The Messy Path to Meaning
Listening to the Light
UP THE GARDEN PATH (After Patrick Heron)
Medium: Sketched by hand, intuitively using the iPad Pro
I used to think that surrender was about relief, about finding a deeper peace. But now I know it can show up disguised as jumping headfirst into the deep end, hands and legs tied up.
The spiritual path is rarely tidy or comfortable. It’s often messy, sometimes brutally so, with every instinct screaming at you to turn back.
But if you listen to that deeper voice, you’ll know the feeling: life handing you an impossible challenge you didn’t quite sign up for, yet something inside you whispers, this is mine to face.
There’s a parallel in my painting, too. Letting go often begins with a mess: marks that feel pointless, chaotic, or wrong. As the painter Patrick Heron once said, “The act of painting is not a process of building, but of discovery.”
If my teacher training had taught me anything, it was to be careful what you wish for. But as I soon learned, it’s just as important to be careful how far you let go, as the universe often provides what’s essential for our long-term growth, rather than our immediate desires.
It was the summer of 1996, and I’d just passed the PGCE (Postgraduate Certificate in Education) with the rest of my cohort—twenty or so of us in all—we scattered like anxious bees, hunting for our first teaching jobs.
In the UK, you couldn’t gain QTS (Qualified Teacher Status) until you’d completed a full year of school-based teaching. So the pressure was on. Everyone was scrambling to find the easiest position, the nicest school, the one with the best mentoring, the gentlest students, the fewest reasons to cry in the supply cupboard.
I was no different.
I applied endlessly. That year, for reasons no one quite understood (possibly karmic payback for my earlier smugness), the job market was tighter than usual. It was a bit like submitting my portfolio of paintings to a gallery: a burst of hope, followed by a black hole of silence, and, if you were lucky, a rejection letter to cheer you up.
Looking back, those many rejections were what eventually shifted the way I approached the creative process, not as a means to gain approval or control outcomes, but as something else entirely. A practice of presence, risk, and surrender. And most importantly, learning not to take it personally.
And if you’re walking your own creative or spiritual path, you’re not alone. We’re all just figuring it out, step by step, or in my case, brushstroke by brushstroke.
Some of my peers didn’t find placements at all. I started to wonder if my applications were being used as scrap paper in the school office. Something I later realised, when I was on the other side of the table as Head of Art, wasn’t very far from the truth. The competition for art jobs was always through the roof. When you’re faced with fifty applications for a single teaching post, there’s no choice but to be brutal. At least two-thirds go straight to the scrap pile before you even begin narrowing down a viable shortlist.
Then came the phone call…
A warm voice on the other end explained that a position had suddenly opened up. It was late August, schools must have been desperate, and no one else was available. A Head of Department had taken medical leave, and they needed someone to cover immediately. A six-month temporary position. Full responsibility.
“Head of Department?” I asked, stunned.
I was barely out of training. I hadn’t even fully mastered writing a decent lesson plan, let alone taking on an entire department, its curriculum, and the hopes and dreams of the senior leadership team. There was absolutely no way I was qualified to lead anything. Unless leadership now included mild panic and a blank stare.
For a moment, I wondered if they’d confused me with someone else entirely. Or if this was some sort of administrative prank the agency played to keep themselves entertained in the slower months of August.
I genuinely didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. In the end, I did a bit of both.
And then I said yes… not to the job, but to the universe. Who, by this point, I’d learned wasn’t to be messed with, bargained with, or casually advised about career planning. If anything, she seemed to enjoy watching me squirm just long enough before handing me exactly the thing I was trying to avoid.