonderful family be comfortably off and have a roof over my head and the belief that I am who I am.

In my own way in my personal growth and development, I will be who I am destined to be. And that is a person who works for spirit, and whatever aspect, they choose for me to work. There are those of us that are blessed to be what and who we are, each of us has chosen the journey and path that we are on. For some, this is to live a life in a way that would be seen by others as being wasteful lazy and degenerate. For others it is a life that makes them happy at a level that they can convince themselves that they are, they choose not to work but to help others by giving time voluntarily to maintain a sense of charity by maintaining a rundown building to allow others to come and showcase their work.

By doing so they see that what they are doing may help others to build the confidence they need to progress further in the hopes that one day they will be brave enough to face the world in general. For others, it is a place that will be forever somewhere for them to hide, and be themselves.

As I sat here in the energy of the building of the life force that was within it. I feel a sense of sadness that it has been allowed to go to wrack and ruin. That those that had it previously no longer cared for it, that whilst it was now being used for a group of people who were perhaps disenfranchised, a place where random people came to spend time drinking and smoking. It was if it was as if it was crying out to be restored to its former glory, and be used for the purpose it was originally built to house the canoes that would have heralded the bygone days of canoeing and boating.

I could sense the ringing of cheers and hurrahs, when a race had been won and men in their long shorts and stripy top stood with oars raised in triumphant celebration. Yet despite all this the sense of love and camaraderie that emanated from each and every person there led me to feel that the negative connotations I was thinking of these unique and divine individual beings were coming from my own ego, my sense of fear of stepping out and doing what they were doing.

Which was to trust and believe in their own self. They were not holding themselves back from being what they believe they could be singer, songwriter poet, an artist, who was I to sit and judge whether or not they were doing what was right for them. This was their home, a place they gave value to by sharing with others. In that moment I felt deeply humbled to have been invited to share this space and to realise the lesson it was teaching me of humility and respect.

These loving souls brought with them a unique part of who they were to contribute to the uniqueness of this old run-down building a place to share.

Sadly the boathouse no longer shares this space with others the authorities deemed it unsafe and the owners long since passed meant it had returned to becoming a local government-owned property who proceeded to demolish it to make room for who knows what.

I will always be grateful for that evening in the boathouse for me it was a small lesson in my journey.