Looking back, looking forward

It used to take monks many hours to illuminate their manuscripts. Now, it took but a few moments to illuminate this blog entry. Things change. Today would have been my wedding anniversary and, on such days, I find myself yet again looking back across the years and marvelling at the alteration I find between the person I was then and the person I am now. We could be separate beings from separate lifetimes.

And then I think back just a year. What a difference that has made to my life. Now, the two people are much more similar, and yet equally different. To move my mind on from the "anniversary", I decided to visit a rather beautiful garden that has been created in an old quarry at a stately home near where I live. Last year, I visited the same garden and admired the same plants and sense of other worldliness. My memory is that it was an extremely long walk from the car park to the quarry. A walk that I thought would never end and that absolutely exhausted me. And all the way there, I worried about how I would manage to return to the car park!

Today, the same walk took no more than five minutes. I was quite disappointed by the proximity of car park to the quarry garden. And, as for the castle beyond, what had seemed like a major expedition to reach it twelve months ago was simply a gentle stroll to the other side of the quarry. It is astonishing how our perceptions alter with time - and, in my case, with increased health.

This wasn't a case of places we visited in childhood seeming smaller when we revisit years later; twelve months has seen a great change in my life, as I have written so many times in this blog. And yet, each time the changes become clear to me, I'm surprised. How could I have reached such depths without noticing? Cliché though it may be, life truly is full of unexpected, twisty, little paths, rather like those I walked along today...