In 1983 I took a trip to France, England and Wales with some friends. We went to Paris and met up with an acquaintance of mine who lived in Rueil Malmaison outside of Paris. We stayed on the Ile de La Cité for a couple of nights in a very old hotel and then we took the train out to Natalie’s in Rueil Malmaison where we stayed for a few more days. In Paris we saw everything we were supposed to see. La Tour d’Eiffel, the Louvre (“pas de flash!” in front of the Mona Lisa) Bois du Bologne, Sacre Coeur, Pere Lachaise (Jim Morrison), Shakespeare and Company, Versailles, La Rive Gauche. We packed in a lot. The whole nine yards. We even had a many course meal at a very, very good French restaurant with much French wine and food complete with waiters who had white serviettes draped over their forearms.

Then my three friends headed off to the Netherlands to enjoy the pot smoking culture there and I took the train to Calais by myself and then a hydrofoil to the White Cliffs of Dover and finally another train into London. There I met up with British friends of B and a couple days later B showed up from the Netherlands. We rented a car and drove out of London to the English countryside, the Cotswolds’ and Wales. We decided not to go to Stonehenge because B had heard the traffic was terrible there and lots of accidents happened because stupid tourists couldn’t remember how to drive on the wrong side. He didn’t feel confidant and he wouldn’t let me drive. I thought this was poppycock. I went along with it anyway and now I regret it. Stonehenge would have been very cool.

The first thing we noticed about Britain was how small it was. We discovered this when we identified a destination on the map and within minutes we were driving past it. The long distances we were used to in the US did not translate to highway traveling in Britain. The second thing we noticed was that country roads were narrow one lane, lined with bushes over your head where you could reach out the window and touch the bushes. Fortunately we never met anyone coming from the opposite direction or there would have been decisions to make.

The Cotswolds’ were charming as they were supposed to be. Bath was also charming as it was supposed to be. On a high hill looking out over England three handlers held down a glider until the pilot yelled “clear!” and popped straight up into the sky in the stiff wind from England.

We toured Chepstow Castle on the River Wye which empties into the Severn on the border of England and Wales. I peered down the open to the elements loo hole to see far below me the flowing river. Don’t fall in or you’ll be sorry. If performed correctly I guess that solved the sanitation problem. Nevermind that your bum froze when a blizzard blew in off the ocean. We marveled over the indecipherable road signs that were in both English and Welsh and sometimes only in Welsh. The Welsh signs looked like someone had dumped all the letters in the Scrabble game onto the table.

On a cloudy day we veered off the main road and discovered a small Saxon church down a tree lined gravel road. I entered the small dark interior alone and immediately felt kind of weird. I don’t know what it was. It seemed like nothing had changed in, what? 900 years? Cold, dim, dank, close. I sat and meditated for a few minutes but that didn’t dispel the feeling of uneasiness, so I left and wandered outside to the small cemetery behind the church. Some weathered gravestones were impossible to read. Some were easier. That’s when it hit me. These were people that lived and went about their lives in the towns and villages from the surrounding areas. Could I close my eyes and imagine that they were there, what it smelled like, what it sounded like? And what did it mean that these people lived and died and now were lost to the ages? Did anyone know that they were here? Had everyone forgotten them?

It was weird to think that people were living their lives all that long ago but were now forgotten. Would I be the same? Would someone 500 years from now be wandering in a graveyard and see my tombstone and wonder who I was? My reaction to that thought might be weird to some.

I felt liberated.

How can I say it? It felt like nothing really mattered and that I could give up whatever need I felt to be special because the truth was I was not special and it was okay. Let me say that again for emphasis. It’s okay to be who you are and just live life as best you can and not worry about it. I didn’t have to sweat my job performance. It didn’t matter if I was in a relationship or not. I could just live my life as best as I could and that was all that mattered.

And that’s what I’ve tried to do. It’s a kind of peace to realize your place in the world and in the scheme of things. Anyway, it’s definitely a kind of peace for me.