Be Careful What You Wish For
Listening to the Light
Beginning - 23 x 29 in
Medium: Painted digitally by hand using iPad Pro
“This post is a reflection from From London to Mexico, a book in progress about the quiet signs that guide us into unexpected change.”
When I said I wanted more animation in my life, I didn’t realise the universe would take me quite so literally…
This is a story about how everything began: my teaching career, my relationship with Virginie (we’ve now been married for 27 year), and the quiet thread of trust that would eventually guide us halfway across the world. At the time, I thought I was just recovering from a creative dead end. I didn’t know life was about to reroute me completely. Looking back, it all makes perfect (and slightly hilarious) sense.
In September 1995, I began my teacher training and suddenly found myself facing classrooms full of students. It was the opposite of the cold, solitary studio I’d grown used to over the previous few years. And it forced me to grow in every way imaginable.
That summer, just before I was accepted at Goldsmiths College, Virginie unexpectedly reappeared in my life.
Technically, we’d met once before at a student Buddhist meeting I was leading. She was a beautiful young French woman, striking and stylish, with that magnetic mix of elegance and unpredictability I’d always assumed came as standard for Parisians. I greeted her in what I considered rather flawless French (having spent my early childhood in Clermont-Ferrand), but she gave me the kind of polite smile usually reserved for shop assistants offering you something you clearly can’t afford. Needless to say, I didn’t make much of a first impression.
It was a particularly glorious summer afternoon when we crossed paths again many months later at a Buddhist garden party. I was newly single, finding a strange peace in the unraveling of what had felt like an emotional and professional collapse. I wasn’t looking for anything. I’d decided to stop chasing, to let go, to focus on myself…
But as I should’ve guessed by then, life had other plans entirely. Like my wonderful grandfather, when my grandmother used to scream across the house for him to fetch something, it seems that life too had selective hearing.
When I think of that sunny afternoon, I can still vividly remember that background hum that only those who live in a city like London understand: the smell of newly cut grass, the intense scent of flowers in full bloom, sausages grilling on the bbq, glasses clinking, laughter, and animated voices. Virginie overheard me speaking French (not something you’d expect from the quiet British guy in the corner) and was intrigued enough to come and investigate. This time, we sparked up a conversation and, against all odds, her eyes didn’t glaze over or drift to the next more exciting distraction. That’s usually the point where people politely excuse themselves, somewhere around minute two of me launching unapologetically into one of life’s big questions.
Oddly enough, I’d done my very best to look unattractive that week, having spontaneously shaved my head down to a number one after years of shoulder-length locks. It was a defiant move, following the abrupt ending of a long term relationship.
I looked like an extra from the film Trainspotting, minus the Scottish charisma. That was just as well, since I wasn’t trying to sound charming.
But something bigger had shifted. One brief introduction became hours of connection. The garden emptied, but we stayed, talking through dusk.
Virginie was unlike anyone I’d ever met. Impulsive, unpredictable, striking. Everything I wasn’t. She’d grown up in Paris with a challenging childhood and had carved her own path entirely from scratch. Nothing had been handed to her. She didn’t waste time. She knew what she wanted, and what she didn’t. Beneath her bold presence was a deep spiritual grounding. Her Buddhist faith was strong. That thread of shared practice was the ground we both stood on.
Virginie had been given my number by what I now know to be two conspiring Buddhist friends who had long been trying, unsuccessfully, to set us up.
Shortly after, she called and invited me to see Fame: The Musical in Soho. That was the last thing I would’ve chosen to see, but as if on autopilot, I agreed, and we started dating. In any case, Virginie had made her decision, and that was that.
After the show (which, to my surprise, was actually rather good), we went for a drink in a nearby café. Minutes into the first real opportunity to get to know each other, Virginie, mid-sip, half swallowed her chewing gum, and nearly choked on the spot. I was terribly phlegmatic, and mostly introverted. She was sanguine, center of the party. I haven’t had a boring moment since.
It felt like life had just said, “Engage!” and suddenly I was in warp speed without having checked the coordinates.
By early 1996, midway through my teacher training year, we decided to move in together. We found a cheap apartment in South London and made it work. I was studying full-time, and Virginie took a full-time job as a nanny. She was still learning English at the time, but already had experience in childcare and as an animatrice in France. She adapted quickly. She always did.
That was the beginning of everything.
If you had told me then, on that summer afternoon in a South London garden, that one day we’d be living on the shores of the Mexican Caribbean, running our own private learning centre, I’d have assumed you were out of your mind. Or perhaps more accurately, that I’d eventually have to be out of mine to make it happen.
We came together through the most unexpected of moments. Our lives were different. Our upbringings opposite. But we shared something essential, a spiritual path, a hunger for truth, and a quiet belief that life was always calling us toward something more aligned.
Over the years that followed, through the late 1990s and 2000s, our life unfolded slowly and deliberately: two decades as educators in London. Two children. A series of homes, bought and sold, until we finally settled into a small cottage in Wimbledon. A place we loved. A place we thought we’d stay.
But even then, I think the whisper was still speaking. Quietly. Patiently. Waiting.
It’s only now, looking back, that I can see what it was guiding me toward, not just away from a quiet sense of stagnation, but toward presence. Toward a life built not on force, but on flow. A life of trust.
That whisper was the beginning.
Everything since has been a deeper listening.